This entire article is fantastic, and hell, this could be me too. 18 months sober and grateful for every day of it. "For me, a healthy fear of relapse helps keep me sober. Most people don’t plan their relapse – it can happen on a random Tuesday night when you go to the corner store to get Sour Patch Kids and cigarettes and end up with a jug of wine. Addiction is a progressive disease, which means that it gets worse with time. A lot of non-addicts don’t want to talk about it that way, acknowledge it’s not as easy as “putting down the bottle.” We have to learn to deal with stuff like going to a dinner party and passing up the wine. We have to re-learn how to function in society. We have to re-program ourselves." "When a celebrity dies of an overdose, people usually lament the loss of talent, not the actual person. In Monteith’s case, people wonder how they’ll write Finn out of Glee. This is the truth for any addict — a young addict, especially, because we are known to be selfish and destructive. The stigma around addiction still moves the conversation toward “he did it to himself” like you can turn off addiction whenever you want. The danger in this type of thinking is that it stops dialogue surrounding healthy ways to deal with addiction. I understand the cynicism. We usually are toxic people when actively using, but the sentiment trivializes our struggle."--Tyler Gillespie
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 03:53:42 +0000
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