I’m down to 1mg today. Hard to know how that’s going to affect me yet, but time will tell. I finally slept 8 hours last night. I’m sure this is partially due to my body slowly getting used to way less Suboxone. And also due to the Trazadone that I’m taking to help me sleep (don’t worry, it’s a non-narcotic sleep aid that they used to give me in rehab, no new habits being formed over here!). So I woke up today feeling like a normal human being. I’ll count that as a win for today.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about people that were instrumental in my so-far-success.
I was talking to my friend Aaron last night. Aaron went to rehab with me 8 or so years ago. He is, to this day, the only person that I know from rehab that has stayed sober. He is also probably one of the strongest people I know. When I relapsed straight out of Hazelden and started living on the streets, Aaron would come sit with me and just talk to me. At a time where I wasn’t being treated like a human being by anyone else, he would come to downtown Minneapolis, sit on the sidewalk, and just talk to me. He stayed friends with me through the time that I was on Suboxone and had started building somewhat of a normal life. He’s probably been there to see more of my story than any other person has.
Aaron is, to this day, a 12-step program guy. Over the years I would always talk about how I’m trying to quit Suboxone and can’t seem to do it. And he would hear me out every time as he watched me spinning my wheels trying to get off of Suboxone and be addicted to other, less severe things. At the time, one of the things I hated about 12-step programs was how judgmental people seemed and how it was always their way or the highway. They would say that their program is the only way that works and nothing else does, so the story goes. But Aaron never really said anything like that to me. In fact, he never really even brought up 12-step programs to me as a method for getting off of Suboxone, unless I broached the subject. I think this is partially due to the fact that he knew that I didn’t like 12-step programs. But also, he’s just not a pushy or judgmental guy. He would only give me advice as it related to his life and what had worked for him in the past.
Jump back to last night. Aaron and I were talking about planting seeds with people. How they sometimes come to fruition. But other times … most of the time, unfortunately, people die before those seeds have time to grow. It’s a dangerous game that drug addicts play. I’ve seen more than a few friends die before they realized their potential strength. There’s something like a 2% recovery rate for people who go through rehab. And the other 98% of people generally end up dead or in jail. Anyway, all of this to say that my counselors at rehab provided me with a lot of great tools over the years. Tools that they probably thought were wasted when I relapsed straight out of the gate. I can imagine them feeling hurt and frustrated when they thought all of this work they had put in was wasted on me. In their minds, there was a strong possibility that I was going to end up as just another dead or incarcerated drug addict.
Likewise, Aaron was telling me about how frustrating and painful it can be to constantly give advice, time, and help to drug addicts only to watch them destroy their lives, time and time again. To have the people that he’d been working with lie to his face in an attempt to pull the wool over his eyes. All the while only doing harm to themselves. And I can totally sympathize with that, partially because I’ve been the one dishing that treatment out to people who were trying to help me.
dBut it’s interesting to think about the seeds that were planted by my counselors and Aaron over the years. How those seeds slowly grew over the course of time. It took a while for the memories to come back, but the information definitely stuck. A lot of the things that I’ve written about on this blog thus far have been things that I either learned at rehab or things that Aaron told me years and years ago. The information was just stored away in my subconscious waiting to be used in a time of need. And as I get more mental clarity and start dealing with life’s issues, a lot of those pieces of information come back at the exact right moment. It’s actually one of the main reasons I started this blog. For me personally, writing equals self discovery. To put pen to paper (er - fingers to keyboard) and figure it out the not-so-easy solutions to my human condition. But talking to someone about your struggles feeds that self-discovery. Talking to someone is where you come to conclusions that you wouldn’t have come to otherwise. To make use of a worn out cliche, it’s the foundation of good recovery. Without it, the recovery collapses into itself.
So now, more than anything, I want the people who helped me over the years to know that their efforts weren’t wasted on me. That I am part of that 2 or 3 percent of people that made it and figured it out. And I don’t have it completely figured out, I don’t think anyone ever will. I can’t say with certainty what the future holds. No one can. But I can do the legwork today, which is my insurance policy for tomorrow. As for today, I made it to a semi-normal life and I don’t need to get high or drunk anymore to deal with my problems. And this is largely because of the counselors. And the people from the meetings. And Aaron, who has become a brother to me over the years. There’s nothing I could ever say to express my gratitude for those people.
More tomorrow. If you're out there struggling and reading this, drop me a line. I'll get back to you.
<3 - B