Journals

I first put pen to paper around the time Cruel Intentions came out. I guess that’s kind of where I first got the idea. I imagine my thought process was along the lines of:

•          Write explosive shit.
•          Die in tragic accident.
•          Have journal surface shortly after death.
•          ‘Explosive shit’ gets out - changes world.
•          Bittersweet Symphony plays at my funeral.
•          Be celebrated forever.
•          Have face on t-shirts a la Kurt Kobain.

Despite my efforts, my journal looks nothing like this. Never got round to adding the pictures. 

But that’s probably the most honest journal I kept. I write about video games, movies, and wait for it… girls. Girls, girls, girls. Because that’s all I had to worry about at the time. The occasional friendship drama, getting in trouble at school, all that found its way in at some point but the real meat in that journal was around my relationships with girls. Falling in love for the first time. Getting my heart broken for the first time. Breaking someone’s heart for the first time. It’s juicy shit, and it’s painful to re-read it. 

But it’s honest. And that is, for me, what a journal is about. It’s about reflecting on what’s been happening in your life and how that has made you feel. That’s the dilemma I’ve pondered over these past two days, how can I write honestly about some of the things I’ve done? Will people judge me? Will people understand?

More importantly, I ask myself, why do I care? Pride is a killer.

For me, I am finding out that it is simply therapeutic to write these ‘feelings’ down and ignore the consequences. That whole, “when you’re angry, count to 10” crap. But seriously, if you’re angry, write it down, or count to 10. Maybe you’ll be angrier afterwards, but I doubt it. Humans are animals and as such the way we instinctively react to certain events is completely uncontrollable.

For example: dude punches me, I fight back. Or maybe he’s one of those “how much can you bench” bros and being twice my size I decide to run. Either way, I am not making that decision consciously. That fight or flight decision is pure survival instinct. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say this guy punches me, and instead of fighting back, or running away, I ask politely if he will wait one moment while I produce my journal, quill and begin analysing the situation for a few moments before deciding how to react.

Now what are my options here? This guy is huge, (think Arnie in Pumping Iron, not Jersey Shore Guidos) and so if I decide to fight, I will probably get hurt. So, I guess my only option is to run, right? Or, as this guy is Arnie ‘The Governator’ and not Mike ‘The Situation’, perhaps he could be reasoned with?  How about a fourth option, now that I’ve had time to sit down and think about this, why did this guy punch me in the first place? Was this an unprovoked attacked? Some kind of macho man mating ritual to impress a girl? Or did I step on his broken toe by accident, not realise nor apologise and obtain a black eye as a result?

The nature of what happened prior to the punch is irrelevant, the point I’m making is, I find it valuable to give myself extra time to think before acting on instinct. As much as I hate to admit it, very occasionally, I might be in the wrong. Maybe I deserved to get sparked (way too classic slang -  had to throw that in there), and my best bet is to apologise and walk away.

Relate it to addiction. The punch, the trigger, the craving, that just happens. Sure, you can avoid people, places and things to keep triggers to a minimum, but you can never eliminate them entirely. How about a using dream? Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t control ‘em. Unless you’re into lucid dreaming, in which case, restecp. 

Ali G speaks the troof

So why do people stay clean who follow the basic suggestions they hear in the rooms? Because those basic suggestions work. When I allow myself to go from trigger to reaction without any gap in between, I engage my auto-pilot. It typically takes me at least an hour to score, get needles and use. Longer even if I need to get money together first. Surely that’s enough time for the craving to pass and dis-engage the automatic process taking place whereby I find myself running around London looking for drugs? But for me it doesn’t work like that. Once auto-pilot has been switched on, there is no switching it off without a strong conscious effort to do so.

Phone a friend. Talk to someone about how your feeling. Get out your journal and write it down.

Three great suggestions, none of which I ever do. To me they’re a cop out. Once I pick up that phone, I’ve already made my decision not to use. Don’t get me wrong, every time I’ve called someone when I’ve been craving, every single time I have spoken to someone about what I’m planning to do, I have not used on the back of that craving.

60% of the time – it works every time. But seriously, it has worked every time.

