Quiet Strength Recovery

Photo: Pawel Owsinski , CC0 1.0 . No edits by me. Hello all. This is something I've wanted to write about, because I think judgement can follow people long after they have started trying to change. When somebody hears the word addiction, they can think they know the person already. They know what to expect, what sort of life they've had, how much effort they're making. I don't think it is that simple. I'm a person in recovery, and my life is bigger than that one part of it. From the outside, people can ask why somebody doesn't just stop. It can sound like a sensible question if you haven't experienced addiction. I understand why people ask it. But wanting something to change and being able to change it without help are different things. I've written honestly about my own recovery because I want people to understand a bit more. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I don't expect sympathy for everything I've done. What I...

Photo: Larisa Koshkina , CC BY-SA 4.0 . No edits by me. Hello all. I've been thinking about trauma and addiction, and how easy it is to look at somebody drinking or using and decide we know their whole story. We see what's happening now. We don't always know what came before it. I know what addiction has done in my own life. I also know that getting better took help, honesty and time. I didn't suddenly become a different person because I stopped drinking. I had to learn how to live differently, and I'm still learning. When I say from trauma to addiction, I don't mean that everybody who has been through trauma becomes addicted. They don't. Trauma can increase the risk, but it isn't a prediction of somebody's future. People arrive at addiction through different experiences, and I think we need to remember that before deciding we have the answer for everyone. For some people, drinking or using can become a way of trying to cope with distres...

  Its such a difficult thing to explain, if there was such a thing as a vampire, its whole life is consumed by trying to get blood (alcohol,drugs), by any means necessary, it felt like i was possessed, and all I could focus on was trying to feel better, even if im good i wanted to feel even better, until it wasn't feeling better, until i needed it, then the sweats, the shakes, cramps, scratching my face and body and night, petrified to sleep holding a pillow on my belly to try and get comfort, desperate for love or affection, scrolling pornsites trying to find anotherway of feeling better, having the tv on but watching nothing, over thinking, wanting to kill myself but not having the energy or bottle to do it, desperate for anything to make me be ok, I was not scared of dying in a way i was scared to live, emotionally incapable of being part of anything positive. i drank my own urine, my room had half eaten things on the floor mice crawled over my face when i was almost asleep, h...