Some days it feels like I’ve lived two different lives. There is a contrast in my mind between what I do today and how I used to live. I often catch myself thinking about the responsibility I have today and how my prior experience with using drugs never even afforded me the opportunity to learn about what responsibility was. I’ve been clean for nearly five years now, but sometimes I forget how fucked up things really were. It’s like there’s this built-in-forgetter in my head that doesn’t want me to recall how my life revolved around getting high.
Addiction is a cunning, baffling, and powerful disease- while actively using, it clouds my thinking to the point where I'm convinced if I can just get high enough and stay that way, things will be alright. Addiction is like a living entity whose sole purpose is destruction. It's permanent effects are sickening: its active chaos lies dormant inside me but it has left me to think maybe, just maybe, someday I could still handle using again- even just one social drink. Those thoughts still occur even after years clean. But addicts can’t have one of anything. It might start off with a social drink for me, but it would certainly end up in isolation, where nothing is ever enough. But the fantasy of using still resonates between the synoptic clefts in my brain. The rushes and thrills of consuming numerous amounts of drugs have created there own category of muscle memory within my head. So stopping has required much more than just simple abstinence.
I was told by other recovering addicts in my early recovery the three Simple rules to staying clean: you go to meetings, you don’t use, and you change your whole fucking life. I quickly learned Simple is not the same as Easy. They told me I had to change my playgrounds, playmates, and play-things. I knew what they meant by this, but my development of deep understanding on this concept has come through a process of trial and error.
The playmates have been the most difficult for me, especially since I joined the social distraction of Facebook. Old buddies that I purposely haven’t spoken to in years have discovered I still exist and some have sent me friend requests, asking me to reconnect with them. I’m left feeling torn between what to do. I imagine that nothing has really changed for them, but then I question maybe something has and they need support from someone who has been there. The aspect of reopening doors that I closed for my own protection and best interest has become a common question for me. I wonder if I can handle it. I ask myself: Am I ready to talk to these people that remember me as somebody else- Is my addiction just waiting for this sort of opportunity to break from its arrested status- When I'm having a bad day is contacting these people going to cross my mind and lead me to an opportunity to use again? Even though its been a handful of years since my last high - my addiction hasn't forgotten anything. I check my motives but I come up with different answers regularly. So I just try keep in mind that slipping down the playground slide into old patterns is always just one bad decision away.
