xxxredpilledxxx
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2023
- Messages
- 9
How My Addiction Started
For my entire childhood I was surrounded by drugs and alcohol, whether it was my time living with my grandma, mother, or my father. My first experience with substances was when I was 11 years old. My dad had said he wasn't feeling well and had asked me to run to the neighbors house down the road because he had let a friend borrow a DVD my father wanted returned. I didn't hesitate at all because my father was a very cruel man to me if I talked back or questioned him in any way. I recall skateboarding to my neighbors house with a good friend of mine and upon getting there I was greeted by a familiar face. He handed me the DVD and I remember to this day riding down the street with my buddy until all of a sudden like fate I had fallen on a rock, the DVD flew out of my hand and to my surprise, a few orange pills fell out of the otherwise empty case. I didn't know what to think of it at the time, all i knew was if i didn't get this task done my dad would have scolded me big time. In hindsight I knew what I had stumbled on was something of severe secrecy. After a moment I stuffed the orange circles back into the empty case and made my way back home where my father was otherwise satisfied with my hasty return.
After that incident I had started noticing that more of my family members were hiding things from the world. I deeply regret how curious I was as a child, it nearly doomed me. My curious nature resulted in finding my mothers narcotics stash box, my grandmother's purse full of prescription pain pills, and of course my fathers suboxone bottle. My mother worked late at bars so I would find myself staying out with my other curious friends almost every night. I shuffled from my mothers and fathers house my whole life and I had somehow found myself in two different friend groups and the only thing similar was our need to get away from our toxic homes. We found ourselves experimenting daily with whatever we could get our hands on, and a lot of times my mother had helped us find the substances we lusted for. My mother was more of a friend to me than a mother growing up and I don't like to put blame on her but she didn't help. On the other hand, my father was so insecure about his addiction that he would lash out at the thought of me ever trying drugs or alcohol. He almost was afraid to acknowledge the existence of them. He avoided all the problems I was having as a young man and it caused me to self medicate even more because he didn't believe in therapy and said kids my age just needed to,”take a walk”. My grandma was a very sick woman and had been diagnosed with bone cancer when i was 14. She had many forms of pain pills and benzodiazepine on hand at all times. Often I would hurt myself skateboarding and my mother and her would issue me a percocet and some rest. At the time I relished the opportunity to wait for them to nod off or to walk away for a brief moment so I could steal a handful of whatever I wanted. My mother was later diagnosed with cancer and was also prescribed pain pills etc. At this point I was a full blown addict, anything I could get I wanted in surplus. I didn't comprehend at the time how awful it was to steal from my dying grandmother and sick mother, but I can't take it back and none of us were completely innocent. This continued as I moved in with my grandma to take care of her for her last living year of her life. I was the main caregiver but I was also benefiting from it in my own way. I believe now that she knew what I was doing but she was just happy to have someone around so she could waste away on the couch while I supplied her cigarettes and pepsi. She was a crude woman but had a soft spot for me because I didn't treat her like her children had, maybe I would have been different if neither of them got sick.
My mother and I had a system where she would sell some of her prescriptions off to people we knew. Some of those people were my highschool friends and it didn't strike me as odd at the time because I was getting high. A few years of this went by and I moved out and got a roommate who I had known for some time because she had the house my buddies and I would go and get messed up at. I was working and still using all the same coping skills I was before like xanax and percocet but something changed when I got to know the real person I roomed with. I smelled a strong odor one night after work and decided to be curious like i always am, only to find she was smoking a crack pipe out in the open with no shame. It startled me because at that point in my addiction I saw myself as someone who was “too good for a crack pipe”. I liked to think I had standards, but I did not.. With just as much hesitation as I always had with trying something new and interesting, I had her help me with my first push of the pipe and it was over just as fast as it started. With a new craving comes a new spending habit and also new friends. I am ashamed to admit, but I got people that never should have picked up the shit to try it. Tens of thousands of dollars later I had moved out again over some discrepancies over rent payment, now I had found myself an hour away living with a new girlfriend.
