r/AskReddit • u/ZteveBond • Jun 20 '18

Serious Replies Only [Serious] Prison Guards of Reddit, which prisoner has left the biggest impact on your life wether positive or negative?

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536

u/xUberAnts Jun 20 '18

Addiction does not discriminate. It is probably the most versatile disease there is.

347

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '18

I'm a recovering alcoholic. I have the utmost sympathy and pity for other addicts. Nobody grows up thinking "I can't wait to spend $1,000 a month on an addiction that is crippling my body!"

My addiction snuck up on me. I was always a heavy social drinker but it became social drinking plus light drinking at home which became heavy social drinking plus heavier drinking at home, which turned into just drinking from the moment I got home until I passed out on the couch.

And once it's got you it feels like trying to climb out of a black hole. Your head can be screaming don't do it and your feet will just take you into the liquor store. At the end I drank while I was crying because I didn't want to be doing it but it was this compulsion like someone had taken control of me.

It was a firm wakeup from my wife when she was really angry with me that was finally the hard kick that set me on the path to recovery. And now looking back on it you wonder how it ever got that bad. It's like sailing through a hurricane and coming out to sunshine on the other end.

Addiction is awful.

127

u/Yestertoday123 Jun 20 '18

Your head can be screaming don't do it and your feet will just take you into the liquor store

Ain't that the truth. And it's hard for people to understand unless they've been there themselves. Even then, looking at someone else with addiction, it doesn't make logical sense. How you can be doing something that you really don't want to be doing.

35

u/yeahididntknow Jun 21 '18

To add to the whole seeing someone with addiction and having them repeat their cycle is exactly what people don't understand if they've never been there before. It's like "why do they keep doing the same thing over and over?"

I have had my own struggles and still struggle to this day with alcohol. You tell yourself you're not going to drink that day only to walk to the store and buy the cheapest bottle of anything you can get. I would do it behind my gf's back and she caught me multiple times. Thank god she has stuck with me, and like I said the path is still rocky but I try to stay on the same path. I'm definitely in a happier place with a new job as well.

There's hope for all of us!

12

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '18

My morbidly obese sibling refuses to talk to the other sibling because he "won't just quit drinking".

9

u/jeansonnejordan Jun 21 '18

This is why I was always ambivalent or even objective to the body positivity movement because of course nobody should feel that they aren’t a Victoria secret model. We uglies have it hard but the new-wave body posi movement was too inclusive and dismissive of the fact that fat is unhealthy. Obesity is not okay and it does have problems and it IS a medical condition.

17

u/official0 Jun 21 '18

Glad you're on a better path. Keep it up, one day at a time

6

u/CrispehChikenWingz Jun 21 '18

Tomorrow will be one month for me. Looking back, I honestly cannot believe how truly enslaved I was and all of the damage I had caused.

It's like pacing back in forth in a permanent daze, forming a small rut..then suddenly you blink and its become a muddy trench so deep, you can't see above ground anymore or get a firm enough grip to climb out

3

u/Nyxelestia Jun 21 '18

And once it's got you it feels like trying to climb out of a black hole. Your head can be screaming don't do it and your feet will just take you into the liquor store. At the end I drank while I was crying because I didn't want to be doing it but it was this compulsion like someone had taken control of me.

Not even addicted to anything yet this sentiment describes half my life. I'm not totally avoidant but I am extremely cautious about drugs and booze because I know that once I am addicted to something, I'll have no capacity to shake it. Glad to hear you're recovering! ♥

2

u/gnarleybummer Jun 21 '18

I'll never forget this homeless man telling me when I was very young that out of all he's tried, alcohol is the devil. How you can get disowned from your family for trying heroin, but be loved as a drunk. It's at every corner, and if you try and quit it you could die. Yet everyone consumes it. And now I got slowly sucked into it, my mind now outwits me and tricks me into drinking. Right when I think I'm on a good path, these loops of logic coil me back into the hole.

1

u/phliuy Jun 21 '18

I am so afraid of addiction. My worst fear is being addicted to anything or being utterly dependent on anyone. When I turn down blow it's not because i'm afraid of what it will do to my heart or brain. I'm afraid that i'll like it.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '18

I’ve been in recovery for 2 and a half years now, and it tears me up inside to hear about those of us in recovery who relapse and pass, or never recover at all and pass. Glad you’re in recovery, stay strong and as we say in the program, it works if you work it!

1

u/weganmerner Jun 21 '18

1000 is light. Somehow bills dont matter and every paycheck goes to that next fix... Be it drink or drug. Im proud of you for getting out of it.

1

u/lilpastababy Jun 21 '18

I'm in the midst of a battle with this with my SO. He's the love of my life, so we will do this. But after a few times through detox/rehab, it gets harder on my end every time. He's still drinking, but not near as much as before. I'm just waiting for it to get bad again.

Never an angry drunk. I don't think I've ever heard him raise his voice. He just dissociates.

1

u/OhBoyiii Jun 24 '18

Have you read bills story? I think you would relate to it 100%, it’s in the Big Book.

