I have found this journaling I started doing almost a year ago to have such a profound effect on me. It all started with a question I had and I am so thankful that I was able to find that answer in which I seeked! So thankful that even in my darkest of hours, this very hour, that I can find no faults within this beautiful world that shapes my life. Though I can not fault this world, this life. It does not mean that I am blind to the cruelity that exist in the world and to all the suffering I can feel from inside of all of you as well. Those same feelings have caused me so much pain. Such an unbearable, wonderful pain. For it is through that very suffering that has bestowed upon me the most heavenly of gifts. For that, I am eternally filled with gratitude!

As you may or may not of guessed, I am an addict. I would actively use my addiction in a harmful way by trying to quench it through an external force. And as of today I have still been granted the strength to be able to not practice in that sin. I am in no way saying that drugs itself are a sin. Not at all. The sin was in my compulsion to fill the emptiness inside myself that drove me seeking that through an artificial source. I didn’t even know I was seeking anything during that searching. When I had surgery in 2009 and the painful months leading up to, what required of me having a section of my infected intestine removed, left me a true addict. Though it took me nine years to accept that fact. When being prescribed a legal drug through a medical doctor  I thought that I was above calling myself an addict. Besides that, I have been a pharmacy technician about half my life already at that time. I studied the drugs that were supposedly addictive so I know I can’t become addicted. Yea right! 

I’ll fast forward to 2014 when my vicodan(or norco, or lortab, or any oxy) consumption was more than I could handle. So I did what I thought was getting help by calling my insurance company to be referred for treatment. I was sent to a behavioral health facility where my insurance covered the treatment 100%. No out of pocket expense for me. I know…Hallelujah! Three years later I understood that hallelujah is not always used as a victory cry. You see in my time of suffering and need, when I put my well-being into another persons hands, I’d find myself in worse shape than I was in before seeking help through our mental health system. I went in for opioid pain medication addiction and left addicted to their treatment plan they called MMT(methadone maintenance therapy). Don’t get mad at them after reading that. I take 100% accountability for all of it. Especially with having so much knowledge from practicing medicine myself. Unfortunately I didn’t gain any true knowledge of that until I experienced it deep inside myself. At first I thought it was heaven. Once a day I could take two teaspoonfuls of this newly prescribed medication and I wasn’t worried about making sure I had enough pills for the next day anymore. Took me three years to see I wasn’t living in a state of bliss but rather that I was being fooled and chained to hell by this liquid handcuffs. 

 You have to stay on MMT. You are an addict and you need this medicine for the rest of your life!

Have you ever been sick? I mean really sick. Maybe been diagnosed with a disease even. That’s the way my drug addiction was handled. Realized that the day I asked my doctor about a plan to get me off of the medication that was dragging me down. I was told that I am sick and have a disease and just like any disease, I’d have to be on medication so that the disease wouldn’t spread. So that I wouldn’t have to risk taking drugs. The doctor had to explain to me that my addiction was just the same as cancer. Seriously, that is not an exaggeration! When I tried engaging him on this subject I was met with resistance. I tried explaining that I felt I was making my addiction stronger by repeating that habit on a daily basis. That alone was startlingly to me. The Doc also explained that because I am on blood pressure medication and have a higher than recommended heart rate, that it would be too dangerous to my heart to taper off of methadone.

Sense of hopelessness…

It took sometime of having that idea swimming through me before it surfaced back up to my conscience looking for air. I hadn’t realized that my subconscious was already actively trying to solve this for me. For in the following three months as I would take my daily drive to that clinic for my medication, I found myself praying. I’d say a prayer as I would pass The Guardian Angel Cathedral and pray a second time as I would drive by it on my way back from the clinic. I did that everyday for three to four months. I didn’t even recognize that my prayer was being answered on that day when I found myself being forced by an external force to be cutoff from this clinic. It was through that same power that found me ten days later thrown into the first steps of recovery. I truly had no idea how much recovery was going to change my life. As I am still dealing with that change today. I don’t have the time, meaning the courage, to tell of my experience through recovery as of today. I have a feeling that that type of reflection is going to not only be tough but also take quite a bit of time. That part of my story will still follow sometime in the future when I am ready. I do see the world through eyes in a way I have never seen it before. And I still wake on most days trying to find a reason that I want to live. But in acknowledging that fact for me has made it easier to find that meaning to live. That is all the time I have right now to share my story with you. If you have a story you’d like to tell,  I encourage you to do so. When you are ready! 

Who are you

Thank you for those of you who have read my journals. Maybe those I refer to means  you. Only you’ll be able to answer that. If you find yourself wondering if that may be you, that is the first step in your own prayers being answered. God bless you!