Addicted to addiction

I haven't written much about addiction here. As a matter of fact only one entry actually made it into the addiction category. I suppose once you say "I am an addict" out loud, you pretty much have said enough for people to make their judgment and move on. Some will pity the addict, others chastise them. Most will have words of wisdom and a few will not care either way. When people who have never been addicted realize you are an addict, even a long time recovering one, they attach a stigma to you that immediately puts you beneath them both on the moral and social ladder. Or so they presume.

I have been an addict since high school. I don't embrace that realization, but I dont deny it. Now that I am many years into recovery, its a little easier to talk about it with people. I even find myself making light of the drug induced behaviors and situations I lived through. I truly don't find humor in them, however sometimes laughing at yourself is easier than beating yourself up.

I harbor a lot of guilt from those years. I don't need others judgments, I have given myself enough of my own. Aside from the horrible things that could have happened and all the things that could have gone wrong, I live with the realization that I could have been so much better. I could have done so much better. I could have offered so much more.

I spent a lot of my days purposely putting myself in dangerous situtations. I copped drugs in the meanest, baddest, scariest places the New York City area has to offer. I have had guns pulled on me, attempted car jackings occur, and friends severly beaten and raped while I waited for them outside of buildings. I visited dealers with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of drugs laying on a table, gunmen and dogs guarding the doors, and shots and sirens wailing outside.

Everyone knew I liked to party, no one knew how serious of an addiction it was. My addiction to the addiction was a million times worse. My natural compulsive behavior got me hooked and my obsessiveness kept me there. I was so addicted to the act of buying the drugs. I was drawn to the danger and the euphoria that copping in an environment like that and surviving gave me. I had delusions of being untouchable and desired as a 'regular'. I refused to think that my drug addiction meant nothing to those I bought from or those I gave to other than their own selfish satisfaction.

There were times during my addiction that I was not 'active' in the addiction. I spent a couple of years not doing drugs at all. During these times there were other things going on that fulfilled whatever the drug scene did previously. I was always very aware of this and perhaps used it to lessen the need to acknowledge I was an addict. If I could stop I was not addicted. If I only used to fill a void, I may have been unstable, but not addicted. And maybe I was right. Maybe I was not addicted to drugs at all.

Just because I ingested drugs does not mean I was addicted to what it did to my body any more than over eaters are addicted to their weight.