It’s easy for the addict to be the target when society aims their judgement. It’s easy for everyone to look at us, sick and twisted souls and say that we have the toxic traits and terrible habits that eat at the core of our communities! I spent most of my life running and hiding from the sober so, it surprised me, as too it might you, when I found out how many sober people exhibit the exact same toxic traits and terrible habits that I always attributed to addiction. Ya know, for a long time, I thought addiction was my habits & behaviors. I really did think that once the drugs were down and I put my cards on the table, that I would leave addiction in the dust. Nothing could be further from the truth so, what is addiction? If it’s not my habits and behaviors, it must be a disease right? I’ve always said that addiction is not a disease and I stand tall to that but I heard a gentleman call it a sickness the other day & that seemed to resonate a bit better with me. All of the toxic traits and terrible habits, the no self confidence, the negativity, the thinking I’ll never measure up, the feeling that everyone is better than me. It’s the same shit many deal with but I was weak & I ran to addiction! The addiction evolved into a sickness that robbed me of the chance to face my emotions, to face my demons! Instead I chose the road that let them fester inside, like an infected splinter in my soul. Until they created the monster I found at my final rock bottom. The monster that came close to claiming my life!! People have asked me many times “what’s it take to get sober?” The answer is, it’s a descent into a darkness that most no one can imagine! One filled with self hatred, that is deeper than oceans and harder than diamonds! The answer is realizing there are no drugs pure enough, no liquor strong enough to escape the monster that lives within! The answer is realizing there is no limit to how high a person can climb but I can tell you from personal experience there is a limit to how far you can fall & it ends with the sound of the hinges creaking as they close the lid over top of you! Everyone asks me for an escape from addiction, an answer to making sobriety easy but there’s not one! It’s fkn exhausting! It’s work! Every day!! It’s choosing every single day to get the fuck up & not be who I was yesterday! Everyone tells me that I’m too hard on myself but I’m tired of accepting just being ok! I didn’t get fkn sober to achieve just being ok!! I didn’t live through everything that was meant to kill me just so that I be simply ok! My dreams didn’t involve a life of just getting by!!! I write this post as my 3 years sober post since May 13th will mark the anniversary of the day I tried ending my life with drugs and alcohol. The day I met the monster within and tried giving up! I woke up on May 14th, being told that I must have a purpose on this earth as most none of the doctors or nurses could believe I lived through the night. I had a .43 blood alcohol content, which that works the same way as a percentage. So, 43% of my blood, was alcohol while I had 3.5 grams of cocaine racing through my veins. The coke is probably what kept me alive but for the purpose of the post, let’s stick with some divine intervention okay? Lol I’ve stumbled through these 3 years feeling like there is an anchor attached to my waist as I try to battle demons I spent my life running away from while trying to act like I have everything figured out!! I walked away from taking care of myself. I quit working out. Hell, I even came across a few pills a few months ago and I swear before I could even think about it, they were swallowed. I kicked my ass pretty bad for that but the truth is, it took away the wondering. It took away the curiosity of always wondering if the high was as great as my addict memory portrayed it to be! The truth is, my second year of sobriety was my hardest yet and honestly, I’m happy to have survived it with only a minor mishap! It wasn’t a first class ticket to euphoria town like I had imagined it would be! Instead, it plunged me to depths so close to hells fire that I started calling my demons, my friends again as I was brought to tears in the face of my weakness! I come into my third year of sobriety with the steam of a thousand horses as I swear on my life, I will not spend another year spinning my wheels in the face of fear! Idk what’s going to happen next but this will be the year of chances and growth! I’ve proved I can be sober, this is the year where I prove to myself that I can be successful!!! I’m surrounded by people who hate risk but rather than keep listening to them & trying to be safe, this is the year I’m going to put it all on the table and see what happens!! For fortunes or fate, idc but I’m going to prove to myself that I can do this or I’m gonna fail in a fkn glorious fashion!! I want to say that this post is written with a flame under my ass but fuck that, I’ve got the torch in hand and this is the year that I light the world on fire!!! Here’s to the year I prove to myself and to everyone why I got fkn sober!! Thanks for reading!! 💯

