New to M.A., not new to recovery, 4 1/2 months clean this time around
Hiya
Just found out about MA a few weeks ago, and starting the first meeting with a few other recovering burners where I live next Tuesday at noon.
I am 50, turning 51 in April. When I was 27 I got clean for the first time, in NA, where, after several years of trying to quit smoking weed, I was finally able to find the help and community necessary for me to stop. I eventually drifted away, and 11 1/2 years later I took my first drink. It took a long while for me to hit a joint after that, almost 2 years in fact (I thought I had it made with drinking, because I have never drank alcoholically). As soon as I started getting high again, though, that was that for that.
And the next 8 years were insane. By the time I was ready to surrender, I had lost a $1/2million waterfront home, dignity, face, had a suicide attempt and corresponding visit to a mental hospital, and lost any treasured benefits I thought I got from smoking. I came in on a lower bottom than my first time, finally succumbed to taking the meds they wanted me to take, and started the long crawl back to some semblance of sanity, in the halls of AA.
Although I was unsure that AA was the place to do it, circumstances made going to NA where I live a very uncomfortable proposition. Then, while reading through the Big Book of AA, I found a paragraph describing the dishonest nature of the Alcoholic, which described me to a T, so I made AA my recovery home. When there, I identify as someone who "smoked my booze".
After 2 years (last summer), I started to long for the bar scene, and went back out. My drinking lasted 2 weeks. You know what? Fuck drinking, I dont really care about it, it has "yet" to have a hold on me. So I started smoking again. And within 4 days (probably instantly) I was once again unable to impose any kind of control over when and how much I smoke.
I am a 'head, a freaking pot fiend, and, as a performing musician, I can smoke a barrel full and still go out there and kill it. But my saving grace was that I knew I was whipped before anything bad or costly (besides the insane price of weed these days) happened. It took little more than a month to realize that I had no control, and the only ways out were either down that road of helpless eventual insanity or out of it altogether, both of which I had done before and knew how to do.
"Today I am not going to smoke until 2:00, after I have taken care of the phone calls, bills, shopping, etc and dont have to deal with anyone I dont want to deal with", and, five minutes later, I had one rolled and burning, Stoned Agin, saying to myself "well, fuck it, I will do it tomorrow". For weeks. No matter how badly I wanted it to be that way.
So, in recognition of that, I threw in the towel fairly quickly, got back into AA, and now have 4 1/2 months clean and sober.
You could say that it is all the same, weed, booze, narcotics, and, on some level, they are. But heroin addicts have something in common that weed smokers dont, hardcore boozers have something in common that weed addicts dont, and weed addicts have something in common that neither heroin addicts or alcoholics seem to fully get either, at least on some level (I had been told by a junkie that I had no business in NA, but that didnt have much of a deciding impact on me, because that guy is an asshole....no, just another addict....anyway).
So I am psyched to find MA, and thrilled to be helping it get a footing out here on this island, which has more than its share of burners, both in and out of recovery. Thanks for reading this.
