A Journey from Addiction to Recovery

Introduction - Refusing to Drown

My dear reader. I want you to know that you have kept me alive for about three years. Taking you on this journey, hoping that my story could maybe help you or someone you know, has kept me going. It has inspired me to learn, grow, be open, do the hard work, and keep writing my happily ever after story…

When I began writing this memoir, I was suicidal. My life, as I had known it, was ending. I was losing everything that I held dear… or what I thought was dear anyway. I was hitting bottom financially, emotionally, spiritually, and alcoholically. I was, for all intents and purposes, experiencing insanity.

I have been writing this memoir for seven years. I never in a million years thought it would take that long to get to the other side of where I was when I began writing. I had many setbacks, challenges and have often felt like giving up. But I didn't. I had to finish writing this memoir!

I have been tempted to go back and edit out some of the details due to my shame and embarrassment, but that would not be honest. Sugarcoating the details to save face would not be doing anyone any favors. It is raw, it is honest, and it is real. And it is a true depiction of the real-time struggle that those who have experienced chronic trauma have to swim through to heal.

I am apologizing in advance for my language in the first part of this book. I am not the same person I was seven years ago, although my potty mouth remains. That is something I inherited from my birth-mother. I am always a work in progress.

Aside from grammar and flow, the writing has not been edited.

I feel privileged that you are reading this memoir and that I can somehow be a small part of your own journey to a place of wholeness. I hope you, too, refuse to let yourself drown in a bottle, in an abusive relationship, or in the sea of crap that life tends to throw at us.

Refusing to drown is a choice we all make every day, one day at a time. If I can make it to the shores of sanity and a relatively happy life, I believe that it is possible for anyone who has a desire for more!

I quit

December 04, 2013

I quit. I failed. I surrender. I am waving the proverbial white flag. I give up. My life has become a complete and utter unmanageable, degrading, debaucherous mess! Did I say I quit? Yeah, this shit isn't working for me. My life, as I know (knew) it, is not working for me.

Why did I fail? Where in the hell did I go wrong? When did I ever think I was going right?

Checking out sounds really good right now. Yes, I said it. And you are not reading my memoirs as I remember them; you are reading some real-time shit right here! I am not starting from the beginning of my life, telling you what I went through and how I am this awesome person now. Save that shit for the self-help books and AA meetings.

You want an inspiring story, I know myself well, and you will get it in the end. You have to. How I get there and what has to happen before the end of this memoir is beyond what I even know right now. But I know my history, I know my story, and I damn well know it is what has gotten me to this point..... I do have a plan.

You see, checking out has to be planned well. I have 3 kids that I need to provide for. Insurance has to pan out. If you commit suicide, they don't cover that crazy shit so it has to look like an accident. So here is my plan and I think it is brilliant.

This city (New Orleans, Louisiana) is full of drug addicts, thugs, and hell, it has one of the country's highest murder rates. I don't have the balls to throw myself into the Mississippi River, where I know I would just go up missing. But you know, those currents can do funny things, so I don't want to risk screwing this up too.

I will pay a homeless drug addict $500 or maybe even $1000 to beat the shit out of me, knock me out and throw my ass in the River. Wholly believable and come on, lets face it, the New Orleans Police Department won't give two shits about another murder around this city.

Well, but then I am white, so maybe they will. $1500 to make it look really, really good.

But you know what? That is just not an option. Tomorrow is a new day.