Substance Abuse Stories

Substance abuse stories are important!

In meeting and working with addiction recovery patients over the years I have found that one of the most important aspects of their recovery is having the opportunity to share their story, their life experience.

Substance abuse stories don’t often have a happy ending but what ever the ending sharing them is helpful.

A few substance abuse stories

Here are a couple of substance abuse stories that describe the process of recovery. We’re hoping that you will share your stories with us as well so that others can learn from your experiences.

Many people tell us that it helps them to read others drug addition stories because they understand what they’ve gone through a little better. Many times therapy sessions are simply a place where people come and share their substance abuse stories.

You may find that sharing your substance abuse stories anonymously is the first step toward dealing with addiction.

Our Family Activity

by Joy Brooke

(New York)

Growing up I had an older brother who I looked up to…I thought he was
the coolest person in the world so naturally I followed in his
footsteps…that included his addictions to cocaine.

Together we tried cocaine, and together we became addicted, but separately we are recovering.

In
high school I lived off cocaine…I couldn’t get myself up in the
morning without blowing a line off the bathroom sink. In a nutshell- it
took over my life and my brother’s too.

My brother is still an
addict but I am trying to overcome my addiction. BUT now that I am in
college it is so hard to avoid it. It’s everywhere…and nobody
understands what I went through..and I don’t have the courage to tell
them.

I need support to help get overcome my addiction and
avoid falling back into the trap while I’m surrounded by it. I think if I
tell my friends, they will be more aware and know not to offer it to
me..but I fear that they will drop me as a friend and judge me for my
past.

What should I do?

How should I seek help?

Support System

by: Ned Wicker

Dear Joy,

Recovery can quickly be derailed if we allow
ourselves to be around our drug of choice all the time. I know that
college is a drug seeker’s candy shop, but you have to avoid contact
with the party people, who either are completely unaware of the
disastrous impact of cocaine, or are so stupid they don’t think
addiction can sit on their doorstep.

Have you considered NA for
support and guidance? Recovering addicts are great teachers and nobody
understands the pain and misery better than one who has walked through
the tunnel.

If you are serious about recovering, you need to be
up front with that and either tell people to quit offering cocaine to
you, or better yet, get with a new crowd of people who don’t think they
need drugs to find fulfillment and prosperity.

It’s all about lifestyle and making the right choices. You, I think, already know that.

If I’d Only Known!

I was twenty one years old. I didn’t have the perfect past, and I
had been smoking weed, but I wasn’t addicted to weed and alcohol to the
extent where I couldn’t go without it. I thought at onetime that I had
problems, but the problems I thought I had were the least of my worries.

I snorted cocaine for the first time when I was 21. I’m gonna
tell you how fast I hit rock bottom, but just to let you know. I snorted
my first line in March of that year, and one year later to the exact
month, I was using any and every time I could get my hands on it.

In for problems right away!

If
I was broke, I would steal, lie, and cheat my way into getting coke.
But going back, I did coke my first time at a party that  I was at. That
night I snorted all night long, and spent about a hundred and fifty
dollars. Now with that being my first time, I should have known that I
was in for problems if I kept doing it. I loved it. I thought I had hit
the jackpot.

I thought that if coke made me feel like that first
time high every time that I would do it for a long time. But that first
time high is the trick in the hat. That high is exactly what puts the
hook in your mouth, and for the ones who love it the first time, they’re
in for a ride, but the lucky ones never try it again. I wasn’t so luck.
After that night I dove in head first.

It was a few months
before I did it again, but after the second time, I met a guy who sold.
That was a very bad thing. That enabled me to get it when I wanted and I
didn’t have to get it through a friend. After I met my first dealer, it
was on in full speed. In a matter of months, I was craving it. I
started stealing money from my parents. I would lie constantly about
where I was, and why I always sniffed.

My family was from the
old school, so they didn’t know anything about drugs except maybe weed.
But eventually they began to figure out that something was very wrong. I
was spending money with nothing to show for it. My eating and sleeping
habit’s had changed. My personality had even changed. My family began to
ask questions. I would lie every time they would ask me about the
things that had changed in my life.

After
a few times of asking me, they put so much pressure on me, that I told
them I had been smoking weed. Being the people they were, with no
knowledge on drugs, they had no idea that weed was very much cheaper
than coke. The amount of control and power that cocaine has should have
opened my eyes at the beginning.

I didn’t enjoy using coke as
much as I enjoyed smoking weed, but because of addiction I would stop.
At the end of my addiction I knew either two things were going to have
to happen for me to stop. I either was going to die from using, or I was
going to have to just stop.

Coming down off of coke is a very
unpleasant feeling. Your body is trying to get back to normal, and you
feel anxiety. I was paranoid. And with me, the comedown was more extreme
for me then for others. The come down didn’t bother some people like it
did me. That was another obvious sign for me to quit. But cocaine is a
demon. It was created in the hands of the devil himself. And the signs
are all around you. They are there during your addiction.

But
the warning signs are like the angel on one shoulder, and cocaine is the
devil on the other. And you either fall for addiction, or you choose
life. There are no cocaine addicts who are old people. The people who
used coke in the 70s are either dead or they got off of it. It will
eventually kill you, and I don’t think that drug, and it’s effects and
high is worth dying over.

Be smart and stay far away. It appears to be awesome and exciting, but once it has you, it’s not as easy to put it down.

You can also share your substance abuse stories by clicking here and contacting us.