Compulsive smoking, compulsive eating, compulsive drug-taking. Throughout most of my adult life, I had compulsions. I grew up learning not to like myself very much. What few attempts there were to start conversations with girls in study hall ended about as well as you might imagine. I was afraid to stand up to the schoolyard bullies. Where I went to school: reading, crying, and being uncoordinated? Not exactly a campaign platform upon which one might run for class president. I was too uncoordinated to compete in sports, too sensitive not to start bawling when the teachers yelled. As a kid, I’d bring home stacks of books from the library … any fantasy world was worth escaping toward. This desire to be someone different started young. I got high on meth because I wanted to morph into a completely different person. I never got high on meth in order to become a high-on-meth version of myself. It was my attempt at a solution to my problems. If I am no longer alone, it means you are not alone, either. Perhaps it may help you understand matters a little better. But, to those of you who know and love an addict, hopeless though he or she may appear: This article is for you. So to the fellow addict: You may get as much from learning my story as I would get from learning yours.

Yet at my core I consider myself a garden-variety recovered drug addict. Today, I am a self-defense instructor, a budding entrepreneur, a volunteer first responder, a friend and family member. I spent 11 years addicted to methamphetamine and have now been clean for nine.

Discussion board about meth addiction