I fell head first into addiction in a matter of months. It did not think about it at the time, after all I'd survived hadn't I? That is the most important thing wasn't it? As so, I could only bring myself to assess.
I could not sit up,nor could I lay down without the swirling mental turmoil in my head, of which I could not summon any control,nor relief,and after previously thinking myself a strong person,and I was(once.) But now,
the rushes of extreme adrenaline,as if I were on a roller coaster came. I could not cry,nor could I laugh. And no matter how much I reassured myself that I had at least lived thru it...the images of the cold bluntness of the pistol held to my temple kept returning out of nowhere with all its promise to bringing death. Each time,I shuddered at how close I'd come,and questioned how I'd managed to survive,then I tried to reassure myself, that it had to have been due to my having survived the many extreme incidents in my childhood,somehow wanting to give justifiable reason for it all,yet here I was.
Counseling? Why? I am alive! I just couldn't think nor face anything else,then.
I was in survivor mode,and yet I was scared to death of dying,and very afraid of living.
So with alcohol being a known depressant, and readily available, I indulged freely. Same w/Xanax or any other anxiety reducing drug(a depressant)...I had to have some kind of relief,even if it was self-medicated,or else I couldn't nor wouldn't have gotten thru it. The relief it(alcohol) brought was kind of like temporarily dying,yet coming back to life,once I'd slept it off,and so the cycle began.
I was all alone in this thing...my marriage had ended as a result,and it just so happened that the office where I had worked closed shortly thereafter this insanity all began. I was transfered to a new town many miles away from the scene of the crime(at the time,I thought it to be a godsend.) It was 4 years before I sought couseling,and went into a treatment center. I was never comfortable with any of it...but managed to get sober and quite temporarily
brain-washed with the AA program for 2 years...,when I relapsed back into drinking. It has been an off again on again thing for me ever since. I did not cry for ten long years,nor did I date the opposite sex for ten long years,because it seemed repulsive to me. I finally married again, and have been for 10 yrs. and now with two kids later...Today,I know that I am better,than I was in the beginning,after the trauma.
I still feel like the "odd man (person) out" most of the time,because no one can really understand,unless they've lived it.
Only one counselor (a unlicensed but well informed therapist in PTSD) has helped me understand from where I'd come...with AA it is all about the booze...and nothing else,with doctors it is either no pills or only pills,etc.
At one time,the day that I no longer carried my gun vigilantly was a day for celebration for me,when I called and told my mother...Of course she tried to understand,but I knew she was just going along with me to my frustrated mind...I wanted more from her. I needed more,and it was then that I understood what the old timers had meant by saying "it is a root hog or die world,"and "if you don't help yourself no one else will."
In the mean time, I doubted that most could hack what I'd lived thru/with the (unnamed to me)turmoil I lived with daily in my head,and I felt those things were outside of me,and that I had no control. Actually, I did not. I wanted back what I'd lost and they had.
I saw myself being jealous of the happy go lucky,and of those who'd never
been exposed to the demons of complete soul sickness,as I.
I thought,I used to be happy go lucky...why should they get off scott free?
It was a very bad time in my life...being so caught up in such a downward unpredictable spiral...but it is still not over,and I am convinced now,that it never will be completely over. I live with it,is all.
I have only hit on the tip of the iceberg here, regarding my journey thru hell,as most on here can easily fill in the blanks without my telling them,but I am now convinced that after twenty years of struggle since...that one never completely recovers but only learns to live with it,and cope with all of it,as best as one can.
It is crazy how the thoughts of suicide had/have often crept in...with so much desire to survive involved. Yet as long as it is a just a thought,(as I've been told) ...then that is all it is (a thought.)
I can take comfort in this forum for I know,that I am not alone. The next time I go out, I will remember that.