- Alcohol
- Drugs
My addiction started in my early teens. Drinking looked like fun at family functions, Christmas and New Years, when normally serious relatives would get drunk, dance and get on chairs. My brother started sneaking drinks at an early age, probably 12 or 13. I don’t think I got drunk until probably 14.
I was curious. I wanted to hang out with my older cousins and some older friends, and they drank a lot and smoked weed. I was always uncomfortable when trying to approach girls, as I was timid, but, if you put a couple of drinks in me, I could approach any girl. I thought, “This is fantastic, I’ve got to do more of this.” I would find girls who smoked pot, so of course I’d do that too. I now realize a lot of my drug use involved the opposite sex, so I was using for someone else instead of for me.
My drug use escalated. I always wanted to try different things, but most of the time I was doing it because someone else was doing it, and I wanted to fit in. I felt like if I wasn’t doing it, I was going to be left out. It was still a lot of fun, and it was never a big issue. I lost some of my other interests. I was never really interested in school, but I was pretty good at sports. Sports soon became second, but it still wasn’t enough for me to realize I had a problem. I was still having fun.
We moved to Chile, where my dad worked for the UN. I got away with a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I got pulled over a few times, but I had a license plate that said “Diplomat” and an ID that said diplomatic, so there were never any consequences. Later I was sent back to Mexico, and in Mexico it was the same thing. It wasn’t until I moved to the United States that I got in trouble.
I found the perfect job for me. I was a bartender and ran disco at a club. I’d dance, have girls and drugs and drink, but everyone was doing it, so I wasn’t out of the norm. I actually did less drugs than many, as I didn’t want to do pills, because, when I did pills, I would lose control and not remember. I liked to remember, so I felt that, even though I was doing a lot of coke, I wasn’t as bad as other people, because they were doing things I had tried but didn’t do anymore. I never even considered that I had an addiction.
I met my son’s mom, and she got pregnant, so I moved to Georgia. When I moved to the United States, I started doing more cocaine. In Mexico I smoked a lot of weed, but I didn’t do much of anything else. I would just vegetate in front of the TV. While I was doing cocaine, I would still actively work. I could do cocaine and then go to work, so I didn’t think it was affecting me. I would drink at night, after I got off of work. I was working at a restaurant and doing tree work, construction or landscaping during the day, so I basically had two jobs, but I didn’t have money. Everything still seemed normal to me.
I met my second son’s mom, and she liked to party too. We started smoking crack. After years of using cocaine I would get nosebleeds, so she said, “Just smoke it, and you get no nosebleeds.” Nobody told me this before, and I thought it was the greatest idea, until the situation escalated. I had to use more and more, so I had less money. I was a functioning addict for a long time, because I would work, get a paycheck, pay all my bills and then spend whatever I had left over on drugs. Bartending and waiting tables was part-time work for party money, because I didn’t have to pay bills with that money. After we started smoking crack, we never had any extra money.
We were together, when we went to our first support group meeting. I felt a big sense of relief knowing there were other people like me. Eventually our relationship ended, and I wasn’t taking care of the child I had with her, so I said, “Why am I paying rent? It doesn’t make sense to pay rent, because I work two jobs. I’m never home. I just go home to sleep.” I joined a gym, and I would go and work out in the mornings, take a shower and go to work. I would go to the gym again at night for another shower and then sleep in my car. I didn’t need an apartment, and I was saving money. When I got paid, I had more money to party. I still didn’t think I had a problem.
Eventually I lost the car. I got a DUI and was in a couple of car accidents, and then I didn’t have a place to sleep. I went to jail a couple of times, but jail just helped me find better connections. I met a drug dealer from Mexico, and he needed someone who spoke Spanish and English and could drive, because he didn’t have a driver’s license. I became his chauffeur and delivery boy, and I ended up moving in with him. Things were okay at first, but the business was growing and getting attention from the police. We had to move from one apartment to another every two to three months, so he said he had to take a break and was going to move to Florida. He said, “You can come with us, but we’re not going to have drugs with us for a while.” I saw no reason to go, if that was the case. He left, and I stayed with my cousin.
I was miserable. I had no drugs, no job and no money. My next son’s mom was pregnant. I had three kids that I didn’t have any contact with, and now I had another one coming. It hit me that I couldn’t keep living the way I was living. I realized I had to make a change. I called my family in Mexico. My dad bought me a plane ticket, and I went to Mexico and went to rehab.
My son’s mom came to Mexico to see me in rehab and talked me into going back to the US after 28 days. They suggested I stay at least three months in rehab, but she twisted my arm. I went back and went to New York, and while I was there, I learned something about addiction and rehab. I learned a lot, but it just wasn’t enough. I recognized I was an addict, but I thought I could still drink, because I wasn’t an alcoholic. When I was in New York I got a job and started drinking. I worked for a few months, and eventually I found somebody who had cocaine and other drugs. I asked myself, “Why am I wasting my time drinking, when I could be doing this?”
The relationship didn’t work out, and it became obvious to me that my addiction was escalating. I started going to outpatient treatment, and I realized it wasn’t good enough. I signed up for inpatient treatment and stayed there for four months. They suggested that I go to a halfway house, but I said, “Oh no, no, no. I’m here on my own, I don’t want to have to do anything.” I went to support group meetings, and I got a few months clean, but then I relapsed. I said, “Okay, I’ll go to a halfway house.”
I managed to have over a year clean, but I still didn’t want to get a sponsor and do all the work, so I relapsed. I was going through a cycle of getting clean for nine months, relapsing, getting clean for six months, relapsing and so on and so forth. It became obvious to me that I wasn’t following all the suggestions, and I finally decided to get a sponsor. I got a sponsor, and I worked the steps. I realized a lot about myself, and I realized that my addiction was covering a lot of underlying issues I had. I had a lot of issues with my parents and with my family, and I worked to make amends. Everybody gets stuck on the fourth or fifth step, as I did, but, when I came to the ninth step and I had to make certain amends, one was with my son’s mom. That step was even harder than the fourth or fifth, so it took me nearly six months.
I ended up having eight years sober, but I stopped going to meetings. I ended up relapsing and using drugs again because of a female, and I realized I was a sex addict. I went back to support group meetings and got five months sober. Recovery is an internal job, and it’s a journey. You don’t arrive; it’s just a journey. You keep going, and you’ve got to be vigilant over everything.
I heard someone say that recovery will give you reasons to leave recovery, and that happened to me. I got a job, I’m back in school and I’m working out. Life is wonderful, and I’m finally enjoying life, but then I think, “Okay, I’m doing things that I like. I don’t really want to go to a meeting.” Having all the good things that recovery brings can cause you to lose them, if you don’t pay attention to recovery. Recovery has to come first. I have to keep that in the forefront. Otherwise it can be easy to lose that focus after a certain amount of clean time. I had a few years, and after that I felt like I didn’t need to go to a meeting every day or week or month. I have to keep recovery as my goal. I always have to be aware that my addiction might surface in other areas. Not picking up a drug or a drink doesn’t mean that my addiction isn’t working in myself.