A dear friend of mine asked me to write about step one. Which, for the readers who are not educated on the 12 steps, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (or drugs)-and that our lives had become unmanagable.” Now I am going to touch on both of those in this post. Step one for me is the pain, the misery of using and drinking without a way to stop. The shooting heroin when I dont want to. When I know that my world will crash all around me and I still but a roxie up my nose. Watching my mother crying in pain because she is watching her son kill himself, and only thinking “I wish she would just stop so I can go meet my dope dealer.” These are very real things that ive experienced. Sick right? That is the diseease of addiction. An illness that kills more people than any other disease on the planet. If you do not beleive it to be a disease and think it is all about willpower you are sadly mistaken. I am a very driven person. But my willpower is nonexistent when it comes to drugs and alcohol. Look it up. The American Medical Association clasifies addiction as a disease. Now knowing this, it is not an excuse to do the things I have done. I was exposed many times to the solution which lies in the 12 steps but I refused to take it. I didnt give it 100%. So I relapsed time and time again. Each one getting worse exponentially then the last. Coming closer and closer to death or prison.

I remember the misery waking up so sick from the withdrawals, not wanting to get out of bed. Only getting up to go and obtain the drug so I wouldnt be sick anymore. There wasnt a day I went without getting high. Not one. I would do nothing unless I was high. I couldnt function. I couldnt live in the real world. I couldnt handle it. I remember not wanting to stick myself again but I had to in order to make the pain go away. Even though it just made the pain worse. The Big Book describes it as a man beating himself in the head with a hammer trying to make the pain go away. That is a perfect description of the utter insanity that I was subjected too. Heroin had me. There was no escape. Not on my own. I remember on multiple occasions having a shot ready and not being able to hit a vein. I remember blood all over my bathroom counter and floor because I kept sticking myself. But I couldnt stop. I had no choice but to continue until I hit it. Then the sweet relief. But that was short lived as almost immediatelly after I wondered and started to plan how to get my next shot. Constantly thinking of ways to get over on somebody. Thinking of ways to use someone until they couldnt be used anymore. Women, friends, parents, brother, sister, other family. All of whom I took advantage of. I remember the situations I had put myself in. The people I associated with, the places I went. I would literally go to any length to get high. I would tell my mother that my drug dealer would come to my house and rob them if she wouldnt give me the money to pay them back. When all i really wanted was money to get more drugs. I had my own mother and two younger siblings unknowingly accompany me and transport me to many drug deals. Knowing good and well the dangers I was putiing them in. I remember them catching me once. My sister found my pills and flushed them. I went insane. I was so angry. I was crying. I threatened suicide. I even went so far as too take almost a whole perscription of seroquel. I had the cops called on me three times that night. I think back to that day and i regret so badly the things I said to them. But in that moment I had no choice but to act like that.

The thing that baffles me about this disease and what makes it so powerful is that this disease centers in your mind. So I am trying to fight a disease that centers in my mind with my mind. It doesnt work. it never has and it never will.

Lets talk about the unmanagbility a bit. Now ever since my drug use started my life has been unmanagable. I could never keep a job for more than a month. Never had any money. Been homeless multiple times. I remember going through my phone (if i was lucky enough to have one) and trying to find someone who would let me sleep on their couch for the night. Only to get there and steal from them to get yet another fix. So many bridges burned. So many people hurt. Two overdoses. One in which my father was told he didnt know whether or not his son was going to make it for 4 hours. And one in a public bathroom in Phoenix, Arizona. 1500 miles away from my family. With someone I had just met and decided to share a needle with because I had no other option. Having to sleep on the side of the road in the parking lot because I had got kicked out of my sober house. My scholorship at LSU was lost. I dropped out. My father even gave me another chance at a community college and I couldnt even make it an entire semester. I had no drive or ambition to do anything anymore. I wanted to die but didnt have the guts to do it. That is a misery in which only someone who has been there can understand. there are no words that would do it justice. I could go on and on. I was hopeless to say the least.

One of the things that I think about on a daily basis is the insanity of the day of a dear friends funeral. I was very close to him and had been for some while. He had reached out to me so many times and i ignored him because I didnt want to get dragged into that life again. Then it happened. he died. An overdose. I didnt know how to handle it. I remember smoking some weed before the funeral and feeling so ashamed when I got there. I remember seeing his mother as I walked up to the casket, crying out. The pain on her face was unbearable. I cried and I cried. I remember the remainder of our friend group all went outside and talked about how this is a lesson for us all and we need to stop with the drugs. They talked to me specifically about getting help for my addiction to heroin because they couldnt bear to lose me too. Even seeing all this, I still went and got heroin that same night. Did as much as I could afford. I remember being with all my friends at the apartment we were always at and I was nodding off. They coudldnt beleive I would go take the same poison that only days before had killed one of our group. I remember a girl that I grew up with crying and begging me to stop. Saying she couldnt lose me. I didnt know how to cope. I couldnt handle the deep grief i was feeling, the only way I know to deal with my feelings is drugs and thats exactly what I went too.

these are but a few times that I recall complete powerlessness and unmanagability. there are hundreds and hundreds more. Today I dont have to live like that. today I stand before you as a sober and reborn person. Someone who is learning to live in the real world and who has a set of morals and values that I strive to live by. I have meaning again. I want to help other people with my experience. I feel God had kept me alive for a reason and this is it. I am not a counselor, a doctor, nor am I a pshyciatrist. I am just a junkie trying to live clean and sober and help other people to escape the pain that I once felt.

Nick