But for me it’s not the ‘phone a friend’ that is getting me out of trouble. It is me who is getting me out of trouble. I put distance in between trigger and reaction. I think about the consequences - I mean really think about the consequences, no sugar coating it. No “oh well it’ll just be this one time” horse shit. And if I still want to use then I say fuck it and I use.

But if I decide to pick up the phone, or turn around and go to a meeting, I pat myself on the fucking back. I did that. I mindfucked the shit outa myself. And to me that’s all addiction is. It’s my mind, mindfucking the shit out of me, all day, every day.

Sergio knows where it's at.

When I get one day clean in London I am over the moon. I treat myself. It is such hard work just getting through one day that when I manage to do it I want everyone in the city to know about it. I call my sober friends, they’re genuinely as happy as I am to hear the good news. Of course, it never lasts, but we must all start from somewhere and build on our experiences.

I am proud of every single sober day I get. Quietly, I worked my ass off for those 24 hours. Life goes on, and typically we struggle in silence. Hard work deserves reward. In work, that might be financial. In the gym, that might be my six pack. In recovery, my reward is freedom. And freedom is a kick ass reward worth fighting for.

More often than not, I overlook the true value of my freedom, and need a little reminder of why I fight for sobriety. Yes I’m an addict and yes I want a reward for every goddamn thing I do against my will, sue me.

But if I’m having a down day, stayed clean or maybe just did something outside of my comfort zone that I didn’t want to do, I treat myself to an Oreo milkshake, or some Churros. Because damn do I deserve it. And you do too.

Just try not to be a dick, like me, and treat yourself to drugs. 

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. 

I don’t think I am going to make it out of this alive.

Periodically throughout my adolescent years I kept a journal - rarely with real conviction or consistency. Reading back through some of this now I get the impression that little has changed throughout the 15 years elapsed from my first entry at 13 and my most recent at 28.

The key theme I note throughout the years – this is the writing of a spoiled child. He wants more. Often, he thinks he knows what he wants, but when he gets it, it is not enough. He is trying to fill a hole. He tries material matters, emotional experiences, friendships, substances, a career, love. Unfortunately for him, these brief encounters are but a trap, as for a fleeting moment they provide the answer to life, that missing piece of the jigsaw that completes the puzzle. Harmony. It never lasts.

I spent 6 months travelling in 2010 - where I picked up my habit - but only remember it as the best time of my life. 

I find study of the brain fascinating. My mind struggles immensely with euphoric recall. My interpretation of this phenomenon is simply an unconscious trick my mind plays whereby it holds on to these moments of happiness like a mother to her new-born child. There is no letting go.

In some senses, I suppose it is a form of misguided nostalgia. If I look back on my early childhood, some of my fondest memories are attached to spending hours upon hours immersing myself in video games. Nintendo have built a business on this nostalgia. For me personally, Zelda, Mario and Pokémon franchises defined the years leading up to my adolescence.

Every few years, Nintendo release a new console with updated versions of those original franchises and I buy into that as it evokes the memories of joy I had playing those games as a child. There have been a small minority of games within these new franchises that have captivated my imagination in such a way as those early games, but the memories are overpowering, they defy the reason centre in my brain so that I act against all logic, buying into each new franchise, often to be disappointed. I think this has less to do with the games themselves, which are in all honesty fantastic, but more to do with the fact that I cling to the hope that by beginning a new Zelda quest it will bring me back to a happier time in my life. Perhaps this is just me, but I challenge anyone who played through Zelda: Ocarina of Time to watch the new trailer for Breath of the Wild and see what emotions this brings up for you. For me, the excitement watching this gameplay trailer was on a level with the rush and excitement I feel when I have finally found a quiet bathroom to sit down in, cook up my shot and then finally see the blood ooze out into the needle as I have registered in a vein.

Bliss.

It is this feeling that my mind remembers. Not the running around for hours on end before that moment trying to get together money to score, the sickness, the pain I have so carelessly inflicted on parents, partners, friends, myself. The paranoia, the insanity. Yes, my rational brain is aware that these are all consequences of my using. But do I feel them? Do I connect with them emotionally? Not one bit. I simply connect with the perceived feeling of euphoria, painlessness and satisfaction that comes when the drugs enter my system. I feel the good feelings. I don’t feel the bad feelings. Intellectually I know they exist, but when the mind feels so strongly the anticipation of a reward, those good feelings, and cannot connect with the negatives, it is no surprise that the behaviour loop repeats time and time again, despite those negative consequences getting worse, and worse, and worse. Last week I sold my Nintendo collection, my childhood happiness, the false nostalgia. I sold those lies to get money to buy more lies. All to fill a void, all in the search for happiness.

