Tuffy H.
DOB: 2/14/57 (Valentine’s Day); Miami, Florida.
You know what? I am never bored any more.
Click Here for Addict Out of the Dark and into the Light – 21_Tuffy.mp3
I can’t understand people saying they are so fucking bored. I’m like, well maybe you’re so fucking boring. I don’t know. I am rarely bored unless I am with someone who is boring me.
Let’s see, I was growing up, I was a happy boy, I am a Dr. Spock baby. There is a bunch of us like that in this generation now.
I don’t know what growing up was like, I don’t really remember a lot, but to give you a quick rundown, let’s see. My Mom met my Dad, he was in the service in Opaloka, Florida, a little town in Miami, sort of, and I don’t really remember my Dad much at all.
My Mom married my step Dad when I was three. My real Dad came and visited me when I was twelve, spent a week with me or a weekend. It was different, it was weird. I don’t remember really much about it.
He didn’t seem like my Dad, but he’s a salesman. I’ve been wanting to look him up here lately. I don’t know where he’s living or what he’s doing. My step Dad and I called my mother by her first name until I was three and then he said, “No more of this. I’m Dad and she’s Mom and that’s how it’s going to be.” And that’s how it was.
But they couldn’t stay married. Off and on he lived in Philadelphia. So it got to one point in my life that I remember that every year we would go to Philadelphia, they would try to get back together — from Miami to Philadelphia. And then it didn’t work — we’d end back up in Florida. Shit, we did that so much that one year, the Catholic school that I went to made a rule just for me that if you left during the school year, you couldn’t re-enroll during that same school year. And sure enough, that same year we did it again and it didn’t work out. We ended up back home in Florida.
So I never had much of a father figure. I get my father figure maybe either form movies or my peers. When I was a teenager . . . this one guy, my Mom’s boyfriend she had for a while, he was a swarthy kind of a fellow, a real man, a man’s man. He wasn’t a bad-ass but he took no shit from no one and he was very sure of himself, confident. And I learned a lot from that man in that short time.
But I grew up relatively normal and we lived in a . . . Once, when my Mom and Dad tried to get back together in Philly and it didn’t work, we were on our way back to Florida. We stopped in Columbus, Ohio, in July of ’70, just to visit some relatives. My mother was born there — I come from Italian descent — stopped there to visit some relatives and it was really nice.
We got off the train in July of ’70 and it was cool. You don’t have cool nights in July in Florida. My Mom said, “This is great, maybe we will stay the rest of the summer of if I get a job we will just hang out for the next four to six weeks and then head back home.”
And fall was approaching, it’s getting time for school. Well, she did get a job, we did stay a while. She said, “Well, if we get a place to live, we’ll stay for the school year. We’ll stay in Ohio.” So we stayed for twelve years or thereabouts. I finally moved back to Florida in `82, in December, and Florida is home. But in Ohio is where I learned how to party and where I found recovery from addiction also, but I am getting a little ahead of the story.
I was coming down to Florida to visit some friends and I wasn’t exposed to any drugs in any form, that includes alcohol, when I was in Ohio, other than maybe trying to drink. But I had never gotten off before, never gotten a buzz. I was visiting in Florida and my friends down here were already partying. So I was in a group of guys, they broke out a joint and they started passing it around a circle. Must have been twelve of us there, and it was scary.
It was a joint just like you would see on T.V., you know, rolled in yellow rolling paper, real tiny, real small. They passed it around and I was scared. I thought, what am I going to say to these guys, how am I going to get out of this one, what am I going to do? The joint comes to me and I say, “Huh, oh, no man, I’m off of that shit now.” They laughed, and said,“What are you talking about?” I said, “Yeah, I was real addicted to that shit, man.” I might have even told them I went to treatment or something. They said, “Get out.” You know, I couldn’t even smoke cigarettes at this time, I was fifteen years old. I am a cigarette smoker now, have been since I was sixteen. But I took a hit off the joint and I didn’t get off, I didn’t get high. But I did get cool. I was cool now.
