The following case studies were written by recovering addicts. Their names have been changed in order to respect anonymity. Their experiences are by no means limited to drugs and alcohol, but include a whole range of processes.
My name is Peter and I’m a Compulsive Overeater, Anorexic and Bulimic.
I was always an anxious kid. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel awkward or unsure of myself. I was the youngest child – and the only boy. I lived with mum: a loving but fiery woman who married and divorced my dad, an older intellectual.
He was a brilliant man – but crippled by self-doubt. He became both God and Monster to me, while I became my mother’s hero, the ‘miracle son’.
My sisters came with their own issues. When they weren’t raging at each other, they raged at everyone else. It was a turbulent place to grow up in, but today it’s hard to be angry about that. I didn’t know it back then, but my parents both had their own difficult childhoods.
By the age of five, I knew I was different from other boys. I had a crush on Christopher Reeve’s Superman, and would leave my bedroom window open at night for him to fly in and ‘rescue’ me, which seemed an entirely natural thing to do.
It wasn’t until other boys noticed my difference and labelled it ‘queer’, and me as a ‘gay lord’, that the bullying began. On my first day at primary school, I was hit by a football, and I burst into tears. It was probably an accident, but I was so oversensitive, I presumed everyone hated me, which set me up for life.
Up until the age of seven, I was very creative and highly imaginative. I loved words and music and books and stories. I recorded tapes, interviewing friends and neighbours. I wrote and performed plays and poems. I saw the world through made-up words and funny voices.
Mum wanted me to be the ‘man’ of the family and daydreamed about me training as a doctor so I could buy a sports car to chauffeur her round town. It was not to be my fate, but I suspect this was one of the many reasons I grew up thinking I was a failure. It was around then that I started overeating at mealtimes and craving sweets and chocolate after school each day – which I was given money for. As mum worked late, I had to walk home on my own.
When I was ten, my headmaster came to my house to tell my parents he thought I was gay. Horrified, I listened from the stairs as he told them my biggest secret. My world came crashing down. I was called in and told I should not ‘choose’ to be gay as ‘homosexuals were the most unhappy people in the world’.
He pronounced the word with such clinical hate – like a 1950s newsreader. HOMM-O-SEXUAL. I was terrified. Of course I denied it. Traumatized, I shook and cried hysterically, but no one told me I’d be okay.
By now, I was always eating. Sweets, chocolates, fries, pastries, sugar, junk food, fried chicken… whatever I could get my hands on. Eating numbed out my feelings. It made me feel better. I became the class clown to rebuff the bullying – now made worse by my weight. I put myself down before others did. I stole money from my mum’s purse to buy sweets and friendships. I went from a small, gentle, sensitive, sweet, creative boy, to a loud, obese, attention-seeking troublemaker within a year.
At some point, I also went from ‘comfort eater’ to ‘compulsive overeater.’ Mum tried to get me on diets, but I failed miserably. Alcoholics and drug addicts steal for their habit, and I was no different. I stole food from my friends’ plates and from the canteen. I raided friends’ fridges at sleepovers. I ‘borrowed’ money from their parents for the ‘bus fare’ home. At meal times, I had seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths. The bigger I got, the more I hated myself. And the more I ate to cover the pain.
I was a small kid in height – I stopped growing when I reached 5ft 5 ins – but by the time I was 14, I’d hit 15 stone, and I don’t know how I managed to carry the extra weight. Somehow, I scraped through my exams and went to college, where I was much happier and finally came out. I even lost some weight. But my addiction to food didn’t go away and I went back to bingeing.
When I was 17 I made some friends, and we started going to gay bars. It was exciting, but I felt so out of place among the sea of toned male flesh. I’d found my people, but still I didn’t fit in. While my mates were making out with guys on the dance floor I’d hide in the corner, planning my next binge. Soon, I added alcohol to the mad mix. It made my world more fun – or so I thought.
If sex happened – which was rare – it was in a dark corner with a drunken stranger for a quick fumble. In my mind, no one wanted a short, fat, hairy boy. I was no good at relationships, so I used self-deprecating humour and my own body weight to keep anyone from getting too close. The more I thought they rejected me, the more I ate. I hated my body, and so I ate more still to escape the pain. Utter insanity. I wanted to stop – but I didn’t know how.
