I was about 16 when I became so enchanted with the drug lifestyle that I knew I wanted to live it, for it to "
be my life and be my wife ... be the death of me, etc." My main foci were heroin and psychedelics, the latter to "expand" my mind and get really far out, the former to contract things to a fuzzy blanket around a smaller and smaller psychological interior, while things went to increasing shit for me.
Drugs and eventually drug trafficking consumed my life, constituted all my friendships and all my free time. I managed to function pretty well at a real job, somehow, but everything else was drugged up, manic, paranoid, dangerous intensity. Ketamine, LSD, and heroin were constant companions. Practically ever waking moment, every conversation with my peers outside my job, was consumed with drugs—using them, acquiring them, selling them, discussing them, drama surrounding them. Being in the business was very much a form of addiction in itself. It wasn't just cupidity, but an insane desire to be "the man." I became a living caricature. Drugs and the associated lifestyle. were my all. I felt at home. "I like[d] drugs. I like[d] the lifestyle." I had no real friends and no real life. I felt like I was living in a movie.
Eventually—many years ago now—I had a major close call with the Federal government and stopped it all, everything I was doing (was on bupe though, for about a decade) but my nature remained the same and my all consuming obsession became drink. Booze helped me avoid thinking on the various traumas I had endured in the prior few years including having some serious violence put on me, losing some friends, coming close to losing my freedom. Not to mention other shit from my past, guilt for my past actions, all sorts of things were wonderfully dissolved in alcohol. But I needed it constantly, without interruption. I consciously chose this route to some degree. I was a self aware degenerate alcoholic and, for the time, content to wallow in my degeneracy. I didn't have any truck with denial, I knew I was trying to "nullify my life."
I had a measurable BAC 24/7. I'd make myself a vodka/Red Bull before even getting out of bed, just so I'd stop shaking and having a fractal panic attack for long enough to get to the liquor store. Then I'd drink all day, on the job, didn't matter. The nature of my job meant this could've potentially put lives at risk. I didn't care. I was comfortable in my degeneracy. I alienated everyone who care about me including people on this very forum.
Things came to a head and I wound up homeless and then what felt like permanent crashing on a couch in a family member's home. I did home detox by buying a case of beer per day and drinking one less daily with each day that passed. I tried to cold turkey bupe and Valium and wound up in the psych ward after not sleeping for practically a week. I got out. I got into some proper mental health treatment instead of the croaker I'd been seeing to pick and choose my own meds. I got into therapy. Took care of an ancient DUI and got a car. Got a job and lost it.
Then I relapsed, wound up in a hotel room with a bottle of rotgut vodka and a 45, fully intending to blow my brains out. Had some kind of epiphany and shot up the room instead of myself. Spent a hot minute in jail, eventually got the charges dropped contingent on doing therapy. I did it.
Eventually found my way to the rooms of AA, something that I'd discounted for years as bullshit—I didn't care for the idea of being "powerless," I couldn't cotton to that first step. Once I did, things started to flow. The steps are in order for a reason and really do form a concrete framework.
Realizing I was powerless—which this entire thread speaks to, "sobriety not being possible"—it follows naturally that a Higher Power is necessary. Fortunately I believed in God already. But in some ways that was a disability because I thought knowing a lot about religion and the Bible would help me. Truly it didn't. I needed to ask for help from the heart.
And perhaps more than anything i needed the community of friends I found in AA. Now we hang out sober and do cool shit. Those two things would've never seemed to go together for me but now they do. We all work our sobriety "with fear and trembling" but with joy too. It is possible. The path there is long, winding, and dark but "with God all things are possible."
At some times I am even thankful that I went through all that shit because due to the program and community I found I have a better relationship with my Creator and with my fellow man. It is a tall order. But it can be done. All that is necessary is doing one positive thing at a time and truly reaching out for help. Hitting bottom may be necessary too but you are a human being with your own agency. Paradoxically, you have to make be the choice to embrace your powerlessness and hopelessness and take another path. It isn't easy but it works and is worthwhile.