realizing my addiction | overcoming my drug addiction
I interviewed former university student Brent about his addiction to alcohol and cocaine.
When did you start drinking and using cocaine?
I started drinking alcohol for the first time when I was 11 years old. Drinking started to become a lifestyle I used to gain acceptance with my friends. During high school, everyone was doing it so I just joined in. Later on during my twenties, I was working at a bar and everyone there was doing cocaine. I started joining them because I wanted to fit in and be accepted.
Why was acceptance such a huge thing for you?
Everybody wants to feel loved and cared for. Everybody wants to be a somebody.
I always had a lot of friends and had a great family so it wasn't that I didn't get accepted at home. But, I seemed to want to make an extra effort to impress others and used alcohol and drugs to gain it.
How did these lifestyle choices become an addiction?
I ended a five year relationship with my fiancé when I was 22. I was drinking quite a bit before that, but it started to affect my life more after the break up. My drinking started affecting my work performance and I started making really poor decisions.
I started going out and partying after work and eventually lost my job as a grocery store manager at 23.
My life had been wrapped up in my fiancé and when our relationship ended, it felt like my life fell apart. I didn't have any meaning in life anymore. So, I wound up in the party life.
As for cocaine, I started that when I was about 24 years old. I had started working in a bar and everybody at work was doing it too. Everyone offered it to me and for 3 months I said no, but finally, I broke down and said yes. It was at New Years that I decided to give cocaine a just "one try."
How did you feel?
I thought cocaine was fun. It felt good. I was having a good time, everyone was partying and I was joining in with them. But, the next day, I was starting to think, "This was stupid." Yet, because I was constantly making bad decisions, I didn't really feel that bad about it. So I began using cocaine once a week. What started as once a week turned into once every couple of days, and then eventually into everyday. This wasn't out of the ordinary though because everyone else at work did the same.
What was the source of your addiction?
At the point that I started to get really deep into alcohol and cocaine, I just hated my life. When I spent so much of my time with my head in the clouds, I didn't have to think about anything else. I could just have fun. I didn't feel fulfilled and I never really liked my job so all I did was party. I used the money from work just to feed my lifestyle.
When did you realize you had a drug addiction?
I realized something was wrong in my life when I became a cocaine dealer so that I could use cocaine for free. One day my roommate and I were just contemplating (we were both high) what are we doing with our lives. He was a Buddhist and I came from a Christian background. We contemplated the meaning of life and started questioning why we were wasting our lives.
He said he had to go bed and I went into the living room and just broke down. I was crying and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I didn't understand why my life sucked so bad. Then I just heard a voice, it wasn't audible, but it was a clear voice in my head that just said, "Go home." After I woke up the next day, I told my mom I needed to go home. So I moved several provinces over from the big city I was in to the smaller city where my family was.
I had been high on drugs for two years straight until that point. Moving home and removing myself from the lifestyle of drugs was necessary. I knew I needed to clean up my life.
Did anyone know you had this problem?
Not really. My parents didn't know I had this problem and I hid it from family and other friends. I wasn't the person I wanted to be. I even hid it from my best friends. They knew I drank but I hid the cocaine use from them. Over time they started to find out, but it was never something I talked to them about.
How did you feel about yourself when you did drugs?
I used to wake up every morning feeling as though I wasn't the person I wanted to be. But, I felt so bad about it, that I would just do drugs to numb myself from that feeling. It was just an unending cycle.
How did you overcome this addiction?
At first, I stopped the cocaine and just smoked marijuana. Most of my friends smoked marijuana and I still wanted acceptance.
Eventually I stopped dealing drugs too. You're easily forgotten in the drug scene since there is always someone else to take your place. So in that way I could slide out with some ease.
After I went back to my family, I started getting involved with a church. I still didn't really feel a need for it though. At that point I still didn't want people to know the things that I'd done because I was ashamed of them.
One day, after I started university (at age 27), I met a guy who sat me down and asked me, "What do you think will happen when you die?" I told him I didn't know and he just shared with me, "You can know for sure what will happen to me when I die." I didn't believe him. But the more I looked into what he told me I realized that there is a God and that he loves me and has a plan for my life.
The man just shared with me that the Bible said about Jesus paying the price and consequence for my sins -- that consequence being ultimate separation from God. He said it didn't matter what I had done in the past, God would still forgive me. I didn't have to be ashamed of my past because God would still love and accept me for the person that I am.
The man also told me that if I believed in Jesus I would be saved and would not need to look to anybody or anything to feel accepted. I've come to experience and see that even though I don't always feel acceptance from other people, God always accepts me. He's always there and looking out for me. All I had to do is ask him to forgive me and tell him that I want to change and he'll be right there.
Not long after that I met a group of people on campus who were excited about God. I was attracted by their passion and wanted to hang around them. They invited me to a men's breakfast.
At that breakfast, a man talked about how to have a personal relationship with God. I had become a Christian when I was a kid but even though I had done the things the guy at school had said, I still felt so far from God. All of the terrible things I had done and bad decisions I made seemed to keep me from God. So it was that day, at breakfast, at that breakfast I said "God, I’m sorry I've done a lot of bad things. I want to change. I want you to change me. And I’ll do whatever it takes."
What was the most difficult challenge you faced in dealing with this addiction?
It was probably moving from the city I lived in and going back home. It was so necessary for me to have a fresh start and a fresh perspective in life. I would've ended up in jail or dead if I had stayed in the same place. I had to get out of there so I could see what was really going on in my life.
Addictions are about more than just the drug. Addiction is a lifestyle. You develop friends with a common interest. You can't just separate yourself from the substance, you have to get away from your whole life. Otherwise, they'll just draw you right back in again. You don't notice that you're going down if everyone else is going down with you. It was hard to get away from my friends.
How does someone know if they have a problem with drugs or alcohol?
You can usually tell by what people get excited about. When people say things like, "I was so drunk last night. I puked all over the place." It shows that they’re proud of something that later on in life they'll be embarrassed of.
Another sign is if people are looking for acceptance all over the place or doing anything to get acceptance.
Also, when people's grades start slipping or when they start choosing to go to the bar instead of other important priorities, you know something is wrong.
And the biggest sign is if their relationships start breaking down. That may be a sign of having a substance abuse problem.
What advice would you give to someone who is facing this issue?
If you wake up in the morning after being high, ask yourself, are you the person you want to be when you look in the mirror? If not, you have to find out who you are. No amount of any drug will make up or fix what you are feeling.
Most people who are high or drunk are running from something and they need to find out what that is so they can stop running.
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