Episode 2 - Am I an addict? Really?

In today's episode, I'll talk about what it means to be an addict. Also, I'll be shedding a little more light on my own story.

Transcript

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Hello. And welcome back to another episode of thoughts of an addict. I am your grateful recovering addict. Em. Just a, one of the open up the podcast today by expressing gratitude. This thing has been around for less than 24 hours and RD the support and the reception that I've gotten from the homeys at home. Shout out homeys and. All of my classmates that I've shared this with. It's it's been pretty, pretty overwhelming in. In the most positive way possible. So, yeah. Anyone who managed to struggle through the first episode and has found their way back to the second one, thank you so much. It means the world to me that you want to sit here and listen to me ramble. So I appreciate that. And I did. And maybe I wasn't clear on the format of how this thing's going to work. I wanted to, maybe do like four or five apps a week. That sounds incredibly ambitious. School starts in three days. So. We'll see how that goes. Two days into my summer. It ends tomorrow. So we'll see if we can keep this thing going. And if not, I'll put out what I can. And like I said, at the end of the day, This exists so I can help the addict who still suffers. So reach out to me directly. If you or somebody, you know, needs help. Anyways, what are we talking about today? Today might be a briefer one than usual today. I just want to talk about. Who is an addict, what's an addict or talking about addiction. What. What are we talking about here? And I need to preface this with again, I've mentioned that in my first one, but. I am not a doctor. I am not web MD. I'm not very. I'm not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination. I'm no neuroscientist. I can't tell you the neurochemistry of addiction and I am not going to be able to diagnose you as an addict. And frankly, I'm not sure if anybody is going to be able to. I think that if you're an addict, Then you know that you're an addict. We say that. Most of us. Don't have to think twice about this. We just know. And. I was looking up. Definitions of addiction before this there's a hundred different ones, depending on what tradition you're from or what version of the dictionary you're using. But this is the operating definition of attic that works for me. It's somebody whose life. Is controlled by something. And for me, that was narcotics. That was drugs. I was addicted to drugs. Therefore my life was completely controlled by them.

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Yeah. I'd like to tell you a little bit about my journey, about how I ultimately discovered that I was an addict. So. I mean, it probably all started. In high school, to be honest with you. So probably started. Drinking around 16, 17 sophomore, junior year of high school, like so many do. And something always baffled me. Something just didn't make sense to me. I would watch people. At parties. Drink and only have one or two or three drinks, and then they would stop there. I distinctly remember I had a, or I currently have one of my closest friends in the world. His name is goat. Well, we'll call him goat for the sake of anonymity here, but I remember he would drink two or three drinks and I would say, come on, goat, what are you doing? Like. Aren't you trying to have a good time. And he was able to self moderate himself. And to me that just, that concept just blew my mind. It was actually completely outside of the realm of comprehension to me. I couldn't wrap my mind around somebody. Stopping a good feeling. Right. I mean, shit. Uh, three beers felt good. Then four is going to feel really good and five is going to feel really fucking good. And that process, that's, that's addiction right there. That's the addiction talking still remnants, still living in there. Thoughts of an addict, right? So that was probably the first time that my drug addiction started to show itself. But I didn't see it as a problem at the time. And once I started evolving into harder drugs. Probably started around college joined a fraternity. Yeah, I was in a frat. And. Yeah. That's when things started to go downhill pretty fast. The drugs escalated. You. You start getting into harder things, Xanax, benzos, whatever. And. Yeah. Even at that point in time, I didn't recognize that I had a problem. I didn't recognize that I was an addict. I thought that okay. I'm working really hard at school. I'm getting A's right now. That means I can treat myself to a few drugs here and there and. And everything will be fine. And so therefore I'm not an addict. Fast forward. A few years later, I visited a psychiatric ward for the first time. And a doctor tells me. You can never smoke weed again. And I'm sitting there thinking, all right. Fuck this doctor. The second I get out of the psychiatric ward. The first thing I'm doing is I'm loading the bomb. Okay. And even at this point in time, I didn't recognize that I was an addict. I'm just thinking, all right, this doctor, this asshole. He doesn't know me. He doesn't really understand that I'm able to balance all of these things.

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So at this point in time, I am what some might call a functional addict, right? Not right now. I'm saying back. Back when I had a, made it out of the psychiatric ward for the first time. I was a very functional addict, which indeed might be the most dangerous kind. Right. Because, people think of addicts, right? And what's the first image that might come to your head. Someone crawling behind a dumpster at a strip club or something, or somebody in some kind of crack house with needles in their arms. But no addiction. Actually has ways. To infect what looks on the outside to be very functioning people. So this makes this specially more dangerous because if you're crawling out from behind a dumpster, I don't think it's too hard to acknowledge. Oh yeah. I got a real fucking problem. But if, if you're doing well and whatever, you're in school, you're at work and everyone's giving you accolades. You're doing a good job from the outside. It becomes really hard to recognize that you're fucked. That you have this real deep. Spiritual issue. That you are just living with that you don't really think is a problem.

