My Drug Addiction: Drugs Were Not My Problem

Ed Kressy
Ed Kressy
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

To overcome my 11-year methamphetamine addiction, I had to understand…

Drugs were not my problem.

They were my attempt at a solution.

My problem — one problem, anyway — was that the way I felt, wasn’t right. No matter how I felt.

Even long before the meth psychosis and disembodied voices took over my life, this was the case…

Even if I felt fine and high, I worried what would happen when the high wore off.

Portents of doom appeared everywhere…

The crash couldn’t be avoided; all I could do was twist another curve in the road ahead.

That meant using more drugs.

You’ve heard the addict always chases the first high. In my case, at least, the expression was only part-way true…

I chased the first-ever realization: With drugs, I had a way to fix my feelings. To climb to a height or plummet to a low. To me, one was almost as good as the other.

Because drugs were nothing more — and nothing less — than a way to ensure I always had a way to change the way I felt.

How did “normal” human beings — those not addicted to drugs — understand the nature of their feelings, whether subtle or powerful?

How should one act or not act upon those feelings?

As a kid, I learned my feelings weren’t as important as the lives of characters from my imagination.

Characters whose lives I could manipulate with my thoughts…

And my thoughts, I later learned, I could manipulate with drugs.

Ironic that drugs brought me to a place where my thoughts came to life — in the form of the meth psychosis — to manipulate me.

I was addicted to drugs because drugs were a reliable means to amp up my feelings…

To create new feelings…

As an addict I was an artist, my mind a square of rough canvas, a block of thickly veined marble…

My artwork was self-expression through the creation/manipulation of feelings, through drugs. To the artist-addict, nothing is more important than how he or she feels.

As an addict I believed everyone else felt the way they were supposed to…

Yet I didn’t feel right.

And so, I believed it was my responsibility to change how I felt…

Drugs rarely failed me in that endeavor.

Throughout adulthood, I told myself: When I’m ready for everything to be okay, I’ll quit doing drugs.

Deep down, I knew it was a lie.

As an addict I understood, at a base level, something the people around me — through no fault of their own — could not…

Quitting drugs would only make things worse.

At least at first.

The pain and horror when the drugs were gone…that was the problem.

Yes, of course as an addict I had to get clean. It was critical.

Yet to me, and to those around me, the obvious solution — that quitting drugs would solve the problem — was also the wrong solution.

When I began to understand the true nature of the problem, I began to find a solution…

For me, that solution is spirituality.

I came to believe in a spiritual force that could solve my problem.

What does that force look like?

Imagine you see an ant crawling across the floor…

Now, you could do many things to that ant…

Carry it to its anthill. Feed it a crumb. Crush it under your heel.

What you lack the capacity to do, is cause the ant to understand what it is to be a human, versus to be an insect….

You can do many things to affect the ant’s life. But communicating with it in a way so that it understands your nature, is not one of those things.

In some ways, I am like that ant…

A spiritual force affects me…

I perceive the force’s presence, yet cannot understand its nature.

But the search for greater understanding of that force, brings me peace…

It gives me the power to change how I feel.

And thus I have a solution to my problem.

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