I came back home to Columbus, told all my buddies, hey man, I smoked some pot while I was down there. And, coincidentally enough, so did some of my buddies in Columbus. While I was away they had smoked some pot or experimented with drugs. So I guess you call that the experimental stage, where there are . . . Yeah, I smoked pot but I would never do acid, let say.
Right then a friend of mine, he had a hit of acid, a hit of windowpane, so that was the line. So I drew the line right there. Yeah, I will smoke pot but I will never do LSD, because well, you see, I didn’t want to smoke the joint because I knew marijuana smoke led to heroin addiction. I saw it on all the television shows.
They laughed at me, of course, but I took the hit anyway. I was cool and I was up in Ohio and my buddy had a hit of acid. I wasn’t going to do acid because it was made of LSD, and I knew if you did LSD you could take an acid trip twenty five years later and jump out the window. That’s what they told us and I believed what the media and society had programmed into me. I really don’t believe that today, that I am going to go on another acid trip some time in the future, fly out the window or roof of the Hilton.
Nonetheless, my buddy brought in a hit of acid, some windowpane, and it was so tiny and he cut it in half. We were going to split it, and I said that little thing, we’re going to get off on that little thing? And I ate it and I was tripping my brains out. That was pretty neat. So I’ve done acid now, right, and smoked pot, but I’ll never shot drugs. I’d never stick a needle in my arm.
So I drew the line a little further. Sure enough, I was at a friend’s house, they broke out some liquid morphine. You know, let me point out, the drugs are not important. What drugs I used, I used because my friends were using, it was just the society. And I wanted to be accepted and be cool. And my buddy who turned me on to the acid, he’s also the first guy I shot dope with. We drew up some liquid morphine and he did it for the first time. He got off instantly, like that. I said, you can’t be off now. He said, “Yeah, man, it’s great stuff, you ought to try it.” And I did and I was off like that, and it was great.
So from then on there wasn’t anything that I would do and anything I wouldn’t try. If it was a new buzz or a new drug, I’d try it. And so I’m moving through the experimental stage.
The first time I got drunk, I was seventeen. I learned how to drink and I learned that after the first . . . it was beer, right? The first couple of beers they were nasty, right, but after about three beers you get that alcohol buzz going and then the rest of them just flow right down. You get a real numb feeling and I liked it. I was working with some hillbillies at some truss company building trusses for houses. At a Christmas party at seventeen I got drunk for the first time.
I threw up too. It was terrible, what a buzz. I drove home too. You know, throughout my entire addiction, I could have been killed many times. I did some pretty crazy shit.
Anyway, my addiction takes off and I am using, and I am working, and I am using drugs in all forms. There isn’t anything I won’t do, but I didn’t become a heroin junkie. I drank a lot and smoked a lot of pot and I did whatever recreational drugs I get my hands on really. But it cost money. I was never a successful dealer, so I didn’t make a lot of money at it. I would try my hand at it just to cover the cost of using drugs.
So anyway I was a construction worker. I got a job doing construction work in Columbus. I was never really a business minded person, but I do have entrepreneurial thinking. I didn’t really ever realize it, but I was always wanting to have my own business, or wanting to make money.
But I would rather party than do anything. After I’d found out what using was like, my whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another, the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. There were times when my stash would get low , it was time to cop. When I was out I was desperate, and we had to have something around the house.
So, like I said, I was working for a construction, I was doing some construction work, some dry wall work. I was a hard worker. I worked for one company, and sometimes the work got to the point where I needed a helper. So I used this for a while as a helper and then there just wasn’t enough work to keep us both busy. I acquired another company.
So now the two of us are doing work for two companies, and eventually I was doing work for three companies, with two helpers and I could see where I was starting a business. And I could have eventually had a monopoly in the Central Ohio area for what I did in dry wall.
But I did like to party, and I did use a lot, and that became pretty much more important than working. Work took a back seat. I would show up late for work, I worked on like a production line system of new home construction, whereas I had to do my job so the next people would get in there and do their job.