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But here's the thing. Although, maybe it didn't reveal itself on the outside. Remember my definition of an addict at the beginning. One whose life is centered. On that addiction and my life indeed was centered around the getting and using of drugs. When I would take those exams in college, I would think. All right, after this it's time to get loaded, I get a reward or, okay. It's summertime. It's time to get loaded or. Okay. I just got a paycheck. It's time to get loaded and those things, I never revealed those to anybody, of course, but my life was centered around the getting in the using of drugs. And. It took me a very long time and I'm not going to get into every facet of my story right now. But it took me a really long time to recognize that one was too many. And that a thousand was never enough. And drugs had become the focal point in my life. I didn't have a higher purpose. I didn't have any meaning. There was no adventure in my life, man. There was no, there was the love, right? Like now I feel so grateful to have all these amazing people in my life. And I feel like I'm on this incredible journey. And all these things, all these feelings that I had. Of joy and gratitude. They weren't there before. They were substituted by drugs because the drugs were able to give me those highs that I was lacking.

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And looking back. At those years in deep active addiction. I often ask myself. Why? Why was it so hard? For me to admit myself to myself that I had this problem. And now we're going to get a little bit spiritual here. We're going to, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into philosophy. That's my incidentally, my undergraduate degree. So there's going to probably be rife with philosophy and this podcast, sorry. So accurate. Totally. He has this book called the power of now. And I think in the second or third chapter, He talks about something called the pain body. And the pain body is when we are in pain and experiencing struggle. That also is an entity in all entities in this universe, they all have one common goal and that's to strive and to keep living. So the reason why I was never able to admit in my heart of hearts. That I was an addict. It's because then I would've done something about it. But the addict side of me, that addicted brain that just wanted more and more drugs. That part of me wanted to continue to exist. It didn't want to die. Nothing in this universe wants to die. Our addiction, our addicted minds are entities, just like every other entity in the universe. So it is going to do whatever it can to keep itself alive. And of course, that's what I was doing with myself, telling myself lies all the time. Oh, it's okay. That you're a terrible son, dear parents. It's okay. That you're a thief. It's okay. That you're. Deeply darkly. Negatively affecting the lives of your friends around you.'cause that addicted mind knows that it's only going to stay alive. If you don't admit that you have a problem. So I would say to you. Anybody listening right now. That if you find that your life in your mind, Is centered around. Some form of addiction. We'll focus on drugs and alcohol. If it's centered around drugs and alcohol. If you're constantly thinking about how am I going to get that next high? Ah, God, I'm coming down from this high. How am I going to get more money for X, Y, or Z? Or, and those are like extreme addicted thoughts, even just. Even just more vanilla thoughts, like. Oh, God, I really wish I could stop, but I better keep going with, I better have another drink right now, or, uh, I really don't want to drink on Friday, but shit, everyone else's, even though I don't want to. I would just ask you to stop and consider. Are you controlling the drugs and the alcohol? Or are they controlling you?

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And here's the thing, friends. Nobody can ever. Tell you that you are an addict. People might call you an addict, but only you. No, your thoughts, right? Only, you know, the deep, deep, inner workings of your consciousness. And. My advice to you. Would be. Total honesty. You gotta be completely honest with yourself. Cause like I was alluding to earlier. That addicted mind is going to do what it can to stay alive. But. If you're able to reach a point with yourself. I think a lot of people call this rock bottom, but I hope that you don't have to get there to recognize. That maybe you do have a problem. Because, The only way that you can get help. For anything. Is the first admit. That you do have a problem. And I genuinely hope that everyone listening to this podcast is addicted to nothing. I hope that all my listeners are happy and healthy and they don't have to suffer the same pain that I in. Probably a billion other people go through. This addiction thing. But if you are having. This thought, this feeling, this knowledge that your life is being controlled. By something else. Then you might just be an addict and it's not all doom and gloom. My friends. This might be. The most important. Realization that you will have in your entire life. It was for me. When I finally fucking put my foot down. And I said, you know what? My name is M and I am a fucking addict. That that is when things finally started to change in my life, because then I could actually start working on all the things that had been that had just this fucking darkness that had been in my mind and my soul for a decade. I could finally start working on those things. So. In closing.

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I would ask. Everyone to just be critically honest with yourself. And see. If you're the addicted part of your mind has started to Tate and take over. The rest of your soul, which I know for a fact is incredibly beautiful.

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I know. I've seen it many times. Somebody admits they're an addict. And then. And then their soul starts to change. Then they can finally actualize and see who the fuck they really are. And that to me, That's what I want out of this for all of you. So if you're listening today, And you already knew goddamn well that you were an addict. Or maybe you do some self-reflection in the next day or month or year, and you ultimately recognize, Hey. Maybe, maybe just, maybe I am an addict. Fear, not friends. We are in this journey together. I will always be here for you. Again, I am just an addict with a microphone. But we are in this journey together. Let's beat this fucking thing. Thank you so much for tuning in. And hope to see on the next one, everybody have a great day.