A Junkie Named June Bug (15-Previously Hero In Addict)
By abn27
- 156 reads
I'm thirty three now, and it's been almost nine years since I achieved sobriety at twenty four, minus a few slips along the way that we'll talk about later. I still identify as an addict, a recovering addict, but an addict still. That will never change for me because I still have to fight the urges on a daily basis, and though it's gotten easier the more time that passes, it's still a fight. The difference now is that I'm winning, and my addiction grows weaker, instead of my addiction winning, and growing stronger, while I grow weaker.
One of the bigger misconceptions about addiction is that there's a cure. If you're an addict, like me, this will be one of the most frustrating hurdles to jump, but not because you can't do it. It's because society isn't as progressive in addiction awareness as our disease is progressive.
I've contemplated a great deal on whether to write about this, because we addicts don't need to know about any more hurdles to recovery, but I've decided that society needs to know what fucking warriors we are, and in spite of them. They need to stop labeling us weak, and recognize that we fight a daily battle to defeat the beast that is our immortal addiction, and the armor we have to wear isn't to protect us from the enemy within, but rather the enemy society remains to our recovery. The single greatest threat and enemy to rehabilitation is society's stigma. If only the armor we suit up with on a daily basis, was being used to protect us from the beast inside, our chances would drastically increase. Instead, we're forced to battle the beast without any artillery, because we're forced to use the heaviest amount of artillery on the beasts outside us, outside in the world that tries to defeat us with it's ignorance and hatred.
I had a man tell me yesterday that all addicts should kill themselves, and worse, he knew I was one. The same day I had a woman tell me all addicts should be sterilized. These are the monsters outside we fight, but we stand tall, because we know how to fight the enemy. We do it every day. They don't know us, and that's what I strive to change. They told me addiction is a choice, and we addicts like to feel 'the foggy brain', and once we make the CHOICE to stop, we supposedly escape this brutal beast. If that were true, I wouldn't be fighting my body's genetic and biological urges to use still, nine years later.
They mistake choice with fight. They don't know how hard it is to fight when your body and mind are at their weakest. They don't know what it's like to be more scared of birth because of the pain medication I had to take, instead of from the major surgery of my son being cut out of me. They're not all like this, but most are, and it's important to have realistic expectations going into recovery, and overcoming addiction, than to enter blind and find out later.
I found out later, and trust me, it's better this way. They don't understand this beast in the way we do, and most instead of asking, simply render their own ignorant and inaccurate conclusions. They think I won my fight, and that I'm cured. They don't understand we are in remission, and we have to keep our disease in check more often than those in cancer remission, because the moment we get complacent, it will return stronger than ever ready to destroy everything we love.
All the things we worked so hard to gain in recovery, all these years, gone in an instant. Take solace in knowing that we are stronger than the threat that looms over us daily, ready to destroy our hopes, dreams, and family's without warning, discrimination, or humanity. Take comfort in knowing that the mere threat society perceives accompanying their lack of knowledge of our disease, is in and of itself so scary to them, that they have to fabricate falsehoods about our disease, to appear less ignorant. Imagine how quickly they would fold if they lived on a daily basis with the knowledge that losing a fight with all the beasts inside and outside, would mean losing our lives, family's, and everything we worked so hard to accomplish. Take solace in knowing that one day, we'll only have to fight the beast within, and we all have each other to help with our fight when one of us feels as though the beasts are getting stronger than we are to fight them.
There's a famous British celebrity that's an addiction awareness Advocate. He made an eye opening documentary regarding addiction, and why it's a disease rather than a choice. One of the most powerful descriptions I've ever heard to support this fact, was his explanation of how he felt watching his former heroin addict self shoot dope. Someone recorded a video of him during his active addiction, and in the midst of the documentary, from a fancy hotel, he watches the video. He's skin and bones, utterly emaciated, eyes sunken in on the floor of a flophouse, shooting dope. As he watches the video, he explains that his disease tells him, even now as a rich and famous celebrity watching the footage from a fancy high falutin hotel, that he's jealous of the hopeless man in the footage. That he now, while watching the footage in all his present glory, is jealous of the heroin addict shooting dope. He knows he can never go back to that life, but his disease convinces him daily that he can and should. That's the disease, and that's why it's so powerful.
They're not even strong enough to admit their ignorance in face of our disease, but we're strong enough to fight it knowing it's full strength and capability of total and complete destruction of our entire world. I know how strong I am, and so should you. One day, they'll know just how strong we are too.
I'm dedicating this book to the woman that saved my life. The life I was so devastated to be resurrected back to from the dead, is now the life I never want to lose. I never want to lose the feeling I get when I look my beautiful son in his big blue eyes, and know that no matter how hard I try, he will never know the full extent to which I am so in love with him. I need every day for the rest of what I hope is a very long life, to even come close to making him realize my neverending unconditional love for him.
Everyone I asked, only knew you as 'A Junkie Named June Bug', so to you I dedicate this book. But, to me, you will always be more than a Heroin Addict, and instead a Hero In an Addict. You will be the registered nurse that brought me back from the dead, and saved my life, along with allowing me to create another one in my beautiful son. It's for you, A Junkie Named June Bug, and a substance user by any and every other name, that I will spend the life you gave me, ensuring your name means so much more than society's misconceptions. You're the Hero in An Addict that saved my life while being mired down with a heroin addiction, and I hope to change the way you're viewed from the inside out. Junkie never meant the same thing to you, the outside world, as it does to me. Now I hope it won't mean the same thing to you, the world and it's ever present detrimental stigma, anymore either. The angel that saved my life was a Junkie Named June Bug. If you're a junkie named June bug, or a substance user by any other name, know you're going to save a life one day, if you haven't already. Everyone of us is going to save a life, and you non addicts can help us too to save the most valuable one of all. The life we'll save that's worthier than all, will be our own hopefully, and you can help us the way A Junkie Named June Bug helped me.
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I was with the dental
I was with the dental hygenist the other day having my teeth cleaned, she asked me if I had any plans for the year ahead, I said, "No, nothing planned at all, the only thing I wish for is good health, because without it life is difficult." She agreed with me.
I think it's wonderful that you can get those feelings out, let the readers know your story, which involves a lot more than being a drug addict. You were forced into that life without choice.
I think addicts need to take one day at a time and having your son to love is one of the best tonics, because you know he needs you.
If anything good is going to come out of this, it's that one day your son will become a man and realize what an amazingly courages mum he's got. To have lived to tell her story.
Don't ever stop writing your story, because I know from my own experience it does help to get it down.
Never stop dreaming of a brighter better future.
Jenny. x
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