Rehab Is For Quitters
Ran into this a lot in my younger years – people I knew who struggled with addictions. There are apparently two kinds of people who go into recovery: those who eschew all inebriants thereafter, and those who just learn to not fall back into THAT particular addiction.
I had a meth problem, very short-lived, in 1995. I have an addictive personality, and meth was an incredible high. I only danced with that demon for about 6 weeks, but it got me into its claws hard. After that first bump, it was: 3 days on, wasted day of crashing. Rinse, repeat, for six weeks, no exceptions. I was working in an oil refinery where they randomly drug tested, so I had a whole lot of risks involved with gacking myself up on crank every day. Didn’t care – the high was incredible.
Until I woke up one day with a nosebleed and bad skin. I was already thin and lean when I started doing it. I’m 5’10”, and when I wised up that day, I had a 28 inch waist and weighed 157 lbs. Looked in the mirror and said “Nope, I’m done.” Haven’t done it since. Keep in mind – I’m not saying that the drug was to blame. I was to blame. My serious lack of impulse control had me dancing with meth in a fast, hard spiral downwards.
So although I wanted to keep doing it… fuck that. I prefer to stay alive. And yeah, there are times I’d love to have a fat caterpillar rail of tweek so I could stay up all night finishing comics and writing. I don’t, because waking up with a faceful of crusted blood is no fun at all.
But I’m one of those who can kick one addiction and still have fun with other substances. I’ve tinkered in various drugs, including coke – which, honestly, I never understood how someone could find it addictive. Expensive as hell, and the high doesn’t last long enough for the price, or for the hangover the next day, when your sinuses feel like they’ve been scrubbed with steel wool and you have a headache nestled behind each eyeball with a power drill. All of that said, I lost a friend in 2003 to cocaine addiction. A lot of Alex’s story comes from watching him go down.
Right now? My addictions are beer, nicotine, and guns. Two of those might eventually kill me. We’ll see. BUT AT LEAST THEY’RE LEGAL!
Speaking of gun addiction: I need to make a montage like this. Preferably using some of Jeph Jacque’s “Deathmøle” music.
(Let’s try this again, this time paying attention to closing HTML tags and whatnot….)
Heh, you want to talk about the idiocies of snorting things not intended to be snorted? I knew a UK public-school-educated rugby player a few years back who, after a school rugby tour in South Africa, insisted that the Tequila Hard Bastard was A Thing, and definitely not just A Thing Complete Retards Do. The Tequila Hard Bastard is like a Tequila Slammer, except that instead of the usual “lick salt, slam shot, suck lime” approach, the Hard Bastard in question snorts the salt in one nostril, slam the shot, then squirts the lime in their eye.
Feeling comfortable with my less-than-Hard-Bastard status at the time, I demurred to try this. He proceeded to demonstrate, explaining afterwards that in his experience it was a surefire way of proving one’s manliness to Tha Laydeez – a notion I disputed on the basis that he had lime juice dribbling down his face and shirt, a nosebleed, and appeared to be crying.
By the time I got told (via a DWI) that I needed to do something, I’d quit everything illegal, and was just doing alcohol. After almost 25 years (pick up the chip on June 1st), I still have times where I’m not sure I’m “powerless” over drugs. I HAVE, however, decided that it doesn’t matter. I don’t need alcohol, nicotine, or other things to have fun, and the potential downside sucks worse than any possible good times would be worth.
Everyone is an individual. Hell, for me, quitting smoking (3-1/2 months after the last drink) was rough enough that I almost moved my anniversary to that date.
The semester after I got back from Afghanistan, perhaps going directly from running convoys in the A-Stan to moving back into the fraternity house wasn’t the best idea, I had problems boozing and even did coke on occassion. And the kicker was, it wasn’t because I was traumatized by battle or anything, I was just happy to be alive, proud of the job I’d done, and dammitt, I’m an American, I’m gonna blow money on booze, blow, and sorority bimbos.
You’re lucky you don’t live in Maryland. Here, admitting publicly that you’re a human being with human flaws and a past that isn’t 100% sparkly clean is enough to have your right to own a firearm revoked.
Ditto Massachusetts. First-offense DUI here carries a potential 2.5 year prison term as of some time in 1994, although jail time is almost never imposed for a first offense. What this means is that if you ever get convicted of DUI in Mass., you become a Prohibited Person per GCA68 and can never touch a firearm again. Don’t even get me started on the whole “Suitable Person” language in the License-To-Carry laws, and how LTC Does Not Do What It Says On The Tin, which is way too complicated to elaborate on here.
Our License-To-Carry laws are effectively no issue. When you fill out the Maryland State Police background check forms (because form 4473 isn’t considered good enough), it asks you if you’ve ever taken any sort of illegal drug, with marking ‘yes’ being an automatic disapproval. Essentially, this means that if you smoked pot once in high school, your choices are perjury or never legally obtaining a regulated firearm (aka handguns, ARs, AKs, all the fun stuff).
I wouldn’t know about narcotics, but I had a drinking problem, or so I got told by people, mostly the types with social-worker attached to their name, after my spectacular breakup with my psycho-ex.
They kept telling me I was an alcoholic, I needed counseling (expensive, or paid for by the state and full of indoctrination, better known as brainwashing, adjudication as a substance abuser (WTF?), financial assistance, etc. Oh, wait! Let’s not forget the STACK of SSRI’s and other chemical zombie shit they wanted me to take!
I kept telling them I didn’t have a drinking problem, (even though at my peak I could knock off a fifth of scotch in a night, easy,) I had simply been self-medicating for trauma stemming from spousal abuse, both mental and physical, and didn’t need that kind of help, I just needed freedom, and the ability to get FAR, FAR AWAY from the ex! Yeah, denial, geographics, all that blather, whatever. In my book self-knowledge trumps a Piled Higher and Deeper
Years later, might have a beer once in a blue moon, but no more than that. Basically, still being a normal person, Whatever the fuck that is…
I did have a serious chainsmoking problem; started at thirteen, tried to quit numerous times, failed. 12-13-2011, I just–quit. Got tired of the stink, the mess, the expense, the hacking up of lungs, the sleep apnea, and just quit.
Slipped once when my computer died, ten days later in the middle of a commissioned render, December twenty-FUCKING-third XD. Hacked my toenails up, and that was the last cigarette I’ve had.
Anybody that can beat an addiction has some respect in my eyes. It’s not easy, it takes some real juevos, but it CAN be done.
anything can fuck up your life. the amazing thing about meth is how fast it works
I love questionable content probably my third favorite web comic after BnG and the last days of FOXHOUND
Still havent listened to deathmole tho
Jeph told me he uses Protools, which I found pretty amazing for the quality of the music he’s pumping out. Incredible speed metal/prog metal. Dude’s got chops.
If you “prefer to stay alive”, then why you be hatin on your liver?
:-/
*sigh* I tried so hard to be a drinker like my friends..I was a total failure.
So-called friends turned out not to be, so much, after all, too.
Only thing I got out of 1 year of (relatively) hard drinking was aging in my face (this had previously left me alone), and, at long last, the ability to get the slightest of hangovers (i.e. headache..as opposed to none at all no matter what I did)
Oh, and money down the tubes.
Phooey.
As for all the other drugs and addictions, I either laugh at them or run screaming [cigarette smoke]
What with heavy addicts/alcoholics on BOTH sides of your fambly tree, I’m thinking it might be the odd iota of this–excruciatingly extreme lack of addictive personality– from yours truly, possibly in your makeup, that enables you to turn it down.
…
Nah, silly me. It’s your superpower of willpower and granite personality, and nothing else.