I cannot go through this again, nor should you.

Faffing over what to write is creative redundancy for me… so fuck it > here goes an honest attempt at just blogging my brains out with no plan…

My intention here with all this is to create honest posts detailing parts of my story that I know will resonate with others, and if it helps anyone, then that is all I seek to accomplish!

There is no celebration in decay, it’s nothing to be remotely proud of, but there IS celebration in recovery and the intelligence harvested from the experiences. To free ones self from the cage of addiction is to fuel up on honesty, humility and compassion for others, lack of self to an extent, but an ever cautious eye on the ball, for if we are to let go of new found clarity- we can be seduced back to old thinking and behaviours… which for me will not end well. A lesson, not so much learned, more face planted by a survival necessity and a last chance saloon serving only bitch slaps of “told you so’s” and a complete loss of self.

I didn’t know who I was anymore… and so held up my hands in total submission and screamed through blood and tears “I cannot go through this again”

As Rumi quoted; “The wound is the place where the light enters you”

From that final moment of defeat a dim but definite light bulb went on inside me… but the light took a long time to shine… I would be committed to getting sober and clean once and for all from that moment, and would set about making plans in which to do so… but the addiction was still running the show, and so began the battle, I fought this fucker right up to an epiphany moment that shakes me to my core and I feel ugly even to remember. Seeing the look in my younger brothers eyes as I cowered pathetically on my hands and knees before him begging for redemption and seeing the pain My addictions were causing my family, the people I loved. I relapsed countless times before this, but was not fully ready, able or wanting to change and do what is needed until I was already awaiting a room in a rehabilitation centre… and that rock bottom awoke the innocent, inner child in me, the ambitious, sensitive, yet outgoing dude I had buried within my older self and a skew whiff life on my own terms.

After a life altering collapse of a long relationship I started intentionally and profoundly self medicating, numbing emotional pain that I’d been carrying since my brain started logging life. I had been using drugs and alcohol since I was 18 but never thought myself in trouble, let alone an addict, but here at 31 years old, after a cocaine induced minor heart attack, I realised – I’m an addict! Then came the textbook chemical progression and subsequent dependency. Cocaine and pills enabled me to be me without the annoying distraction of low self esteem and all the trimmings that go along with that ole chestnut. Psychedelics helped me to elevate to places and states that challenged even the simplest of beliefs and fuel my imagination (or simply give it a playground in which to run riot for seemingly life-long trips), marijuana helped me relax, Jam, write, even assisted sexual shenanigans, and alcohol was abundant in everything, always there to wash what ever else down and keep me functioning free from fear and fatigue. Of course this diet was a yo-yo affair and quickly had the opposite effect I was seeking, only making me more anxiety ridden, depressed and physically sick. This pushed my intake and the more I consumed, the lesser I felt the effect, and so began that age old vicious cycle, where the drugs and booze end up using you until you belong to them… because they no longer work, right!? You don’t cop a buzz no more, you use to level out and maintain. I was unable to function without it all. The teeth were in and the mark had been made…

Life had to go on though, and as I trudged through it like a false, cocky, arrogant, angry, decrepit feeble tosser… I stacked up resentments, enemies and above all else- I really hurt people I truly cared about, and so began the whimpering apology machine, sluggish gears grinding away losing bits of myself every pain staking, wobbling step I took…

Then I found heroin and everything went away… the day the world went away.

Like a long lost warm, cosy embrace from a lover wrapping her arms around you, seductively sinking her delicious sickly teeth in, feeling both familiarity and nothing at all… escape. My life was such a fucking disgrace by this point this enabled me to turn out the lights, where usually I’d drink and use to black out in (dis)order to reach this state of escape, the false plane of ignorant, blissful, unawareness, now I had found the ultimate trip switch.

As said previously, I will try to document the stages of my addiction and the ways in which I sought and attained help/recovery, but for now this is a brief overview of when,where, how and why I; Sammy Lee, am an alcoholic – addict.

