Men who fell into addiction…what’s your story?

41 comments

  3. Ahhh, let me tell you a story about a man named u/dblstkd123. Shortened version: Did the usual drugs in High school: alcohol, weed, shrooms, acid. Met a girl and began smoking. Joined the military, moved to California, got married, had a kid. Got hooked on meth and cocaine. Got caught snorting lines in the bathroom stall next to an officer. Got kicked out of the Marines. Found out my EX (wife at the time) was sleeping with at least one of our dealers. Went to rehab (did no good) came home to only a mattress and some clothes. Locked myself in my apartment for 4 days and went through horrible withdrawals. Rode a Greyhound bus for 3 days from Cali to Florida. Kept smoking weed and doing shrooms and acid. Caught on fire and couldn’t walk for 3 months. Lived in my car for a while. Got divorced. Stopped smoking. Finally sobered up and met a girl. A good girl. Got several jobs. Went to school to be a nurse. Got married, had two more kids. Eventually began working at an opiate addiction treatment center. Now I own my home, own my vehicle, married for 16 years, Nurse Manager of a drug treatment facility with 5 nurses working for me. Oh, and I have the bestest doggo in whole wide world.

  4. To many thoughts all at once. Sleep is very difficult. Possible fear of authenticity and/or responsibility. Psychoactives are a cognitive “shhhhh”.

    Obviously this exacerbates in times of moments of trail and uncertainty.

    Ending oneself with certainty (not to mention terror of pain and post-botching life) is absurdly difficult without guns or 150+ story building.

    It’s a bit like getting closer to sleep or an utterly absorbing task or activity while mortality catches up. It’s also weak and pathetic(!) ofc but it’s not exclusive to narcotics. Without them I think many addicted people would become obsessive, zealous, self-destructive in other ways.

    Tl;dr: “life is difficult” =/= “life just isn’t worth it”. It’s not the first but the second.

  5. I’m a very anxious person. Drinking made that anxiety go away which made me feel better. I like feeling better. So I wanted to feel better each day. 7 years later my body became too use to alcohol for the effects to work the same. 1 year after this I got sober lol

  6. The first time I drank was at 13 years old. My parents were asleep. I went down to the pantry and poured a shot of whisky. I liked the feeling it gave me. I continued to do that every night. Eventually I started drinking 2 shots, then 4. Then my parents found out and locked away the booze. I got my friends to get their older brothers to boot for me. This continued until I turned 18 when I could buy my own alcohol. That’s when it got real bad. I lost a lot of friends and did a lot of stupid things. My ex girlfriend’s father confronted me about it when he found a fifth of vodka in my backpack. Why he was looking in my backpack, I don’t know. We were sorta forced by my drinking to break up and that drove me to drink even more.

    Eventually I had a psychotic breakdown while driving a later ex-girlfriend while drunk. She didn’t know I was drunk because I had learned very well to hide it. Plus, since I was always drunk I seemed to be my normal self. I got in trouble driving with a BAC of 0.04 which is legal, but I only had my beginner license which means I couldn’t have any alcohol in my system. The insurance shot up and I sold my car. I then cut out hard liquor which was probably the only good thing in this story.

    Now I am in my mid 20’s. I only drink beer. A lot of beer. I drink enough to the point that I barely eat food. I drink at work and university. I drink when I walk. Somehow, I am treading water. I am pretty fit, I have my own apartment, my school is going well. I know something is going to break because all of my relationships are built on a very big lie: That I do not have an alcohol problem. I’m not ready to quit. I was broke once, couldn’t buy any beer, and started experiencing confusion and hallucinations. Luckily I didn’t die. I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to taper. I can’t afford to go to rehab because I will lose my job and won’t be able to attend school. I am in a very bad place and the solution is very simple. Quit drinking. Yet I can’t find it in myself. I am afraid that the only way I could quit is if I lost everything. Because in a way, I’m getting away with it and I have little motivation to quit. That scares me.

  7. Molested at 12 (just once thank god) but my abuser groomed me and taught me about ejaculation and masturbation and porn. Been addicted to porn since and have no control over it.

  8. First, TV glamourized the idea of the workaholic-alcoholic, so I forced myself to like whiskey and drank through all my university assignments — I’m competent enough that I reliably got 70s, but I was paving the way.

    You can drink pretty heavily in your early twenties without too many ramifications, but I did put on weight, I wasn’t saving any money, and lines were appearing under my eyes.

    I’d had anxiety disorders for years and started leaning on whiskey more and more. They say there’s no free lunch in nature, but for about two years, it felt like I had beat the system; I’d have a little party by myself after work every day, sleep six hours, go into work groggy, then feel fine by noon.

