Triggers

Recovery
#1

NOTE: If this is going to trigger otherwise be bad for your well-being, please stop reading. This is a mental exercise, not encouragement to use. If I offended you or you simply want to talk, I’m always one DM away.

I’ve been thinking about the overlap between positive memories and their reality of indulging my disease—for me, there is a lot of this.

Around ten years ago my girlfriend at the time drove the two of us down to her summer house. I distinctly seeing the music video for Rhye’s “Open”, which coincidentally is a love store at a beach house.

It’s challenging for me to look at that weekend/song and not see anything but another challenge in my journey towards clean time. Has anyone else romanticized a specific memory that was in reality was nothing more than another step in the wrong direction yet remains positively memorable in your head?

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#2

I find myself doing that often as some of those memories evoke a feeling where I felt alive. To be honest, the sheer thrill of being young, wild & carefree and just living in the moment was exhilerating- not going to lie.

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#3

I feel so guilty/wrong thinking like this so I’m glad I’m not the only one. For every few people in recovery, there’s one who romanticizes that feeling of being young and wreck-less. Is it good or bad? Hard to say. Is my life better without substances? Unequivocally. Do I miss those nights of endless parties, finally going to bed with a cute girl I was flirting with as the sun was coming up, only to start it all over the next day? I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss that.

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#4

I romanticize the days I was a teen. Me and my brother would throw water balloons at cars as hard as we could at night. They would slam on the breaks, throw it in reverse, and we would run for our lives. The adrenal rush was euphoric. :joy:
But those days are done. I hold those memories, but that chapter is over. I'm an adult now and can't get away with things like that anymore. The same can be said for any of the good times I had partying. Time for the next chapter, time to turn the page.

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#5

Life is meant to live right? Hence, why we live and learn? Although I reminisce about those days with no regrets, as an adult i grew up; I learned from the past. I mean in all honesty, this is quite "normal" when applied to someone who doesntt have a problem with addiction, but just like us as individuals- we're all different and the past either really haunts us or propels us in life. I'd like to think its made me who I am and why I am today . Just a thought

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#6

All in all it was all just bricks in the wall and Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together again.

#7

Teenagers and young adults have brains that are wired to do more risky and more social things - Substances or no substances. In other words, you were going to change no matter what. Sobriety is only one part of the very complicated being that is you :slight_smile:

#8

Man, I romanticized everything, every part of every part of my addiction/alcoholism. Shooting up in a Chinatown bathroom and ODing, passing out in my car I'm the dead of winter and waking up with a foot of snow on my car and pissing myself, dating wealthy older ladies so they would pay for my habits. Prison. Jail. Mental institution. Going AWOL in Thailand etc etc.

None of it was romantic. It was ugly. Lonely. Gross.