20 Things I Do Not Miss About Doing Drugs

Benefits accrued (or rather detrimental aspects negated) in my first 13 months of recovery from the underlying causes of drug and food addiction:

(Let’s start off with a bang)

1) I have not yet had what was supposed to be an innocent fart turn into poop in my pants in recovery.

2) In fact, in recovery any fluids or solids that may be discharged from my body in any variety of contexts, do so in their most natural, purest rhythm (if that is too vague, I can urinate when nature calls and don’t get so constipated that I wonder if some wizard cast a petrification spell on my digestive track).

(That’s all for bodily functions, except…)

3) I have not vomited a single time in the past 13 months. That’s probably about 200 times less than the 13 months before that.

(OK, no more bodily functions.)

4) I have not been suicidal or depressed since being in recovery (huge deal for me). This past winter was the first winter of my entire adulthood in which I was not afflicted with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Glory.

5) I do not miss backing out of 98% of my plans involving other people due to social anxiety.

6) I do NOT miss jail cells, psych wards, frivolous and forced ambulance rides, and the condescending way most medical personnel treat you in the hospital once they realize you’re on drugs.

7) I do not miss forgetting what I’m saying not just mid-sentence, but mid-word.

8) I do not miss compromising my own values or making insane justifications for breaking the law and wronging other people.

9) I absolutely do not miss the way I’d get manic after using every day and not sleeping for a week, being immersed in the feeling of perfection and providence in all my words and deeds while also being 100% sure that I was divinely protected and guided.

I mean, it was awesome at the time, but then I had to live with the disconnection, alienation, homelessness, criminal record, poverty, stigma, and all-out train wreck of devastation that comes from being a high and mighty, arrogant, condescending prick who literally thinks he’s Jesus.

OMFG, I do NOT MISS THAT.

10) I do not miss being the withered-up black sheep of the family, ever on the outskirts while feeling simultaneously inferior and superior.

11) In recovery, while I do have the occasional grumpy spell, my life is not balls-to-the-wall with erratic mood swings and utter mental instability.

12) I don’t miss obliterating myself in cheap motel rooms, my only companions being heartbreaking hallucinations and living nightmares.

13) I do not miss money mercilessly burning a hole through my pocket.

14) I do not miss stealing after all the money slipped through said hole in my pocket.

15) I do not miss eventually stealing even when I had money because by then it was a habit.

16) In recovery, I do not ever again have to find my sense of self-worth in the delusions of grandeur that substances gave me.

17) I sooooo do not miss hitting on all the female friends (and males on like every 10th full moon or so) in a 3AM fit of desperation and loneliness.

18) I am totally OK with not having panic attacks at the grocery store anymore.

19) I do not miss being addicted to pushing myself to the edge of death and slowly coming back (rinse, lather repeat), because that journey back from death was the only way I knew how to find a sense of meaning in my life for a long time.

20) I honestly do not miss any of it anymore. I did enough drugs to wipe out an entire colony of elephants. It’s a Christmas miracle that I’m still alive. I’m one of the lucky ones.

If you’re stuck in the spider web of drug addiction and you’d get out of it if you could, let’s talk.