    Covid lockdown hit me hard. I needed to be drunk 24/7, which takes its toll on you. I went over 200lbs, which is not a benchmark I wanted to reach — I was like 5’10 and 140 through highschool, then got to a comfortable 180. Back down to 187 or so no.

    My anxiety got so bad, but the booze was tearing up my stomach to the point where I was throwing up blood. I reconnected with an old dealer and got into benzos. It felt like I had beat the system again. A few klonopin or Xanax in the morning, drink myself to sleep, rinse and repeat.

    Whatever withdrawal I got from alcohol, benzos defy all preconceived notions about physical dependence. Complete, freakish misery. Eventually, I was taking about 40mg of Xanax a day — that’s enough to knock out an elephant. The therapeutic dose is about .5mg.

    I had some seizures as a kid, and boy did playing with central nervous system depressants bring that make. I had a grand mal seizure after being myoclonic for days — thank god I was already in the ER. I stopped breathing after chewing through my tongue and wrenching my back horribly. I’ve done permanent damage to my nervous system and will be a lifelong patient of a neurologist.

    And now I take it one day at a time. I can’t say I’ve gotten better — sometimes I can go months of thinking things are getting better, but everything just keeps going wrong and I can’t seem to catch a break.

  9. Depression, constant feeling of inadequacy, loneliness, no girl in around 8 years. Realized that I have no reason to live, stopped caring about health.

    Bought some testosterone enanthate. Started sticking needles in my ass. Going to expand out with EQ and maybe Tren later on. I don’t care anymore. I am still not good enough.

  10. Had my first cigarette at 13. I thought it tasted like snow. I had mental health issues and realized cigarettes helped chill me out. Queue 12 year long severe nicotine addiction. Quit at 25. I’m 29 now and still going strong. I’ve learned that I can never again try any sort of product containing nicotine. Every time I fall off the wagon. For those who might understand: at one point I would gravity bong 1/3 of a cigarette in one rip. I’ve also picked other people’s cigarettes out of ash trays or off the street when I couldn’t get my own.

  11. My parents were heavy drinkers all through my growing up, I swore I would never be like them. Was straight edge all through high school and my one year of college, and 3 years after that. Met my current wife, we had a bit of champagne on our first NYE together, slow downhill roll since then, that was 19 years ago. I would call my self a functional alchoholic, I drink every day pretty much, but hold it together for work and maybe drink enough to have a hangover once a week…I know I should drink less and I know I should drink less, I guess I haven’t hit far enough to bottom to have a reason to change. I don’t crave it at work or during my day, it’s more of a habit by now.

  12. Parents/family has narcissistic personality disorder, alcoholism/addictive personality disorder, plenty of other mental problems. I’m old enough to know better but it’s hard to turn away from all the awful habits I developed.

    Quit cigarettes, maybe smoke 5 cigars a year now (don’t ask me how I beat cigs, I still can’t believe it) drink less but still too much, imo, I’m trying. Eat better but portion control is still difficult.

    You just have to take things one day at a time

  13. Started at age 15, friends brought over an X-rated video, we watched it and they let me borrow it for like a week. Well one night I was trying to emulate what was on the video, and booom masturbation happened. It felt good and I had to do this on a nightly basis, was over 20 years before I realized it affected my life.

    Any woman I was with I felt was not as good at giving pleasure compared to the girls in the x-rated videos, also some of these women looked worse with their clothes off, amazing what shape wear can do to a woman’s body when he is in clothing.

    I realized it hurt my last relationship with my ex though….I was constantly annoyed when she was around and for some reason was not always turned on even though she was a beautiful woman. As a result I could have been more passionate with her instead of annoyed and feeling like she was smothering me.

    I realized I had a problem, I kept ending things with women that really liked me because I kept thinking there was someone else better, so I would make up excuses to remain unattached, I was addicted to not only x-rated videos but also dating apps. I became a serial dater and habitually singe, basically going on 1-5 dates with someone and the relationships would not go anywhere, kept thinking there was someone better.

    So yes X-rated videos can be addicting and dating apps can also be addicting, I heard some people spend years bouncing for one dating app to the next in a vicious cycle.

    I stopped watching porn and I stopped using the dating apps, i’m now detoxing and was told it might take 1 year or longer for my brain to rewire itself since porn and dating apps were triggering the same element of my brain of a drug addict. I can now start to see women without thinking of them as sexual beings, but I am now learning I want my best friend in life, not someone that will only be temporary fun. I’m not saying marriage, but it would be nice to have a best friend, lover, and someone that we both can grow together as people, even if we are married or just boyfriend and girlfriend.

