Soap MacTavish
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2010
- Messages
- 293
I'll try to condense my story as much as possible, but there is a point to the intro.
I'm writing this long introductory story as part question to you and part warning to others who may be on this path and can relate. It is a tale of addictions and mental disorders.
It starts out with teachers sending me to school psychologists for tests because they thought something was wrong with me. They thought this because I never paid attention in class nor could I if I tried, nor did I ever do any homework. (back then they were not as aware and hot on spotting ADD as they are now) The psychologists would all say the same thing; I'm smart, high i.q. so it's they don't know what is wrong and "he will grow out of it later."
I never grew out of it. I was not even able to follow a conversation or remember a persons name, I would forget what a person was talking about and drift in and out and feel nervous. And so early on I became socially awkward and I was alienated by my peers. Eventually I was alienated by the people I loved; my parents. My father(who could never deal with frustration) would occasionally beat me because they knew I was smart but just "was not applying myself". My dad "found no pleasure" in hitting me in the face and kicking me into a corner to get me to comply. All the while screaming at me with intense rage about how the world was going to eat me alive and filling me with his own distrusts and paranoid fears and rejection of society. The omnipresent threat of physical danger invaded the sanctuary of my home and shattered the final pillars of security in my mind. Here's the part where my daydream of 30 years begins. In a home this hostile there was nowhere to go except my daydream world full of the strange and amazing. Here I could hyper-focus and concentrate and control.
So right out of the gates of life I'm labeled as some misfit right away. I was cast out of normal world to the fringes of society, to the only subcultures that would have me, the outcasts in the garbage can of life. And so I was raised by wolves. And of course as the outcasts we are treated by society as such. There were a lot of rejection. I got into fights and impulsive behavior and lashing out at the world I longed to be a part of.
At an early age I learned to wear an armor, it was false bravado, I put on armor that looked like it was made of iron but really it was just a facade made of fear.
Nothing ever changed. Fear was always by my side. My inability to focus or remember anything got so bad eventually I failed a grade and had to repeat it in high school. No matter how hard I tried and no matter how high my resolve I was failing to stay focused or organized. I seemed to have very little control over my impulses. I was unable to read a single page of a book without reprocessing it 5 to 10 times. As a result I was unable to read a whole book in my life. I was also seemingly 100% unable to pass anything but the most remedial math classes.
I essentially flunked my way through high school for 5 years and then they just passed me to get me out. I was already into drugs at this point and had given up on fitting in and having any sort of normal life in society, my girlfriend who I loved dumped me. I was lost and now in terrible fucking fear of my future. So I didn't face my problems, I retreated, as I always have to the only safe place, my fantasy daydream world.
All of this resulted in a rapid loss of self esteem. After all, the way I saw it I must really be a stupid lazy retard like they say, since I didn't know my thought processes were any different than anyone elses. So here is the part where the final pillar of self esteem came crumbling down. I became a doormat. A pathetic people-pleaser. And eventually there was nothing but a hole, a vacuum that needed to be filled with material things to dull the pain and sorrow. And the daydream continued on for years. In the dream I did not have problems, it became a divergent construct of my fabricated reality.
My adult life eventually became a constant search for material things to posses and control and fill the hole. I eventually joined the marines and was in Iraq in the GW1 invasion and I was not prepared for the harsh realities of combat. I saw death and horrible things happen to bodies and became even more horrified and hollowed out and panicked. It made all life seem to have no worth. I went AWOL, told them what happened to me and that I was essentially shell-shocked and was dishonorably discharged.
I did what i had to, I escaped every chance I got, I wore masks, I told lies, I stole, I did whatever anyone wanted out of me. I felt there was no point to my existence. I did not feel anything and I abused numbing agents of all type to lessen the hold reality was trying to take on me, it became a constant battle.
Eventually I was hooked on every drug and in rehabs for every drug, in and out many times, and in AA and NA and I came to believe that I was what they told me in those rooms; powerless and hopeless. It didn't matter though, because even now I was still undiagnosed for ADD and did not know the root of all this hell I lived. I strayed back out many times and returned many times to no avail. I went to many shrinks and psyche wards and the doctors spent their time treating the RESULTS of my ADD but not the disorder itself. The depression and addictions and anxiety and rage were all a result of undiagnosed ADD which is the root of the damages and the hole that still needed feeding. Nothing ever changed.
So more years go by in my daydream. More brain damage. More relationships destroyed.
