Guest Contributor – Nick Garbarini
I think the most interesting thing about my story and my relationship to drugs and alcohol is the sneaking suspicion that, in retrospect, they may have actually saved my life. Now, I know that feels grandiose, but for me, drugs were the salve I used to “do life.”
I’ve struggled with mental health since a very young age—depression and suicidal ideations—and once I felt relief from that via drugs and alcohol, there really was no going back. The thing I didn’t know at the time was that this cycle of feeling worse and then using more to feel better was just at its infancy. This centrifuge of masochism would get much worse, and it did. Quickly.
I was absolutely not the type of functioning alcoholic you might find working a fast-paced job and indulging in substances to keep an edge. I was quite literally using with the purpose of inner oblivion, and that’s exactly how it presented itself to the world around me and to the people who loved me.
The interesting thing is that in 12 years of using, drugs never felt as good as they did the first time. I was chasing a ghost ever since that first experience, and I never caught up. The best it ever got in the years after that initial high was when I’d be sick, and the phone would ring, letting me know I could cop again. That feeling—not even the using itself, but knowing I wouldn’t be sick anymore—was the best it would get.
I floundered like this for years, imagining my life as a scene from The Basketball Diaries, when in reality, it was more like Groundhog Day. The tedium and utter boredom of daily drug use are actually indescribable. Having the same routine with the same characters and the same results—daily life was incredibly tragic. But when you’re as low as I was, it didn’t even raise your pulse.
I was resigned to the fact that I would die like this, and it didn’t even really bother me. What I didn’t know at the time was that utter hopelessness was the only place where a person like me might actually be able to find some genuine hope.
I asked for help for the umpteenth time and went to treatment (again). To be honest, the process of getting there and detoxing didn’t feel much different than any other time. Did I want to be sober? Kind of. Did I want to get high? Kind of.
The main difference was that when I finally left the hospital and got to the treatment center, something happened. I had had lots of “moments of clarity,” as people like to phrase it. What happened to me this time was different.
I couldn’t close the door, and I really badly wanted to because it hurt in an indescribable way to look at the truth about myself. The emotional pain was so great that I couldn’t tuck it away and keep moving. I was completely cooked.
Everything I did once I got to that treatment center was completely out of character. I was telling the truth (blegh), completely against my will. It would be more accurate to say that the truth was pouring out of me. I tried to keep it in, but I just couldn’t anymore. There was no more room. It had to overflow somewhere, and thankfully, it all started to unwind.
I was taking direction from other people who had been on the road to recovery before me—another anomaly. I was the type of person who just couldn’t listen. I would even know you had a better plan or idea than I did, and I still had to do it my way.
It truly was the perfect storm. I had the right help at the right time, and I was finally ready, though it certainly didn’t feel like it. Over ten years later, my life barely resembles the former catastrophe I dared to call a life. Sometimes it even feels like the memories of the things I used to do to get by don’t belong to me.
I have not done anything perfectly in recovery. The relief is that I didn’t need to. I just had to be honest, open-minded, and willing. And I had to continue.
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