Being addicted: The most beautiful loss

Being addicted: The most beautiful loss

The most beautiful loss

On November 19, I lost my Grandmother. I was given to her by my mother when i was fourteen and my sister was about ten, and she became my mother. She was the rock of our family. Her house was the home base. You knew if you needed a place to sllep for the night, you could go there. You knew if you need a bite to eat, you could stop by her house. Every holiday and birthday was celebrated there, and thats how its always been. We dont have that anymore. Im at a very fragile stage in my sobriety because every death that has occured before I instinctively reached for a needle or some sort of drug to numb the pain.
With her death, being completely sober, I felt the beautiful feelings that come with something so painful its hard to describe. I felt this vice around my heart. An electricity through my veins. A pain so intense that it convinced me that there must be a soul inside of us. This time my pain was real. It was pure. It was beautiful.
I love you Ma I find comfort in the fact that you can finally rest and are no longer suffering.

My heroine

"The drugs begin to peak. A smile of joy arrives in me. But sedation changes to panic and nausea, and breath starts to shorten and heart beat pounds softer. You wont try to save me! you just want to hurt me and leave me desperate! You taught my heart, a sense i never knew i had I can forget the times I was lost and depressed from the awful truth, how do you do it? you're my heroine!!
You wont leave me alone, chisel my heart out of stone, i give in every time. you taught my heart a sense i never knew i had I can forget the times I was lost and depressed from the awful truth, how do you do it? you're my heroine!
I bet you laugh, at the thought of me thinking for myself, I bet you believe that I'm better off with you than some one else.
Your face arrives again. all hope I had becomes surreal. But under your covers more torture than pleasure and just past you lips theres more anger than laughter. NOT NOW OR FOREVER WILL I EVER CHANGE YOU I KNOW THAT TO GO ON I BREAK YOU MY HABIT!!
I will save myself."

The twelve steps or not

I want to say first and foremost that I stay neutral about the the twelve steps in a public forum and let you make the choice if it's something that might work for you. I am writing them here and you can research and choose for yourself to work the steps or not. Here we go.

1. We admit we are powerless over our addiction and that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the higher power (God) as we understood him.
4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admit to the higher power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We are entirely ready to have the higher power remove all these defects of our character.
7.We humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all the persons we have harmed and are willing to make amends with them all.
9. We make direct amends whenever and wherever possible
10. We continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong we admit it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our concious contact with the higher power . Praying for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all out affairs.

"by staying clean, we're free to become who we want to be."

the family

I have a family blog at H://www.surpriselifeshard.blospot.com

A Trigger

We all know what a trigger is different from person to person and how many triggers we have are also different. Some of us actually don't even know what their triggers are yet. It takes alot or searcing and digging to find them but they are there. Unless you are one of the other kind of addict and I have two categories. The first one is an addict because they are trying to escape a feeling or event or can't deal with life in general. The second is just a person that nothing bad has never happened to them but they just like to get high.
You're probably wondering where I'm going with this but I'm the first category. I've had some traumatic things happen in my life that I didn't want to deal with and still do not want to deal with. I just came back from a visit with my grandmother who is at the mass general hospital in Boston dying. She raised me through my teen years and did her very best with my sister and I and just seeing her is a big trigger for me. If she passes I'm going to have to find a way to keep the needle form my arm because I know how much pain will be there when this inevitable event occurs. If anyone has any suggestions email me. dddorato@gmail.com
I'm sure I'm not the only one in the world that is going through a death during recovery and I would love some feed back. My advise to anyone that reads my blog is that if you are an addict, find out what your triggers are because its very important to know what sets you off so you can avoid those situations so you can stay clean even if it is for the day, the hour or even a minute. Love yourself, Love the people that love you and stay sober for yourself.

The first time

I wonder if everyone remembers their first time getting high like I do. I remember the second it hit me and then wanting to smoke a cigarette really bad. I sat on my couch and watched TV all night popping vicodin and smoking cigarettes. I loved it. I was hooked. I was in my own little world and I was unstoppable. I mean only $3 for a pill and all I had to do at 15 was asking mom mom or dad for 15 bucks and that was a pack of ciggs and a couple of my pills. Months went by like this and then one day a friend of mine showed me this tiny tiny little pill compared to a vicodin. She gave it to me for free of course and told me not to take the whole think because it was like taking 8 vicodin. I really didn't believe her since the pill was so tiny but i cut it in half and swallowed the other half. I couldn't believe it. From that day on I never touched another vicodin. What she had given me was an oxycontin. That's how most opiate journeys begin. I was buying one every 3 days and then soon enough every 2 days. I couldn't see how fast I was falling My family knew something was wrong but they had no idea what. Now I was going to school preferably on a pill than without one. This was only high school and the and of my innocence.

The Pain we suffer

When I started writing I didn't want to do it on a scale where a whole bunch of people could see, never mind the Internet. 1. I'm not a professional writer 2. I wasn't really sure if Ive ever even written a proper sentence and 3. I didn't want to waste my time writing unless it would benefit someone. Myself first and then others. This blog has become my outlet I thought at first it wouldn't help but it actually does. Its like therapy. All the pain, all the secrets, all the stories we keep inside as addicts I can write about and its a great release. A word orgasm. Like i said i know I'm not a professional writer,but I do have things to say. Some graphic some uplifting. I wish there were more places I could go to read about other addicts experiences so that is why I want to continue writing even though it might not be perfect I hope to share the pain we go through together with other people going through what I am.

meetings and the 12 steps

Alot of people go to meeting and follow the twelve step program. I only want to post my own opinion about the program. I believe that having this support of many people is very helpful and could be a great tool to use when getting or trying to stay sober. The more people you have on your side the better, right? How many people that are there are actually clean though? How many are court stipulated and would rather be shooting up than in a meeting? I think that more people have found running partners than have actually gotten good information from a meeting.
I do believe that meetings were intended to help people meet other people in recovery, but somewhere along the line things went wrong. Some meetings are full of drug dealers, others are fashion shows, others are just people that are there because the court said so and others are like a singles dating service. Let me remind you that this is only my opinion and I would love to go to a legit meeting but they are few and far between. I do like the steps. but I believe you can do them on your own. If you have friends and family that can support you on your journey then I recommend that instead of NA meetings. Even if you wanted to email me dddorato@gmail.com I'd be more than happy to be that shoulder. May the higher power be with you and be strong my fellow addicts, it gets better.

My letter to you

I never thought I'd say this but, I'm leaving. You told me you'd protect me and keep me safe and more importantly you'd never hurt me...you lied. I remember the first time we met. The anticipation of our first intimate encounter gave me the chills and then you embraced me with warmth all the way from the bottom of my feet, to the top of my head. Tingling, warm, sensual, Ecstasy that lasted for hours. Then slowly you began to fade. Your intensity and passion began to subside and you only left me wanting more. All of those promises were lies.
I lost everything for you. My family, my friends, My child, myself. I hate you but at the same time I love you. I can promise though that every minute of every day I will remind myself of how much I lost because of you and I will remember I AM beautiful without you. I AM able to deal with my feelings without you. I AM a person that deserves to be loved without you and I promise to expose you to as many people that will listen that you are nothing but lies.
I bid you good riddance. We are through.

coming out

I never thought I could have the courage to write this but I find myself at a stage of recovery where I am not so embarrassed to tell people my story.
I'm 28 and like I said, a mother a daughter a sister and an addict. I was 16 when I started to realise a problem but like most addicts I thought I could control it. HA.
All these years later here I am hoping my story might inspire, deter, or just educate someone about addiction from the person who would know it most. The addict herself.