- A story from one of our Why Not presenters
“When I was in high school, I started to go through a rebellious phase, doing everything my mom had raised me and taught me not to do. I started smoking a lot of weed and coming home high. My mom told me that she didn’t want drugs in or around her house, so being the rebellious teenager I was, I decided to move out and live with my older brother who wasn’t going to be on my case all the time about what I was doing. I started working to pay for the lifestyle I wanted to lead and surrounded myself with “friends” who would affirm all my decisions, good or bad. The friends that I made would always encourage me to try harder drugs and at first, I said I never would. But I found a way to justify it to myself and it became a slippery slope.
“When I was a kid, I said, “I will never do drugs.” Then it was, “I won’t do any ‘hard’ drugs.” Then, “I won’t take anything that I can overdose on.” Then I said, “It’s just pills. I mean, they get prescribed to people all the time.” You will take that justification trail all the way to your death if you don’t put an end to it.
“I was at a place where the only time that I thought I felt happy was when I was high, but realistically, the drugs weren’t helping me with depression, they were making it worse. I always lived with these thoughts in the back of my mind, like, “I shouldn’t be doing this” and “I’m a disappointment to my family”. I never addressed those issues. I just let them live in the back of my mind and tried to develop an ‘I don’t care what people think about me’ attitude. But deep down, I knew that I couldn’t keep living like that. I had no money, I was losing relationships with people that cared about me, and it was just a selfish, hedonistic lifestyle that gave me no hope for the future and left me with nothing good beyond the moment. I got clean in a miraculous way, with more people than I could imagine supporting me on the road to sobriety.
“If you are thinking about trying drugs or are currently, I promise you that it isn’t worth it. You will find out that you will become a master of justifying things to yourself that you never used to be okay with. You will turn into someone that you aren’t happy with when you look in the mirror. You don’t want to become a slave to your addiction. The best way to fight it is to never do it in the first place or drop it now before it ruins your life and feels like its uncontrollable. If you are already deep into that lifestyle, reach out for help. Don’t fight the battle alone because you can’t do it alone. Find people that can get you the help that you need because YOU are worth it.”