  14. To my knowledge I am the third generation to have substance problems. My grandpa has been a high functioning alcoholic since he was 18, my dad who recently passed got into cocaine when it was big and then meth once it surpassed the quality of coke but in the last 10 or 15 years he used it more as a way to keep going so he could work everyday possible, and then there’s my generation. I have a brother 11 years older than me who has done almost every drug, I think crack and heroine are the only ones he hasn’t tried but he has smoked weed everyday since he was a teen. Growing up I always thought he was cool so I wanted to be like him but never found weed appealing so never tried it. Once I graduated I went to work with him in construction working 84 hour weeks and it didn’t take long before I was introduced to the lifestyle a lot of them live, it started with adderall and vivance but after I got going with them I’d take anything someone had. I spent almost 2 years either drunk or high on pills to the point I’d slur my words at work, then one day I saw one of my friends who was doing the same thing while I was stone cold sober and it made me embarrassed that I’ve been walking around like this everyday to the point where strangers are concerned for you just walking alone. It was hell and I lost all those people I considered almost like family because we had so much in common, but I went cold turkey on drugs and just drank more. I drank close to a fifth of crown royal a day and more on weekends, blacking out almost daily, until my stomach wouldn’t let me last year. If I drink one shot it makes me sick immediately and I get pain unlike anything I’ve felt before. I’ve never gotten a complete diagnosis on what it is but I’m thankful that I’ve finally kicked my last substance problem hopefully for good so my kids won’t mirror it and be the 4th generation.

  15. I could talk all night about this but I don’t believe in sharing “war stories” , because for me, it’s haunting and all negative. But I’m glad there are people who will talk about it because not one person will ever say it was a good thing for them. Best way I can describe addiction is if you imagine walking around all day with a monkey on your shoulders. And that monkey don’t give a fuck about you. And that monkey will mess with you because the monkey only cares about the damn monkey.

  16. TL;DR- I became a degenerate gambler during the pandemic.

    I was bored, lonely, and isolated during the pandemic and the casino was one of the first social spaces to reopen.

    I had a players card from previous visits for birthday parties, etc. so I got the email about the grand reopening. Gathered up the homies and we all went.

    It was still the only place open, so we started going more. Eventually my friends were tired of it so I started going alone. At first it was 1 or 2 hundred a trip that I would bring. Then 3 or 5 hundred. One of those trips I left up around 6,000 which enabled me to ramp my betting up even further.

    I realized it was a problem when I was going 2 or 3 times a week with 1 or 2k. I knew I needed to take a break but I couldn’t stop. It’s like I would fall into a trance and drive to the casino. I was skipping work, taking zoom meetings in the casino parking lot, staying out all night, etc. Eventually I was terrified and signed up for my states self exclusion list.

    I was good for about 3 months when the urges started hitting heavy again, but I was going to have to drive to another state to play. Since I couldn’t go as often I may as well bring more money right? It wasn’t long before I was going every weekend with 5 or more thousand dollars.

    It felt like monopoly money. I didn’t feel a single thing if there wasn’t thousands of dollars at risk. I would feel sick driving home and want to drive my car into the guardrail but I just kept going.

    Eventually I excluded in that state too, and a few others. Still grapple with the urges from time to time but I got a 2nd job this year to try and dig myself out and I’m most of the way there.

    I didn’t want to win, I was bored and lonely and wanted to feel *something*. The only way to get a rush was to risk everything. I could have been up a million dollars I would have kept playing until it was gone. Ruin was the only possible outcome. The only question was how financially, morally, and physically bankrupt I would be when the other shoe dropped.

    When I finally got serious about stopping my savings account was empty and I had about 30k om credit card debt. Worse than that I had lied to people close to me, including myself and sacrificed career opportunities.

  17. 2017 : i tried cigarettes (2 of them) out of curiosity but i didnt know that you take them all the way down to lungs and not just throat. It tasted bad and didnt feel like anything. “Whats the point of this?”

    2018 : went to my friend’s place and smoked weed for the first time, looking at the smoke coming out of my mouth, my friend told me that iam doing it wrong and i learned the right way to smoke and got high for the first time.

