Asking For Help

I guess I always knew I had a problem, I just didn’t want to admit it.

I could come up with a reason for everything: I was stressed, I was having a bad week, I deserved to relax, and I’d stop tomorrow.

Tomorrow turned into a lot of tomorrows.

After a while, pretty much everything revolved around using. I started lying to people about it, I stopped answering some phone calls. I wasn’t being the person I wanted to be, but I didn’t really know how to get back to being that person.

I tried stopping on my own a couple times. It didn’t work.

Finally, I got to the point where I knew I needed help. Honestly, I was embarrassed. I thought people were going to judge me or look at me differently.

But it wasn’t like that.

I met people who understood. I didn’t have to explain every little thing because they’d been through their own stuff.

I’m not going to say everything is perfect now because it isn’t. I still have bad days; I still get frustrated. But I’m not using, and that’s a pretty big deal for me.

I’m starting to talk to my family again. I’m trying to fix some of the things I messed up. I’m figuring out what to do with my time now that getting high isn’t the main thing in my life.

I still take it one day at a time.

Some days it’s one hour at a time.

But I’m here. And that’s more than I could say a while ago.

— Aiden