my sobriety so far

just putting this all out there.

full abstainance is the only thing ive found that works for me. i dont want to be preachy at all. i can only speak for my own life.

always had a lot of unique interests since i was a kid. vintage film cameras, guitars, analog tape recorders, etc etc. i got diagnosed with adhd and high functioning autism. drugs became an obsession that dwarfed all my other obsessions.

i used a lot of drugs since i was 13. i think the scariest it got was when i was 20, i was using opiates, benzos, cocaine, adderall, drinking heavily.. it was really scary.

even when i stayed off harder drugs after a stint in detox to get off benzos and alcohol... when i just smoked weed... or just smoked weed and did kratom... or set any kind of rule for myself, i would have serious mental health problems.

cannabis 100% without a doubt in my mind triggers psychotic episodes. when i had periods of time where i didn't smoke weed i never was hearing voices and being the center of terrifying paranoia. maybe i have underlying schizoaffective disorder. but whatever it is when i smoke cannabis it comes out.

wasted away my early 20s. drove all over the western US living in my car. no income. would beg my parents for money and lie to them. that was all i did.

by 24 i had a run in with the law in salt lake. got in a car that wasnt mine during psychosis(only drugs i was doing at the time were weed, kratom, alcohol) and got arrested.

when i got out of jail which was a highly traumatic experience i moved back to texas.

lomg story short it got brought down to a misdemeanor and i ended up, after another stay in a psych hospital in the austin area after a serious mental breakdown where i was convinced i was psychically married to a local artist id never met... (this is really really cringe and i get suicidal ideation to this day over that delusion i had... i made an instagram account and put my name and her name together on my wall... never sought her out or stalked her but like it was really weird and creepy)

i ended up getting on meds and seeing a therapist who would write letters to the courts. i wasnt drug tested. i ended up continuing to use and at this time i had no friends and no community. i was miserable.

moving forward... a bike accident put me on painkillers which i abused. told my therapist and she said i had to go to rehab.

so i went. i stopped all drug use a week before i went in. did 10 days intensive inpatient and 20 more days in php living in their sober house. i committed to a full year of sober living houses and AA.

was very involved in AA. sponsor i had was chill buddhist guy he wasnt much of a big book thumper. i moved between sober houses(sober living houses are terrible but i kept my commitment) soon all my friends were AA people. i had a temp job at a state office building and kept a full time gig for 7 months.

i kept going and hit a full year sober. the room was full of all these friends i made in AA and i felt like id never be able to do it. this was in 2021.

as time went on i started not agreeing with things people said in AA. but i kept going. that was my only real social network.

i made some really close friends and moved to an apartment next to them. we got along good for a while but that friendship burned the fuck out eventually.

i started getting involved in the local music scene and started a band. i played in another band too. i got a job working for a music festival i really liked. i started making friends outside of AA.

so i get to almost 3 years sober. in AA i was trying to do that right, and i got sponsees just following suggestions. i took a few guys we never got past the fifth step. i never really got 6 or 7 or understood it. but i just figured it was good i was doing something.

a sponsee i got told me some things that were too gnarly for me. i realized i was not qualified at all.

so i left aa discovered this subreddit and found i didnt like aa at all. i had also met people who were sober without it. keep in mind this whole time i had a reservation about psychedelic drugs.

so i eventually just decided at around 3.5 years with no drugs at all to do LSD. i was living with a roomate (who wasnt sober) and i ended up having an interesting couple of experiences with LSD and mushrooms. i decided to start smoking weed again when a good friend of mine passed me a joint.

i was connected enough to basically get huge amounts of hashish really easily. i had some good times getting stoned with friends and all but i was for real starting to get paranoid and hear voices. i eventually got crazy again.

so after a fight with my roomate where i freaked out at him... i threw out my weed and went back into AA the next day. all in all i was only using psychedelics and weed for about 3.5 months after 3.5 years sober.

ive been totally sober since. this was over a year ago

i also realized after 9 months of it i really just dont like AA at all. tried a hardcore big book guy sponsor and spilled my guts out on my 5th step. a week later i happened to meet the woman i am still with a year later.

i just wasnt comfortable sponsoring. i was keeping a service commitment at this big book study meeting it was like really good for me i think to have somewhere to be but i quickly burned out on the message of AA and realized AA is just a religion. i grew up LDS and saw the same group dynamics and circular logic there.

i still talk to my AA friends on the phone. i havent gone to a full meeting in a long time. i just dont believe it was the program that got me sober. there were elements that were helpful but not really for me.

so yeah. at the end of the day i really cannot use drugs at all. im just not able to. i dont hate the people in AA i just dont believe the ideology they have. its too culty for me and i fully did it for several years.

i like being sober, i dont have any reservations about it this time. its what i gotta do. but yeah im happy now.

got a good girlfriend, got a band, good friends. im doing filmmaking, graphic design... i work for my favorite record label freelance. i supervise people for my favorite music festival. gotten to make friends in the uk and traveled there a bit. happier than ive ever been. i wasnt doimg much of anything until i got sober.