- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Being raised in the 60s, you knew what smoking weed was and you listened to Rock ‘n Roll music. I played drums in a rock band as a teen and it wasn’t long before we were smoking weed. Everyone it seemed did it. The older kids did and every young kid wants to fit in with the older ones, right? Going to high school was getting HIGH school.
It wasn’t very long before we (my friends and I) found out what cocaine was like and how it felt when snorted. I loved it. I still love it! As an addict I know I can’t do it, especially because I love it. Thats how it works. When you love something that is unstoppable as well as non-productive to your life, it’s time to stop doing it!
After high school I soon left the family business to work with all my friends in construction. Construction as an industry can be destruction for the human. That’s where the party was and we got paid well. My focus was at work and enjoying the creativity part. I worked my way to a position of foreman and crew chief. Shortly after I was asked to come work at a video studio in New York City. This was a great move up financially and pretentiously for me. The drugs were also common and accepted in this industry as they still are to this day. I never stopped getting high and cocaine fueled many long nights or weekends of overtime.
Getting paid, enjoying your work and getting high is a combination few get to live unless you are a rockstar. I was loving it. I also was married young and was now raising a family. The overtime stacked up, my bills were paid, we took vacations in Disney and I was commuting on a Harley to Manhattan daily. Life couldn’t get much better. Having children made life very pleasant.
Although the cocaine stopped for some years, in order to buy nice things, the party never really did. Everyone around me was making too much money, getting high on something and drinking most every night…and of course all weekend long. I managed to raise a family, pay my bills and pay off a home with all the overtime and soon saw myself missing the children grow up. I got involved in the PTA, the Cub Scouts and the hockey league. Moving into the 90’s, Crack had all but taken over the planet. It wasn’t long before I rediscovered cocaine. The train was headed for a wreck and I was the engineer.
We had two more children (4 in all) and the younger two were not getting the attention the older ones saw early on in our marriage. In fact our marriage wasn’t getting attention either. I moved jobs twice to get away from the hustle of the big city. Only to find out working on Long Island brought me closer to my old friends and the bar rooms we frequented in our youth. This was a recipe for anything other than a wholesome family life with two young children and two teens at home.. The scary part was I thought this was completely normal, and I actually deserved it for all the hard work I put in throughout my years in the city.
My marriage soon dissolved to separation and the children suffered dearly as did I not being able to see them. Once the courts were involved I was more insulted than sorry and the world of addiction took on a new life, a destructive life style. As I still had financial obligations and a family I couldn’t see, the fuel for this fire brought me to selling cocaine to others in order to get high myself. The details of the next ten years are sketchy as well as unpleasant to reflect.
I wound up disabled with spine injuries including nerve damage. and lost a home I was building with a friend to his divorce. Hurricane Sandy took my family’s home and everything we had ever known that made us a family. This tragedy ultimately brought us back together to piece together what relations we had left and build a new home.
A month after the hurricane my mom passed away and I saw the motivation to change while my dad was still alive. I sought treatment once again though throughout the ten years of prior treatments this time I was committed.
I am happy to say three years into sobriety my outlook on life is way different as I see drugs killing off an entire generation. A generation that my children live in. Many of their friends are gone. Ten of their friends, that I can count, and 30 of mine in the past ten years. The numbers are staggeringly devastating and my mission now is to share my experience with parents that don’t understand addiction and youngsters who need the truth before addiction takes hold of them.
I opened a page on Facebook to connect people with the name Drug Addicts Against Drugs and hope it will help some people to realize the problem earlier and reach out for help. Cocaine and other drugs destroyed my life. Hurricane Sandy destroyed my home, but I refused to stay down there. I got back up and recovered. Today I’m rebuilding my new life.
After losing our home to super storm Sandy I have regained relations with my wife, though time is proving my long term addiction has left us emotionally apart. I am at our newly built home now with two youngest in college and in the process of restoring my hobbies in my shop. As I have undertaken building a Harley from the ground up. I have ridden all my life. I just passed the three year mark and though addiction will always be close behind me. Just knowing that getting high on drugs will take me right back and most likely consume me for good this time, keeps me on my toes.
My health is well though I suffer from spine injuries that limit my mobility. I exercise my back riding the boardwalk on Long Beach most every morning. My dedication to help others through our web pages is a strong source of joy. I’ve suffered from depression and have taken medication for many years. The artificial release of pleasure chemicals in my brain has been forced for so long that today it is extremely hard to find happiness normally. I feel I have left myself in a state of anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure). Long term abuse can leave us this way.. I am hopeful that it will keep getting a little better every day.
Keeping my/ourselves busy with positive activities is key to anyone in recovery survival and a must for me . Too much time on our hands is a set up for relapse. Keeping in the company of positive people , family and social functions is also a plus. I feel blessed today to have many positive people around me.