Life was a wonderful place, or so I felt as a child. Looking back on it with healthy, adult eyes, it truly was not a healthy place. Life felt wonderful because I spent most of my childhood away from the house participating in the normalcy and comfort of other people’s family environments. I did not […]
I didn’t know it then, when my room was being searched for drugs, but that event–my attempted jump out of a high-rise Casino window and being stopped by a battery of police and fire personnel–would be the last time I used crystal meth. I still remember the way the words of the paramedic hit me […]
“I wish I had never adopted you!” “I don’t love you!” “You make me want to kill myself!” These words made up a constant refrain that defined who I believed I was for most of my life. I was convinced that I was fundamentally broken and completely unlovable. Those beliefs would be what drove me […]
I’ve never lived in a gray area when I used or drank. Some people can say that they didn’t know that they were addicts or alcoholics, but I knew. At the age of 13, I had my first experience with alcohol. I was with my first boyfriend, my best friend and her boyfriend, and we […]
A Daughter’s Experience Sitting here on a Saturday afternoon with my mom, drinking coffee and reminiscing about our journey through addiction and recovery. As mother and daughter we feel we have a unique perspective on addiction. We are both addicts and we have both recovered in our own time. Looking at our experiences overwhelms me […]
The topic of family has always been a sore subject. It was an especially difficult one to discuss early on in recovery. There are a lot of deeply rooted issues stemming from my childhood and young adulthood that led me onto the road of my addiction. I’m the youngest of three boys, the baby of […]
Alright, long time ago (probably in 1980 I would say) there was a discussion about the fact that we could not talk about drugs. And so many of us, we were drug addicts and alcoholics, but they frowned upon us saying it; so you have to just slip it in or something like that. Well […]
My brother once asked me if I was on drugs. I replied, “No, Dan, I’m not on drugs.” He paused for a few seconds, looked at me and said, “you are the only person I’ve ever known who could look someone so honestly in the eyes and lie so deviously.” Towards the end of a […]
Dim red light shined down on my shame as I was again spending another Tuesday evening in a room full of naked men, undoubtedly high on meth as I allowed myself to once more be used by every single one of them. I didn’t realize that the clinking noise of the chains, the constant stream […]
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” So says the old English nursery rhyme. My story has a different ending than Humpty Dumpty’s. Crystal meth shattered my life, and thanks to the program and fellowship of Crystal Meth Anonymous, my life has been put back together again. I […]
I’m a crystal meth addict and I’m SOBER AF! I’m also TRANS AF! I’d also like to start by saying that I am a trauma human. I was sexually abused before I could walk. There was a lot of physical violence in our home which landed us in a domestic violence shelter by the time […]
When my oldest daughter was five our car broke down in the middle of town. We lived 20 miles away in the canyons outside of Redlands, California. I had no money or cell phone back then so I told her to stick out her thumb and we’d get a ride. Being the bright child that […]
If it was just alcohol, I could’ve lived with that. Yes, alcohol did lead me to waking up on the restroom floor of my favorite leather bar with my fly down and my shirt inside out. But hey, who hasn’t been there? However, it was the crystal that made me disappear for days at a […]
We aren’t born knowing how to use and we aren’t born knowing how to deal with our addiction and difficult life issues. He was introduced to the 12 Steps of CMA, and following the clear suggestions from fellows, discovered he could not only live through anything, but thrive and find true comfort in the Steps. […]