She was much older than me at the time I was 18 and she was 27 and liked to drink, alot. I got off the pills easily as I moved away from all my dealers and family, but with new people, places and things, came new cravings. She was a bartender at the local bar in town and she would get me underage. At this point I was making great money so I didn't notice how bad of a habit going out and drinking was and I loved the feeling it gave me. I loved being able to go and order a few strong drinks and like magic all my troubles seemed to fade away. I never noticed how toxic the relationship was or how I had to drink every night to be able to sleep, or how she disappeared for days on end coming back still drunk and with a new DUI. She always reminded me how young I was and not experienced in life. It got so bad that I was kicked out and made to look like an immature man because of our age gap. I still believe to this day that no man her age would have put up with her shit, but I digress. With all my stuff thrown onto the wet lawn and my nearest family over an hour away, I picked myself up and moved back home.
Back on the westside of Cleveland I met back up with some old friends and started to couch surf at many locations and each place was a drug den of sorts. I began working downtown at a restaurant I had worked in the past, but this time I was selling cocaine to support my habit. Not a day went by that I wasn't chasing a high and I stopped doing the things in life that I loved, like skateboarding and guitar. I didn't see it at the time but this was the turning point for me, once i lost love for my true passions in life i was but a shell of myself. Months went by and living a transient lifestyle was the new normal for me. I got so caught up in getting high that I had done terrible things in order to get what I needed, like selling my body and stealing. Everything seemed to change one Halloween in 2018. I met the future mother of my daughter at a party and our shared love for getting high made us inseparable. We moved into a shitty loft that was once an elementary school. With no appliances or furniture all we had to do was get high and cook ramen in the coffee maker until we eventually got kicked out for not paying rent. After that we separated but she later called to tell me she was 5 months pregnant and it was mine. I jumped on the idea of being a father and we got back together by moving to the suburbs and getting a decent job to take care of us. Together we kept getting high and I drank everyday too. A bad idea for me was to take some acid one day and I panicked and thought she was giving birth to our kid and forced her to go to the hospital where they told me that she wasnt due for another 3 months. They must have thought I was insane, maybe I was. In late July my daughter Luna Tribuzzo was born and in the hospital I had convinced her mother that I needed the pain medicine the doctors offered her more than she did. She obliged and snuck me a strong oxy after the doctors left the room after her C-section. I was so high that day I hardly remember being in the hospital for my child's birth. Little did I know that my life was saved that day.
The last part of this story starts with my daughter's 2nd birthday party. Up until this point I have remained doing all the substances I could along with drinking daily. Me and the mom separated and have been co parenting along with help from the grandparents along the way. I arrive at the party with my mom but with one stipulation against me, I'm high and have a pocketful of xanax. Everything is going smoothly until my daughter's mom arrives and I decide to take a few xanax and down a few beers. Now I'm blasted and if you know anything about xanax then you know that my mouth was on fire. I wasn't holding anything back. I told her off and from what I remember it was pretty brutal. Now this isn't out of character for me at the time but what was different now is how my whole family was witness to it. I couldn't hide my addiction anymore, the cat was out of the bag. This mixture of alcohol and Xanax continued through a new relationship I got into. Me and my daughter's mother couldn't get along and fought and cried every time we saw each other. I knew she had a drug problem but it didn't get serious until she was pressured to go to treatment or else she would lose custody of our daughter, so she went. Now her going to treatment and surrendering to her addiction took the heat off of me for the time being so I just fell deeper and deeper into my alcoholism. I supported her through her journey of sobriety and we began to get along better than we ever had. Not until she got out did she realize upon staying with me some nights that I had not been myself anymore, the disease took over my body and brain entirely. Shakes, delusions, forgetfulness, anger, mood swings, emotional, and irresponsible. I declined quickly into insanity and my suicidal idealogy began to start by hearing voices and never being able to sleep causing me to get sent to the psych ward multiple times. Everytime i entered the detox ward I said to myself, “I'm never drinking again”. On the last day of each escapade I left the hospital knowing I would pick up liquor in the same hour I left. The job I had understood the issues I was having but on a small scale, I stopped going to work entirely and couldn't even get off the couch other than to get to the liquor store once daily. Terrified of my daughter or anyone else seeing me I began to isolate and barricade myself inside. I was dying. The girl I had been with 2 years prior left me because of my disease and everyone wanted to see me get sober but I wasn't ready yet. I had gotten drunk one night and promised my stepmother I would go to rehab for an extended amount of time and she wasn't going to let me get out of this promise. Thank