In my 20s, I found that I could lose weight momentarily. This was achieved by starving myself and restricting my calorie and fat intake – excessively. Years later, I learned that I was merely acting out my anorexia – the other end of the disordered eating spectrum. I didn’t realize that any periods of ‘controlled’ eating were simply followed by longer periods of a ‘loss of control.’ I’d lose three or four stone in a matter of weeks, but then swing back to secret bingeing and put it all back on again.
For the next 15 years, my life was spent in an utterly insane and miserable cycle of overeating, anorexic dieting, compulsive exercising and binge drinking. When I wasn’t eating, I was in on my own, getting drunk, or spending several hours a day in the gym. This dramatic yo-yo dieting distorted my body image, and damaged my body, inside and out. Yet that still wasn’t enough to stop me from starting again.
In bars, guys looked straight though me – perhaps I represented their own fears about weight. I despised being fat. And yet, on my way home, I’d buy a bag of binge food to make myself feel better. Later, I learned to vomit in order to make room for more food. By then, I’d developed the classic ‘three-sided coin’ of disordered eating: bingeing, starving and purging. I had all three symptoms and I never knew which side the coin would land on. I had no control at all.
I lost and gained weight at least 10 times over a decade – swinging from 18 stone back down to 11 stone within months. I’d binge, feel disgusted, starve and then do it all again. Friends wouldn’t see me for weekends on end if I was ‘in the food’. The shame I felt was intolerable. When I did surface, I was coming down from sugar or booze, so I’d argue and scream my way into yet another drama.
I reached rock bottom in 2007. My weight had peaked at over 19 stone. My stomach was so large, I hadn’t seen my penis in years. I often wet myself before reaching a toilet, and I had difficulty wiping my own backside.
I ended up in a sex club, staggering around the floor in piss and vomit. I’d been drinking all night and passed out. I remember waking up in a sling, and then I blacked out again. Then I woke up in someone’s bed. I’ve no idea what happened in between. The next day, I stopped drinking and I haven’t drunk since.
An amazing doctor who was concerned about my weight mentioned the 12-Step group Overeaters Anonymous to me. Desperate, I began attending their meetings and ‘working the steps’. I began to lose – and then maintain – my weight in a way I’d never achieved before. It was a miracle.
Over time, I found abstinence from eating behaviours and foods that had held me prisoner for years. Today, beyond the food, OA has helped me to address the thought processes which, as an addict, have robbed me of many years of my life. Food was once the solution to numb and sedate intense feelings. Now I recognize it as merely the symptom. The real problem lies in my thinking – which is slowly changing.
Years ago, I abandoned a very frightened but wonderful little boy. And now I’m getting him back. I’m sad that I left him alone for so long. He doesn’t deserve to be put through the wringer in yet another binge-purge cycle. He deserves so much more.
My name is Keith and I’m an addict. I will always be an addict.
I grew up in South Africa in the 1980s – a life in the sun, on the beach, carefree. I sailed through school and university with good marks, scholarships and bursaries. I got drunk a few times and smoked a bit of marijuana, as most teenagers and students do, but I certainly never had ‘a problem’ – at least not with substances.
Having an extremist nature, I never did things by halves. When I started modelling and partying during university, I discovered I really enjoyed it, so I stopped studying. I ruined four years of study because I’d found something I’d rather do – something that filled the void that studying didn’t.
But, despite all the partying, I knew I’d never do ecstasy, cocaine or heroin. To me, they were hard drugs and I’d never put my prize asset at risk: my brain was my future.
On completion of my studies, I went to work for De Beers as a Particle Physicist, and a combination of awful management and a job that felt too much like hard work, led to me quickly becoming demotivated and susceptible to alternative means of escape. One night, while I was chatting to a rave DJ friend, he offered me half a pill of ecstasy and I took it… and my life changed!
Around this time, I picked up a girl while high in a nightclub, and two weeks later, her father and I set up a screen-printing business. Not being one for deliberation, I left De Beers to start working for my new company. But I’d never tried selling things before, and on the first day of my new ‘job’ I realized that I hated selling things, and quit.
