Help Me Overcome Addiction and Start Fresh

I'm a good, honest guy. Yes, I have my flaws like anyone else, and I am by no means perfect. I could probably write a book about my life and all the ups and downs.

I'll do my best to keep this short. I grew up going to church every Sunday, and then after church, all my aunts, uncles, and cousins would meet at my grandmother's house for lunch. We had a huge family; my grandparents had 3 girls and 3 boys, and they all had 2 or 3 kids. It was one of those things that you knew was magical, but you also never wanted it to end. Everything has to end at some point in time.

When Grandma passed away, I knew that was the beginning of the end, and everything was about to change. Fast forward to 2015, Grandma had been gone for a couple of years, and life threw a major curveball at me. My dad had a major heart attack and died. He and I had a really rough relationship, and it hit me hard. Fast forward to March 2016, Grandpa on the other side of the family died. He was my rock; he was the last man of the family I had left to look up to and kept me balanced.

Between Dad and Grandpa’s passing, I started using drugs because I couldn’t handle everything that was happening. I was falling apart, and everything around me was crashing down, and I couldn’t stop it. And it wasn’t over yet. Six months after Grandpa passed away, my mother-in-law passed away, and my marriage was hanging on by a thread. Fast forward to the middle of 2019, and I’m sitting in a bathroom looking at myself, not recognizing the man looking back at me. I just cried and wondered how I ever let things get to this point. I was a shell of a man, and when I walked out of that bathroom, I knew I was about to change everything once again.

That’s when I told my wife I was done and wanted a divorce. That killed me to say because I never thought I would end up divorced. There’s a lot more I could write, and I probably should, but my point is I didn’t process and handle things correctly. I don’t know if I didn’t know how or if I just didn’t want to deal with the emotional side of things at the time. I started using drugs because they would numb the pain and keep me from crying. I never meant to use them as long as I did, but once I was sitting in prison and lost every single thing and every person I always thought was there for me just walked away and never looked back.

What I’m trying to say is I ruined my life. I really had a beautiful life, and I mentally didn’t know how to handle growing up and losing the people I cared about. I didn’t know what the next phase in life was or how I could get there without these people. I had never thought much about it, and I’m scared of what will happen when I lose the rest of my family. Will I be able to handle things, or will I fall apart again? I’m trying to build up my money to buy a vehicle to get back and forth to work and to get myself in a better place than I was before in hopes this won’t happen again.