I remember the first time I smoked and the last time I smoked. The other 25 years is a cloud of smoke. I was a natural born drinker. That was some thing I did from an early age, stealing drinks after my mom and dad passed out. But drugs is some thing I grew to like. I found a sense of ease and comfort that overwhelmed me. I could drink and get high with the best. When I got in trouble I could quit the drugs at first, but drinking was here to stay.

My picture of drug addict was an old dirty man who had nothing. Boy was I ever so wrong. My friends, little did I know were drug addicts. They were all older then me and would teach me everything....not that I didn't instigate enough on my own.

Yes it was a blast at first. The days when the romance of  hiding from the law and family was fun. They would never know I was high (little did I know they could see it 2 miles away). But I was finally excepted among my peers. 

I was one of those kids that did not belong anywhere. I was a round plug of wood trying to fit into a square box and I didn't fit. Once I was drunk and high I fit anywhere I wanted. I was the best at every thing and not afraid of anything.

Like all pot smokers, I went somewhere to get the pot in the early days. Running in to every drug man drugs had ever made. It was easy for me to say "yes" to them, I had nothing to lose...I thought. I worked every day to supply my fix. As long as I worked I thought I couldn't be an addict.  There is no way I could be that picture of a drug addict.

Little did I know...and I did not plan this...one day I would smoke pot to wake up with my morning coffee, taking some kind of speed all day to work, drinking and speeding all night and some times taking something to go to sleep. I would like for you to remember that this took a life time to do. No rest in between.

Just a little prison, where I learned how not to get caught and stay high. I did a  lot of county time (2 and 3 days at a time) for little stuff, staying off the drugs for a day or 2  when I was in the dog house with the wife, but I still drank).. I will not go in to the 25 years of horror stories and people, places and things I hurt.  That is not recovery. It is like the kids movie never ending story. But it did end....one day at a time

The picture of a drug addict, I know to day, is a kid that can't stop smoking pot, much less the extreams I went to. I was addicted at an early age and did not know it. With me that was just life. It does not have to be that way for you. There are 4 million, just like me, that will tell you the same story. You don't have to be that picture of a drug addict as I knew him.

You have the rest of your life to live free and off of drugs.