As a result of an arguably compassionate intervention by two ex girlfriends, I admitted myself to CRI HOMER addiction recovery centre at Alexandra House in Aldershot (now called Inclusion drug and alcohol services) and was able to stop using through an abstinence based care plan. (Colin Thied Lowe & Big John Phipps x) Having now gone to that place where you know your now more than flirting with death but the urge to get numb is all that matters, if death comes then so be it, I was scared but not scared of dying. I now struggle to understand this mentality, but alas; the mind of an addict is not exactly a hive for common sense, and I was not really living anyway…

https://www.inclusion.org/services/inclusion-aldershot/

To cut through my trying to sound clever and tell a typically ego invigorating story, I basically switched substances and embraced alcohol as much as I physically could, it worked, I missed the drugs, but was happy in the bottle and felt no real severe repercussions health wise. I felt as though I’d dodged that bullet of dying with a needle in my arm… I hadn’t used intravenously up to this point, and now I was substituting- just shifting poison tracks, but these were more socially acceptable, and better still- I had stopped using, so I was proud, and in a false bubble of having bettered myself… this was my biggest mistake…

Alcohol for me was the worst addiction… it’s a cunning fucker that creeps into you via socially acceptable means and years of ‘fun booze fuelled shenanigans to be reminiscently relived again and again… and if given the correct conditions -will take you to the depths of your soul. Make no mistake… alcohol IS a drug! addiction IS a disease (dis- ease) and those of us prone to it, given the chance, will encounter a problem of some kind, awareness is so minimal a thing to have and yet life saving if and when needed.

For myself, the rest is a concluding blur of bouncing around trying to meekly survive, in my state I excelled at making things beyond difficult and just kept fuelling the desire to escape, booze was my buddy and I refused to function without it, but as the drinking increased I began using again, after… you guessed it relationship drama, (to put it mildly) rejection and then having been understandably fired from my last job, for being ignorantly ‘on my own clock’, fucked up and unable to function what-so-ever. I was thereafter kamikaze falling with nothing left in the tank. Life had truly become unmanageable and I was rotting inside… yet my mask was relatively able and ready to act out and be merry Sammy to all who met me, between drunk, shitfaced and blackout was my window for social interaction… it was all a consistent topping up in any way to keep the withdrawals away and function somewhat, either to steal, score or scrounge the next fix.

Inevitably, another overdose brought me to hospital… again, but this time was told I most likely would not be back and that my body was dying, which was why I was bleeding out so bad. Interesting to know with addiction, you decompose before you die, as opposed to nature’s preferred way.

Tired of being sick and tired, life had become impossible, boring would be fun, no, life was utter madness and I was now so unwell I couldn’t function anymore, desperate to prevent seizures and actually get the poison in me I would try and recycle alcohol by puking into a bowl with a sieve and filter out the alcohol, drink and repeat until it stayed down… coughing and shitting blood, not eating, stealing anything to fix up, couldn’t remember where I left my conscience but survival was killing myself to live now, withdrawals were always a few lines or drinks away so I had to keep that fucker away, having had numerous seizures and hellish hallucinations along with all the usual shakes, sweats, sickness, insomnia and psychological torment… during this time I had been using needles and it was at this point I truly didn’t care anymore, this world was better without me draining its resources and all that self deprecating bollocks one tells themselves when simply in need of help… the best way to sum up where my head was at during one of many rock bottom’s is actually from a rather pathetic suicide note I scribbled (I had attempted suicide numerous times with varying outcomes, routinely self harming fuelled by pitiful self loathe and an inability to cope with the madness… It was all bollocks, if I had wanted out I’d have done it proper… more likely a cry for help, memory is foggy here though!)

“It will be easier to die right now, tonight, than to keep living like this, than to wake up and deal with the shit I’ve created/caused yet again, I’d prefer it… its a better outcome for everyone… I’m not scared, I’m exhausted and trapped”

I don’t see my handwriting as me, when I read the scribbles that person wrote in those moments of depravity, I only see that everything is a cry for help in a fog of fear, confusion and an overwhelming inability to cope.