You’ve got painters and carpenters and carpet layers and plumbers and everybody’s got their turn to get in there. It’s production, so I was kind of holding up the works. I got fired from one of my companies. That was okay, I had two other companies, and I was going to keep working for them. I lost them both.
By this time I had learned about credit and signing my name. I had an old lady that lived with me for five years. She had two kids. I played Dad to them, and that kept my using down to a minimum, because I had some responsibilities.
I had truck payments, I had my mortgage payment, and I bought a washer and a dryer and a refrigerator, or anything else could sign for and not be able to pay for. So I starting losing everything. I lost a house, I lost a truck, I lost my wife, I lost the kids, I lost my employment from all three places.
I ended up living at my mother’s. I was like twenty three, twenty four years old, living at my mother’s. Was fortunate enough to collect unemployment, and I just started to learn how to live then. I found recovery. There is plenty of self help groups that offer recovery and that’s how I found recovery.
I didn’t go through any kind of treatment or any rehabilitation or detox, or anything like that. Just through the self help groups which are offered in various communities is how I found help. I went to these meetings, couldn’t really relate to anybody at first, but they had a lot of fun. And that’s what I said at the beginning, that I love to have fun. I am about partying and enjoying life and having a lot of fun. Some of the people were fun to hang around with, I just started to have fun.
I just kept coming to meetings. After a while I heard something that I related to. When I came, I saw a bunch of addicts that were trying to stay clean. I looked at them and said, they can’t, they didn’t party like I partied. People where I came from, they didn’t get clean, they died, they ended up in jail.
A guy in our neighborhood, he killed his girlfriend. I mean premeditated, strangled her, raped her, burned her car up, killed her dead, and told people about it. His father shot himself, killed himself. I had another guy, we had another guy, this chick was breaking into someone’s house. They were in there waiting for her and they blew her away with a shotgun.
I had another friend of mine got killed in a car accident. They came over to my house and used my cooler. They went out cruising that night and they wanted to take me with them and I wasn’t going to go. There were four guys in a Volkswagen with my cooler. It’s like there wasn’t any room for me.
They went out and got into a wreck and one of them died that night. Another guy cruising down Westerville Road, semi truck was out in the middle of the street, backing out from a driveway, or a store or something. He went right underneath it cut off the top of his roof and his head and he was dead. And I was really kind of glad for that, he was a dick anyway.
But this is the kind of neighborhood I come from, and people just didn’t stop using and didn’t get responsible. I mean sure we got married and had kids, and shit, but we did not recover, we still used. And sometimes when you have forced responsibilities like a wife and kids, your using is somewhat limited and your weekends out are somewhat limited. But nonetheless I was coming to these rooms of recovery and I thought these people were real lightweights and wimps and didn’t know how to party anyway.
But something started to click. What I did was I just kept coming around, I just kept coming around. I didn’t want to stop using, I didn’t want to recover, But something attracted me. It must have been the fun everyone was having.
We would go out after meetings to coffee shops and to restaurants, and it was just really crazy. I didn’t think these people were like. . . I thought life without using drugs was really quite boring, but these people were having fun. They had functions and dances and social gatherings and activities in which I participated. And I enjoyed, I enjoyed them. I had fun. Because I kept coming around and something clicked.
I got a Higher Power that is spoke of in meetings. The self help groups I went to, they’re not like religious things at all but are based on spiritual principles. So we are each free to find our own Higher Power, our own concept of whatever spiritual fulfillment we get from. So I latched on to some¬thing similar, yet different, from my preconceived notions of religion. I was raised a Catholic boy. And it got to the point where I was coming to these meetings.
I was still using drugs, I was smoking pot. My drug use had gotten limited. I had already quit drinking, I quit doing hallucinogenics, and I would only shoot dope if it was like something really special. But I gave up acid. I tried to just quit shooting dope. But as I am coming to these meetings and I am still using all the time and I would do a couple of bong hits. I was just smoking pot and I would meditate, I’d have my Higher Power, I would call him God.