And so began a few years of drifting. I modelled, played an extra in a soap opera, escorted girls in a beauty pageant, did stunts in a movie, became a rave DJ, bought a mobile disco business, became a chauffeur, worked for an event management business… among other things.
Unsurprisingly, it was at this time that I started using coke. It’s also when I met Anna, who was working as a tequila girl. I was running a rave club and doing quite a lot of coke. I’m ashamed to admit that I persuaded Anna to do drugs with me, precipitating a downward spiral that made everything that came before look like carefully planned life choices.
Our relationship was screwed up at best, and exceedingly dysfunctional at worst. It was over within three months, but it took us eight years to actually end it. The reason we stayed together – the only reason – was the drugs. We went through the using phase, the abusing phase, and the addiction phase.
Needing to fund our habit, and as a result of my previous achievements as an honours student, I managed to land a job in investment banking. I became an investment banker from Monday to Friday and a rave DJ Friday to Sunday, as well as doing event management and graphic design every night.
For a while it seemed to be working. I was promoted, headhunted from bank to bank, and to outsiders we appeared to have it all: socially, financially and career-wise – a dream lifestyle.
In fact, it was no dream – it was a complete nightmare! Behind closed doors we often spent weeks living on soup and bread, having quite literally blown my not inconsiderable salary up our noses. Our relationship had deteriorated into bitter hostility, each of us blaming the other for the drugs, our problems, the hideous reality our lives had become… and the downward spiral continued.
There was another problem: the drug dealers’ phone numbers were burned into my brain – there was no point deleting them from my phone. There was no escape from the misery of the life I was living.
I moved to London, where I couldn’t just call the dealers, and I thought my addiction was finally behind me. Right from the start, I was going out every night, spending over £100 on alcohol and getting completely plastered. But at least I wasn’t ‘using’, or so I thought. What I didn’t realize was that my addiction, my desperate pursuit of escape, had merely taken a different form. I was as much of an addict as ever.
Within a few months, I was using coke again and my life slipped away from me once more. And then I met Kira. I was drunk and high that night – which elevated the encounter and seemingly intensified our connection. Almost immediately she started staying over at my place a lot, accelerating the development of our relationship.
Kira didn’t do drugs; in fact she hated them. She moved into my place ‘officially’ after about two months, and in order to avoid arguments, I would do drugs behind her back. At night, as we watched TV together, every half an hour or so I’d go to the bathroom and do a line of cocaine off a CD cover I’d hidden there.
And so things progressed: the relationship, the drugs, the deception, and the guilt. I was getting drunk and high most nights, and every day I stumbled to work thinking: Look at yourself – and look at the pathetic loser you’ve become, when you could have been and done anything with your life.
At that time, I’d already started seeing Dave – a psychologist who specialized in addiction. His counsel was excellent, but all the advice in the world amounts to empty words if one isn’t ready to hear them.
Friday, 29 February 2008 saw yet another big party at my place: more sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The next morning was business as usual – clean up the mess, lie to Kira, go and see Dave. There was nothing tangibly special or different about that day or that therapy session, but when I got back home and faced Kira, I became overwhelmed by guilt and remorse, nauseated by the lie I was living.
I broke down and confessed everything – the whole sordid truth: the drugs, the deception. She was furious, disgusted and disappointed, and stormed out of the house. But when she returned, she had a plan: ‘We’ll beat it together.’
And so we began!
It was tough… and a blur. I can’t even remember all of the things that happened, but I do know that Kira gave up her friends and her social life in order to help me. She stayed home on weekends and forced me to stay with her, and I cursed and swore at her – I wanted to go out and have fun with my ‘friends’.
I started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings the first Tuesday in March, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous on Saturdays. These became my regular meetings – I took strength from them because when I was at the meetings I wasn’t using. There were good days and bad days; days when I had cravings; days when I wanted to use; days when I burned up inside.
But I didn’t use. I’d get up every morning with one thought in mind: Higher Power, help me stay clean today! Just today! Just until I go to sleep tonight! I can use tomorrow, but just for today, please help me stay clean. And when I went to bed each night I’d read my Narcotics Anonymous ‘Just for Today’ reading and thank God that I hadn’t used that day. I saw my sponsor regularly; I saw my psychologist regularly.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years. Kira and I got engaged. I hadn’t known that life could be so good. I was finally living the life I’d coveted so many years before.
