I have been in and out of the program for a few years. I would always gain enough sobriety that I would start to feel good again and then start thinking I can get high one or two times and be ok and I was wrong every time I would be off and running until I hit a bad enough bottom that I would want to get sober again. I think that hitting a bottom is a very important part of finding the willingness to get sober. For me I had to hit a very low bottom and hang out there for a minute to really want to get this thing. I had hit bottoms before and I thought that it had gotten bad enough but as soon as I got comfortable all of the memories of that bottom would drift away and I would start romanticizing the good times that I had with drugs and forget the bad times. Every time that I relapsed my bottom would get lower and lower to points were I didn’t think that my life could go.
For me my bottom came when I was living in Denver with a girl that I know I had been sober for three months when I came up there and the deal was I could stay with her as long as I was sober. A few weeks after I got up there I found out that one of my friends had died. He was a friend of mine since I was really young and I was crushed. Right after I found out I didn’t know what to do with myself so I did what I do best to deal with feelings that I can’t handle… I went and scored some heroin and I got high. I didn’t care about what I was trying to do all I wanted was to feel better and heroin did that for me. I fell right back into daily use. After five days my friend could tell there was something different about me and saw me nodded out on her couch so she went through my stuff and found a bunch of dirty needles and she kicked me out. She then called every one that I knew in Denver and told them that I had relapsed and to not help me out if I called them and she called my Mom and told her. When it all went down I was really angry at her but looking back I am grateful that she did what she did because I would not have reached my bottom as quickly as I did. So I was homeless, broke and strung out and I couldn’t not see any way out of it no one would help me out and my Dad the one person that would have was in Rehab for his own heroin addiction. I was sitting in an alley one night at four in the morning shooting up and I had this moment of clarity I could see myself from above and I could not believe that my life had come to this I knew that I needed to do whatever I could to get sober and stay sober. I was still homeless for another two weeks but I happened to run into my sister’s boyfriend and he offered to take me to Taos to stay at my dad’s house. The sick thing is I had to think about if I want to go with him or keep doing what I was doing I was terrified of getting sick and I knew that if I went back that I would have to get sober. But I luckily made the right decision and I came back to New Mexico. I was in Taos for two weeks still getting high and I was not allowed to go to my Moms house because she had had enough of my bull shit. In that time I had three other friends die from overdoses and I was so messed up that it did not affect me at all, I just kept doing what I was doing. One day, I got the God shot that I needed to get out of this thing. I overdosed myself. I came to in the ER after they gave me a shot of Narcan and my family was standing there crying because they thought that I was gone. They had put a main line in my neck and I had all of these tubes hooked up to me and I remember thinking why did all of my friends die but I did not, I realized that I had been given a second chance and that I was meant to do something better with my life. In that moment I became willing to go to any length to bet sober and stay sober. I told my Mom that I wanted something different so she arranged for me to go to a recovery house in LA and it was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I have five months sober and I feel the best that I have felt in a very long time. My family is back in my life and my Mom doesn’t have to worry about where I am and if I am dead in an ally anymore and the least I can give her is peace of mind. There are still ups and downs in my life but now I am learning the tools to deal with it without getting high I am learning how to be a man that is honest, loving, and willing to do whatever it takes.
-Justin
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