Friendship in addiction is as difficult as trying to play Jenga on the high seas. I see so many people getting sober and finding out that sobriety is, sometimes, maybe most times, a lonely, desolate road where the only company you have are the terrible memories from a life no one would’ve chosen. The truth is, it’s easy to say that “we see who our friends are” but I think a lot of the blame for our loneliness lands a bit closer to home than a finger pointing at others. In addiction, I never knew what friendship meant. I mean, I had the people I got high with but most of those would rip me off or stab me in the back faster than they could spell trust or loyalty so, I wouldn’t call them a friend. I had my dealers and my script pushers, who always acted like friends & talked like they were looking out for me but the only interest they ever had was what I could add to their bankroll so, again, wouldn’t call them a friend. The addict stumbles through life burning bridges faster than a troll doused in gasoline & calling the people who help us fall, our friends then wonder why friendship seems so difficult in sobriety! As an addict, we’re so ashamed of our actions and letting everyone down that we seek out isolation and solitude until they are the only thing that we know!! We push everyone away until that loneliness is where we call home. So, in sobriety it’s easy to find comfort alone or feel at home with the chaos of our own thoughts! Idk maybe after our life of addiction and every single person that we did call a friend screwing us over or ratting us out, it’s easier to feel safer in sobriety, alone. We wear emotions on our sleeves that we used to bury under 6 day benders or gallons of liquor, so it’s hard to step out of the comfort of our own bubble, of our solitude, of our safety & say hi to that stranger from the past or that person we wish we could be friends with again!! Friendship in sobriety can be, at times, as scary as sobriety was when we were addicted but as with everything in sobriety, there is always a reward for stepping out of our comfort zone! The people you called a friend yesterday will rarely be the people you see tomorrow so don’t be afraid to say hello to that neighbor, that guy down the street or the dude you see everyday at the gas station! I know it feels foreign for something as simple as a hello but friendship is important in life and growth never comes easy!! Growth never starts from a comfort zone!! Thanks for reading! 💯❤️

I had just gotten out of rehab number 3, I was living at my parents, with no driver’s license & thought I was “sober” because I wasn’t snorting cocaine or pills, I was only drinking. I was on this dating site and I started talking to a teacher. She was a children’s teacher with a retired police officer as a dad & had never even seen weed before she met me!! Her idea of drunk was seriously 4 beers!! I’m over here happy I’m not stealing my parents shit and selling family heirlooms for cocaine & pain pills so I mean I chalked all of this up to me making better decisions in life!! Like what can go wrong? She’s a nun!! Lol Wellllllll, before we had met, I can’t say I had been the most responsible person about having protected sex & I knew at my core, that I couldn’t have children. If I could’ve, I would’ve but when we were only like a month in & she told me she was pregnant & that our first time together was what did it.. to say alarm bells rang through not only my head but also my families, is an understatement. The inner battle with what I knew to be true and what I wanted to believe caused a cascade of emotions like nothing I could’ve ever prepared myself for!!! She kept telling me it was impossible to be anyone else’s, I mean 7 million times I had asked!! Especially when I started to crumble and was belligerently drunk all the time, I would scream, cry and beg for her to tell me the truth but she never waivered!! Ever!!!! At this point, I had spent 2 decades being the best person at lying and manipulating I had ever met but over the next 7.5 months, I was taken to school by the fn teacher, she was so good!! Like somebody get this bitch an Oscar cuz this shit is impressive!! Lol She even came up with a fake DNA report that she showed me in the hospital!! With hospital letterhead & email and everything!!! She created a fake email for the hospital to send her the fake DNA