I eventually found a woman who was as damaged and sick as I was and fell instantly in love. We got pregnant because I felt I was so utterly worthless that was one way I could keep her, by knocking her up. So it happened. We got married and had 2 more unplanned kids. I eventually slowed down and the outward appearance was that I had slowed down and become more stable, when really it was just another mask and internally I was in pure terror of being discovered who I really was and that I hadn't actually changed. My fear of success helped me shy away from every good chance that came my way. The internal compression of all this pain became too much and I started back on smack again and in no time back in rehab again and in no time lost my job again and was homeless and penniless and living under bridges and eating garbage.
I eventually pulled myself up out of there with the help of the VA and some AA people and found my way back in early 07. By a miracle I ended up getting a good job and living back with my wife and kids. Still even here I am undiagnosed as ADD. I was seeing many psychiatrists and psychologists again and getting treated for all my results of undiagnosed ADD again and again ADD is totally overlooked and no one catches it nor do I have any idea I have it.
I kept wondering why after so many years of making the same mistakes and foolish impulsive bad decisions I never seemed to learn from it. How could this be? Was I an addict and that's that? I never believed it was that simple.
The docs put band aides on me but the core was left untreated. Nothing changed. I didn't get better. I stayed off hard drugs and found a new legal one; food. I started overeating and binging on food to fill the hole and now I wore my undiagnosed mental disease for all to see. I started including whiskey in the mix and constant video gaming and constant masturbation and ANY other distraction I could get my hands on to get my mind away from ME.
And all the while, years and years later I am still making terrible decisions and having evidently no impulse control. I might have been under treatment for depression and anxiety but there was no treatment for bad decision making and poor impulse control that I ever heard of or was offered (Here is the ADD causing it all and being left untreated again) So again, nothing really changed.
My poor judgment and impulse control and binge eating and drinking and now nearly constant numbing of my feelings again I felt I was at a point where I was spiraling down again totally out of control. It seemed like there was no human power that could end my suffering. And then it all collapsed, my poor judgment and constant distance from reality and fear of human interaction and public speaking ended up costing me my good job.
I eventually ended up 6 months ago at the shrinks again, and this time, I was totally honest and she put the puzzle pieces together, I took some tests and got diagnosed with ADD and PTSD.
So after all that reading here is where the new trouble begins. I was given a script of Adderall and by God they were right, I have been walking around like a blind man, and they really have found my problem. For the first time in my life I was able to still my mind and see through all the static and fog and chatter with laser efficiency. The effect was instant and breathtaking. Never had I seen or even known of this world before where there is order and simplicity and focus and completion and follow through and memorization and math. A beam of light cracked though the false bravado and the armor of self preservation I had worn for 30 years. And almost more importantly I finally knew what happened to me all those years ago and how I ended up in all that muck. The puzzle pieces came flying at me at light speed and it all made perfect sense now, as the days went on more and more about my life now added up.
And now finally I felt together and whole and some self esteem in returning to my long dead soul like the waters of life. I had started putting my relationships back on track and all was looking good. I had taken stands against people that before adderall I would have shrunk to and allowed myself to be walked on. I had a sense of self worth growing and all the fat from overeating was coming off pounds and pounds because Adderall even made it so I could eat normally, or not at all if I wanted to lose weight.
Control over my destiny even felt like it was close at hand and I experienced a genuine transformation into another person that actually had respect for himself and liked himself for the very first time. I felt like facing the realities of my life and dealing with problems head on and I did so for a while.
I had finally found the panacea to all my ills. Or had I?
Soon enough I made a few bad descisions and used the power of adderall in a negative way. I raged out with fury against the people I viewed as having a hand in my downfall. My parents. I accused THEM of being the ones who caused me to never be able to live up to my potential. And I accused my father as having ADD himself. Which may be true but I went into a rage and I attacked a lot of things about these 2 people who didn't know any better either. They might have deserved the verbal lashing but it went down bad. It felt all wrong.
Well they upped my dose pretty quickly, and pretty quickly the skills I learned as an addict were in full swing again and I was off. Here is the part where the drug starts having negative effects. I always knew I was taking more than I needed. I could have gotten by with 30mgs a day but I was offered 60, so I went with 60. Since if 1 is good then 2 is better.
Anyway here I am today and I am spiraled out of control with this drug. I take so much of it now, waaaay more than prescribed and it almost has the opposite effect now and it scatters my mind and trashes my body. I am dependent physically and mentally and currently caught up in what looks like another addiction. Or is it?
I desperately want to regain control of this substance and be able to use it as directed since I fear going back to that world or darkness from which I came. With adderall I feel like I could -- if I can control my intake -- reach my potentials and goals but without it I am certainly doomed. I am a genuine case of ADD and going back to that daydream of a life is scarier than this addiction right now.
What do you think I should do?
What came first and what am I? An addict or an ADD sufferer? Or both?
Bottom line is do you think I can learn from my experiences now and reign this abuse in and regain control over it and my life?
