Stimulus and Response

Writing my blog and sharing my story with other addicts and people has been extremely cathartic.  There is a psychological relief that comes from expression of these emotions and getting this all out has been therapeutic as fuck.  I highly recommend anyone carrying around a lot of mental baggage to do the same.  Sharing my addiction war stories is helping me to put all of that nonsense behind me. For now, though, I wanted to take a break from the past and post some insight into present day.

For the most part, my life has been trending in a positive direction.  I have a normal type of routine and workout for at least an hour, religiously, every day.  Between my job, kratom, exercise, and the blog, I feel like I have enough to keep me engaged and out of trouble for the most part.  I did have somewhat of a mini-emotional breakdown last month and wanted to share it because dealing with the mundaneness and day-to-day slowdown involved with sobriety is hard.  I have not been having meth cravings or anything really close to that and I am thankful for that.  However, I am having a hard time not consistently thinking about what I have thrown away and not consistently making comparisons of my life now relative to what it could/should be.

Last month I had to go back to Houston from Dallas for a work training.  My company’s headquarters is in Houston so I drive there for sales training once a month.  Every now and then certain events trigger something in my brain and the weight of what I have lost comes rushing back.  It’s happening less and less, but I wonder if these types of thoughts will continue to be with me the rest of my life.  What could have happened if I didn’t self-destruct the way I did.  What kind of life could I be living right now?  Am I ever going to feel like it all happened for a reason or will I be in a constant struggle?  I don’t know what the future holds for me and I wonder sometimes if there isn’t enough time to make back what I lost.  I don’t mean that from a strictly financial standpoint.  I mean that from a relationship standpoint as well.

Some days are better than others, but I was recently set off in Houston at my work training all from overhearing a stupid conversation.  I couldn’t not vent this, so I posted this on the r/addiction subreddit.

In the days following that post, I started to absolutely kill it at work.  I decided to stop trying to fit into the type of mold that they think works and decided to do things my way. I pivoted away from the “hard close” mentality. Instead of badgering and hounding the few customers that walk into our store, I decided to focus more on online and social media strategies to get clients in the door.  I used to have to sell a lot of fraud shit on Offer Up, Facebook Marketplace, and LetGo.  In fact, some of my old postings for Rolexes and tool sets were still on my Facebook Marketplace page.  Instead of blasting the apps  with hundreds of random ads on everything in our inventory, I targeted only the best deals on our lot and focused solely on marketing those good deals.   I find that if I generate my own traffic instead of relying on walk-in traffic, my close percentage skyrockets and I now do not have to rely on my boss and sales leader “loading my lips” and telling me what to say and how to say it.  Long story short, almost immediately after posting that Reddit post to r/addiction, my sales numbers blew up.  I was the top salesman in the whole store last month which is pretty cool.

It’s a feeling that I haven’t had in a while.  I have double my savings goal that I told myself I wanted to have set aside before I moved out so I feel ready and confident to be back out on my own again.  On a very cool side note, I also have been communicating with the CEO of a small business that is fully aware of my past and criminal record and has told me that he may have a position for me.  This would be an amazing opportunity and make for one hell of a blog posting because it is kind of related to this whole story.  Anyways, I am trying to not get my hopes up on that too high, but it is still a very motivating thought to entertain.

When I first started this blog, I did so in a low and frustrating moment.  I was having recurring negative thoughts of everything that went down and needed a healthy way to vent.  I meant what I said when I see this site as a life preserving activity to cling onto as I tread in the ocean of recovery. Sharing my story online has also shown me that there are tons of people out there all over the world fighting the same struggle.  I have talked to the mother of an addict son in Australia, a boyfriend whose girl was losing herself to meth in the United Kingdom, and a hedge fund analyst in Manhattan who is about to check himself into rehab for the second time.  People have messaged me from all over the world and have logged into alphatweaker.com from Uzbekistan, Jamaica, Mongolia, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Estonia, and several other countries.

Many reach out with messages of love and support and others, not so much, lol.  The feedback I receive is all over the spectrum.  Some people (mostly addicts) can sympathize and see where I am coming from:

Others get somewhat of a “scared straight” vibe from it (in response to Raquel’s story.)

Annnnnnd some just think I’m scum that will never fully know “the extent of the hurt I caused”:

These types of discussions are hard for me to not get pulled into.  I genuinely want these people to see and understand that I am not a bad person and I am trying to make things right.  I want to change their minds, but that is just not realistic.

None of my coworkers, boss, parents, and family have any idea that I am doing this.  Less than 5 people that know me are aware that I have created this blog.  Nobody really knows that I am venting and pouring my heart and soul out in random, anonymous blog postings and that some people are actually reading it.  I like that.  Instead of hiding something negative and something illegal and dangerous, I am hiding something that helps me cope and may help others too.  It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I am doing a good-bad thing. I also get a kick out of lively discussions that my writing can sometimes spark off.  Commentators below are marked with corresponding colors.  This guy took issue with my telling Allie that I understood why her pimp slapped her.  I responded to him, then the blacked out user came in and gave his two cents.