god for her because on the day I said I would go I had changed my mind. I locked all my doors and shut my phone off hoping I could just ignore the pressure. She wasn't going to let it stop her as she broke into my house to find me naked with puke bags all around my living room, liquor bottles, and cigarette butts on the ground. She dragged me into the last detox I was going to survive and made me feel confident. I hadn't eaten or showered in 14 days at that point and I was 50 pounds underweight. The first place that reached out about having a bed open was the Alpha house on Cedar Hills and I took advantage of it because I could have my phone. It was a Christ based rehab and it didn't bother me at the time because I was at rock bottom and had tried everything already. I now see purpose in the spiritual side of life and leaped right into step work. The book of A.A was gifted to me by an older man leaving the program the same day I entered, and inside were 9 past owners of this very book. All of them left notes and highlighted important parts of the chapters inside for the next person to read. They all left names and phone numbers on the first page of the book and now that I'm almost 5 months sober I'd like to call some of those numbers and just thank them for being a subtle yet impactful part of my recovery. Since being in the A.A program I have learned to be an honest person and let the good parts of me shine while still acknowledging my imperfections. We must not look over our faults but set them aside for further analysis and under the light we can flesh out the demons from self. These past few months I've met some of the best people I've ever known all with one goal in familiarity, getting our lives back. I'm a better father, friend and son because of my sobriety and I take great pride in the person I'm becoming. On the road to becoming a licensed PRS counselor as to not waste this knowledge of addiction. I know my journey isn't done yet and I'm now taking my 12th and final step to reach out to other addicts for help and guidance.
For my entire childhood I was surrounded by drugs and alcohol, whether it was my time living with my grandma, mother, or my father. My first experience with substances was when I was 11 years old. My dad had said he wasn't feeling well and had asked me to run to the neighbors house down the road because he had let a friend borrow a DVD my father wanted returned. I didn't hesitate at all because my father was a very cruel man to me if I talked back or questioned him in any way. I recall skateboarding to my neighbors house with a good friend of mine and upon getting there I was greeted by a familiar face. He handed me the DVD and I remember to this day riding down the street with my buddy until all of a sudden like fate I had fallen on a rock, the DVD flew out of my hand and to my surprise, a few orange pills fell out of the otherwise empty case. I didn't know what to think of it at the time, all i knew was if i didn't get this task done my dad would have scolded me big time. In hindsight I knew what I had stumbled on was something of severe secrecy. After a moment I stuffed the orange circles back into the empty case and made my way back home where my father was otherwise satisfied with my hasty return.
After that incident I had started noticing that more of my family members were hiding things from the world. I deeply regret how curious I was as a child, it nearly doomed me. My curious nature resulted in finding my mothers narcotics stash box, my grandmother's purse full of prescription pain pills, and of course my fathers suboxone bottle. My mother worked late at bars so I would find myself staying out with my other curious friends almost every night. I shuffled from my mothers and fathers house my whole life and I had somehow found myself in two different friend groups and the only thing similar was our need to get away from our toxic homes. We found ourselves experimenting daily with whatever we could get our hands on, and a lot of times my mother had helped us find the substances we lusted for. My mother was more of a friend to me than a mother growing up and I don't like to put blame on her but she didn't help. On the other hand, my father was so insecure about his addiction that he would lash out at the thought of me ever trying drugs or alcohol. He almost was afraid to acknowledge the existence of them. He avoided all the problems I was having as a young man and it caused me to self medicate even more because he didn't believe in therapy and said kids my age just needed to,”take a walk”. My grandma was a very sick woman and had been diagnosed with bone cancer when i was 14. She had many forms of pain pills and benzodiazepine on hand at all times. Often I would hurt myself skateboarding and my mother and her would issue me a percocet and some rest. At the time I relished the opportunity to wait for them to nod off or to walk away for a brief moment so I could steal a handful of whatever I wanted. My mother was later diagnosed with cancer and was also prescribed pain pills etc. At this point I was a full blown addict, anything I could get I wanted in surplus. I didn't comprehend at the time how awful it was to steal from my dying grandmother and sick mother, but I can't take it back and none of us were completely innocent. This continued as I moved in with my grandma to take care of her for her last living year of her life. I was the main caregiver but I was also benefiting from it in my own way. I believe now that she knew what I was doing but she was just happy to have someone around so she could waste away on the couch while I supplied her cigarettes and pepsi. She was a crude woman but had a soft spot for me because I didn't treat her like her children had, maybe I would have been different if neither of them got sick.
