In Recovery?

I had actually given up blogging about my “Recovery.” Mostly because I’m lazy and I figured no one was reading, but when I look back at my old blogs, I think it’s more important that I re-read and remember. Also, I’m here when the addict will come looking like I did when I was desperate and needed answers and to know I’m not alone. You’re not alone.

Hi, I’m Michael Whitley and I am alcoholic, drug users, compulsive liar, bipolar and schizophrenic, and sex addict. When I think about all the things I am, I could add so much more like the childhood abuse and molestation. It’s funny, when I started to “recover” –Well, I actually consider it “In recovery” I didn’t know where to start.

How does one heal a broken heart?

Well I had to start at alarming problem and that was my drug use and alcoholism which landed me in the Psych ward for like a month. I was mixing my antipsychotics, drugs and alcohol and that was not a good thing. I lost my mind. I never felt so out of control. I couldn’t control my maniac swings, I was all over the place. And then I ended with trying to kill myself. But that’s just the synopsis. That’s the car hitting the wall.

The reason why I started writing “In Recovery” because I finally got me some sober time. I got out of Psych Ward. I finally started getting some help. I started taking the meds properly. I started going to AA meetings. I got me a therapist. I got me a job. I was going to live right whatever the hell that meant. That last for about two weeks before shit started falling apart again. Funny, I got sober and my life got so much harder. It was like I woke up and realized I burned down my house and had no where else to live.

Some more time passed, months, I stayed sane, because I stopped calling it sobriety. I started getting a new perspective on my life. I was sober and sane, but what did that really mean. I was in “recovery” but what did that really mean?

I wanted everything back I had given up. It was like that commercial where the teens are burning their trophies and college applications because they smoke pot, like saying how addiction will take everything if you let it. I mean it’s not instant. I know it doesn’t happen to everyone. A lot of “say no to drugs” campaigns are propaganda. I don’t have anything against drugs because I don’t think it’s just drugs that make addicts. It’s so much more complicated.

I wanted everything back I destroyed. After months of sobriety, I had a new perspective. I felt older and wiser. I felt I could use my own mind.

So now, in recovery has become about putting my life together for real. I’m thirty years old and it feels like I’m just graduating kindergarten. It feels like I’ve been flunking the same grade over and over again for the last ten years. I mean in the beginning, it didn’t look that way. I was just having fun. And I was having fun. I had a lot of fun. But it changed. Somehow it changed for me. It was like I didn’t leave the party. My friends left the party but I stayed behind for just one more dance and drink. My friends moved on, kept their jobs, bought houses, and I was still at that party with new people I didn’t know or trusted but I didn’t want to leave the party. And soon the people got worse, and there was no more music or dancing, just drinking and getting high. And soon there were no more people, just me and the drinking and getting high. I became an addict. Just me. Not any of my old friends, I had to go find other addicts to keep company or get drugs.

Now I’m in recovery. It’s not an easy process. Ironically, it wasn’t giving up the drugs and alcohol that was really the hard part or has been the hard part. After I was thirty days sober, I really stopped craving. The hard part was learning to live again. That’s the real recovery.

So here I am, the last three months I was evicted, hospitalized for a month, lost my job, my ex broke up with me but I’ve been sober.

I started to realize I wasn’t going to easily escape my past. And not many really gave a damn I was “in recovery.” I thought sobriety was going to be like a baptism, I go under the water and everything was going to be clean again. That didn’t happen.
The hard part is forgiveness. I haven’t forgiven myself becoming an addict. When I go home to my shitty small apartment and think all that I squandered, and lay my head down to sleep hating that I’m starting again at 30 when I should be so much further, that’s why I need the forgiveness.

Funny, I saw an old neighbor the other days. She was one of the tenants who banded together to have me evicted. She sneered at me and rolled her eyes. I hadn’t seen her in months, but that look she gave me made me so damn angry. I wanted to spit in her face. I felt she was looking down on me and then I turn that anger on myself. I hated myself in that moment. I felt dirty. I wanted to drink. I wanted to forget. And then I decided to just forgive myself. To smile at the old neighbor and wish her a good day. I struggled with those feelings for days, going back and forth. I still don’t think I've forgiven myself.