And then, with just over two years’ clean time, my world fell apart! Kira left me for someone else!
My entire existence ground to a halt. I was shattered, destroyed, crushed! How could this happen? She was the reason I’d stopped drugs. We were perfect; we had beaten my demons together – what about our future?! My reaction was that of a shocked addict… my life was over, there was nothing left for me. If I were ever going to use again, it would be now.
But something inside me had changed. Granted, Kira was the foundation of me getting and staying clean to that point, but those years of being clean, of working the programme, of therapy, and of addressing the causes of my addiction had done their work. I was able to feel the pain but not give in to the compulsion to use drugs to numb that feeling.
Dave once said to me: ‘You’re an addict. You’ll always be an addict. Your first thought and your first reaction to a stressor will always be that of an addict, but you don’t have to act on that first thought. Think again and act on the second thought, not the first.’
And that’s how I choose to live this life, this second chance that I’ve been given. Some days are good, and some days are bad. Life happens. I have a job I love and a great boss.
I have a fiancée – Kathryn – someone I’ve known for years and love madly; someone who is my best friend, sex goddess and soulmate all rolled into one. I have a family who support me unconditionally; they too know my demons and love me more for the fact that every day I choose to overcome them.
Ironically, I also own a flavoured vodka company; I’ve never tasted my products and hopefully I never will. I’m often told that, by putting myself so close to alcohol, I’m gambling with my sobriety and my future, and they may be right… only time will tell.
For now, I’m living in the moment. I’ve accepted who I am, and I’m grateful for all of my experiences – both good and bad – for they’re what has shaped me into who I am today. I’m thankful for everything that I am, and accepting of everything that I’m not.
I have the ability to think. I have the ability to act: the ability to react. Most of all, I have the freedom of choice. I can choose whether the addiction will run my life, or if I will. Today I choose me; tomorrow I get to choose again.
This is dedicated to my amazing mother who died shortly after this article was written. She finally knew the truth before she passed on.
I’ll start at the beginning of my life, because I believe my addictive behaviour started before I picked up drugs. I was born in Milan, Italy, in 1987, to an English mother and an Italian father. One of my most significant early memories is of being taken away from my dad (who was an alcoholic) and my home to live in the UK with my mum.
My struggles started in early childhood, as my mother became extremely depressed. My parents’ relationship battle continued, and I was the weapon. When I was eight, I was moved to London to join my mum, after having been in the care of friends and neighbours. I was bullied at school. I was a good girl; I never dreamed that one day I’d become an addict.
With hindsight, the ill treatment and neglect I suffered at the hands of my parents was so severe that it was no surprise that I began to develop an inherent sense of shame. Bullies at school pointed out what I’d already learned to believe about myself: that I was ‘unlovable’, ‘unlikable’, ‘different’, ‘a freak’, ‘ugly’, ‘fat’, ‘stupid’.
As a child, I couldn’t intellectualize what was going on and tell myself that this was about them and not about me. The world was becoming an intolerable place. I took each comment that was made to me and swallowed it down with the rest, hoping that day would be the one that I was left alone.
I started developing an illness that my mum called ‘a nervous tummy ache’, and which I now know to be fear at the pit of my stomach. I’d pretend to be sick so I could stay at home alone. This became my sanctuary. My mum went to work every day and I spent hours watching films – they would take me away from the world. As my mind switched off, so did all those horrible feelings.
In 2001, I went to live with my dad in Italy. As a teenager I adapted to each situation in ways that would shield me from having to suffer on a daily basis. Starting a new school became the perfect opportunity to re-create myself. The establishment was old-fashioned, and smoking hadn’t yet been banned from school premises. There were drugs all over the school – to the knowledge of most of the teachers. There were no rules, and no one who would hold me back.
I began smoking cigarettes and marijuana straight away. They not only helped boost my social status, but also switched off my mind. I wasn’t vulnerable anymore; instead, I treated others how I had been treated. I didn’t care and I blamed my parents. I became a good liar and a good manipulator. I felt older than my years, despite being just a child.