My mother and I had a system where she would sell some of her prescriptions off to people we knew. Some of those people were my highschool friends and it didn't strike me as odd at the time because I was getting high. A few years of this went by and I moved out and got a roommate who I had known for some time because she had the house my buddies and I would go and get messed up at. I was working and still using all the same coping skills I was before like xanax and percocet but something changed when I got to know the real person I roomed with. I smelled a strong odor one night after work and decided to be curious like i always am, only to find she was smoking a crack pipe out in the open with no shame. It startled me because at that point in my addiction I saw myself as someone who was “too good for a crack pipe”. I liked to think I had standards, but I did not.. With just as much hesitation as I always had with trying something new and interesting, I had her help me with my first push of the pipe and it was over just as fast as it started. With a new craving comes a new spending habit and also new friends. I am ashamed to admit, but I got people that never should have picked up the shit to try it. Tens of thousands of dollars later I had moved out again over some discrepancies over rent payment, now I had found myself an hour away living with a new girlfriend.
She was much older than me at the time I was 18 and she was 27 and liked to drink, alot. I got off the pills easily as I moved away from all my dealers and family, but with new people, places and things, came new cravings. She was a bartender at the local bar in town and she would get me underage. At this point I was making great money so I didn't notice how bad of a habit going out and drinking was and I loved the feeling it gave me. I loved being able to go and order a few strong drinks and like magic all my troubles seemed to fade away. I never noticed how toxic the relationship was or how I had to drink every night to be able to sleep, or how she disappeared for days on end coming back still drunk and with a new DUI. She always reminded me how young I was and not experienced in life. It got so bad that I was kicked out and made to look like an immature man because of our age gap. I still believe to this day that no man her age would have put up with her shit, but I digress. With all my stuff thrown onto the wet lawn and my nearest family over an hour away, I picked myself up and moved back home.
Back on the westside of Cleveland I met back up with some old friends and started to couch surf at many locations and each place was a drug den of sorts. I began working downtown at a restaurant I had worked in the past, but this time I was selling cocaine to support my habit. Not a day went by that I wasn't chasing a high and I stopped doing the things in life that I loved, like skateboarding and guitar. I didn't see it at the time but this was the turning point for me, once i lost love for my true passions in life i was but a shell of myself. Months went by and living a transient lifestyle was the new normal for me. I got so caught up in getting high that I had done terrible things in order to get what I needed, like selling my body and stealing. Everything seemed to change one Halloween in 2018. I met the future mother of my daughter at a party and our shared love for getting high made us inseparable. We moved into a shitty loft that was once an elementary school. With no appliances or furniture all we had to do was get high and cook ramen in the coffee maker until we eventually got kicked out for not paying rent. After that we separated but she later called to tell me she was 5 months pregnant and it was mine. I jumped on the idea of being a father and we got back together by moving to the suburbs and getting a decent job to take care of us. Together we kept getting high and I drank everyday too. A bad idea for me was to take some acid one day and I panicked and thought she was giving birth to our kid and forced her to go to the hospital where they told me that she wasnt due for another 3 months. They must have thought I was insane, maybe I was. In late July my daughter Luna Tribuzzo was born and in the hospital I had convinced her mother that I needed the pain medicine the doctors offered her more than she did. She obliged and snuck me a strong oxy after the doctors left the room after her C-section. I was so high that day I hardly remember being in the hospital for my child's birth. Little did I know that my life was saved that day.
