Tales of Recovery from Crystal Meth Addiction
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I’ve been sober five years today and I’ve been writing and erasing this post for 2 hours now. I can’t seem to be able to communicate this without sounding pathetic, so maybe I should just say it in the most concise way possible.
Recovery has made nearly everything in my life better, except for one thing. I am still profoundly lonely. And I think I may need to move if that is ever going to be different.
The corniest nurse at St. Luke's Hospital cut the dressing into a heart. I could use more corny in my life.
I got a pacemaker a couple of days ago. All those tests revealed a 2nd degree type 2 heart block so in to the hospital I went a couple of days later and now my heart beats every time instead of every other or every third time. I can’t believe how much better I feel. I’m in a little pain at the place where they implanted the device and a little tired from the trauma – but other than that I feel great.
I remember getting clean was kind of the same. I hadn’t really noticed in the process of becoming an addict just how much worse things were getting. I didn’t see the pain I was in because the slide was a little bit incremental – and for a long time the “benefit” of using, the temporary getting out of pain, deceived me into not seeing the problem clearly. And then when I got clean and sober, I was in pain, because getting sober can be hard, but I was also so relieved. I guess these progressive diseases are like that. They sneak in and slowly destroy us while we aren’t paying attention.
Just like with getting sober, I am very fortunate and very grateful that help was available to me when I needed it. I would never have been able to get this kind of treatment if I hadn’t had affordable health coverage. The investment I made in attending school for a semester immediately paid me a 500% return.
Anyway – I’m home and I’m healthier and I’m bionic now. Yay!
My decision to go back to school was influenced partly by the fact that my cardiologist wanted to do a cardiac catheterization and angiography, a procedure I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do with my old health insurance with its $450/month price tag and its $5000 deductible. Student health offered by my school is under $900 a semester and only carries a $250 deductible. I scheduled the procedure for right after the end of the semester. Every time I’ve been to the doctor he’s observed some other thing wrong which is why he wanted the cath, and of course the cath revealed something else entirely.
I had been preparing to become really angry with myself. Chronic crystal methamphetamine abuse is implicated in a host of cardiac and pulmonary problems, and if I had somehow done serious damage to my heart through my drug abuse I wasn’t sure how I’d forgive myself. Luckily it doesn’t appear that I need to be concerned about that. We did the procedure last Tuesday. That test revealed a brand new problem, so we put a Holter monitor on the next day and I suspect I’ll get the results of that by Wednesday of next week.
I’m super relieved that none of the problem I have are the kind of problems that appear to be caused by methamphetamine abuse. If the diagnosis doesn’t change between now and Wednesday it looks like I’ll get a pacemaker, hopefully before the next semester begins. I know that all sounds kind of scary. At least it sounds scary to me, but there is an up-side to this. I don’t appear to have created this problem myself, so I have no impulse to beat myself up over it. It is probably congenital; that is, I was probably born with it and it has progressed to a stage where I am experiencing symptoms. Today’s pacemakers are very smart little machines, they’re easy to install, and when they are installed properly they can significantly improve the quality and length of life for patients like me.
I’m thinking that deciding to go back to school may be among the best decisions I ever made, second only to getting sober.
Spring 2006 Grades
Fall 2011 Grades
My grades are in. I’ve made it through my first semester of school. Actually I’ve finished up my Freshman year finally. So here are my grades. Here are my current grades and my grades from the spring before I got sober. I feel like I should have a disclaimer on my recovery. “Results are not typical.” And while everyone’s experience of recovery will be personal to them, these pictures are an honest representation of what I was like and what I’m like now. What happened is I got sober.
This year we get a matched set of holiday mug shots. In less than a week mom had violated the terms of her release on bail and violated a restraining order. Sober people, and I mean that in both the physical and emotional sense, don’t violate restraining orders, do they? Now, even if her husband did tell her to come home, she isn’t above the law; and the law said she couldn’t come within 100 feet of him.
To be fair, I’ve done the same thing. Read the rest of this entry »
In the newest installment of my family tragi-comedy I have collected the 4th mug shot of my mother in as many years; this time for domestic assault. Now, placed in the same situation she has been living in I can hardly think that I would have been arrested for anything less than attempted murder, but as a sober person, I find it impossible to conceive of remaining in a toxic relationship with a sadistic monster like her husband. I’m not randomly calling him names. I have 30 years of history with this man and I can honestly say that he is the worst thing that ever happened to my family. But mom is very comfortable in her material condition. I wouldn’t call my parents “rich” by any means, but they want for nothing. And that presents something of a problem. Mom has enough money to be shielded from the consequences of many of her actions, and she is sick enough to be able to deny the rest. Read the rest of this entry »
I realize, of course, that talking about gratitude on Thanksgiving Day is, at best, cliché. Oh well. Today is as good a day as any to set aside a bit of time to discuss the idea of gratitude. It is a mistake, I think, to think of gratitude as a state of being, or a feeling. Of course, it is those things, too, but gratitude is really something more than that. Gratitude is a habit of mind that, if cultivated, becomes a part of one’s character. Practicing gratitude helps us stay sober. Read the rest of this entry »
I will sometimes, maybe even often, not do something because the idea that I will do it less than perfectly paralyzes me. I’m way better now at allowing myself to make mistakes than I ever have been before. Really, you don’t make the kind of catastrophic mistakes that we serious tweekers make, and not come to terms with them if you want to stay sober. My mistakes are visible from space. I’m thinking about having UNESCO declare them a World Heritage Site. Outfit them with some kind of perceived value that the “normal” world can understand as useful or meaningful or positive. Read the rest of this entry »
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