By Joel Congleton

In the throes of addiction, the mind can get so diseased and unsettled that to imagine a life of sobriety is akin to wishing upon a star. It just seems so incredibly far away. Yet some people manage it, and go on to live healthy, productive lives. The odds are stacked, certainly, but knowing that these people exist is enough to tuck away a little hope.

My addiction led me to prefer the company of junkies, but occasionally I’d emerge from my self-created fishbowl existence long enough to cross paths with a recovering person. If they’d been working a program, they’d probably greet me with a solid handshake, a warm smile and a slightly intrusive stare. If I knew them from their past lives as active addicts, the contrast would be staggering, and I’d puzzle over how they could radiate so much confidence and coolness without the aid of a mind-altering substance.

I wasn’t a stranger to detoxes and rehabs; I’d been force-fed plenty on the topic of recovery. But no matter how badly I wanted sobriety, I’d always revert to the familiarity and comfort of the drugs.

There’s a certain simplicity in being a junkie. You’re either high or you’re dope sick. You either have drugs or you’re looking for them. So many of the variables and skills involved with managing a balanced life are removed, and there’s a beauty in that. While everyone was frantically racing around from this birthday party to that doctor’s appointment, I was perfectly content sinking into the couch cushions, staring at the TV with a needle in my arm. Some might think that the social stigma attached to this type of lifestyle would act as a deterrent, but I didn’t care what people thought. I was too focused on getting high.

Of course getting wrecked didn’t pay the bills, and as my tolerance to the drugs went up, so did the cost of my habit. Trivial problems began to arise — failed college courses, loss of jobs, etc. But I’d let the people who loved me worry about that stuff. More importantly, the high stopped working, so I began to hunt for that perfect combination of narcotics — amphetamines to bring me up, benzodiazepines to bring me down and a steady stream of opiates to keep me from getting sick.

Combining benzos with opiates is possibly the quickest way to an accidental overdose, and one night in my apartment, I woke up from what I thought was a typical heroin-induced “nod” to find my roommate in the middle of calling 911. He said I’d been unresponsive for more than 10 minutes. My glasses hung bent and crooked on my face from him slapping me, my crotch was wet from the ice cubes he’d shoved down it, and I had an enormous burn in my nylon shorts from the cigarette between my fingers. After the initial shock of almost dying, we had a good laugh and got high.

It’s not that I wanted to continue living that way. I’d grown weary of it years ago, but lacked whatever it took to change my trajectory. A favorite tactic of mine was the “I’ll get clean tomorrow” mantra. It was the best of both worlds — the moment I’d swear it was my last hit and pump myself up for the epic battle between my demons and the real me (the one who wouldn’t steal cash from my folks). Those were invigorating moments because I really meant them. And of course I needed that last hit so the hero inside me could take one last breather before the dope sickness and depression took a grip. But this type of self-deception only took me so far. After a while, I knew the game I was playing, and played it anyway.

Years passed. Eventually I tried a methadone maintenance program, traveling over an hour each way to the clinic every morning for three years before my Medicare got cut and I could no longer pay for it. I immediately entered into an outpatient rehab for the sole purpose of being prescribed Suboxone, an alternative to methadone. After the counselors had deemed that I’d made little to no progress in the weeks that followed, they kicked me out of the program. I continued to buy drugs off the street for a while longer, but things began to feel different. The accumulation of years of living the same mundane, repetitive existence had reached a tipping point. Something had to change.

I started going to meetings again. I got a sponsor, and he suggested 90 meetings in the first 90 days, so that’s what I did. Every night I sat in plastic chairs hastily strewn into rows or semicircles or squares around tables, depending on what church basement we were occupying. I sipped cheap coffee out of comically small styrofoam cups, the caffeine only adding to my nerves as I wrestled with the terrifying notion of raising my hand and sharing my vulnerabilities with the room. But I kept showing up, and it got easier.

On the date that marked my one-year anniversary of sobriety, I chaired a meeting at my home group, as is custom. I told the room the things I’d done and places I’d gone to get high. Longer than some and mild compared to others, my story was just one out of millions that ultimately got us all to the same place: searching for a way to fill the hole in our soul. As I fumbled nervously with the medallion my sponsor had handed me minutes ago, I talked about the tools I’d been given over the past year. How I’d been practicing meditation, learning to set my diseased and unsettled mind aside entirely (if only for short bursts). How the desperation and selfish motivations that got me to those meetings were slowly shifting to something more closely resembling altruism. I was starting to see the value in being helpful.

The thing is, it always made sense to me that I’d get clean at some point in the distant future. But I’m guessing most addicts feel that way. No one anticipates that last fatal shot that leaves them blue and face down, drowned in their own vomit. But I think I expected I’d do it on my own, relying on the same broken mind that had sabotaged me for years. It wasn’t an epiphany, but a slow, dull bludgeoning over the head that made me realize it would take a room full of broken minds. A church basement full of hardened, desperate junkies, alchies and outcasts that wanted what I wanted. We weren’t all going to make it, but what mattered was that we shared the desire to get clean.

The path to a life of sobriety was right there, among my people, but it was invisible as long as I was confined to the walls of my own mind. To break out would take courage, strength, and a commitment to myself and the recovering addicts I’d surrounded myself with. It would take raising my hand and speaking in the meetings, despite the nearly crippling anxiety. It would mean asking for help, and forging a willingness to do the things that were suggested to me. And it would require that no matter how grim things look, I always cling to hope.