The last part of this story starts with my daughter's 2nd birthday party. Up until this point I have remained doing all the substances I could along with drinking daily. Me and the mom separated and have been co parenting along with help from the grandparents along the way. I arrive at the party with my mom but with one stipulation against me, I'm high and have a pocketful of xanax. Everything is going smoothly until my daughter's mom arrives and I decide to take a few xanax and down a few beers. Now I'm blasted and if you know anything about xanax then you know that my mouth was on fire. I wasn't holding anything back. I told her off and from what I remember it was pretty brutal. Now this isn't out of character for me at the time but what was different now is how my whole family was witness to it. I couldn't hide my addiction anymore, the cat was out of the bag. This mixture of alcohol and Xanax continued through a new relationship I got into. Me and my daughter's mother couldn't get along and fought and cried every time we saw each other. I knew she had a drug problem but it didn't get serious until she was pressured to go to treatment or else she would lose custody of our daughter, so she went. Now her going to treatment and surrendering to her addiction took the heat off of me for the time being so I just fell deeper and deeper into my alcoholism. I supported her through her journey of sobriety and we began to get along better than we ever had. Not until she got out did she realize upon staying with me some nights that I had not been myself anymore, the disease took over my body and brain entirely. Shakes, delusions, forgetfulness, anger, mood swings, emotional, and irresponsible. I declined quickly into insanity and my suicidal idealogy began to start by hearing voices and never being able to sleep causing me to get sent to the psych ward multiple times. Everytime i entered the detox ward I said to myself, “I'm never drinking again”. On the last day of each escapade I left the hospital knowing I would pick up liquor in the same hour I left. The job I had understood the issues I was having but on a small scale, I stopped going to work entirely and couldn't even get off the couch other than to get to the liquor store once daily. Terrified of my daughter or anyone else seeing me I began to isolate and barricade myself inside. I was dying. The girl I had been with 2 years prior left me because of my disease and everyone wanted to see me get sober but I wasn't ready yet. I had gotten drunk one night and promised my stepmother I would go to rehab for an extended amount of time and she wasn't going to let me get out of this promise. Thank god for her because on the day I said I would go I had changed my mind. I locked all my doors and shut my phone off hoping I could just ignore the pressure. She wasn't going to let it stop her as she broke into my house to find me naked with puke bags all around my living room, liquor bottles, and cigarette butts on the ground. She dragged me into the last detox I was going to survive and made me feel confident. I hadn't eaten or showered in 14 days at that point and I was 50 pounds underweight. The first place that reached out about having a bed open was the Alpha house on Cedar Hills and I took advantage of it because I could have my phone. It was a Christ based rehab and it didn't bother me at the time because I was at rock bottom and had tried everything already. I now see purpose in the spiritual side of life and leaped right into step work. The book of A.A was gifted to me by an older man leaving the program the same day I entered, and inside were 9 past owners of this very book. All of them left notes and highlighted important parts of the chapters inside for the next person to read. They all left names and phone numbers on the first page of the book and now that I'm almost 5 months sober I'd like to call some of those numbers and just thank them for being a subtle yet impactful part of my recovery. Since being in the A.A program I have learned to be an honest person and let the good parts of me shine while still acknowledging my imperfections. We must not look over our faults but set them aside for further analysis and under the light we can flesh out the demons from self. These past few months I've met some of the best people I've ever known all with one goal in familiarity, getting our lives back. I'm a better father, friend and son because of my sobriety and I take great pride in the person I'm becoming. On the road to becoming a licensed PRS counselor as to not waste this knowledge of addiction. I know my journey isn't done yet and I'm now taking my 12th and final step to reach out to other addicts for help and guidance.
