Natural Progression
It took a little longer for me than most people with the disease of addiction to progress and eventually destruct most areas of my life. For a few years after that first taste of opiates, I was what most would call a “functioning addict”.
I graduated college with a Bachelors degree, and went on to get a great sales job where I blossomed quickly. I moved in with father at first, allowing myself to save money for my own place.
It was soon after moving in with my father that I entered a relationship with someone very similar to myself, a fellow addict. We both fed off each other’s love for mind-altering substances, and co signed each other’s use on a daily basis. The toxic, codependent relationship was a recipe for disaster.
Up until this relationship started, I was able to drift away from the opiates, and stick to marijuana and alcohol. On our second date, my girlfriend reintroduced me to opiates, and it was downhill from there; quickly.
It started back up as a weekly, recreational activity, and quickly progressed to a few times a week. My family began seeing the red flags, and advised me to get out of the relationship.
After we had been dating for about a year, I decided to move out of my father’s house and move in with my girlfriend. At the time, my father warned me that moving in with her would be the worst decision of my life. Even though my dad was my role model, I decided to go against his advice and move in with her anyway.
This is when things started to get out of control fast. I was still at my sales job, where I was a top sales producer, and bringing in large amount of money for a recent college graduate. However, I was using the majority of my income to support two pill addictions.
We began seeing that our lives were becoming unmanageable, but we were unable to stop on our own will. On multiple occasions we attempted to stop, but then one of us would have a bad day and convince the other that it was ok to get pills “just one more time”. And that insane cycle went on and on, and we were not able to stop.
I was making upwards of $80,000 a year, and could barely afford to pay the rent. Between the two of us, we were spending about $100 a day to feed our addiction, and our lives were falling apart quickly.
Eventually my family and friends (the few I still had) had seen enough, and intervened. They sat me down and had an intervention, similar to the ones on television. The only difference is they did not understand addiction and the concept of complete abstinence. They would under the impression that I would go to treatment, stop the pills and continue to be able to drink and smoke like a normal person.
It was not a hard decision for me to go to treatment. I was so emotionally drained that I was ready to surrender. I had enough of waking up every single day with the only thought being where I was going to find my next fix. Although I did not hit the “rock bottom” you hear from other addicts, I knew it was time to get help.
To catch up on David’s Story, read his previous entries:
“The Beginning” and the White Picket Fence