Autobiography of a Crackhead

Autobiography of a Crackhead

A Personal Statement

I am a completely recovered alcoholic and drug addict. I have previously used and then been used by Heroin, Dope, Cocaine, Uppers, Downers, Acid, ‘E’ and basically whatever else was going at the time and in whatever method I could find to get it into my body. My most favorite drug of all was generally those that belonged to other people. However, now I have fully recovered from that life and I am very well, happy, whole and free, and I certainly no longer suffer in any way with addiction.

I have lived a lifetime of experiences ranging from notions such as ecstatic joyfulness, abject tragedy and a few near death drug overdoses. My life has been candid, mysterious, sometime tragic, comic, love-lorn, childish/child-like, happy, sad, perverse, miserable, beautiful, desperate, disparate, aching, arching, high, joyous, confused, cloudy, hopeful and hopeless. Perhaps most powerfully though, it is the reality of a seeming depth of loneliness that a person is even able to endure that I remember from these experiences – I would feel lonely even in a room full of people –unhappy drunks and addicts will understand here.

As I reached the nadir of my human resources at the height of a period of intense drug addiction, it was the confronting of a woundedness that had to some extent been my companion since as long as I care to remember that had begun to set me free - namely, I had this obsession for some kind of ‘Love’ that would 'make it all alright' (the loss of my mother age 11 was the central component here). This coupled with an ever-present and much abused self-centered sadness were the reasons why I thought I was making such hard going of life – ‘Life’, and how I failed to cope with it was, as I discovered, the problem and not the drugs or alcohol at all (I did not know this at the time). These same old separate parts of my previous negative outlook were dominating every moment of my waking/sleeping hours and these were factors of my life that I thought would never, ever change. When I was drinking and using it was a nightmare, so I would pray to go to sleep to escape my world, and in sleeping I would again be plagued by an even worse nightmare, only to wake up to the same nightmare – you get the picture!

However, the source of this erstwhile recovery was not found where one had ever considered looking before – in spirituality. Through the process of a gifted 12 Step spiritual, therapeutic and continually supported recovery, my life has now rebuilt at an apparently swift rate and with every care and endeavour one can personally muster – subsequent transformative experiences have helped exponentially - I am recently married, now re-homed and situated in the career of choice. However, it is not these previous gifts that are as telling as these next - I like myself, I am sure that life will remain OK despite its inevitable tribulations, I live with a sense of completeness conjoined with the realistic notion that I will continue to move two steps forward and sometimes three back (and possibly four forward). Furthermore, I am assuredly on the ‘other side’ of my space in this world to my previous ‘Prodigal Son’ stance, and I am now more than ready for the next healing and sharing eventuality in this wondrously entwined tapestry of exploration, excitation and communication of life – Bring it on!