Any insight or experience would be greatly appreciated.
I'm writing this long introductory story as part question to you and part warning to others who may be on this path and can relate. It is a tale of addictions and mental disorders.
It starts out with teachers sending me to school psychologists for tests because they thought something was wrong with me. They thought this because I never paid attention in class nor could I if I tried, nor did I ever do any homework. (back then they were not as aware and hot on spotting ADD as they are now) The psychologists would all say the same thing; I'm smart, high i.q. so it's they don't know what is wrong and "he will grow out of it later."
I never grew out of it. I was not even able to follow a conversation or remember a persons name, I would forget what a person was talking about and drift in and out and feel nervous. And so early on I became socially awkward and I was alienated by my peers. Eventually I was alienated by the people I loved; my parents. My father(who could never deal with frustration) would occasionally beat me because they knew I was smart but just "was not applying myself". My dad "found no pleasure" in hitting me in the face and kicking me into a corner to get me to comply. All the while screaming at me with intense rage about how the world was going to eat me alive and filling me with his own distrusts and paranoid fears and rejection of society. The omnipresent threat of physical danger invaded the sanctuary of my home and shattered the final pillars of security in my mind. Here's the part where my daydream of 30 years begins. In a home this hostile there was nowhere to go except my daydream world full of the strange and amazing. Here I could hyper-focus and concentrate and control.
So right out of the gates of life I'm labeled as some misfit right away. I was cast out of normal world to the fringes of society, to the only subcultures that would have me, the outcasts in the garbage can of life. And so I was raised by wolves. And of course as the outcasts we are treated by society as such. There were a lot of rejection. I got into fights and impulsive behavior and lashing out at the world I longed to be a part of.
At an early age I learned to wear an armor, it was false bravado, I put on armor that looked like it was made of iron but really it was just a facade made of fear.
Nothing ever changed. Fear was always by my side. My inability to focus or remember anything got so bad eventually I failed a grade and had to repeat it in high school. No matter how hard I tried and no matter how high my resolve I was failing to stay focused or organized. I seemed to have very little control over my impulses. I was unable to read a single page of a book without reprocessing it 5 to 10 times. As a result I was unable to read a whole book in my life. I was also seemingly 100% unable to pass anything but the most remedial math classes.
I essentially flunked my way through high school for 5 years and then they just passed me to get me out. I was already into drugs at this point and had given up on fitting in and having any sort of normal life in society, my girlfriend who I loved dumped me. I was lost and now in terrible fucking fear of my future. So I didn't face my problems, I retreated, as I always have to the only safe place, my fantasy daydream world.
All of this resulted in a rapid loss of self esteem. After all, the way I saw it I must really be a stupid lazy retard like they say, since I didn't know my thought processes were any different than anyone elses. So here is the part where the final pillar of self esteem came crumbling down. I became a doormat. A pathetic people-pleaser. And eventually there was nothing but a hole, a vacuum that needed to be filled with material things to dull the pain and sorrow. And the daydream continued on for years. In the dream I did not have problems, it became a divergent construct of my fabricated reality.
My adult life eventually became a constant search for material things to posses and control and fill the hole. I eventually joined the marines and was in Iraq in the GW1 invasion and I was not prepared for the harsh realities of combat. I saw death and horrible things happen to bodies and became even more horrified and hollowed out and panicked. It made all life seem to have no worth. I went AWOL, told them what happened to me and that I was essentially shell-shocked and was dishonorably discharged.
I did what i had to, I escaped every chance I got, I wore masks, I told lies, I stole, I did whatever anyone wanted out of me. I felt there was no point to my existence. I did not feel anything and I abused numbing agents of all type to lessen the hold reality was trying to take on me, it became a constant battle.
Eventually I was hooked on every drug and in rehabs for every drug, in and out many times, and in AA and NA and I came to believe that I was what they told me in those rooms; powerless and hopeless. It didn't matter though, because even now I was still undiagnosed for ADD and did not know the root of all this hell I lived. I strayed back out many times and returned many times to no avail. I went to many shrinks and psyche wards and the doctors spent their time treating the RESULTS of my ADD but not the disorder itself. The depression and addictions and anxiety and rage were all a result of undiagnosed ADD which is the root of the damages and the hole that still needed feeding. Nothing ever changed.
So more years go by in my daydream. More brain damage. More relationships destroyed.
I eventually found a woman who was as damaged and sick as I was and fell instantly in love. We got pregnant because I felt I was so utterly worthless that was one way I could keep her, by knocking her up. So it happened. We got married and had 2 more unplanned kids. I eventually slowed down and the outward appearance was that I had slowed down and become more stable, when really it was just another mask and internally I was in pure terror of being discovered who I really was and that I hadn't actually changed. My fear of success helped me shy away from every good chance that came my way. The internal compression of all this pain became too much and I started back on smack again and in no time back in rehab again and in no time lost my job again and was homeless and penniless and living under bridges and eating garbage.