    Few months later : tried cigarette again because now i know the right way to do it, felt amazing. “I will never do it regularly” i said to myself

    Mid 2018 : started having cigarettes with whiskey cuz i read on the internet that both go really well together. It was once every 2 months during this time

    Late 2018 : started smoking with my brothers when hanging outside, still very occasional. “This feels amazing, i cant even stand on my legs, feels like iam gonna fall”

    Mid 2019 to early 2020 : smoked 1 or 2 cigarettes every weekend and then it was one more cigarette during the weekday and then it was 1 cigarette every alternate day throughout the week “its fun but not as much as before but i still feel like doing it every day”

    2020 mid till now : started smoking 1 cig everyday and its 7 now in 2022. The way number increases is like you would occasionally smoke one extra cig just cuz why not and it slowly becomes a habit. the “FUN” aspect faded away somewhere in 2020 and now i just feel like i need to smoke a cigarette , i dont know why and when i smoke a cigarette, it feels like nothing but iam satisfied for the next hour or two. Its some kind of unconscious need and satisfaction which you cant feel. I do enjoy those me time moments when iam alone looking at the sunrise while smoking but iam trying to reduce the number of cigarettes i have slowly. Lets hope i never go higher.

  18. Went to bed on time a few days a week now i cant stop. That sweet 8 hours is the biggest high out there.

  22. Alcohol addiction. Pretty simple story really. When alcohol became my go to for dealing with stress…BAM! I didn’t notice this is what I was doing for a while, and even when I did I couldn’t bring myself to slow down or quit. By this point I was self medicating with it and was addicted to it.

  23. Food addiction: it’s the only thing that doesn’t make me sad, makes me happy. It’s also causing me to become fat. well fuck.

  25. Since you work in an opiate rehab you might have seen this story. I have arthritis in my spine, busted discs throughout, mainly L4-5, L5-S1, causing pain down my left leg since 1997. Got on pain management in 2008, so was on ever increasing doses of opioids for 8 years, realized I was dependent so I switched to Suboxone. Been through opioid withdrawal multiple times, ended up in the emergency room a couple of times. Doctor was surprised how much Valium he had to use to calm me down. Enough to probably kill a normal person.

    Was on Suboxone or zubsolv until October 2021. Went through withdrawal once I stopped that lasted over 4 months. I still have some minor symptoms to this day.

    Now this might sound self-righteous, but I don’t consider myself an addict since I never took opioids to get high. I just became physically dependent over time while dealing with my pain. Sadly I still have pain but never plan on going back to opioids.

    That’s my story. Will continue to have pain for the rest of my life but would rather cope with it than take another opioid ever again.

  27. Long story short, I came home with problems I didn’t manage and fell back into more problems I tried to leave behind. And I stayed royally fubar’d for a couple years that followed.

  28. I always Iiked to drink since I was in highschool but it never caused me any serious negative consequences until I was in my mid 30’s. It was always just fun until.it wasn’t. Lost my really good career, a long term relationship, probably 50 thousand dollars, went to rehab and trahsed my credit all within about a one or two years span. Epic self destruction. I found the miracle pill that I’d Naltrexone about 6 months ago and hardly drink anymore but I caused serious damage in a short amount of time

  29. Loneliness and a lot of spare time on my hands sent me on a path to porn addiction. It was so bad that it got to the point where I was watching it just to pass the time like a tv show, instead of just getting off to it.

    It was only last year when I finally kicked the habit when I completed NNN that I realised how much time I was spending looking at porn, and man was it a lot! Going forward I still watch it every now and again (I’m only human), but I’ve replaced a lot of the excess time with other activities such as working out.

  30. Fell into a pit of depression, turned to drinking to cope with being alive. I’d been depressed and suicidal for several years before, but I had a **massive** breakdown and just completely gave up on life… so moved back in with my parents and just started drinking all day, every day for 10+ years without even trying to get myself out of the void. Finally the day after my 35th birthday this year I decided to at least give life one last proper shot, and quit alcohol (after drinking up to a litre of vodka every day)… and 8 and a half months later, still sober. My anxiety has got so bad that I never leave the house, but hopefully I’ll be able to become a normal functioning adult in 2023… that’s the aim!

  31. I had stroke 3 times when I was young and because it was a “brain vasculitis” (I think it’s called inflammation in English). I was treated with steroids since they were originally for curing strong inflammation, and steroids give you a lot of muscles – if you workout and transform the fat into muscles. However, because I was 8 years old in a children’s hospital, I couldn’t workout, so I went from 38kg to 60-65kg in a month.

    After that I was told to go to the hospital every month and that I had to go to chemo for 36 hours. Because chemo basically just weakens your immune system, I was homeschooled for the time being. During this homeschooled thing, I had anxiety and panic attacks, I had mental meltdowns and random tantrums, which made my life hell.

    Because steroids are basically drugs, they are highly addictive, and during (and after) chemo, I was gradually given less and less steroids, but I still had withdrawal symptoms and tantrums. So when I got back to school for 4th grade, I punched kids in the face, flipped tables and chairs upside down, and told death threats to a teacher who didn’t let me finish my meal. It was my worst years of my life.

