1 year!

I can't believe that today is 1 year clean and sober. Looking back it seems like time has flown by but daily it feels like it's been dragging forever. It's been a long journey to hell and back over the past year. Starting off with severe depression and anxiety. My psychiatrist put me on antipsychotic meds and told me I wasn't allowed to use on them. I quit everything cold turkey and started the meds. The next night I was in the ER with muscle spasms as a side effect from the medication and was told to stop it. 2 days later I woke up and couldn't stop shaking. I finally called and checked myself into UNI where I stayed for 2 weeks. My anxiety was so high that I don't even recall noticing any detoxing. Anxiety was so high when I was discharged that I tried to check myself back in.

After UNI, I started going to meetings. I needed something to keep me off of what I was using. I knew that if I started again I could likely die from either an overdose or spiraling down to a suicide attempt from my depression. I walked into recovery rooms in such immense pain and the lowest point of my life. For the first 4 months of sobriety I practically lived in the rooms. A therapist I saw told me I was very lucky I hadn't overdosed on a number of occasions from how excessive my using was. I've been deathly afraid to use again, knowing where it would take me.

It's been such a long year but I've been trying to put in a bunch of effort to recover and grow. To work through my issues and my addictions. It's been hell to work through and much harder than I thought. But.. It's working. It's 1 year later and I am still clean and sober. I walked in the rooms with pain and death in my eyes and heart and now I have some hope that I don't have to be in the position I was before. I'm slowly becoming a different person and already am feeling like I am such a different person than when I first got sober. The healing process is a lifetime journey but is already paying off in my life. I can function, I can work, I don't have to escape life. Learning to feel and cope with emotions is like pulling teeth for me, but I am finally feeling emotions and not using whatever I can find to escape them. I have a Higher Power in my life that I pray to every day now and am learning to live life on life's terms. I am learning to love and be open.

Surprisingly enough, I quit smoking. I thought I would wait longer before trying to quit but for some reason I decided to and today is 15 days without cigarettes now. Quitting smoking feels very similar to quitting everything else.

It's been such a long journey with so many trial, twists and turns so far but I am very proud of how far I've come and what I've been able to do in the past year. It's hell, but I've made it through thus far. Someone said once that religious people are afraid of hell, spiritual people have lived there. I've definitely lived in hell for much longer than I want, but I need to look back on it and not regret my life. It's brought me to where I am today and I am finally learning to be myself and be okay with that. I have a long way to go and I finally have some hope in my life.

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but just for today I am going to stay sober and pray for help to stay sober and be able to help other people.