i'm startin with the man in the mirror, i'm askin him to chaaange his waaaays

[blumpkin blownuts]

Hitting Bottom

We don't up and decide to attend NA because we're excelling at life or finding ourselves free from problems.
Most addicts are driven to seek help when they are face-to-face with a highly-negative life change, such as divorce, loss of custody, bankruptcy, prison sentences, insanity or death. Not everyone hits the same bottom, or falls to the same extent. Some of us may have hit our bottom years before seeking help, and haven't yet realized just how little we've had for such a long time.

For those of us who haven't been driven into the rooms by a recent horrible event, it is easy to fall into a psychological trap by comparing our own circumstances to those of other addicts. The disease of addiction constantly attempts to fool us and tell us that we aren't "real addicts", or that we still have control over our lives while in active addiction, or that we can resume using after some milestone achieved or lesson learned in recovery.

Most recovering addicts will relapse, and while relapse is not the most desirable way to have our powerlessness over drugs confirmed, it is one of the easiest ways to come to terms with this inevitable conclusion. One of the biggest ways that NA is successful is that relapsing addicts are always encouraged to come back to the rooms, where they can still find love and forgiveness by their fellows, instead of being judged or berated.

As long as an addict keeps coming back, and never loses their desire to be clean, they can easily recover from a relapse before they hit a lower bottom than the circumstances that first brought them to the program.

[Plug Drugs]

bob, let me be honest, i think youre making your problem with drugs out to be this monstrous insolvable ultimatum, and in doing so you're giving your addiction the power to still ruin your life even after the drugs are gone.
You're putting your addiction up on a pedestal, stop it, just want something better for yourself, don't measure things in terms of how high they get you, just stop ittSTOPSPP SOTOPPPTIOpasotopsidrpfsditr

[blumpkin blownuts]

bob, let me be honest, i think youre making your problem with drugs out to be this monstrous insolvable ultimatum, and in doing so you're giving your addiction the power to still ruin your life even after the drugs are gone.
You're putting your addiction up on a pedestal, stop it, just want something better for yourself, don't measure things in terms of how high they get you, just stop ittSTOPSPP SOTOPPPTIOpasotopsidrpfsditr

it is unsolvable, and the worst part is i did it to myself. what's even worse is all the people who are able to use substances without abusing them, they got some kind of bonus that i didn't get. it's completely fucking unfair, yet -- honestly -- i don't care. it's finally not worth getting upset over anymore.

i am not defined by my mistakes, but i don't pretend they never happened, because i will be learning from those mistakes and using them to improve myself and my quality of life for the rest of my life. sometimes i feel bad for fucked up people who never got addicted, because recovery is so much more than how to stay clean, it provides incredibly useful tools for learning to live happy, joyous and free.

[blumpkin blownuts]

anyway i'm off to my gf's

i hope you do it mike, but it's up to you to realize whether or not you need help from people like you to improve your life
NA can't remove your desire to get high, you really need to already have that before even bothering with recovery

[blumpkin blownuts]

bob, let me be honest, i think youre making your problem with drugs out to be this monstrous insolvable ultimatum, and in doing so you're giving your addiction the power to still ruin your life even after the drugs are gone.
You're putting your addiction up on a pedestal, stop it, just want something better for yourself, don't measure things in terms of how high they get you, just stop ittSTOPSPP SOTOPPPTIOpasotopsidrpfsditr

Keep in mind there's other recovery groups besides 12-step programs, like Reasonable Recovery which teaches addicts they can still use in moderation without ever getting out of control again. I think the doctor who founded that particular group later got behind the wheel drunk and she ended up killing most of a family in an accident.