You have my prayers!

Some thoughts, I am a drug addict, gutter bound junkie. A normal night was mixing heroin, cocaine, vodka, and dirty puddle water In a syringe and mainlining in a burnt out corner of a filthy warehouse, praying for God to kill me, save me, give me a bunch of drugs, or straighten me out. It didn't matter, anything but who and where I was.

I spent years trying to overcome, recovery houses, jail, hospitals, overdoses, everything. Id stop, get my life together a bit, and then crash and burn again. During this I became a sperm donor for my child ( I say this because I'm the father, but was no dad). I swore I would stop and change for her, for her mom who I loved, for God, for my family and loved ones. Never worked.

The drugs did what they will do and ruined my life. I got a spine infection, got misdiagnosed, and was told it was muscle problems and my doctor's thought I was looking for pain killers so did nothing. My spine melted over time, years, and all I knew was pain, drugs, sadness, until my legs have out and I went down. Emergency 9 hr. Surgery, spine rebuilt from bottom to top, not sure if I'll ever walk again and may even die. Still chasing drugs.

I came home to my daughter and her mom. After years of ruining all of our lives, they took me in because they didn't want to see me die. I could barely walk for a long time, always in pain. Got a work from home job and slowly recovered. Due to the Injury, the Mrs. Holding my money, and other factors, my life got better and I no longer had any way to get the drugs for a year or so.

My life actually got so good that I, for the first time, said no, I don't want to loose what I have this time. I have a path at the workplace I am at to success, a family that actually loves me, gratitude (this is what I believe helped me stop) for everything in my life since I should have died from my spine issue, and I have been clean for a long time and it's different. I am disgusted on multiple levels over my past behaviors, and you could not pay me to do drugs again.

Look up the experiments with rat park and heroin. This describes what I believe will actually help people. We need to have connections to others, a life full of hope and love, and what I believe is most important, gratitude for what we have.

There is a saying a grateful heart will never use. It's a way of looking at the world, gratitude is an action word as well. You don't feel gratitude, you live it. Until I was able to appreciate what I had and feel hope and gratitude, I never had a chance.

One of the barriers I faced was no matter how often I tried to get clean, or how grateful I acted or looked, or how good I looked and acted in the outside, it didn't reach deep down inside and didn't become a part of my actions. There was always a piece that sad it's going to happen again, maybe even ten years from now, so why wait just do it now, you have no chance.

I now write gratitude lists and thank God for everything I have, even the bad parts, because I should be dead. It's ok now if my car got repossessed, I loose my job, or whatever else may come, because I should be underground, and I feel it on a spiritual level beyond just thought.

Some people need to lose it all to appreciate and be grateful for what they have. I did. Some need to feel hope for a future where they can live a normal life. That's all we really want is a normal life, and I've seen so many people relapse because they are so deep into bad things they can't imagine a future where life is not crashing down around them.

Sorry, ramblings of a degenerate junkie over. Again, check out the rat park drug experiment