Two years ago I decided it was time to get clean.
by Lauren Belmonte
To be truthful, I don’t entirely understand how I made that move; some days it still seems impossible that I’m sitting here completely divorced from a lifestyle that defined me not so long ago. If I had one wish regarding my sobriety now, I’d wish I could nail down and solidify the formula that got me here, so that others might be able to apply it themselves (Genie of the Lamp, please turn addiction into algebra?) The closest I can come to explaining it, is that some part of me that normally hides deep within - the most basal survival instinct, perhaps? - rose to the surface that day out of pure necessity, and told me “this is the day that this ends.” It felt as much an involuntary reflex as it did an intentional act, and it’s hard to teach others how to do something I’m not entirely convinced I did on my own. All I can really do is tell them how it happened for me and assure them that no matter how far off or impossible it feels now, it’s safe to hope their day will come, too.
Too often we underestimate the force of our own will to survive. The funny thing about the way our brains and bodies fight for survival is that they can be very smart, and very stupid at the same time. So many functions of each seem counterintuitive, and result in what is essentially the opposite of what we want. We have these survival-based impulses and tendencies that are part of our DNA, but are not as well-suited for the current version of humanity as they were when life was about nothing BUT survival.
Take pain, for example. Pain sucks! We hate it, and we go to great lengths to minimize and silence it, when really we have to feel it to survive. The things that erase our pain are often fiercely addictive, and cause great harm despite how good they feel.
How about starvation mode? Say we go a full day without food. While we might know a meal is eventually coming, our bodies interpret the deprivation as a harbinger of future scarcity. In response to this, we start storing whatever we do consume as fat in anticipation of being low on fuel for the foreseeable future.
Addiction creates a similar sort of conundrum. When we become addicted to something, our minds and bodies becoming convinced as a collective unit that we need that thing to be okay. Part of us then internalizes that we must need it to survive, and that belief plants strong roots within our subconscious. (In recovery they refer to these as anchors.) Of course logic dictates that we don’t actually need it to live, and yet we begin to behave as if we do because part of us believes that to be true. This creates a deep-seated fear of sobriety, and trying to apply logic to fear is like putting gas in an electric car or trying to erase permanent marker off of a whiteboard.
For almost 10 years my life revolved around that fear. I made every decision according to what that fear commanded. No matter how much I may have wanted to stop at times, I didn’t really believe that I could stop; I couldn’t picture ever wanting it enough to follow through. How could i stop something that I needed so much?
People who are struck by lightning often describe feeling an electrical charge around them right before the strike, and that day when I woke up the air around me felt so charged with energy I struggled to breathe it.
I’d lost my job a week or so before, and had since spent my days pacing around the house, fighting off panic attacks. My anxiety felt like it was shredding my insides while my depression had me pinned down, helpless. Every time I thought about performing the functions necessary to secure another job before I blew what savings I had on dope, I felt physically ill because I knew I’d never make it.
The jig, to put it simply, was up. After so many years keeping the balancing act going, something had finally knocked the bottom out. I’d had a feeling it was coming soon in the weeks prior, which had made for some of the darkest, loneliest and most desperate days I’d ever experienced.
Faking normalcy while cloaked in a blanket of impending doom took a much heavier toll than the struggle of living on the street had. Out there I was often hungry, hot, cold, sick, scared, angry, but getting high shut those things off, and it was easy to justify using when everyone around me was doing it, too. When I scaled it back to appear sober and live at my parents house, I had every creature comfort I needed - but I was using alone, in secret, and that brought with it an unprecedented level of loneliness that made the idea of rehab start to seem inviting. Could it really be much worse than what I was dealing with?
But I was still having trouble making the move. Even after losing my job, seemingly the last thing I had worth fighting for, I couldn’t quite get myself to leap. My basest survival instinct was still clinging to that belief that to be okay I needed those drugs.
That day, though…that day I woke up slipping. After so long fighting to stay in the game, suddenly I felt myself barreling toward the Boss Level at an alarming speed. My chest felt heavy, I couldn’t sit still. I looked at what dope I had, and though it wasn’t as much as I thought I’d left myself (it never was) it was enough to last most of the day if I stretched it. I called and messaged my dealer; no answer. This was not unusual, nor was it unusual to start experiencing early stage withdrawal by the time he got to me - but for some reason on this particular day the prospect of going through that was no longer within the boundaries of what I could endure.
After lecturing myself that this day was no different than any of the others, I settled in to wait. Or at least I tried to settle. I sprinkled what was left of my fent onto a piece of foil, added a little shard of meth (I never needed much of that) held the flame underneath, and breathed the smoke that billowed up from it as deep as I could.
Hold… release.
That was when I noticed there was no relief.
I hit it again. Still no relief.
I called the dealer again. I texted:
“Hey, hmu as soon as you can, I’ll be out before tonight so kind of a 9-1-1 here lol.” (I was about as far from LOLing as one can be)
And I waited. My heart started beating faster. Had I put more meth on there than I thought?
I’d been smoking sitting cross-legged on the bed but suddenly I couldn’t sit there anymore, and I’ll never forget the aggression with which I launched myself off the bed, almost like my body did it without me even telling it how to move.
What the f*%# was happening right now? These drugs were supposed to mute the feelings and shove them into a box I can deal with later (or not) but now those feelings were all standing right in front of me, digging in their heels and talking at me all at once. Their collective voices created a storm cloud that was now battering me with a downpouring of unavoidable truths and the thunderously loud realization that my addiction, the one thing I’d been loyal to, was not even on my side anymore.
And there, in that devastating moment, is where the shift happened- where my will to survive switched allegiances. I’d been clinging to drugs to protect myself, and all it had really been doing was destroying my natural shields against pain, leaving me wide open and vulnerable. It was all out in the open now. The writing was all over the wall, and I no longer had the energy to erase it. The Boss Level was now the only one left to play, and it was time to admit I didn’t know how the controller worked and hand it to some people who did.
I still feel so lucky that that shift took place that day; I truly don’t feel it was voluntary on my part. I’ve made many voluntary choices since then to remain on this path, but I felt so far removed from everything that happened that day that it feels disingenuous to say my own will power helped me decide. From the moment I jumped off the bed like a lunatic until I checked into treatment, it was like it was all unfolding while I watched from inside a body I was barely even controlling - and after that it all just… fell into place.
I definitely had some difficult moments where I resisted being told what to do or where the addictive voice almost coaxed me into going home too soon. But the longer I stayed with it, the more things I got back that I’d lost, and the more trouble I began to have picturing giving all that up again.
I know now getting high would never be the same for me if I were to do it, and I really struggled with that some days; my primary coping mechanism for so many years, the one thing I always turned to, no longer available to me. It felt like I’d made it to the end of a long road and was now standing at the edge of a cliff - and the jump in front of me seemed like it might be a bigger leap than I could make. But when I turned to look behind me I saw the path I’d come down was already grown over, so I couldn’t go back that way either (at least not without great difficulty.) The way forward was uncertain but when I looked that way I saw light; the way backward was a dark, tangled mess I no longer had the energy to drag myself through.
I’m so glad I leapt, and so grateful to everyone who was there to catch me on the other side and all who have helped illuminate the road thereafter. I hope that with every post I share I create another light source for those who are still trying to find their way.
Cheers to two years.
