'I’ve learnt, through months of painful realisations and mistakes, that there are no shortcuts to learning to be human again.'
Sitting in a dark room, the mounds of various powders on the coffee table in front of me slowly getting smaller and smaller, was as close as I got to a party back then. It was also my reality for three years. I hated every second of it, but I also knew that the next day would be exactly the same.
Drinking was all I could think about. I made it my mission, as much as possible, not to feel anything – in other words, to self-destruct. At 15, I found what I thought was my own tribe, people who, like me, had also found the perfect solution. I still felt alone. I didn’t feel loved or cared for by any of them. After the drink, after the drugs, I was still left with myself – and I hated me.
Writing this now, aged 18 and nearly 18 months sober, I realise that one of the hardest things about giving up was dealing with loneliness. As excruciating as my time had been with people who didn’t care that much for me, they were still my security. Though I felt lonely when I was with them, I felt lonelier without them. Being newly sober on top of that was the ultimate in self-isolation, but as long as they were still drinking and using, I couldn’t be with them.
These people were emotionally intelligent, they’d been through similar things and had tried to unravel them. They had lives filled with interests, jobs, passions and plans. Some didn’t, but that was OK, too. Most of all, they had my back. What did we have in common? We had struggled, and we were still struggling, but we wanted change.
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