I picked up my first drink at a friend’s birthday party. I’d already smoked pot that night, and I threw up everywhere. But still I kept drinking. I’d never even acknowledged the fact that I was gay. Older men knew how to take advantage of me. To me, it was an easy exchange to get what I needed: attention, drink and drugs.
I drank and smoked pot daily, and I was always seeking out the next drug. At 15, I convinced a fellow pupil to bring cocaine into school. I snorted a line in maths class. On my 16th birthday, during a night out with my friends, I exchanged my body for ecstasy. I had absolutely no idea what these drugs did to me, and I didn’t care.
At 17, I moved back to the UK and reverted straight back to my old habits. I started seeing women. My first girlfriend was completely out of control, much like myself. By the time I was 18, I was consuming large and dangerous amounts of ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamine. And I tried crack for the first time.
I wanted help and I looked for it, but no doctor would provide me with a diagnosis. I was frustrated, because I knew it was abnormal to suffer the way I did. There was clearly something wrong with me and no one could see it.
The consequences of my using got worse, as did my inner turmoil. I hated myself. I self-harmed with kitchen knives – slicing through my arms to the point where I needed stitches. On my 18th birthday, I ended up in an ambulance after a three-day binge.
Another night, I thought it would be fun to climb on top of a friend’s van while he was driving and jump off. When I landed, blood poured out of my skull. My so-called friend wouldn’t take me to hospital, and so I lay in bed, vomiting and unable to move for days. Months later I got a CT scan and it revealed that my skull had been severely fractured; the impact of the fall ‘should have killed me’, according to my doctor.
My mum had kicked me out by this time. I had no home, and I was a park bench drunk at just 18 years old.
In the summer of 2007 I kept a diary with me because I was convinced I’d be dead before my 21st birthday. I’d given up. My mum was desperately trying to help me, but all I could say to her over the phone was, ‘I’m beyond hope, mum.’ When I finally agreed to let her pick me up, she and my granddad took me to a top psychiatrist, who diagnosed me as an ‘addict’. I believed that my problems ran deeper than my misconception of what addiction is, so he elaborated: ‘If you want another definition, how about feeling avoidant?’
On 24 September 2007, I went to rehab for the first time. I was introduced to a group of fellow addicts: bulimics, anorexics, heroin addicts and alcoholics. I was introduced to AA meetings. Rehab wasn’t what I was expecting: an instant fix or wonder pill that would solve all my problems. Instead, I was faced with the one thing I’d run away from my entire life: my vulnerable self, much like the 11-year-old girl that I hated.
I discovered that I had problems with alcohol, drugs, relationships, sex, food, shopping, caffeine and smoking. The only addiction I didn’t have was something I’d never tried: gambling.
I didn’t stay clean immediately. After five months of recovery, I thought I could have a glass of wine. After a three-day binge of drugs and alcohol I ended up in hospital. I went back into treatment, this time in South Africa. I realized that the party was over – that relapse almost cost me my life.
My 27-year-old sponsor and mentor was one of the young people who inspired me to pursue recovery; I wanted what she had, and did everything she did to get it. I spent my 21st birthday in rehab, and slowly started to believe that I could have a life. With nothing to lose, I pursued that dream. I became passionate about recovery and I discovered my voice. I sought to help as many young addicts as possible. A feeling of esteem started to grow from within, and already I felt like a different person.
Recovery has been a slow and painful process. I’ve made so many mistakes, yet however painful those mistakes were, they moulded me into who I am and who I am yet to be. It’s taken years to be free from the chains of my past. Today I’m six years’ clean. I’ve finally found love, and a career working in schools telling my story and teaching drug facts to children.
I can do anything and go anywhere. I’m in control of my life, something I could never comprehend when I started this journey. Through desperation I walked the path of recovery blindly, often being held up by my peers until I could see the path in front of me. I don’t have to stay away from a drink, because I don’t want it, and for someone like me that’s a true miracle.
Growing up with a history of active addiction on both sides of my family, and in a town with one of the biggest breweries in South America nearby, it came as no surprise that I started hitting the bottle very early in life.
