I am an addict. I came out of rehab
almost three months ago. I am now clean and sober (yay!). And you know what? It
fucking sucks! It sucks that I can’t drink and be silly with my friends.
It sucks that my confidence has disappeared. It sucks that I’m ill and I
struggle with it every single day. It sucks that I spend my Friday nights
in a cold church for my Cocaine Anonymous (CA) meeting. But the thing that
hurts me the most is the look on people’s faces when I say those four
words - ‘I am an addict.’ That look is fear. People are afraid of who I am. And
that’s shit. Because essentially I’m just a normal 23-year-old woman, I
just have a story, like everyone else.
My poison was not the cocaine I
spent thousands of pounds on. Nor was it the alcohol I binged on till my only
friends were the floor and the toilet. Not in the way that many people
think. My poison was my anger and my sadness. My poison was not being able to
ask for help. And the thing that stopped me using wasn't the threat of
being a criminal. It was talking. It was the people I met in rehab and my
family and friends who held my hand all the way.
Addiction is everywhere. It’s that
white F surrounded by blue on your phone. It's neatly wrapped in eat-me junk
food wrappers. It's a shiny yellow M on a high street. It's sat at the
bar. It's on the side of the road. It's sleeping in the cold and the rain. It's
running through so many veins. Maybe it's because it's dirty and ugly that
we don't want to look at it. Maybe it's because we're all so scared. I'm not
sure why we find it so easy to ignore. But it's here and it's not going
away. Despite the laws that scream DON'T USE DRUGS OR YOU’LL BE PUNISHED! in
the science of addiction, we now know that it can be caused by a stress hormone
called Cortisol. I won't go too much into this as I'm not a scientist but
this tricky bastard of a hormone sucks every inch of enjoyment out of life.
People born with this are so much more likely to turn to addiction. It's a
bitch and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once you've made that turn to
drugs or alcohol or whatever it may be, your brain gets all excited and it
releases dopamine. It’s the part of your brain that tells you to sleep, eat and
breathe and it tricks you into thinking you need your 'drug of choice'.
That part of your brain is now fucked. It is not a choice. If we look at the
way some people view addiction as the chemical hooks in the drugs that
make you an addict, we'd have safely identified the millions of people that
have been in hospital and had to have a morphine drip addicted to heroin.
I'm sure someone you know has had an op but not come out a junkie. We need
to change the way we think about drugs. Maybe you’ve even used drugs
recreationally or you drink alcohol regularly. What’s the difference
between you and an addict? It’s not the substance. It’s the person.
In Portugal they have
decriminalised ALL drugs. Sounds like a stupid move, right? Or does it? They
now have systems in place that HELP people who suffer with addiction. They
help the person to find work and they provide counselling and support. And
guess what? It costs a whole lot less that throwing them into prison. By
doing this the number of people using drugs in Portugal has dropped massively
and so has the number of drug induced deaths. The Portuguese prison
population has also declined. I was told in rehab that addiction (alcohol
and drug related) causes more deaths than any other illness in the world.
Why are we ignoring this? I get it. I’ve been there. Addicts are annoying.
We lie, we steal, we’re very difficult to be around but we’re ill. Most of the
addicts I’ve met have been so kind-hearted and compassionate and every
single one of them has one hell of a story. They’ve been fucked over by life.
I’m not asking for sympathy. A lot of the mess and havoc I caused was all
my doing. I have taken responsibility for my actions. I’m just asking us to
rethink this ‘war on drugs’. To me it is redundant. We cannot fight a
substance. But we can fight for each other. We can fight this together. We can
fight those demons that tap at the back of the skull of the people we
share this beautiful planet with. Our time is always so precious to us, until
it's too late. Don’t let it be too late. We need to start talking about mental
health. And we need to do it now.
#weneedtostarttalkingaboutmentalhealth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE
