Hey everybody! I feel like this site is useless without telling you a story about someone struggling with an addiction and mental health issues and showing you real results, so here is my story. I was born a healthy boy on October 1st, 2002, in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. My father was a Marine, and my mom was a pharmaceutical representative for Pfizer (don't worry, she didn't sell any of the bad drugs). We lived in California for a few years after I was born, but we moved back to Virginia before I started school. I was an only child, but luckily, I was decent at making friends in school, so I had lots of people to talk to. However, whenever I was home, I felt alone and lived in my imagination to keep my mind occupied. Once I got to middle school, I experienced some what I would call "light' bullying, it wasn't pleasant but I also didn't dread school because of it. Kids would make fun of my voice and call me gay because it was so high pitched, and I got made fun of for my face being so red, like a tomato (tomato boy). I still felt pretty normal though; I didn't feel like I was "messed up" or "different" at this point. In high school, I found my crowd of friends through playing soccer and football, and they took me under their wings, and I felt like I belonged. We would hang out on Friday nights and Saturdays, usually drinking until we couldn't anymore and smoking pot. Drinking was fun, but once I was introduced to pot, I couldn't get enough of it. At this point, I became depressed through smoking pot,, and my first real girlfriend broke up with me, and I was devastated. I went from only smoking at night to smoking as much as I possibly could so that I could always be high. Then I started to learn about other, better drugs through my friends and social media and whatnot until I got to what I like to call the "rummaging" phase, where you start looking through purses and medicine cabinets for prescription drugs that will get you high. During my rummaging phase, I found Adderall and Oxycontin, which were prescribed to my father. The Adderall was good, but the Oxy took me to a different level. It was the most amazing feeling I had ever felt. I felt relaxed and safe, and I felt okay. It wasn't until I took Oxy for the first time that I realized that I didn't always feel okay. I realized that I was missing something, and I learned that Oxy was that thing (Oxy was not what I was missing, but that's what I concurred at the time). I started taking Oxy religiously, and once you get into harder drugs, it's much harder to hide it. I'm 16 now, Junior year is about to start, and I feel worse than I've ever felt. I'm constantly depressed because I ran out of the prescriptions and I have no drug dealer and no money. I ended up taking close to 120 Benadryl to try to kill myself. I woke up the next morning and got to school somehow, and I was stumbling around the halls, hallucinating like crazy. A teacher called the nurse, and they got a wheelchair and brought me to the nurse's office where a cop and the principal met me. They realized how high I was and called an ambulance to get me. Once I got to the hospital, nobody knew what was wrong with me (I told the cop and nurse that I was on LSD, not a fatal dose of Benadryl). I started twisting myself around in the cords and IVs that were attached and I was completely tangled up with blood flying everywhere from ripping out my IVs. I was put into a medically induced coma by the doctors and I woke up about 2 days later in a different hospital. They sent me to the Psych Unit where I spent a week, then went home. I started having trouble with the school until I was eventually kicked off the football team and kicked out of school, to which my parents responded by sending me to a rehab in California. I thought I would go there for a short time and then come home, but I was very wrong. I was at Newport Academy for 40 days, then I was sent to Turnbridge in New Haven, Connecticut, where I stayed for 10 months. I relapsed all the time at Turnbridge because I found out that they don't really kick people out for getting high. I relapsed on my 18th birthday at Turnbridge to celebrate, and when I got caught, I was brought to the program director's office. He informed me that since I had relapsed and I was now 18, I would be going to my first big boy rehab. I was sent to the Plymouth House in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I was there for 4 months, went to a sober house in Portland, Maine, relapsed, went back to the Plymouth house for 2 weeks, and then went to a new sober house in Portland. At this point, I had been either in rehabs or sober living houses non-stop for over a year, and I decided that I didn't want to anymore. I found a girl on Tinder, said "She'll do," and moved in with her. I spent the next 2 years of my life doing things I didn't think were possible, like smoking crack, overdosing on fentanyl, and using needles. Once we broke up, I moved back home with my parents, who were under the impression that I was doing okay. I immediately found a drug dealer and started using opioids more than I ever had before. I felt like crap when I was sober, and I also started to feel like crap when I was high. My solution had stopped working, and I wanted out. I went to a clinic and started taking Suboxone. Suboxone is so good at its job that I thought I wasn't a drug addict anymore (haha). I decided to get off suboxone, and once I got through the withdrawals, I was met by my addiction, just as strong as before, waiting for me. I thought about what I would do to not get high again. I knew that AA and NA worked for some people, but it hadn't worked for me. I knew that therapy helped some people, but I had had therapists for the better part of 4 years, and they didn't help me. I forget exactly how it happened, but I was introduced to David Goggins's YouTube videos and his book. I was amazed, and I started following his instructions. I ate clean, I started working out, and I stopped wasting time. Every waking second that I had became work. I stopped being lazy, and I started getting to work on myself. About two weeks into my journey of self-improvement, I did some reflection on the work I had done. It became apparent that I hadn't craved drugs once! I wasn't sad or anxious at all! I realized that working hard, not wasting time, and not being lazy directly helped me to no longer crave drugs, my life was more fulfilling, and I wasn't depressed and worried. It may not be the answer that you are looking for; you might be looking for the answer that tells you to do something easy, but all the things in life that are worth doing don't come easy.
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