I’d do a couple of bong hits and I would, you know, like the Indians would do. I thought the Indians were really cool, really spiritual. They would do their peyote and they’d touch God, they would touch the spirit. Everything to them was the spirit. And I felt Indian. I’m not Italian, I don’t have any Italian blood. I’m Indian, I know what I am. And people would say, Tuffy, how do you know you are Indian. I’d say an Indian knows when he is an Indian.
But I would do this and I would meditate and I would try and find God’s will for me. I figured there must be a plan.
I kept coming to meetings, I kept doing bong hits, kept meditating. Sooner or later I figured, well, you know, my Higher Power probably wants me to stay clean for a while and help some of these fools recover because they were having a hard time of it. The meetings in my area, there’s only like three of them a week. This was like in ’81. Then I figured maybe I could start some meetings, they need me, these people need me. So I did.
I started a couple of meetings while I was still using, and by the time these meetings started I was really clean. I had to lie, I had to cop to a clean date. Sooner or later no one used to ask me, but then after a while people started asking me, my Mother asked me. I was living with my Mother, and the condition was that I be totally abstinent, to live there free from all drugs. So I gave my Mother a clean date. I just picked it off the calendar in the kitchen.
And going to these meetings people started asking me, how long are you clean, Tuff? I’d say, oh, a month well, six weeks, two months, ten weeks. This lie every day kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I was still doing my bong hits every night and meditating. I started two meetings, I’m almost four months of this lie going when I really never had a day.
And I am gaining respect in this program, of the fellowship of which I belong. And then finally one day I get clean. I, through my Higher Power, I figured God wants me to be clean to help these fools out for a while. Then I could go back to using maybe a week, maybe month. It wasn’t permanent, I didn’t have to stay clean forever because pot was okay.
I just had to stop drinking because alcohol was a very serious drug. I mean it made me do things I didn’t want to do. It turned me into the kind of person which I really wasn’t. But pot was okay. So I say to God, sure I’ll stop using for a while and help out the situation. So I am really clean.
I’m really clean now. And I can’t tell anybody. I mean everybody thought I was clean four months and I have got a week, and I’m really excited about this. I’ve never had a week before since I started using, and I’ve got a week and I am proud of it. I can’t tell anybody what a feeling. . .
I didn’t have some of the suggestions like a friend or a mentor that guides you through the process of recovery. I didn’t have that until I was really clean. So this guy, he came to share his story at one of our evening meetings that we have, and he was good. He covered all points about recovery. I asked him to be my friend, to guide me in my recovery. He said sure he would.
And I had to tell him. It was tough telling him, but I told him the events that came about me getting clean. It had to do with my dogs getting loose, and it was a spiritual awakening for me which to someone else would not have been anything. But it was what I understood as my Higher Power talking to me.
I told my friend this story. I didn’t tell him that these events took place last week. I just told him the story that got me clean. He said okay and we go out for a bite to eat at the restaurant where my ex-old lady was working. And she’s talking how everything’s fine, how’s everything going, fine. She says, how’s the dogs? I say, oh, they’re fine. I say, they got out last week but I caught them, they got back in no harm done. And then I realized.
I looked at my friend. I said, oh, shit just realized something. He said, yeah, me too. We gotta talk. So now my friend knows I’m only clean a week and that’s really a relief. He says, “You know what you’ve got to do, don’t you?” I said tell my Mother because figured I’d get kicked out, but that’s okay.
I had faith in my Higher Power. I trusted God, so what if I get kicked out. I’d sleep in the truck, no big deal, everything will be all right. He said, “You know what you’ve got to do, right?” I said, tell my Mother. He said, “Yeah, and tell the fellowship.” I said, “Ah, shit, man, I don’t want to do this shit.”
These meetings I started three weeks ago, I planned them to begin in three weeks. So here it is, I am a week clean, these meetings are getting ready to start, it was like we already had the Wednesday meeting. He was the speaker at the first meeting. It was a Friday meeting and I had to tell the fellowship.