Drinking alcohol to the point of oblivion was, and is still, perceived as a sign of masculinity in Colombia. So, at the age of 13, impressionable teenage boy that I was, I had my first ‘proper’ alcoholic drink at a festival. Most of my friends and some family members were there, and I proceeded to black out and vomit in front of everybody.
To my surprise, my behaviour was not frowned upon. I also enjoyed the feeling of temporary numbness it gave me, as well as the sense of being rebellious and more of a man. Needless to say, I saw that incident as a green light, and drinking to the extreme became a sort of routine. I also remember that I thought that if I only drank on Fridays and Saturdays, it would all be well – another sign (I know now) of problem drinking. If you don’t have a problem with alcohol, why would you start making rules about drinking it?
To my surprise, Fridays and Saturdays quickly became Mondays, and sometimes Tuesdays, and the new rule was that as long as I could get away with it and no one noticed I was tipsy or smelled of alcohol, everything was good. I would also like to say that at this point my drinking was almost exclusively social – another reason to think that it wasn’t a problem – and getting together with people who drank to my level also supported that belief. It was fun, and the consequences were not then ‘too serious’.
Without my noticing it, my academic success (I’d always been an excellent student) started declining. I was not the first clarinet in the orchestra where I played anymore, and I made myself believe that it was due to favouritism, and not the fact that, at 15, I had shown up tipsy to a few rehearsals.
My motivation and enthusiasm for my studies, which I actually loved, didn’t seem to be there anymore, and a thirst for parties, and for social acceptance in the ‘cool crowd’, seemed unquenchable.
At the end of High School, and still not knowing what I wanted to study at university, I decided I was going to be a doctor. This seemed the acceptable thing to do, and also what would please my parents, especially my father. It was at university that I discovered marijuana, and how cheap and widely available it was.
I could now drink most weekends and smoke marijuana occasionally during the week. Surprisingly, I did pretty well for the year I was there, but I was too confused, and after a heart to heart with my mother I decided I wanted to be a veterinary surgeon. So, off I went to vets’ school, only to repeat the pattern a few years later.
I think it’s important for me to make the connection around compulsively ‘quitting’ plans and goals and drinking and using drugs. I believe my lack of determination and focus was greatly due to my substance consumption. It seems so obvious to me now, but back then it would have been impossible to even try to make sense of that link.
Drinking was a great tool for socializing, and for feeling part of things, and growing up as a gay man in a homophobic society, the need to belong and to feel accepted was sometimes too much to bear. I do think alcohol saved me from isolation and depression, and it was also a great ally while it worked.
After dropping out of university for a second time, I was sent to England: to broaden my horizons, to learn a new language and to live in a different culture. Little did I know that the British drank as much as the Colombians, and that alcohol and drug consumption was not only accepted, but encouraged.
The club scene welcomed me with open arms and I was then introduced to ecstasy and cocaine. I never used drugs more than my peers did (although I certainly drank more than all of them), so the illusion that I was not ‘as bad’ as the rest was still there.
The consequences of my drinking, however, started to become obvious. Blacking out was part of going out, as was losing my documents and mobile phone, and sometimes even ending the night in hospitals covered in bruises, or at police stations reporting a crime. I was never violent, but I did put myself in very risky situations where, inevitably, I would end up a victim.
My health also suffered. While I was drinking I would get a cold at least once a month; if I got a little stressed my skin would break up in eczema, and the athlete’s foot I caught at a swimming pool in my late teens never cleared. As a by-product of drinking alcohol I also smoked tobacco, so chasing after a bus for a few feet always felt like running a marathon and deep breathing was a luxury I could hardly ever afford. And I was still only in my twenties.
Mentally, I was generally unhappy, too. I worked in a retail job I hated, and was surrounded by people who hated their jobs too – let’s say that customer service was not our priority. I completely lost sight of any substantial goals in my life. I forgot I enjoyed studying, playing music and making art. I was seriously emotionally anorexic. I never had a romantic relationship that went further than a second date, and I made myself believe that casual sex was all that I was worth.
