What exactly is drug abuse? If you take drugs are you really abusing the drugs or are they abusing you? Through my travels and my ups and downs with drug abuse I quickly came to grips with the brutal answer to that question. I mean I used and abused more drugs and alcohol than you could shake a stick at and at the end of it all I realized that I wasn’t abusing the drugs–they were abusing me. Not that it matters either way. I mean, the bottom line isn’t about semantics at all. It’s really about the fact that drugs are in your life and something has to be done about it immediately. Let’s face it, if you are a victim of drug abuse the only thing that is truly being abused is your life and more importantly, your ability to have a good one. Honestly the best definition for drug abuse is that it is a cancer that can either slowly or quickly destroy one’s life with no regard to whether or not they understand its true nature. That’s drug abuse. It is a sure fire way to ruin your life. And yes, when you abuse drugs they are abusing you.

I was a different person when I was doing cocaine. I was, well…I wasn’t Me, let’s just say that much; I was Someone Else, someone at once much bigger and much smaller than the person I knew myself to be.

I couldn’t help it, of course. That’s the thing about cocaine abuse: It’s out of your hands. If you could control addiction, it wouldn’t be addiction. So it goes with cocaine. All I wanted was to get high. All I knew was the need. Without cocaine, I was Nothing. With cocaine, I was Everything.

The rest of the equation took care of itself.

Getting clean was the best thing I ever did. It was hard, of course; harder than I’d ever thought it would be. But it was worth it. It is worth it, today, when I wake up in the morning and don’t have the voices in my head screaming to use and Use and USE. I was a different person, when I was doing cocaine. And I don’t ever want to go back.

 

Many years ago, before all this…before crack addiction made me what I was, and what I am…many years ago, before all this, I was something more than this: something more than this shell, something more than this ghost. That is what crack addiction does to you, if you let it…that is what crack addiction does to you whether you want it or not, because that is what crack addiction is, and that is how crack addiction works.

Drug addiction is a hollower of men, a disease that strips you of everything…everything inside and outside…everything you thought you ever cared about and everything you thought was who you were…yes crack addiction is a hollower of men, and he who learns that lesson the hard way…as I have, as I am…is the owner of hard-won wisdom indeed.

Many years ago, before crack addiction made me what I am, I was something better…something more…than this. Many years ago, before crack addiction with its hollowing and stripping turned me into this shell, this ghost…many years ago I was something more, something better: Many years ago I was myself…and that, today, seems to me a thing worth being again, some day, maybe, many years from now.

 Alcohol rehab never comes easy. It took me years to pull the trigger on an alcohol rehab program: years between the moment I realized I needed alcohol rehab care and the day I finally decided to check into an alcohol rehab center. They were lost years, really; they were years that I wasted, because I was too scared or stupid or both do the one thing I knew I had to, for no more or less a reason than that alcohol rehab was the only hope I had left.

I know it’s hard. I know entering alcohol rehab means admitting vulnerability, and impotence; I know entering alcohol rehab means admitting you’ve got a problem you can’t fix yourself…which is helluva tough thing to do sober and a damn near impossible thing to do drunk. But still: You’ve got to. If you’re an alcoholic, alcohol rehab’s the only thing in the world that can get you better. With so much to lose, you just can’t afford not to win.