test so when I looked at it in hospital, it had my damn name on it!! I still feel like I should applaud those skills as damn, that’s fucking meticulous!!! It’s easy for me to feel sympathy for a second when I tell this story, like oh poor me but the truth is, that 7.5 months, I put that woman through a hell no one deserves!!! I just couldn’t believe that she was picking me, the drug addict, the loser to be a dad! So, if my feelings were true, I guess I thought maybe she couldn’t see how bad of an alcoholic or an addict I was so maybe I should push the pedal a little further to make she sure sees!! If she’s lying and she sees how bad I am, she’ll walk away, was my thinking as I plunged myself into a darkness I can’t believe I survived!! When we went anywhere, I mean anywhere, I would tell her I had to pee so she would stop at a gas station, I could steal a tall mikes harder lemonade & pound it on the toilet before getting back in the car. If we went more than an hour away I would do this 4 or 5 times on the trip and be drunk upon arrival!! The inner battle I was fighting with myself was the loudest I had ever faced as seemed like mortars echoing in my ears “it can’t be yours!!”! These constant cannons were the hardest I ever tried to drowned as I poured hundreds of gallons of alcohol down my throat for a year straight but when she was born.. when I was holding that angel in my hands, I didn’t care if she had my eyes or even if our genes matched! This is when I started to realize how far I had fallen as now I am in a wheelchair with 2 broken feet and ankles, I’m snorting 10-18 OxyContin a day while drinking everything I can get my hands on!! She ended up calling the paramedics & the police a few times because I was going into seizures, convulsions or black out fits of rage & mild violence where I would scream as I would rant and rave about how she was ruining my life and I knew she was lying!! I was so torn apart inside as finally we separated and she kept Harper from me for 6 days. I said fine let’s go to court & she was at my door in like 27 mins!! Like here you go, how long ya want her? Just let me know when ya want me to get her! Have a good day! And as I’m holding my 5 month old daughter I said “omfg, you don’t wanna go to court cuz you don’t want the dna test do you?” At this point, Stevie wonder could’ve already seen this answer coming as she said no!! She broke down for the first time ever & a part of me felt sry for her but was quickly trumped by the burning rage I felt creeping over me!!! I noticed I was shaking and both hands were purple they were clamped together in such tight fists and I told her she needed to leave! I didn’t wanna talk, I had nothing to say, there’s your car, I have her, you’re leaving! And she did. Idk how, probably with the help of alcohol, I kept my shit together and was business as usual as much as I could while I took in the time with my daughter. Every movement of hers seemed to hit a different chord with me though as I just couldn’t get over thinking “why would your mom have ever have picked me!?” When she came to get Harper 3 days later, I handed her to her mom on the front porch, walked in the house and I collapsed on the floor! I bawled like a child who had been having to act tough in front of his friends until he found a quiet corner to collapse into! I had empty fifths spinning on the floor whenever I would move, clinking into each other like some kind of alcoholics medley!! It was 3 days of a cocaine induced, blackout drunk where I was in and out of consciousness kinda binge before I picked myself out the puddle of tears and misery I found myself in & stood up!! Leaving or walking away was never an option for me!! I always felt like she is going to need someone in her life when she finds the truth out about all of this! I wanted to do the right thing but I just felt so hopeless and weak as I watched myself drinking and snorting my way through every day!!! Every night promising myself that tomorrow would be better, praying through the twisted glass of the addict as I asked for endless drugs or for god to solve all my problems and let me wake up sober! From here til where my story includes sobriety, it was almost uncontrollable for me that if her mother saw me, I was beyond belligerent!! My daughter’s one year pics, I fell out of the car when we got home because I drank a fifth of whiskey, in 3 drinks in the Meijer bathroom on their toilet when we stopped after pics to get my daughter some diapers!! I was dragging myself up the driveway like my legs were broken as her and my daughter are bawling with my parents!! All watching me through a fog of disgust & disbelief as I crawled through the lowest point of my life! May 13th, 2019 was