Giovanna V.
DOB: 2/24/70; Los Angeles.
It’s like about that shit, ‘Just Say No’ is a bunch of bullshit. because you can’t just say no once you’ve started.
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It might work on Kindergarters. But I think once you start, anyone will enjoy the numbness.
I am an only child, so my Mom’s only baby. She was totally over-protective of me. And school has always been totally easy.
So my Mom always had these really high expectations, like I was supposed to be some kind of fucking brilliant career-minded individual or something.
And I have always felt like I was . . . I could never be. . . I could never fit that perfect little mold that she had of me.
I kept letting her down and I’d do weird shit and get into trouble and look weird and act weird and be totally hostile and angry. And she couldn’t understand what was going on with me, but she just expressed her disappointment in me all the time, so I always felt like that I was failing her in some way.
And life was pretty happy around the house. I had a Step-dad who lived with us, and they had a divorce when I was eleven,
and a lot of shit went down in the family, and I heard a lot of shit about my Mom, and stuff that was behind the scenes before, and I didn’t like it at all.
I didn’t like any of it — what was going on. So it hurt a lot, I think at the time. But I was never told, I was never taught,
I never learned how to feel, and I didn’t know that that feeling was okay, and that it was okay to cry.
And so I just shut off emotionally like at eleven, and so it was like the beginning of . . .
I know I was an addict from the day that I was born, because my Dad has this disease, and my grandparents. It just goes way back.
So what I was dealing with was a pretty much dysfunctional family and all that other shit.
So it was perfect, when I started drinking and drugging, because it just reinforced that fact that I didn’t want to feel anything, and so it was just perfect.
It started out fun, partying and getting ripped, and I basically was a garbage can. Just as soon as I’d be introduced to a new drug I’d go off with it. I basically did everything that I told myself that I would never do. Well, I told myself I was never going to fry on acid, and I ended up selling it. Hah.
And I told myself that I was never going to use a needle, and the only thing that I haven’t tried yet that I told myself that I would never do is heroin, because I was afraid that I would like it too much.
And now I know that I am sure that if it crossed my path I would have done it. Just about anything. I just really loved, to be numb and totally out of it, and not to have to feel anything.
And it’s fucking amazing that I kept the outsides so neat and tidy. I don’t understand how I worked, and I finished high school all four years, all my friends dropped out.
The outside looked real nice and pretty, and I liked to keep it that way so people would get off my back. All I really ever wanted from my Mom was for her to just leave me the fuck alone so I could just be high and she wouldn’t fuck with me.
My using drugs wasn’t all that eventful. I’ve never been arrested. I got kicked out of a high school, only one, and I didn’t really get into trouble that much. None of that shit really matters, because I drank and did drugs to get fucked up period.
There was no social . . . I don’t understand social using. People talk about how they just had one drink. I didn’t drink because I liked the, taste, I had cocaine with it, but I’d drink because I liked to get fucked up. I liked acid because it took me way out to lala-land.
After a while things stopped working, so I would just find a new drug, you know, and was the type of person that would rather be up than down.
So I did coke until I found crystal meth, and then that was better because my drug addict thinking is like: “Well, I can buy less for less money, stay high more until this is better,” and so
I did that.
Snorted until it wouldn’t go up my nose any more and started slamming it, and think that was just like . . .
By that time I was just totally fucking out of it. And my little reality was like so warped into, I could just make the world around me whatever, whatever I wanted it to be in my reality, which is not the reality.
I had no problems, tons of friends, I loved myself, and it was just rosy. But that was all my warped thinking. I just made it up to be whatever I wanted it to be. I fucking hated people.
And I have found since I have been clean that that is because I hated myself. I’d fucking judge anybody just by the way that they looked. And besides, I had this real shitty attitude like, “I already hate you but if you can possibly prove to me that you are cool enough for me to be nice to your then maybe I will, if you’re lucky.”
A real fucking ego. I really was just scared that somebody was going to fuck with me, and somebody was going to try and fucking take something from me.
Not that I had anything to offer except drugs, but try and rip me off, or fucking fuck me over in some way. I was just totally paranoid and so I just fucking hated everyone.
I was my own little friend or whatever. I just projected negativity all around me. Drugs was just such a negative thing that I was just such a negative person.
I couldn’t really help it. I just didn’t know another way. I was just really angry and hurt inside and I didn’t even know I needed help or needed recovery,
But I never allowed myself to feel anything. The problem was that when I was happy that was false tool because I couldn’t really feel any true feelings.
I just felt what I wanted to feel. So I fucking went along my merry way and graduated high school and moved out and basically just went crazy, went off, slammed speed every second that I could,
all my money went to it, and I didn’t even notice. Spent like eighteen hundred dollars in like three months on nothing, nothing material and I didn’t even notice, you know.
I was just so far out there to even notice that there was anything wrong with my life, that when I got put into rehab I was fucking blown-out.
My mom was the great enabler. She has always swept up after me when I get into trouble.
She will like take care of it, so it doesn’t look so bad. And she was always getting on my ass to get good grades, and she always made me have a job,
and all this stuff. By her making me do all this shit it just helped me in my disease, because I stayed licker because it looked like it . . .
I guess it was to fool everyone into thinking that I wasn’t sick. I did do other things besides drugs, which was not true.
