Hi, I’m Sarah, and I’m a drug addict.  I like to think of myself as a ‘legitimate junky,’ because what brought me down were indeed opiates, but the prettier packaged, controlled ones rather than their street cousins.  I did those too, of course, but those were generally reserved for ’special occasions.’ They’re all the same in my opinion, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot of people delude themselves into thinking they didn’t have a problem because ‘at least it’s not heroin.’ In my mind, it’s ALL heroin.

Realistically, I should have died years ago.  I have done just about every mind-altering substance known to humankind, and usually in large quantities.  So called gateway drugs, uppers, downers, psychedelics, natural things, very chemical things, you name it, and I have probably done it, and a lot of it too.  Over the years, I have watched some substances attach themselves to receptors in my friends’ brains a little too strongly, and down they’d go.  For some reason, I had this ability where I could walk all the way up to the fire, play with it for a little while, and turn around and walk away without getting burned.

I’ve lost friends to varying drugs.  At one time, a lot of my friends were having problems with opiates.  Rather than learn from what I was seeing them go through, I jumped right in with them.  My reasoning was, if I had been able to walk away from everything else, why would this be any different?  Well, in this case, I was wrong.  Quite wrong.

My parents (who lived on the other side of the country) rescued me.  I was in a pretty bad state.  They moved me back to the hometown I despised and couldn’t wait to leave when I was younger.  I got hooked up with a doctor, went through detox (detox sucks in its own right, but going through it in front of your parents takes it to a whole new level), and I was placed in a rehab program that involved a new drug they’ve been testing as a substitute to methadone.  A doctor has to go through a DEA program in order to be able to prescribe it, and the DEA closely monitors it.  The addict has to fill out all sorts of forms and agreements, and one of the main ones was a contract promising “at least three meetings a week.”  You were given a slip for the meeting’s leader to sign to prove your attendance.

When I speak of meetings, I’m talking about Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, the world renowned 12 step programs.  I’m sure you’ve heard of them; maybe you’ve even been to one as its format has been modified to include every malady from gambling to sex addiction to codependency.  It’s based on a 12 step program developed by Bill Wilson (who got much of his material from The Oxford Group) and Dr. Bob.  The details on the formation of AA is very well documented, so I won’t go into it here, but just in case you’ve been living in a cave and are completely baffled, here, at least, are the 12 Steps:

1.  We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3.  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4.  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7.  Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8.  Made a list of all people we had harmed. and became willing to make amends with them all.

9.  Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would harm them or others.

10.  Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11.  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12.  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I’ve had ‘issues’ with AA/NA well before ever attending a meeting.  The biggest one was their take that it’s not their fault because they have a ‘disease.’ I thought that was ridiculous.  No one has ever forced anything down my throat; everything I’ve drunk, smoked, snorted, and ingested has been of my own free will.  To say ‘I have a disease’ always seemed like a cop out to me.  I also wasn’t a big fan of the program because it seemed like it ws an excuse to sit around and talk about the glory days. People who hadn’t touched a drink or a pill in 20 years still regarding themselves as alcoholics-is this useful or self defeating?  If you follow the notion that your thoughts create your reality, then constantly thinking about yourself as this negative person doesn’t seem very productive.  Plus, it seemed like an excuse to re-hash the good old days of how wasted they were, even if it WAS 20+ years ago.   As long as a person ended with something like ’but things are much better now that I’m sober and I love AA,’ the moments of their debaucheries could be continuously re-lived.  Their eyes would light up as they told their stories, and you could feel that given the chance, they’d be back out in a heartbeat if there weren’t any consequences.  In my time with the program, many did, which was sad.

So this is what I was walking into-a program that I not only did not believe in but was actively opposed to.  But when you’re eaten down and are looking at death like it would be a nice vacation, and your parents just shelled out a ton of money to get you clean, you don’t have a lot of choices.  I’ll tell you how it went next time…