- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
I smoked and snorted opiates, I was not an IV user. I used oxycontin and heroin until I was so tired of being a junkie. I wanted to get off of opiates. I detoxed, went to an intensive outpatient treatment, got on Suboxone, and thought I was doing really well. But I had not quit drinking; in fact, my drinking increased. I was drinking a fifth of vodka in the parking lot when I went to an NA meeting and picked up a 90 day chip and really believed I deserved it, because I was free of opiates.
The drinking took me on lower lows than opiates ever did. And as I came off of Suboxone and alcohol, I thought, ‘I’m losing it, I must be crazy’. I was on 16-24 mg of suboxone when my drinking brought me to the hospital. My roommate found me unresponsive on the floor and called an ambulance. I remember the number of my blood alcohol that day. It was not a breathalizer– they took my blood, and it was 0.53. Now this was not from one night of drinking, it was almost a year drinking around the clock.
I was in the ICU for about a month. I lost my mind when they took me off and detoxed me from both. I had to go to a psych ward after this for about two months in a hospital setting, my entire body shook for three months. To remember it today is kind like remembering a dream, a very bad dream. I was not all there or ‘with it’, but I remember a lot.
I started experimenting with drugs and drinks at age 13. I was always a big party guy. It didn’t start becoming an every day thing until I was about 20 or 21. I finally got sober when I was 28 years of age. My parents used to drink very little; it was not an every day thing for me to see. I got the disease and got so badly addicted, yet my older brother has no problems at all. But alcohol runs in our family, some of my grandparents have been battling it for years and years. At the end, as I also had lost my job, I was always awake for 2-3 hours, then asleep for 2-3 hours. As soon as I woke up, I had to drink. It didn’t matter if it was day or night, I stopped paying attention to this.
After the hospital stay and the psych ward, I went to a treatment program for 28 days. From there I directly entered a sober living home. It was a sober living home without much accountability or structure, just with a house manager, and in a couple weeks I was drinking again. I got kicked out and was bouncing between some sober living homes until I ended up living in my car and drinking there all by myself. Being on suboxone for a year had resulted in a lot of numbness going on.
After I got sober, I started to experience hope. My counselor once asked me, “What are you passionate about, Luke?” and I told him how much I like film and acting. He suggested for me to take an acting class and start pursuing my passion. So I did.
I needed a job to pay my living while following my dreams and had a part-time position as a tech at a treatment center, which became soon a full-time position, and it turned into being a case manager after a while. After a few years in, I started to see that I liked the counseling work more than the acting. I always thought that if I ever got a big role somewhere, I would walk away from the treatment work. I noticed when this was not the case anymore, and I enjoyed my work there so much more than the other dreams I had. But the time spent acting was good for me. It helped me to stay sober by following my passion. It also helped to inflate my totally deflated ego and self-esteem at that time, because I had good feedback.
My wife and I met in treatment. Rehab romances sometimes work. Since we were in long-term treatment at that time, we didn’t start dating until after nine months of being discharged. We engaged in therapy about dating before we even did it. We both were very scared to be in a relationship. The funny part here is that normally if you are dating, you put in your best right at the beginning, you want to show yourself as the nicest and best. Gradually over time, it gets worse. Her and I, we saw each other at the worst at the beginning, we came in only a week apart, so I saw her on day two of her treatment. Then we got to learn together what our best was, and gradually saw each other getting better. It was a very different dynamic at first to be opposed to how relationships most the times go.
I don’t want to go back to where I came from. I’m glad those times have passed and I have more beautiful days still to come.