My last night before getting sober was not an unusual or a dramatic one. I went out, drank more than I promised myself I would, blacked out, lost my phone, fell on my face somewhere and woke up with that same old sense of dread – of knowing that if I didn’t stop I would hate myself more and more, and more.
I found sobriety through a 12-Step programme nearly six years ago, and the meetings have been vital to my recovery. I remember the sense of defeat I had when I first attended one. I felt my life was over, that I could never be socially active again and that it would just be boring. However, it wouldn’t be as boring as waking up wanting to die, so I stayed.
To my surprise, things only got better and better. I’m now as healthy as I can be. My skin has completely cleared; I get a cold every one or two years; and I don’t smoke or do drugs. I’m also at college doing a foundation year in Art and planning to do a BA in Fine Art. I’m surrounded by loving and understanding peers who understand me at a level no one else could before. I’m also in a new romantic relationship that’s loving, and in which I’m learning tolerance, respect and boundaries. I’m happy and optimistic, most of the time.
It hasn’t been an easy ride – if anything it’s been challenging – but with all the tools, love and support I’ve been offered it’s a real fact of my life that today I can be happy if I choose to. At the moment I’m doing my steps in the money fellowship, and it astounds me that all that love and wisdom that I found in the alcohol fellowship is also widely available for all types of addiction, be it under earning, gambling, other drugs, sex and food disorders, anything!
Doing the steps, taking service commitments at meetings and being in contact with my sponsor are at the core of my recovery. Being honest about my feelings and where I am at in life have allowed me to establish real connections and to get, and offer, help. Asking for that help and accepting my vulnerability have also been a real lesson for me.
I had my first therapy session nearly a year into sobriety, when things felt a bit flat, and it has made a real difference ever since. Being in therapy has helped me understand how I function, how I make mistakes, how trauma works, how codependence is at the core of addiction, and also that there’s a solution. It has basically taught me how to love and how to feel compassion for others and for myself, and to accept how imperfectly perfect we all are.
The motivation and focus that alcohol and drugs took from me are slowly but surely coming back into my life. By staying sober I’m making on-going amends for the harm that I caused to my family and friends, to society, and to myself on a daily basis.
By staying sober and in contact with a power greater than myself (call it ‘other people trying to lead a healthy lifestyle’, God, the universe), I’m useful to others and find a real sense of joy and purpose. And by waking up sober to whatever challenges I might face every day, a day at a time, I feel that my life is definitely worth living.
Everyone says that I was born an addict. I’ve spent years trying to figure out how my life ended up here, but I realize now that it’s not important. What matters is this is what I am. If I look back, I really did seem to have it all. An amazing family, a loving older brother and incredible parents. Looking from the outside in, it seemed pretty perfect. In reality, I was going through a horrific trauma, but I decided the best way to deal with it was to keep my mouth shut.
I grew up in Hong Kong and my memories of my childhood are of sunny days spent on the beach, surrounded by friends. I experienced sexual abuse between the ages of five and nine. Even at that age I was full of shame. I became quite clever at hiding my emotions, and my dress sense changed – I thought if I looked like a boy and made myself unattractive the abuse would never happen again.
It was from that point that I went on to self-destruct. It started with an eating disorder and then developed into self-harm. I struggled to talk to teachers or friends about it – I was too ashamed to admit the truth of my situation. I’m a very sensitive person – as I guess most addicts are – and the fact that I couldn’t cry or show emotions came out in rescuing stray, beaten-up animals. I spent every moment I could, trying to bring them back to life. I realize now that I was doing for them what I couldn’t do for myself.
School was hard. I’m not academic and I just scraped along. I was drinking at this point – as were the other kids. The safety of Hong Kong gave us the freedom to go out most nights without our parents worrying. By the age of 13 or 14, I was hanging out on the beach, drinking and smoking cigarettes and spliffs.
Everyone was doing it, and I didn’t want to be left out. I would turn up to school just to be with my friends, as well as to skive off to meet with my boyfriend, who had been kicked out for dealing and taking drugs.
My brother developed an illness around this time, so my parents’ focus was very much on him as they travelled around the world trying to find the right treatment. I was left to my own devices. I wasn’t a bad child and I was constantly trying to please everyone around me. The problem with that was that I lost myself in the process.