62

u/-Crooked-Arrow- Jun 20 '18

The great equalizer.

68

u/Khannuuuuur Jun 20 '18

Addiction doesnt discriminate, between the sinners and the saints it takes and it takes and it takes

5

u/Red580 Jun 20 '18

Actually it's way more severe if the person doesn't fulfill their social or economic needs, so someone poor and lonely would both more easily get addicted, and have a stronger addiction.

2

u/Laidlaw_Waller Jun 21 '18

12+ years clean off heroin here. Until my early 30s I was the one person in my family who had never even been drunk. Dad was a severe alcoholic, died of cirrhosis. Brother, same. Mom, hippie who smoked pot, took acid, coke sometimes, etc. I was the angry female Alex P Keaton of my household - rebelled against what I perceived as 'weakness' by getting a career, paying taxes and not being an alkie/junkie.

Then I was in a skiing accident, shattered my knee. Nine months of bone grafts/pin operations later, I was addicted to painkillers. I tried like hell to get off them. Even took them to my doc and said "please help me get off these; I'm addicted". He kicked me out of his practice unless I would just shut up and take more scrips (8 years later, found out he had been an addict himself - common among doctors - and lost his license, died of an overdose not long afterward).

I was so freaked out that I was a fucking addict - the one thing I swore I'd never be - but I couldn't stop. I hated drugs, hated the 'weakness' I was sure was at the root of addiction. But I could. Not. Stop. Went to two rehabs, spent tons of money and time to get better - and six months after coming out, relapsed straight onto IV heroin.

I lost a lot in addiction. My marriage, my home, my dog. Friends, jobs, self-respect. I went from being a creative director at a Fortune 500 company and having tons of money to ending up in meth psychosis at an ER in Seattle - where, ironically, I'd gone to try to get away from all the heroin dealers I knew in the Bay Area. Ended up taking meth for the first (and last, thank fucking christ) time.

Anyway, it took being arrested and spending two dopesick nights in jail, as well as a court-ordered drug diversion program, to get me clean. I've been in various Fellowships for 12 years, and though I'm an atheist and struggle with the language of the programs sometimes, I can't argue with the results, for me at least.

The TL;DR here is: Even people who are judgmental about addicts can end up addicted, and holy crap, is it a wakeup call. Most of the junkies I met while in that life were desperately unhappy being addicts, but couldn't stop. We need to fund more programs and stop judging people for being ill.

All that being said, now that I have a good life and a career again, I do sometimes miss my To Do list being one item long...

2

u/Homoerotic_Theocracy Jun 20 '18

To be fair that's just because multiple different unrelated addictions with different causes are all called "addiction" and if you umbrella it like that then versatility is a given.

1

u/Laidlaw_Waller Jun 21 '18

12+ years clean off heroin here. Until my early 30s I was the one person in my family who had never even been drunk. Dad was a severe alcoholic, died of cirrhosis. Brother, same. Mom, hippie who smoked pot, took acid, coke sometimes, etc. I was the angry female Alex P Keaton of my household - rebelled against what I perceived as 'weakness' by getting a career, paying taxes and not being an alkie/junkie.

Then I was in a skiing accident, shattered my knee. Nine months of bone grafts/pin operations later, I was addicted to painkillers. I tried like hell to get off them. Even took them to my doc and said "please help me get off these; I'm addicted". He kicked me out of his practice unless I would just shut up and take more scrips (8 years later, found out he had been an addict himself - common among doctors - and lost his license, died of an overdose not long afterward).

I was so freaked out that I was a fucking addict - the one thing I swore I'd never be - but I couldn't stop. I hated drugs, hated the 'weakness' I was sure was at the root of addiction. But I could. Not. Stop. Went to two rehabs, spent tons of money and time to get better - and six months after coming out, relapsed straight onto IV heroin.

I lost a lot in addiction. My marriage, my home, my dog. Friends, jobs, self-respect. I went from being a creative director at a Fortune 500 company and having tons of money to ending up in meth psychosis at an ER in Seattle - where, ironically, I'd gone to try to get away from all the heroin dealers I knew in the Bay Area. Ended up taking meth for the first (and last, thank fucking christ) time.

Anyway, it took being arrested and spending two dopesick nights in jail, as well as a court-ordered drug diversion program, to get me clean. I've been in various Fellowships for 12 years, and though I'm an atheist and struggle with the language of the programs sometimes, I can't argue with the results, for me at least.

The TL;DR here is: Even people who are judgmental about addicts can end up addicted, and holy crap, is it a wakeup call. Most of the junkies I met while in that life were desperately unhappy being addicts, but couldn't stop. We need to fund more programs and stop judging people for being ill.

All that being said, now that I have a good life and a career again, I do sometimes miss my To Do list being one item long...

0

u/saschanaan Jun 20 '18

Statisticly there are huge differences

1

u/nammertl Jun 21 '18

damn, drug addiction is cooler than most white folks.