A good-bye letter written by an Adult Drug Court Participant, Chris.
I am writing this letter to say good-bye. I don’t feel like you deserve this, but I believe you need to hear this. You were once all I knew. I had given you control over every thought and every action in my life. You took advantage of me at my weakest moment and never loosened your grip. I came to depend on you, and as you always did, you numbed my pain, but that wasn’t your true intentions. It came to a point where you began to numb more than just my pain. You numbed every emotion and feeling I had in me. With you in control of my life the only feelings that remained was apathy. Not caring what happened to me or to anyone or anything on this earth. Also, the feelings of loneliness and emptiness ran through my polluted veins and mind.
People say that with this disease comes selfishness, but the selfishness is fueled by the need to feed your unfillable void. You had me at a point where I had judged and labeled myself “a junkie”. I had completely accepted this “reality”. This is who I had become and who I was going to be until I either went to prison or died. I felt unworthy of any other outcome. You transformed me into a monster, an evil force in this world. A machine moving emotionless with the sole purpose of maintaining your toxic destruction. My growing low self-worth drove me to isolate and gravitate toward other people that were living the same lifestyle as myself, validating my own actions.
If I did not feed you, you would punish me by sucking through, my broken mask, any dignity, self-respect, or any scrap of hope I had left. Everyone began to see who I had become. The mask became too heavy and it got to a point where I stopped trying to wear it. The only time I wore it was to manipulate someone or a situation to get the results I wanted.
I have now made a choice. I have chosen to fight. To fight against you harder than I have ever fought for you. I now feed another force. The force of recovery. A support system with true empathy, open arms, minds, and hearts. With applying recovery in my life I could go on and on about gaining back the material things I’ve lost, but anyone can get those things back with the abstinence of using. The true gifts of recovery for me has been the many relationships I’ve gained and mended and the fulfilling joy that has came with them. The true love, hope, and strength that has grown in my heart for myself and for my life as a whole. I now feel like I have purpose and direction in my once unmanageable and lost life.
I know you will try to find any way you can to find some way back into my life. You are relentless. I know you will never give up. You are devious. You will have no mercy on who you have to hurt or use to get to me. You are keen. You will disguise yourself as a friend, love, and happiness. I know you’re there, patiently waiting. You do know me. I will give you that, but I’ve been getting to know you as well. I will look for you in everyone, everything, and every situation I come across. You have caused enough pain in my life and the lives of others. I know you’re not through with me because I am still alive.