So this was Mom’s last great attempt to save me. And so she put me in rehab and I was just blown away. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I don’t even barely remember that day,
because I was just so emotionally blasted out of the water I did not know that the fuck was going on. Because I couldn’t be honest. And I was trying so hard to lie to myself and thinking that I am not an addict. I’ve never been arrested, you know.
I’d go to these meetings and hear these people’s stories about how they lost their wife and their dog and their house and their car, and their fucking twelve D.U.I.‘s and prison and all this shit.
And I’ve never done any of that stuff. And so I was comparing all this stuff that people had been through in my life and saying, “Oh, well, I’m not that bad yet. I’m not that bad.”
And after being in rehab about two weeks I started to clear my head a little bit, and because I wasn’t loaded — all that time since the day that I picked up my first joint I have not, I cannot remember really a day that I wasn’t loaded.
I think the most was like three days when I had to go somewhere with mom or something. So that was totally new, this first two weeks of rehab I was clean and it was weird.
I really started — I don’t know when it happened, but I really started to look objectively at what I was doing and where I was at. And I just realized this disease of addiction can be in anyone.
It doesn’t matter how much you’ve lost on the outside, what matters really is on the inside.
And that’s the beautiful thing about recovery, is that it doesn’t fucking matter who you are. It’s why you’re here, because you’re an addict, and that’s what brings us all together.
If you look at everyone in a meeting, it’s amazing the different kinds of people. There is no way everyone would get high together, but we have a common bond because we are all addicts.
And so I realized that you know, the basic characteristics of being an addict were totally in me. And I learned a lot about the disease of addiction, and that it is a disease and that it’s incurable and that it will kill me. I’ll fucking die in one way or another from this.
I started coming around and decided that I did want to stay clean and start recovering. I also learned in there that I could have fun, that I didn’t have to be loaded.
There was a lot of other things that I could do. I used to tell myself, “Well, I just party because there isn’t anything better to do in this boring town.” That wasn’t the case, I didn’t even take the time to look. I just wasn’t interested.
I started caring a little bit, I don’t know about what, not necessarily about myself, I just started caring about life. I wasn’t really suicidal when I was loaded, but I just didn’t give a fuck.
That was my problem, I did not give a flying fuck about anything. Ever. Nothing. No people. I didn’t care about anybody. I didn’t care about myself. I didn’t care about my house.
The last place that I lived was with a recovering alcoholic, and I totally partied in her house, fucking just disregarded everything around me. I just didn’t care at all. I did not give a fuck.
So, I think that I decided that I didn’t want to die. Without the drugs, man, it’s like all of a sudden you start feeling again.
I started feeling all these weird feelings that I hadn’t allowed myself to do in so long. I was like totally scared shitless. I was scared as all hell. Full of fear and a lot of pain and really confused. I didn’t know what was going on.
But I decided I was going to give my recovery a go, give myself well, maybe I will just try this for like 90 days.
If I don’t like it after that I can just bailout. Well, that wasn’t the case. I got into it. The more I found about how much I can learn and how much I can grow by staying clean . . . I try and keep my recovery simple. I believe that as long as I am aware of my powerlessness over my addiction, I am not going to get loaded.
Shit, it’s like hard. This is the hardest thing that I have ever done. Because I don’t know how to fucking act. My whole identity was drugs. And everything about me and everything that I did, my brain was always, constantly on drugs.
It was either getting drugs or being on drugs, always. Fucking thinking up plans and schemes on how to get more, and how to get a killer deal. And it just consumed every part of my life.
And so today, I don’t know, it’s not like that, I don’t have to kill myself on a daily basis. I think one of the main reasons that I was scared was because I just didn’t know what to expect because I had never lived clean.
All my conceptions about being clean was just fucking nerds in high school, or just lost, whatever. I didn’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want to do drugs. It’s like about that shit, “Just say no” is a bunch of bullshit.
Because you can’t just say no once you’ve started. It might work on kindergartners. But I think once you start, anyone will enjoy the numbness.
So I didn’t know how to live. That was my problem. That is my problem. I don’t fucking know how to live.
And so that’s why I go to meetings, read literature on recovery, because that’s what’s teaching me how to deal with things. Like I said, it hasn’t been easy. It’s been totally hard.
I’ve moved five times in eight months being clean because places don’t work out. I fucking got kicked out of my Dad’s house two months clean. I didn’t have, a car, job, or a home, and people took care of me, and it worked out. It was amazing.
And I know that’s all because of I was free. I didn’t have to sleep outside once, because people offered me their homes and food, and helped me to get a job, and I got my car back. Things totally worked out.
And I know that if I would have gotten loaded and said, “Fuck this,” I’d still be on the streets, because that’s where I was. But I wasn’t, I wasn’t alone. People cared about me and I didn’t even care about myself.
People said, “We’re going to love you until you can love yourself.” And I told them to fuck off and they loved me anyway. I don’t know why I really hated that.
Now I am really grateful. I just know that as long as I stay clean it can only get better. And as long as I get loaded it can only get worse.
That’s what I keep in mind when I think that it would be fun to go get ripped again, tweek-out, and stay up for days in a row, go back to that zombie state.
I don’t think that would even work, because I know about recovery now. My high is ruined. I would just be fucking up.
I am glad to be alive and clean. It’s not rainbows and beauty all the time, but that can be found.
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