I eventually pulled myself up out of there with the help of the VA and some AA people and found my way back in early 07. By a miracle I ended up getting a good job and living back with my wife and kids. Still even here I am undiagnosed as ADD. I was seeing many psychiatrists and psychologists again and getting treated for all my results of undiagnosed ADD again and again ADD is totally overlooked and no one catches it nor do I have any idea I have it.
I kept wondering why after so many years of making the same mistakes and foolish impulsive bad decisions I never seemed to learn from it. How could this be? Was I an addict and that's that? I never believed it was that simple.
The docs put band aides on me but the core was left untreated. Nothing changed. I didn't get better. I stayed off hard drugs and found a new legal one; food. I started overeating and binging on food to fill the hole and now I wore my undiagnosed mental disease for all to see. I started including whiskey in the mix and constant video gaming and constant masturbation and ANY other distraction I could get my hands on to get my mind away from ME.
And all the while, years and years later I am still making terrible decisions and having evidently no impulse control. I might have been under treatment for depression and anxiety but there was no treatment for bad decision making and poor impulse control that I ever heard of or was offered (Here is the ADD causing it all and being left untreated again) So again, nothing really changed.
My poor judgment and impulse control and binge eating and drinking and now nearly constant numbing of my feelings again I felt I was at a point where I was spiraling down again totally out of control. It seemed like there was no human power that could end my suffering. And then it all collapsed, my poor judgment and constant distance from reality and fear of human interaction and public speaking ended up costing me my good job.
I eventually ended up 6 months ago at the shrinks again, and this time, I was totally honest and she put the puzzle pieces together, I took some tests and got diagnosed with ADD and PTSD.
So after all that reading here is where the new trouble begins. I was given a script of Adderall and by God they were right, I have been walking around like a blind man, and they really have found my problem. For the first time in my life I was able to still my mind and see through all the static and fog and chatter with laser efficiency. The effect was instant and breathtaking. Never had I seen or even known of this world before where there is order and simplicity and focus and completion and follow through and memorization and math. A beam of light cracked though the false bravado and the armor of self preservation I had worn for 30 years. And almost more importantly I finally knew what happened to me all those years ago and how I ended up in all that muck. The puzzle pieces came flying at me at light speed and it all made perfect sense now, as the days went on more and more about my life now added up.
And now finally I felt together and whole and some self esteem in returning to my long dead soul like the waters of life. I had started putting my relationships back on track and all was looking good. I had taken stands against people that before adderall I would have shrunk to and allowed myself to be walked on. I had a sense of self worth growing and all the fat from overeating was coming off pounds and pounds because Adderall even made it so I could eat normally, or not at all if I wanted to lose weight.
Control over my destiny even felt like it was close at hand and I experienced a genuine transformation into another person that actually had respect for himself and liked himself for the very first time. I felt like facing the realities of my life and dealing with problems head on and I did so for a while.
I had finally found the panacea to all my ills. Or had I?
Soon enough I made a few bad descisions and used the power of adderall in a negative way. I raged out with fury against the people I viewed as having a hand in my downfall. My parents. I accused THEM of being the ones who caused me to never be able to live up to my potential. And I accused my father as having ADD himself. Which may be true but I went into a rage and I attacked a lot of things about these 2 people who didn't know any better either. They might have deserved the verbal lashing but it went down bad. It felt all wrong.
Well they upped my dose pretty quickly, and pretty quickly the skills I learned as an addict were in full swing again and I was off. Here is the part where the drug starts having negative effects. I always knew I was taking more than I needed. I could have gotten by with 30mgs a day but I was offered 60, so I went with 60. Since if 1 is good then 2 is better.
Anyway here I am today and I am spiraled out of control with this drug. I take so much of it now, waaaay more than prescribed and it almost has the opposite effect now and it scatters my mind and trashes my body. I am dependent physically and mentally and currently caught up in what looks like another addiction. Or is it?
I desperately want to regain control of this substance and be able to use it as directed since I fear going back to that world or darkness from which I came. With adderall I feel like I could -- if I can control my intake -- reach my potentials and goals but without it I am certainly doomed. I am a genuine case of ADD and going back to that daydream of a life is scarier than this addiction right now.
What do you think I should do?
What came first and what am I? An addict or an ADD sufferer? Or both?
Bottom line is do you think I can learn from my experiences now and reign this abuse in and regain control over it and my life?
Any insight or experience would be greatly appreciated.
