To Pauline Poff!!!
Thanks for playing a big part of this and helping me realize that my life sober was the best way to go: Happy 5 years to me!!!!!!!!!! Life had been golden for me…..I had my own little loving family, great education, a great job, a personality and talents that took me to the top of everywhere I went!!!! Maybe it was that mistaken sense of being golden that led me to believe that recreational drug use would work for me. For many years, using and drinking was just an occasional retreat from the monotony of the day….more of a social butterfly thing!!!!! But that all changed rather quickly….I became less effective in every aspect of my existence……no one around me (besides those using with me) would have guessed that my meth use was getting out of control. As is true for so many of us, when I could stop using……I didn’t want to….when I wanted to stop using…..I couldn’t. I had surrendered myself to my drug of choice…..disconnected from anything that meant anything—I existed only for my next hit….everything else didnt matter!!!
Through the intervention of the criminal justice system, I found myself embraced by others whose stories reflected my own….I came to understand my addiction and to recognize that there was a solution. If so many other hopeless addicts could find hope……maybe there was hope for me!!!!
The days I spent pursuing that solution set me off on a journey that has brought about a transformation in my life….back to reality!!! Back to the me that I’m supposed to be and way better than I was…I have limitations I set for myself, a much better respect for myself as well as others, and a relief that I have evolved!!!! Not having to use is only a small part of recovery….I have become an effective human being…..some one you might want to know…..rather than someone you would pity!!! Someone who has great will power, strength, courage, hope, willingness and a faith so strong its unbelievable!!
I will be forever grateful that the people that came into my life and put a stop to my recklessness no matter how hard I bucked the system but I think it was more of a God thing so I could show others how great you can actually be without all the haziness, stuffy headed, clouded mind crap and to reach out and help those who actually want the help!!!! Happy 5 year sobriety to me!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanking God today for the most precious and most valuable lesson in my life but most importantly for the strength, the courage and the will power when the statistics and odds where so highly stacked against me!!!!!!!! “I’m so proud of you Tiff!!!! You are absolutely amazing!” [patting myself on the back] It has been a long, hard road and a tough one at that but I am still a survivor from the most evil of all evils–methamphetamines!! I am still fighting that fight after 5 years without a problem!!!! Can’t say so much for others but that’s them…I gotta worry bout me first and foremost!! And to all the many who said I couldn’t do it–hahaha!!!!!!! God bless you for giving me that much more faith and that much more power to do it for MYSELF!!!!!!!! A fact about methamphetamines is that the national average is only between 2-12% and of those in recovery only 2% make it to the 5 year mark!!!!!
Every day something or someone helps me realize that I just don’t have any desire to return to the old way of living, the person I had become on meth and I realized that to be able to recognize the things I had done that made that possible and be able to continue to draw on them and remind myself of the worthless idiot I was when I was on it makes me every day not be who I was then!!!!!!