  32. Me as a teen and a young adult i would always tell myself i would never smoke cigarettes or tobacco of any kind. fast forward to my first deployment, that was the only thing that calmed me down at the end of the day. to this i’m addicted to nicotine and i’m not sure i want to stop. it relaxes me when i need it. I know it’s not as bad as other drugs or even alcohol. but lol that’s my little story

  34. I would wake up in the middle of the night and eat an entire Toblerone. And I don’t mean a small one. I mean a medium-sized one.

  36. It started out as an occasional once a month recreational activity while I was on the road. Once I settled down and stabilized from a nomad, I soon found that I had more time than before and it quickly became near daily addiction. I ended up loosing track of time and feeling run down a lot. I think it’s under control now that I’ve cut back to 3 or 4 times a week. If you are thinking about playing pickleball, please make sure you have sufficient free time to invest.

  37. i was 13 when i was first totally hammered and this was the downfall for me, teenage years were spent drinking most of the weekends and adult life even in the middle of the week wasn’t rare. i was completely addicted and in denial of the fact. now i’ve been sober for 3 years and no urges to drink

    nicotine came to my life as an addiction when i served in the military pretty much the basic denial “i can stop any time i want” it wasn’t the case nicotine was harder to quit than alcohol and as of now i’m 2,5 years clean

    luckily i was always so poor i couldn’t afford drugs and never went down this route.

    my first addiction was to porn i think, i encounter it when i was about 6 years old and accidentally mistaken an adult VHS for a cartoon after that is was a snowball secretly watching this VHS every time i was alone, and searching for more etc etc. it was sick, i learned to control it this year when i finally sought professional help and that lead me to an ADHD diagnosis

    Right now i feel like a better man, a man my father never was and will be, since he is consumed by his addictions and completely ruined my childhood with that.

  38. TW Alcoholism and suicide for anyone who needs it.

    I was coming to the end of a one sided long distance relationship 2 years ago, things were already getting rough as it was (already been homeless for 2 years living in a cramped 2 bedroom house with 7 people, my parents moved back in with my grandparents because we can’t afford anything). I never considered myself much of a drinker but I only liked spirits. I went out with a friend group who rarely talk to me so I was happy for a change. We were saying goodbye to someone who actually treats me like a person so I was little upset. Anyway we got to drinking and I drank a full 200ml of 30% rum to myself and I felt tipsy. I hadn’t ever drank so much and I felt alive for the first time in a long time.

    The effect wore off after a few hours and everything went back to normal. I told my now ex that it took me to get basically drunk to feel happy and they completely brushed it off and started complaining about a petty fight (they started) with their family. That was the final straw for me in that relationship and a month later I finally broke up with them. But being brushed off like that broke me and the suicide thoughts I had fought back from for years came flooding back. Came super super close but I hung on.

    Couple more months went by and I was still having these bad thoughts every night before bed. I was playing games with online friends and we started a drinking game, I had another 200ml bottle of rum from Christmas I never opened so through the night I drank all of that. The feeling of being alive came back and it was so freeing from the constant depression and suicidal thoughts I did the same the next night, and the next, and the next. After awhile I moved onto whiskey (40%) and I increased the volume to 500ml every day and a half.
    I got into a new relationship and it stopped for about 3 weeks because I had a new source of happiness. But the alcohol was so tempting. On a bank holiday I got a 750ml of whiskey and I had a ball playing games. I fell over and couldn’t stop laughing, that’s all I really remember.

    I did that a few more times then it hot really bad. My alcohol tolerance became really high so I moved up to 1l bottles of whiskey. (So I was spending 30 euro a day of whiskey). It all stopped when I drank 1l in less than 45 minutes. I threw all that back up with my girlfriend on the phone crying listening. I guess I just snapped out of it and I haven’t pulled any stunt like that again. The thought of alcohol now disgusts me but I do have a causal drink every 3 months or so.

    My story isn’t finished, I still struggle with my thoughts but I suppose I’m getting somewhere

  40. Sleep. I am a chronic non-sleeper and will use anything at hand to help me sleep. I have never used a drug to get high and a brief experiment with alcohol taught me how greatly it negatively affected my sleep. I am working on cutting back on the various drugs and combos of drugs I use to sleep now, have been tapering for 6 months but I now fall asleep at about 10PM and wake up bright eyed and feeling great at 2:30AM-this is my general pattern. One great discovery is that exercise is a fantastically effective tool to reduce anxiety and help with my problem. I struggle and fall back to heavier usage but always try to continue with my tapering effort.

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