Why?

I got side-tracked the other day. What I wanted to write about was my journals. They’re bullshit. I write in them, 90% of the time, in the hope that one day I’ll have been someone important so people will go back through my journals and give me bucket loads of posthumous sympathy. A journal is not a journal if it is dishonest. Just like this blog is ineffective in its purpose if I cannot write with complete honesty.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since that first post. Why am I writing this stuff? What’s the purpose? What’s the meaning!?

On the positive side, it helps me a bit, I suppose. It certainly gives me something to do. I enjoy writing. Every second I spend writing is one less second I spend trying to score. Double thumbs up.

But admittedly it’s hard to write an honest account of my feelings and actions when I know my words are certain to inflict pain on others. Surely, I’ve caused enough pain for one lifetime? Maybe I owe it to those close to me to just zip it, zip it good. Keep my sharing to meetings, behind closed doors, as so many others do.

Does it help others? Probably not. I’m not exactly in recovery (although I am clean just for today whoopdidoo!) and as such I don’t have magic answers for anyone seeking them.

Finally, what employer doing basic due diligence will overlook these posts? I, like many addicts, find myself completely broke and in need of work. Who’s going to hire the author of these posts who so clearly lacks the commitment required to achieve long term sobriety.

Therefore, at the crux is one question: why go public? And I think I know why. Pride, arrogance, showing off. I still think it’s cool. The junkie subculture. It sucks me in. And it’s completely insane. When you spend time with career junkies, in their late 50s, shitting their pants every other day when they can’t get together the money for a fix (honestly I’ve given away 3 pairs of undies in the past month to those in need, junkies you get what I mean), clucking out on the streets, in the freezing cold. 

Please someone tell me – where is the appeal?  What is so attractive about that?

Good times fellas...

It’s disgusting, degrading, demoralising and yet so damn deceptive. How can you package up one of the most lonely, miserable existences into something so appealing? I want it. Now.

It’s this heroin chic shit, Kurt Kobain, the troubled soul, misunderstood, turned to substances when life got unbearable. I bought into that a long time ago. But my life has been great. Yes, I’m a seriously troubled soul now, but that is a consequence of my using, and not the other way around. I find it so easy to understand why people turn to heroin if they have had difficult upbringings, experienced traumas, rape, domestic violence. I cannot imagine how those sorts of events impact the developing adolescent mind, but I do know that no matter what that feels like, heroin is probably an excellent solution, it will make you forget the pain, and it will work. Temporarily.

Then you have the people like me. I’m just an asshole, I manufactured the circumstances in which I would be able to use and simultaneously receive sympathy for doing so. The truth is - I like to get high, it was fun for a long time! The euphoric recall, those are the good times I remember and hold on to. Since trying to put drugs down, I’ve also noticed this complete emptiness inside of me. This hole in the soul. It’s been there forever, but drugs fill it up. Love fills it up. Without either of those things, life becomes unmanageable very quickly, for me.

A spiritual solution – that’s what I believe in. Maybe writing some of this stuff down will help.

When I see people with good recovery I don’t see arrogance, I see gratitude, humility and above all, serenity.