natema

beedril,
You said:
There are some real problems here. First of all, in order to be clean, you have to want to be clean. I realize that you're young and it all seems alright right now because of the great feelings that you're getting from the drugs.
I am 22 years old now, but I went to rehab when I was 19 years old. I started earlier than you. I started smoking cigarettes when I was 11 years old to right now( now I can't stop. It is the hardest drug to quit). I started smoking pot in the 8th grade. Around the same time, I also started drinking. I mean, it was natural to me. I remember being six years old and my Grandpa giving me some of his beer every time I saw him. My best friend would come over and we'd go down to my Dad's bar and mix in as many things as we could fit in a 12 ounce glass to see what it would taste likeBy the time I was a sophomore I was smoking pot everyday. It was harmless, right. Wrong. By the time I was 16, my partying was getting me into trouble, but I didn't see it. My grades were falling, I was skipping school all the time. My parents didn't know what to do, I was out of control. They didn't know about the drinking and drugs, but they knew I stayed out way too late, had all the wrong kinds of friends, and I lied to them constantly. I planned and plotted to do what I wanted to do, stay out late, party, drink, smoke some ganja, have some f'g fun! I even started helping to campaign the movement to legalize marijuana. I couldn't imagine living without it. It made me mellow when I wanted it to. If I was sick and nauseated it made me feel better. If I was down, it made me forget what was going on or at least make it seem not so important. At 17, I started getting really depressed and felt like I was going crazy. I know now that I have Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety, and a dash of OCD. I may also have borderline personality disorder. I smoked pot everyday just about all day long. My boyfriend and I toked up in the morning and afternoon while we figured out what we were going to do for 4:20, then smoked until the next one and the next one. You get the picture. All the parents and older crowd said marijuana was bad, but I didn't think it was. I had tried it and it was good. Had they? No. So what did they know? Besides I knew a lot of people I was close with who would give me marijuana for free. I liked the high it gave me and it was 'natural', but I started wondering about other drugs, how they would make me feel. Then, they offered me other things for free. I tried out LSD. I liked that alright, did it quite a few times, but it still wasn't quite the greatest high. So I took pills, didn't like them, they made me sleepy or groggy. Speed wasn't my style, didn't like feeling jittery. Then I found my drug of choice: ECSTACY. It made me feel so good. I loved everyone and everything was beautiful. I could forget about feeling bad inside. I wasn't depressed. Except for the next couple weeks. I would always be... off... I felt so depressed. Until I would take it again. It progressed this way on & on. I was self-medicating. But the problem with that is it really only makes things worse. They made me feel really good for a while, but afterwards I was even worse off than I was before I took whatever I had that time. I didn't have control over my emotions or my life anymore. It was a landslide. When I was 19, I realized that I wanted to actually live, not just try to fly high all the time only to crash. I wanted to be happy. I wanted it to be real when I was happy, not some chemical emotion. I went to see a psychiatrist and psychologist. They reccomended I join their recovery program when I gave them the mammoth list of all the drugs I had ever taken. I went. I wanted to get better. I wanted to feel okay inside. I did. I started feeling so much better. Just being sober was crazy to me. I had been high so long, being sober was a whole new world to me. I quit doing drugs, but not all. Smoking pot once in a while seemed harmless. What's a little weed? I drank too once in awhile. What's wrong with that? I know what's wrong with that now. At 21 I had a breakdown, went to the hospital, stayed for 2 weeks inpatient, 2 weeks outpatient. I learned I was having LSD flashbacks. The once in a while drinks were adding to my depression. The weed causes paranoia and depression. It eats up all the seratonin that let you feel happy and not depressed. I stopped it all. I went to an AA meeting, but it wasn't my style. I didn't get anything out of it. I did go to meetings at EA (Emotions Anonymous) though. That helped a lot. "My name is Natema and I have no control over my emotions." haha. I have so many regrets about who I used to be, drinking and drugging. Don't let it happen to you. I never graduated high school. In school, I tested in the 99th percentile, I should've gone to college. Now, my brain is a little swiss-cheesed from the drugs, especially the X. What's ironic is that I am not an addict. I am what's called an abuser. When you say "I am willing to cut down, but the thought of never smoking weed or drinking again scares the crap out of me" it sounds to me like you are going down addiction road.

I'm going to try to finish high school through correspondence school. Hell, I'm trying to rebuild my whole life, but that doesn't change who I am. I'm not born-again. Not all of my friends are clean, but lately they seem to be learning, too. My boyfriend is clean from heroin for 9 months now.

I've got tattoos, piercings. I am who I am, I just don't drug up anymore. I know you are afraid, but what should scare the crap out of you is what will happen if you don't quit? Do you wanna go down the road I did? You've already leaped from alcohol to weed, don't let it progress further.

Please don't take offense to this, but it sounds like you've got some low self-esteem, some issues behind your drinking and smoking up, and probably some mental issues I hope you're getting help for.

Does addiction run in your family? Are you doing this because of problems you have?

I hope I've been able to help a little even though I've been babbling. If you want to talk more, just let me know.

See you around,
Natema


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Participating in real life is not so hard. Ceasing to
pretend that there is something better we could be doing is a
little harder.
-Tao of Enlightenment

__________________
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Participating in real life is not so hard. Ceasing to
pretend that there is something better we could be doing is a
little harder.
-Tao of Enlightenment