I’m sober now. Off of benzos and booze. But holy shit the things I’ve seen while in rehab. I’m a transfemme and got put in the men’s psych unit. A quick recap. A crackhead who was five foot nothing who upon learning I was a trans femme was convinced I in fact had afab genitalia. He would often ask if I was wet or if id fuck him. The best thing that happened with him was me walking into the bathroom while he was shaving his stomach, turning to me, and shouting “XXXXX CAN I SHAVE YOUR PUSSSSSY?”
A PCP addict who out of nowhere asked if he could call me “Mother” and said shit like “mother do you like Hitler” “Mother do you get horny here” “Mother is anyone on the Boston Celtics secretly a transsexual?”
Security flipping the whole units stuff because we weren’t allowed to bring food up from the vending machines and I had a nice thing going where I’d buy honey buns and wait for them to run out and then sell them for 3 cigs then sell each cig for a dollar and make a decent profit. They didn’t find shit bc I kept my honeybuns in a back office that no one used and they thought was locked (I jimmyed the lock with my rehab id card)
Cuddling with a cute Bi dude on ten blankets and a pillow I made in my “office” and immediately stopping bc fuck cuddling while paranoid and afraid of being caught.
A 62 yo alcoholic who was from Georgia and came to Chi just to go to rehab. He couldn’t read or write, was racist, sexist, and queerphobic. He called his roommate “boy” and learned the hard way racist shit doesn’t fly past the Dixon line.
I have waaaaaay weirder stories and will add more. Love you all and I’m glad 2 be back
I’m pretty much always some kind of wasted. I suspect we’re fairly similar wrt addiction based on what you’ve said.
And yeah, it’s pretty much destroyed my life and cost me most of my relationships outside of my immediate family. It’s cost me jobs, career opportunities. It’s wrecked my health, physically and mentally.
Mad respect to you for quitting, but I can’t do it. I’m too committed at this point. Plus, I think you need hope for it to really stick, and all my experience of life tells me that things get worse until you eventually die, usually miserably.
Best of luck to you.
I’ve been in the exact place you are now for a long time. I promise you it can and does get better. It just takes some work. Get to a meeting if you haven’t been before, a speaker meeting would probably be best. I guarantee that just about every single person in that room will know precisely how you feel. It isn’t hopeless. Sure, things are pretty fucked right now, but that doesn’t mean they can’t change for the better.