The fellowship couldn’t have been more than twenty people at that time, and I expected five to show up at the meeting. We had like twenty five people at that meeting. I knew twenty three of them and two of them were newcomers. I don’t even know how they found this place or knew that there was a meeting there because it was the first night of the meeting.
So I start the meeting, I ask if there is anybody that has a topic of recovery they want to talk about or a problem. Nobody did and everybody looked at me. So, I had to talk about . . . so I told them, well I’ve got something to say. I said I’m not really clean almost four months, I’ve got a week clean. And I cop to it, and there was like silence fell over the room. And I talked about it, whatever I said, I copped to it and I remember how humiliating.
Of course recovery is about being humble and building your character through spiritual principles. And we shared about it that time. The one hour meeting lasted I think two hours. It was almost seven years ago. That was in November 1981. So then I told my Mother. She ended up not kicking me out. I stayed there and so started my recovery and my spiritual awareness and so my life got better or else I would use.
And now I can go out and use any time I want because I didn’t have to stay clean, I choose to stay clean. When I was using I did not have a choice. I used every day and I thought I had a choice, though I didn’t really. I used every day and when I thought I could go a day without using, by the end of the day I thought, well, why am I doing this? And I used to smoke a joint and I . . . .
Keeping total abstinence in the beginning wasn’t easy. I didn’t have a reason. But when I got a Higher Power, I had a reason. It was only something that I was going to do temporarily and then I could go back to using and just go on about my life. But I never really wanted to do that. I just kept helping out other addicts seeking recovery, I kept getting involved.
And you know what happened? I made friends had real feelings of love, acceptance, joy, happiness, belonging. I was not as insecure as I was when I was using, I had confidence, self esteem. That’s what I got. I got self esteem, something that I never really had. I really didn’t feel that good about myself really much. I hung around a lot of other, older people maybe or people that were more cocky or that were, that I looked up to. I rarely hung around anyone that looked up to me, so naturally I had no self esteem.
Recovery has not only given me a life not only better than the hell I once lived but better than any life I have ever known. Even when I was a kid and having fun and playing and riding my bicycle. This fellowship has given me a sense of belonging. And the principles are, you’ve got to give it away to keep it.
And I am not selfish any more, I’m more selfless. I give much more than I ever did before. I don’t have that feeling of if I give it away I am going to lose it. The only way I can keep what I have is by giving it away. By helping another addict stay clean another day. That is why I am here.
I try to carry the message of recovery to the addicts that are still suffering but also if they want help. Without helping new people I don’t grow. People that want to stop using, people that are curious people, that don’t know if they have a problem but think they might.
They come around, they feel the love, the acceptance we have, the empathy, that feeling of recognition. Wordless recognition that you can only get from another addict, the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. Nothing comes close to one addict helping another, because one addict can best understand and help another addict. You’ve got one addict that’s recovering, that’s been a practicing addict but has found recovery.
I stay clean just for today. I’m not here to be clean forever but I probably will. Addiction is a chronic and progressive disease. I could relapse, I could go out there and use and you know what would cause that lack of maintenance of my recovery? Maybe I have stopped going to my meetings, maybe I’ve stopped praying.
I pray every day, I have my spirit, I have my beliefs and I keep that conscious contact alive. And sometimes it gets cloudy and sometimes it’s very alive and very clear and it shines through. And there is just like a real connection sometimes, where other times it’s like a bad connection. It’s like, I can hardly hear you, can you speak up? And sometimes it’s like wordless recognition.
There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery and we can be defeated. This is not a guarantee plan other than . . . Anyway, the one thing more than anything else, that’s an attitude of indifference or intolerance towards spiritual principles. And I was saying that these things, if you don’t maintain your recovery, sure you could use again.
