Over the past two months I have been attending NA and AA meetings as I try to bother understand and gain control over my addictions. I already lost so much to the disease of addiction that I didn’t want to lose more.
I wasn’t court ordered to go. I don’t have a DUI. DFS hasn’t taken my kids from me. I wanted to stop using before any of that happened or worst. I did not want to hit rock bottom before I got help. I didn’t go to NA because of what I was currently addicted to but because I know myself well enough to know that I can and likely will be addicted so something far worst and deadly.
It was clear to me that I had a problem when I was more concerned in the morning to get my fix than it was to remember to take my meds. Unlike my meds, there was no way that I would forget to toke up that morning, or as I like to call it “Wake and Bake”.
When all I could think about throughout the day was the next time I could get high, and even then I never was satisfied, I knew that it was time to get help.
Some people refuse to see me as a different person. They look at me and all they see is the same selfish bastard that has ruined their life. But over that past months and years I have changed. There just isn’t forgiveness in some people’s hearts. I have to come to terms about that for myself and on my own.
I cannot let what someone else thinks about me get in the way of my recovery. In NA I have found a fellowship of addicts who take me just as I am. They don’t ask me to clean myself before coming in the door. They don’t even ask me to be sober at a meeting. What they ask for is that I have the desire to quit. And that is where it all starts.
I got my third white key tag (white being day one) which represents the third time I relapsed since coming to NA. I refuse to let failure be an excuse to quit trying to get clean. My focus right now is staying clean for my 30 day tag. Beyond that I am not going to worry about it. I have to go this way one day at a time. At times I have to struggle just to go five minutes at a time with my compulsion to use.
Drug use and Bipolar are too often found together. As a person with Bipolar I am statistically more likely to become an addict because of the nature of my illness and my intense desire to control my cycling emotions. I am so desperate to stop feeling pain that I was willing to risk my life, my kids, even God to make the hurt stop.
I try so hard every day to mask my emotional state that people think that I am uncaring, selfish, self centered. The problem isn’t that I don’t feel anything. The problem is that I feel everything. The intensity of my emotions and mood swings have the ability to drive me to drastic actions.
My hope now is that I can stay clean and serene another day. Then the next day. And the day after that. Sometimes that is all you can do in life. Focus one day at a time; one moment at a time.
The Bipolar DM 