Even writing this now puts me in an extremely dangerous, vulnerable headspace. In 30 seconds, I have gone from fondly writing about video games to planning an escape from my current situation. Complete disregard for my family, their feelings. It’s Christmas? So what. I want a fix. I don’t care what gets in my way, who I hurt, I want what I want and I will do what I must in order to get that. Flashback to the 13 year old writing his first diary entry, spoiled child. If you get in my way, I’ll hurt your feelings with complete disregard of any consequences.

This is a habit loop. An animal instinct which resides deep in the core of our brains. To ignore what has over millions of years become a survival instinct: trigger à routine à reward, as I have found out over the past few years, is beyond challenging. But millions of people across the world who have suffered from mental health issues including addictions to both substances and behaviours have found ways to overcome this.

My rational mind knows that using drugs brings with it misery, poverty, homelessness, disease, ultimately death, and those are just the affects to myself. For those loved ones who still cling on to hope that their addict may one day recover, I argue that they suffer even worse. All the same feelings of hopelessness, despair, fear, wide ranging mental health issues, but unlike the addict or alcoholic they suffer these feelings without the substance to numb the pain. At least the addict finds temporary relief with each fix, no matter what pain they may have endured to get there.

I have read many inspiring accounts of addiction and recovery, and many of these have been truly gut wrenching. I do not use gut wrenching simply as a generic expression that I’ve heard used time and time again to describe the actions of alcoholics and addicts, because I do hear the term thrown around frequently in meetings and in first-hand accounts of others who struggle with problems like these. I chose these two words carefully as they describe exactly the physical sensations experienced by myself when reading some of these harrowing accounts of active addiction. First comes the nausea, a sinking feeling in the abdomen, physical symptoms in my stomach, tightening, increased heart rate, anxiety escalating to full on panic when certain passages really hit home. For me, the most painful part of this that I live with every day is the simple fact of how my actions have devastated the lives of those around me. Unfortunately, in my experience, and I’m sure many can relate, it is those that we love most who get dragged through the shit, deeper and longer than anyone else.

It is through reading memoirs, blogs, first-hand accounts written by addicts that can dig beneath the euphoric recall and expose the life of an addict for what it truly is. It is so incredibly painful, I think, because I can relate. I know that the actions being described are identical to those I have carried out myself, and if I haven’t quite gotten that far yet, I see the reality of the situation and know that, although I may not have sunk to such depths yet, I know that the path leads one way only. We continue to decline, we cheat, rob, sell our bodies, sell our souls and ultimately take our own lives when we have sunk so far down the rabbit hole, in our isolation we can see no way out.

There is always a way out. Recovery is not easy, it is not natural, it doesn’t happen overnight and to be honest, I don’t think I fucking want it enough. I see my younger siblings getting their lives back on track, my best friends around me getting 6 months sober, throwing themselves into the program, or doing it their own way, it doesn't matter how they do it, just that they're doing it! And they're happy. It makes me so fucking proud of them, so happy for them. It also makes me so upset that I can't be there on that journey with them.

I want to want it. I've tried doing it for girlfriends, family, and sometimes I think I've wanted it for myself. But it doesn't last, and what good is that?

I find myself in a situation now where I have but two choices, recover, or give up. The alternative to recovery at this stage is to dive head first into the rabbit hole. But I know it’s there, I know what I need to do to get there, and I know that I can do it. For me, it is not a matter of how to do it, because the solution is simple. It does, however, require hard work, determination, and an absolute desire above all else to fight for your recovery.

Summer 2014 - think this might have been the last time I was actually happy and clean from opiates at the same time. Love, happiness, its never enough. I relapsed a matter of days later.

I am grateful for those who have managed to capture the insanity, depravity, and unparalleled selfishness of active addiction. Those who have been brave enough to put honest accounts of their stories out there. They help me see through my euphoric recall, and they may ultimately help with my recovery.