no different other than my ability to stop was broken! I was at the casino that morning, I stole a bunch of pints of whiskey from Meijer, I got some coke & I don’t remember anything until my mom is holding my daughter screaming for my dad and me stumbling around like some sort of zombie trying to get my daughter out of my moms hands, who is trying her hardest to protect my daughter from me! My dad ended up throwing me around like a rag doll and calling the police as I left in an ambulance with a trail of red and blues behind me!! I had a blood alcohol content of reasonably past legally dead!! The doctors didn’t know what it was that made me survive as all of them insisted I should be dead! The truth is I think god finally let me wake up sober after finally finding the true rock bottom I always had searched for!!! When I woke up in the hospital hearing suicide and being told that I gave up, idk things were just different ever since then! I tried to go back to what I knew of “I don’t need rehab” as even told my mom “I need therapy not fucking rehab!” 😂😂 But 2 days after my 8 day stay at the county psych ward, I checked into my final rehab!! It was in that rehab where I dealt with most of this like I refused to for so long!!!! I bawled and bawled and cried and screamed my first 3 weeks of rehab cuz I couldn’t say the word dad or my daughters name without feeling a wave of guilt and shame that I swear would’ve crushed a small city!!! When my daughter came to see me in rehab, her running to me with open arms, changed my life & is a vision I think of often as the pinnacle of this life I have lived!!! There was a time when this tale was viewed as the worst thing that had ever happened to me!!! There was a very long time where I felt like a victim and like my choices had been taken from me!!!!! Maybe the hardest part of this story, to accept for me, was still the fact she picked an addict! The whole time when I was all fucked up like a soup sandwich, I always thought fuck you for picking an addict to be her dad but when I started seeing a little more clearly, I realized that I was the only person who was allowing her dad to be an addict!! The story of my daughter & I, almost ended in black dresses & condolences with people telling my parents “at least he isn’t suffering anymore” but god didn’t let me give up that day!!! What once was viewed as the worst ever has been, by far, the best thing that ever could’ve happened to me!! She makes me want to be a better version of myself everyday & although I still have some kind of feelings about it all and what will happen in the future, I thank her mother everyday for the gift that is my Harper Rae!!! She may never have my smile nor my eyes but it is in her eyes, I see myself more clearly than I ever have a mirror!!! It is in her smile, I see my sense of humor & my pride as a person lies in her laughter!!!! I almost killed myself because I didn’t think I could ever be who I am for this angel of mine!!!! I prayed, a million times over, for god to make this nightmare I was living end!! I prayed for him to give me the strength to be who I saw in my dreams!!!! I prayed to him, a million times, for an escape, for an answer & he gave me my daughter!!! I thank him every night of my life for the struggles I face today because with this angel at my side, idc what I face, I’ve already won!!!! Looking back, I might not have fucked up at everything in life as honestly feel like right here, right now is where I’m supposed to be! Regardless of how terrible it was getting here.. all of the handcuffs and jail cells.. I’d do everything again, a million times over, if it meant my story ended with this addict and his angel!!!! ❤️💯

If you’re just getting started and haven’t had a coach yet, getting the right guidance can make a big difference. A lot of beginners struggle because they try to figure everything out alone. If you want someone experienced to guide you step-by-step, you can reach out to Arianna Martinez. She helps people understand how to start and grow with online opportunities. If you’re interested or need guidance, you can contact her directly on Telegram: 👉 https://t.me//a... Feel free to message her and ask any questions you may have

I’m just trying to figure this out. Plz be patient lol my name is Jason and I’ve struggled with addiction, my entire adult life.. when I finally got clean I started writing & telling my stories. We found a lot of folks could relate to the posts or those too shy to say anything felt seen. So here we are trying to grow that and help who we can!! Either through stories or I’ll be available for mentoring or counseling or just need someone to listen. I hope to grow the community and appreciate any members!! Thank you!