I have many years of experience with substance abuse/addiction and it stems from many different angles. For many years I was the support for a loved one trying to sober up from alcohol but 2016 ended up being the year that he decided to quit. After 15 years of ups and downs with his addiction and many years of worry, stress and disappointment that came with it.
We all as a family suffered a great deal from this. It was hard, we didn’t feel like we had any outside support, so we continued our own lives while going through it. We just kept getting told that he has to want to do this on his own after hearing it so many times, we kind of just gave up thinking that that there was nothing out there for us and he wasn’t going to sober up. We tried to reach out to get the help on so many occasions but there was nothing for us.
Eventually he reached his point of where he wanted to make an actual change, he has now been sober for 8 years. Something that we truly never thought would happen. I was the one in the thick of it with him, trying to locate him when he was out, making sure he’s safe. I was his go to person and his main support. So when he asked me to go to the AA meetings with him so that he felt more comfortable, of course I was going to do it. This led me to really want to change my lifestyle even though, I already knew that I wanted to quit drinking. I knew I too was an alcoholic In the meantime, my best friend was suffering as well. We had been friends for 20 years died of a drug over dose. He was my go-to person, my right side. I relied on him for everything. He had been an addict for years, trying to quit, change his lifestyle but kept bouncing back to it. Eventually succumbing to the disease and overdosing in 2019.
My experience lies in all aspects of addiction, I know what it is like to struggle with it, have a loved one that went through it in such a way that it severely affected our entire family and I lost someone I am close to due to it.