Later on, I threw myself into drama, which really helped as I could pretend that I was someone else for a while and it allowed all my emotions to come out. If I had another chance now I would have continued down that path. Unfortunately, drugs came along at the same time. I had the opportunity to go to university, and for the first time I had made my parents really proud. By this time I was 17, and although life seemed great from the outside the reality was that I was already falling deeper and deeper into the depths of addiction.
Things later took an awful turn when my best friend’s father died of a heart attack in front of us. We were both in shock and I guess emotionally we froze. She asked me to get hold of some crystal meth. A friend of mine gave me a couple of bags, assuring me they were meth. They weren’t, they were pure grade heroin. Unfortunately, the minute we tried it, we lost the choice to put it down, it was that powerful.
Over the next couple of years things got progressively worse. My parents found out about the drugs and I was kicked out. I lost the opportunity to go to university, as I’d decided that it was far more important to become a heroin addict than anything else.
The girl who was my best friend overdosed one night on the side of the street and my priority, instead of saving her, was to strip her down to get her drugs before the police or an ambulance turned up. Nothing was more important than my next high.
My friend didn’t make it past 24 years old, but even that wasn’t enough to stop me. Each time I tried to get honest with my family and check myself in somewhere for help, the drugs were more powerful than my intentions, and I would end up running back to a life I hated. I was given so much love and so many opportunities, but they weren’t enough to beat the feeling that I got from the drugs.
I always ended up using again, and I put myself in dangerous situations in order to get drugs. Eventually, I fell pregnant after a horrific incident in the UK in which I was gang-raped by three men while I was on drugs (I still regret that this was my only chance to have kids).
After that, I tried to get my life together and I succeeded for a while. I had 10 years clean, between the ages of 24 and 34. My life really took off – people believed in me, which in turn helped me believe in myself. I became a fashion designer, living all around the world and experiencing amazing countries and amazing people. I taught myself everything I needed to know so that I could be the best I could at my job.
For a while, things went really well. I forgot all about my addiction, and that was the problem. Once the drugs were out of my system, I was left with me and my emotions, and I didn’t know how to handle them.
At the age of 34, I started using drugs again. I’m 39 now, and still battling this horrific disease. What I realize now is that, since I was a child, I’ve been running away from me – from how I felt and from what I experienced. It has taken me 15 treatment centres and being surrounded by caring and professional people to understand this.
Before my last major relapse, I was living in California and was surrounded by opportunities and amazing people who wanted to help. But my loneliness took over and I hooked up with some guys I’d met in detox. My experience over the next six months is hard to put into words.
I came from a loving family; I grew up with the world at my feet, and I never thought for a moment that I’d end up like the junkies I saw begging and stealing on the street. Using my body to get me that five-minute fix and hating myself for it. I ended up in jail on drugs charges. I was petrified, dope sick, and surrounded by strangers. I had no shame. This is what drugs had done to me.
After coming out of jail I didn’t think I could get much lower, but I underestimated the power of my disease. I lied my way into a few hospitals, with no money and no identification. I just needed my fix; what people thought about me didn’t matter anymore. I ended up letting men use me, and I even risked sharing needles, knowing people were riddled with hepatitis C and God knows what else.
I didn’t think I had that much longer to live, and to be honest I didn’t care, if that was what my life was going to be like.
Eventually, I returned to the UK, where my family was now living. It was then that I hit a complete emotional rock bottom and I considered throwing myself under a bus. Thankfully, my family intervened, and they gave me another chance by sending me into a treatment centre. I have been in recovery ever since (subject to a few bumps along the way).
My life is not what I ever imagined it would be, but I’m alive today with an incredible story to tell – to help others and be there like people were there for me. Recovery has given me amazing friends who love me till I can truly love myself. It has given me an inner strength that’s indescribable. It has given me a willingness to fight, but more importantly it’s given me hope.
I shouldn’t be here. I’ve ended up in comas, I’ve overdosed and I’ve been in car crashes. I’ve done things to my body that I’m not proud of. I’ve lost many of my friends through this disease, but I haven’t lost myself. Each day, by sharing my story, it teaches me acceptance and gratitude. I have an amazing book of life and for that reason I am truly grateful.