The dilemma of addiction is the inability to be honest… I had cried wolf in the past so many times, and by now most of my long term friends had understandably given up on me, or at least distanced themselves. Everything I did and said was a lie, but whatever it was that made me admit defeat and hoist my feeble white flag, remains clouded because I was no longer there.

This is where a belief in a higher power hauntingly and questionably bleeds into my story, (I’ll delve into that honey pot next blog) for it was through random events and the compassion of people I had either used and treated so disgustingly, or whom did not even know me, and yet I was pulled from this pit of decay by them and began my climb up this ladder of recovery… which is ongoing and ever testing, but worthwhile beyond any words can express.

My mother Patricia is the one person on this planet I look at now and see the very best a person can be, she too is a survivor for less selfish reasons, and she didn’t deserve to see her son end up the way I was… today my mother has her son back and I will never again gamble with her happiness as I was once doing so destructively, for this remarkable woman gave me life and for that I am now, at long last -grateful for. She is my inspiration and my reason to believe, and this fuels my recovery, but doesn’t define it, for that is my decision -to stay well and maintain the disciplinary effort to keep doing so, one day at a time.

The ladder out of my personal addiction hell was implemented by i-access drug and alcohol services, Guildford, through referral from a very compassionate and understanding G.P; Dr Laura Dando at Southlea Practice Aldershot/Farnham. This put me in an abstinence preparation program leading to admission for full detox and substance addiction treatment at Windmill House rehabilitation facility. Following rehab I entered into the Transform housing and support program, which is a recovery facility for people after rehabilitation, (kinda like a secondary, more easy going rehab) living in a staff run dry house with 7 others, all recovering addicts of varying degrees, and all such lovely dudes and dudey’s. I am now, as of today: 7 months and 17 days clean and sober, still at Transform Reigate, my life is back and my mum is proud of her son again, Rome weren’t built in a day… but the foundations are being laid in a Maslow fashion this time, learning to live a straight life with a crooked mind.

http://www.surreydrugandalcohol.com/

To accomplish recovery you need to want to do it for yourself and not for anyone else… contrary to popular opinion one does not need to hit rock bottom to seek it… I seemed to be rolling down a spiral staircase of rock bottom’s that lost me everything but it needn’t be that drastic, you will know if the curtains are pertinently drawn and the soul submerged. The vital ingredients are honesty, humility and compassion to maintain it, thereafter all’s ya gotta do is get to a meeting and keep coming back folks.

http://www.surreydrugandalcohol.com/windmill-house

For anyone suffering or concerned about another- please contact one of the many links posted here and take that first step, it’s the hardest but the most rewarding step you will take to throwing those curtains wide open motherfuckers and embracing a light at the end of that dark tunnel that no one need be suffering and lost within.

https://www.transformhousing.org.uk/

Peace, luv and hugz

Sammy x

Musical side note:

As with most things in life, music has been a soundtrack through some of the darker times, for better or worse. As a result there are songs or albums I can’t listen to now because they have the power of taking me back to those dark places.

BUT…

The music of Nine Inch Nails has been a source of constant inspiration, incite and emotional release for me at ALL times (among many others obvzzzz) but the association of Trent Reznor’s music to this blog is undeniably appropriate and ultimately inspiring to anyone suffering addiction. NIN’s albums arguably document Reznors own experiences of addiction and the dark places one goes, both in it and looking back. Although the downward spiral’s song ‘Hurt’ is the more ‘known’ NIN song about addiction, however, the album ‘With Teeth’ is a biographical depiction of Trent’s then new found sobriety, and the regret and inevitably uncomfortable raw emotions brought about by his own recovery. It’s violent, sonically abrasive, self deprecating and yet soothingly beautiful in equal measures! Leaving no stone unturned! It helped me immeasurably over the past year and now has a place in my fragile soul. I will go as far as saying I think Trent Reznor is a musical genius and if you’ve not been lucky enough to of heard of him… Everything’s. Going . To. Be. Okay!

Go check it… x