That’s what I did all my life, escape, get that buzz, that feeling of euphoria. You know, trip off into another land, just feel kind of numb. But I have to go to meetings, I have to help another addict stay clean another day. And I I’m rewarded through this. I feel good about myself. I feel happy. I enjoy life.
Otherwise, if I stop going to meetings . . . Let’s say I’ll stop praying, let’s say I just start getting kind of negative.
I get kind of shitty, my attitude, my level of acceptance goes out the fucking window. Take traffic, take elevators, take standing in lines, for instance. These are good examples. It doesn’t bother me to stand in line although sometimes traffic still bothers me. If I know there is a lane that I can get in, I’d rather be in that lane than sitting behind these people in front of me.
There’s nothing like being perfect. I’m not perfect, I’m human. I have human emotions, human desires, human defects of character. I try and rid my character of these defects, these defects that burden my spiritual growth. I want to grow spiritually, I want to be respected, I want to have self esteem. This is how I build my character, by going to meetings and sharing about what’s going on with me. This is how I love myself and I really do love myself.
I live alone now. I love my apartment. I cherish my solitude. I cherish it or I treasure my solitude. I love being in my apartment alone, especially when the TV is off, and the radio is off and sometimes when the lights are off. And the only light might be from the moon, might be from maybe the street lights shining in the window. Sometimes it’s really really quiet, and I am alone with myself.
Damn that feels so fucking good. I don’t know how it would feel before. Maybe I would feel bored. You know what? I am never bored any more. I can’t understand people saying they are so fucking bored. I’m like, well maybe you’re so fucking boring. I don’t know. I am rarely bored unless I am with someone who is boring me.
I am in a controlled situation. Recovery is really good and I enjoy it. Today of course I maintain it. I still go to meetings, I still help another addict stay clean another day. What a feeling that is. What a feeling when a newcomer, his eyes are wide open, and he wants what you have to offer, and he is willing to make the effort to get it. In other words, he is ready to take certain steps, he is ready for recovery.
I got it from the guy before me and he got it from the guy before him. And that person got to keep what they had by giving it away. Not everybody wants recovery and they would rather use. And you know what? They are miserable. Every single mother fucking one of them that goes out there and uses, every addict that I have known that has gone out there and used, has not been as happy as he has been in here in recovery.
And something else I was going to say about using and about recovery, about being in, about being out, people that come back. People do go out and use and many of them come back. I say, “Why did you come back?” They give me the strangest look and they say, “Well, it didn’t get any better out there, man. It got fucking worse.” And I’d say, “Thanks, I needed to hear that.”
Since I’ve got clean I’ve never relapsed. I’ve never picked up another drug. There have been some times when I’ll tell you my disease was full blown and I was angry. I was pissed off, angry is not the word. I was negative, my defects were glaring. But I did not pick up, see my priorities in life. First to stay clean, and two, recover. Number one, I stay clean, number two, I recover. Because first of all I have to be clean to be recovering.
And sometimes all I am is clean, sometimes I can get into an emotional situation where my feelings really come out, my recovery goes out the fucking window. Acceptance, I don’t want to accept it, I want to kill the fucking bitch. Okay, I’m so pissed off sometimes. It’s usually in relationships where my emotions get so exposed, I guess is the word.
My raw nerve endings are out there is when I am most vulnerable and that’s when I am most susceptible to pain. Let me tell you, I have felt some serious pain in recovery unlike anything I have ever felt, emotional pain when I was using.
Of course, I have felt some joy in recovery in parallel to any joy or feelings of happiness I ever felt when I was using. Indescribable joy, I guess that is the way to describe it. It’s indescribable.
So I stick around, so I stay. I love being clean, helping addicts. I love what I have to offer. I love talking about myself. I love this fellowship with a passion. I love it with my life, I love it with my soul, I love it with my recovery.
My recovery is very important to me. Recovery works for people who try it and work it. You come to meetings regularly, it’s going to start working. You help another addict stay clean and it’s going to work for you. These are the principles that made our recovery possible. If you don’t do these things, well, no wonder you’re out there fucking using again.
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