I also get a kick out of the people that think I am making this up.  I don’t know why anyone would make up stuff like this.  Seems like it would be a lot of work for someone to go through for a free blog.  This guy claims that my pictures are photoshopped and that I am lying about Raquel dying, but yet believes me about drug dealing?

A “lying attention seeking whore.” So yes, feedback is all over the place.  It is supportive and encouraging though for the most part and I am glad that I decided to start this blog journey.  I have no idea where it is going or how it is going to end, but I hope it becomes a story of sobriety and someone taking full advantage of being given a second chance at life.  I have noticed that good things can happen if you put forth effort and try.  If you step outside of your comfort zone and try something new one day, it will be easier to do that the next day.  Then eventually you will have taken multiple steps out from your comfort zone and soon find yourself in an area where better and more opportunities may present themselves.  It sure beats the daily struggle of fighting tooth and nail to keep the high going.  Instead of worrying about re-upping, jail time, cops, or where I am going to spend the night, I am now starting to deal with “better” problems.

For example, I plan on starting to date again when I move out of my parents. I have absolutely no idea how this is going to work.  Like, when exactly would be a good time to share with a girl that I am interested in that I am a recovering meth addict ex-criminal that completely lost everything?  Is that a first date thing or a third date topic?  Do I lead with that and save everybody time? Shit, maybe I should just shoot them a link to my blog early on and see how they respond to that.  I have no idea how I am going to handle this.

I wouldn’t consider the social activities that I did post-divorce to be categorized as “dating.”  It was more like an all-out shit show of chaos and mayhem.  So, excluding that time frame, I haven’t dated or been in the single-scene since before I met my ex in 2000.  That’s nearly two decades.  I have a feeling this is something that I am going to dwell on and overthink quite a bit.  If I meet someone for a date and I like them, it’s going to be extremely hard for me to not think about this massive skeleton in my closet.  I am already overthinking it and it hasn’t even come close to happening yet.  Maybe I will create a separate anonymous blog just for dating in this day an age, lol.  Anyways, I guess this is a good “first world” type problem to have.  If this is one of the things I am stressing out about these days I should be grateful that my entire class of issues has shifted up quite a bit from living in the tweaker world and having to run fraud shit to provide a place to stay and food to eat.

A little over a week ago, I went and looked at apartments and think I found one that will work.  My dad is going to co-sign on it and I appreciate that level of faith he and my mom have in me by doing that.  I know that if I fuck this up, they won’t have a good reason to ever offer this type of support and help again. You only get so many chances with this kind of shit.  Often the hardest question for anyone dealing with a loved one’s addiction is just how much help should be offered before cutting them off.  How much effort and financial resources should be given to an addict before realizing it’s a lost cause?  I don’t really know the best answer to that question, but I am very thankful that my parents haven’t given up on me.  I had never been in trouble or arrested and hadn’t really never much help after I graduated college.  All of the sudden their son is broke and living back at home trying to put his life back together while dealing with felony charges at the same time.  I like to think that this was my only mistake I will make on this level.  In elementary, middle, and high school, I only ever really got in trouble once.  It was in elementary school and I got detention for howling like a wolf extremely loud in the boy’s bathroom.  My dad yelled at me and my mom was disappointed and I decided that I wouldn’t get in trouble again. I am hoping that my meth slip up will be the same type of “one and done” issue.

Life recently has been going fairly well for me and I have no plans on risking that anytime soon.  If I get this job from this CEO, that could be a complete game changer for me.  I really hope that something materializes out of that, but the chances are small and I can’t afford to get my hopes up for something like that.  My job now is sufficient to pay the bills and gives me good income earning capability; I just don’t see myself making a career out of this.  I may not have the luxury of having that be a choice though.  It may just be the world that I now live in that I have created for myself.  If that is the case, I will try and make the best of it and give it my all for the time being.

As far as this blog is concerned, I certainly have more to share from this volatile time period in my life, but the focus will not always remain on what was as much as what will be.  I wanted to take a break from the past and provide an update as to what was going on with me and how my writing and blog has been received so far.  As you can see, it’s quite a polarizing topic.  I believe that one’s reaction to it is largely affected by whether they have dealt with addiction of a loved one before or not.  I can’t say that I am that surprised, but I was a bit caught off guard by how black and white some issues are to people.  To some people, a criminal is always a criminal and an addict is always only ever going to be an addict.  Many people stop reading my writing after only a few sentences assuming they already know what I am going to say and have heard it before.  Regardless of what they say and think, I am not going to stop writing anytime soon.