So, I have not done any writing in a while and I have had a lot going on so I need to offload a little bit and hush what is a very loud mind at the moment. This is my way of letting people in and sharing what is going on for me.
18 Months. On Saturday 20th August I marked 18 months into my recovery from addiction to drink and drugs. A hell of a lot has happened this last 18 months. 18 months ago I couldn't go a day without alcohol or cocaine. I was stuck in the endless cycle of getting and using drink and drugs with little regard for anything else be it relationships, health, money, accommodation, personal hygiene etc. I was a mess. Now 18 months in I give a shit about myself, I have written 3 books published on Amazon, writing more, I have great friends around me, I have great prospects namely in the job I have landed, and I have love, the love of my life, the only girl I have ever been prepared to marry back in my life and this time she has the real me not the mess I was when we were last together 3 years ago. I never recovered from our split and never found anyone I loved like her and I feel like the luckiest guy alive to have her back in my life. She is my world and so much more and I intend to spend the rest of my life making things up to her and making up for lost time with her over the last 3 years.
I have not started for the first time properly and willingly receiving counselling and working with a shrink. I am getting a lot from it and starting to deal with things I needed to years ago.
Job. I have (after a long and hard recruitment process consisting of writing a personal statement to job spec and 2 lengthy interviews) landed myself a job in the substance misuse sector. I am so happy and proud of myself and how far I have come, I am actually gonna get paid to help others into recovery WOW (the lunatics have the keys to the asylum lol). I have worked really hard as a recovery coach to put myself into a position of finding employment and studied even more endlessly in my own time into the subject to develop myself and its nice to get rewards for the sheer amount of passion I have to make a difference and work within this sector. I have finally found my calling in life.
Continuing studies and thoughts. I spend so much of my free time reading and watching anything I can find about alcohol, drugs, addiction and recovery. In particular at the moment I have a preference for 'Harm Reduction'. I love learning more and more the subject fascinates me.
Drug treatment. It is still clear to me that wide scale reform is needed within the substance misuse sector and government policies. Im not going to go into it fully in this post but a few things we need to look at is;
- Prohibition does not work Re:former legal highs. History has shown that prohibition does not work and simply passing a law to make something illegal will do little to stop its use. We need to look at Portugal's approach to the war on drugs i.e. making all drugs from weed to Heroin legal! It has proven success and should be the standard
- Alcohol, lets help people not capitalise from the suffering. Alcohol abuse costs the NHS £3.5 Billion per year, yet the government does very little to reduce this....why??!! because they make more (a lot lot more) in taxes from the drink industry.....money means more then people and lives.
- Methadone. I think there is a massive flaw within opiate addiction treatment in as much as too many people are spending far too long parked comfy on methadone as an answer instead of actually targeting and achieving complete abstinence from drugs.
- Users belong in treatment and Dealers belong in jail, simple!
Back to the Future. So I am a huge Back to the Future geek (that is a huge understatement to be fair). I need to start doing something big about this love of mine, so I am going to collect as many props and merchandise as possible and save up to go to America and go to the shooting locations of the films. Its a dream and you must always (if they are possible) aim to fulfill your dreams.
Me and thoughts and reflections thanks for reading and I will write more soon
Love Karl
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