“Life After Drugs”

I wasn’t one of those people who thought their life would be over if they quit using, but there are plenty who do (or did). Some people don’t ever even try sobriety because they don’t want to become a ‘boring’ normie. Some folks have the misfortune of walking into their first twelve-step room and being faced with dour, depressed faces. News flash: Recovery does not have to be a funeral. If it feels like it is, then you’re doing it wrong.

My fear was always that life never would become anything other than misery. Actually, I can’t even call it a fear. I was convinced that was what life was, or at least what my life was. I thought everyone did it that way, that anybody who claimed to be happy was merely pretending. I was convinced that the agony I spent each day in was how everyone felt and that getting fucked up was how we all dealt with it. And let’s not forget the final piece of that particular insanity of mine—that I was a grade-‘A’ fuck up because I couldn’t keep doing it anymore.

I am still amazed that my life can be so full of joy. I used to think joy and happiness weren’t ever attainable, that at best all I could achieve was to be so deadened from substances that I felt nothing. That was my pitiable attempt at achieving happiness and balance in life—to be so fucked up that I was dead to all feelings, to the people around me, and the world I lived in.

These days, it is so different. Like night and day. No, more like the cold and dark of absolute zero in the middle of space, versus dancing on the surface of the sun in eternal brightness. I get to have a life now. I get to have a balanced life, too. I get to work, to play. I get to have my moments of struggle and the times of reward. I have hobbies, friends. There are sacrifices and payoffs. There is balance.

I never thought to myself that I didn’t want to quit because I wouldn’t have a life if I did; I never thought I had a life to begin with. I wasn’t a party user. I was a depressed, lonely soul who hid from the world and desperately tried everything he could to get the world to leave him alone. I tried everything I could to be emotionally dead. I even tried to make being dead a reality—without any success, obviously, and I can tell you that there is really nothing worse for a disastrously low self-esteem than failing at committing suicide!

Yes, there is a life after getting clean and sober. For those like myself, it’s a life like we’ve never known was possible; it’s the first time we’ve ever truly even had a life.