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I still have a long ways to go

My name is David. My story is a combination of the result of sexual abuse and drug abuse. As a child I endured a rather odd form of sexual abuse. It wasn't your garden variety painful abuse, just a kind that left my young childhood self very confused, and as an adolescent with the onset of hormones, I wasn't sure how to identify with anyone of either gender.

I was always a nice guy, and thus easy to get along with for most people, but sexually I didn't know where I stood and I was lonely. It was way too easy for me to get into drugs--after all the people that accepted me were users, and man, did getting high feel good.

I started off using pot, and to this day, I don't think that pot's such a bad thing--about as bad for you as cigarettes or drinking I think--but I see how it becomes the gateway drug. Start searching for pleasure, and the hedonistic drive only grows--that and people who partake in one illegal thing are just as likely to participate in other illegal things--so thus when I was young and looking for pot, I found acid and later on I would find meth.

Acid was fun, but surely cost a bit of my memory and perhaps my normalcy, but it was meth that really got me.
I'd experiment with coke, and in the later years try some crack, pop a few pills, try jimson weed, smoke some heroin and a bit of opium. But nothing had me like that meth. I never once let a needle touch my body, but smoking and snorting had me hooked enough. My grades in high school and college suffered--in the early years because I was a lazy pothead and in the later years because I rarely slept and was always chasing the meth high.

I did a lot of things I regret--sexual things to get the meth and sexual things that only felt right on the meth, lying, and retreating from all my friends and family. I saw many friends lost massive amounts of weight right along with their health. I saw mind's become twisted, and if there be a soul--surely, meth corrupts it. I saw marriages and other relationships become perverse, and somehow I got drug into these dysfunctions.

I Love how meth made me feel physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Physically, it made me feel strong and amorous, emotionally, I felt euphoric, and it seemed to speed up my thought process and I Loved that.
However, in all senses, it was costing me too much, and after several years of trying to get away from it, wanting to quit, but not being able--I changed my desire. My desire was not to get away from the drugs. My desire was to move toward something good. Having a desire to get my college degree, get a good job, be able to in the future have a family and be a responsible father, and to be able to help people--these were the goals that led me away from the self-destruction of drugs.

I still have a long ways to go to reach my destination of success--but at least now, I'm not doing anything illegal, I'm not doing anything more dangerous than my disgusting nicotine habit. I'm in control of my feelings and actions, and I'm moving closer to my goals. It feels wonderful--wonderful in ways that the fake pleasures of drugs could never touch.   David