100 days – 265 to go
Addict name Carlton. I guess some thought he finished or he using. No, I just thought I would stop spoiling you all with my inventory of my life. I just been building up a foundation and spreading the message and not the shit the messenger said. I believe in anonymity, even if I don’t get the same respect. It is just something about pushing up on other people’s business “YOU FEEL ME?” Hell if I can’t solve my own problems what good am I to want to try and solve the price of gas?
Any way, I was trying to do a blog one day and it got so tense I said, fuck that I can’t push this one out. I got to save something for my 4th step, personal inventory same shit I be writing, but I am suppose to tell everything. I will bring it to the net after I reviewed it with my sponsor. It had a lot to do with religion and resentments. It got so deep I felt like was going act out and do something to release my anger. And I couldn’t be angry with no one but myself. This is my words, my life, and the shit I volunteered for and showed up with commitment scribbled across my face. I became the opportune person looking for opportunist so I could punish them for being so naïve and granting me an opportunity. I was terrible, because the disease had made me believe what was manifested, which is as far as I could see. While being caught by the invisible force I could have sworn it was someone in front of me. It was someone me trying to look past myself. I couldn’t face my future constantly looking in my past getting lost.
The disease had me feeling I didn’t really have anything to write about. It told me to reduce my meetings (I really have to one a day). I need to specify I have only, because I have a business and I am also addicted to my graphic arts. I need to be somewhere I can identify helping out my cause with my future. I have a opportunity to make something more out of myself then to be seating in meetings all day and then wonder why my talent isn’t going no where, why I am not an inch better then I was last year when I stopped. What happen to all them ideas I had, I can’t remember, because I don’t want to. God was waiting to be invited in so he could guide me along the way and all I could think about before I gave him the invitation was assume he had always been there. He was but I never asked for his help. Until I did so, things became easier, my patience soared, and my ability made me battle weariness. I knew my job is not complete, but with God half the job is done. Now when he wakes me up tomorrow I can go after the other half. Today that is what I am doing. Now when I first started off this Blog I had other things in mind. They didn’t want to come out the cage and roam around with all the other animals in the zoo, in my head.
100 days - 265 days to go. Over the last 10 or more years, I never thought I could put together another set of extremes like I have. I was here before for two years on my own. I had changed for the better and it definitely wasn’t over night. I was always helping people, my spiritual side had never died, I was prayed up and I wasn’t in the rooms. Now I have to share about that, so if I am jumping around I have to because some people don’t believe u is recovering unless you are in the rooms. Then some feel if your thinking hasn’t change then, if you used all you did was given up your clean time, but you didn’t relapse. I really want to touch on this and I will.
I had just lost my house and other of the world shit, I had two more children, same age, and they not twins, and you figure it. I had been trapped between both of their mothers. I can say I was addicted to one and using the other one just like the drugs. I was really caught up on the weed, as minimum as that might seem, when you getting some of the most exotic shit, coming in on the boat, somebody please tell me how you managed not to getting obsessively addicted. I was an addicted then and I wouldn’t face it, because to me weed wasn’t a drug or it wasn’t considered a controlled dangerous substances. Yeah right, alcohol I convinced myself wasn’t one either. Any way, the lifestyle had begun to eat way at me like a cancer. I was losing shit; basically I was giving it away and wasn’t sweating it. Only until the money disappeared I noticed something was wrong. By now the houses were gone, the car, the other woman, including my third baby mother, she had been jumped off the plane, but I hadn’t really paid attention to it. I was trying to make the rest of the other passengers comfortable as possible, while I crash-landed this motherfucker. Unfortunately, all those bitches jumped off and I was the only emotionally scared, mentally damaged, infected individual now with a disease called addiction. Never in my wildest dream had I thought smoking weed would have done this. It had to be something more, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t stop fucking smoking and I didn’t know what the hell to do about my habit. I wanted to continue, I was smoking more weed in a sitting then a crack heads did with crack for real for real. You know you addicted when you still aren’t trying to face the facts and tell yourself lies to break your fall. The rocks at the bottom of the pit weren’t looking so comfortable upon approach, but what could I do about the pain? In my case find a new way to handle more pain.
I was powerless then but I was still fighting. I had beefs that lead to the judge calling me the defendant. I was on trial for a faction of my life and getting high was the only solution at the end of my days. My anger was getting the best of me now. I was becoming enraged with self. I was fuckin up the children, my middle girl and her brothers. I hate to say it they got on my nerves, but I was the problem, I realized. It got to the point they called their fathers. They met me one day when I got home and was trying to hold court in my vestibule. I was going to go against both of them, but to be truthful I was so fucked up, I got sober on sight. I was scared because I wasn’t physically or mentally prepared for them both. Probably not even a one on one would have been helpful, if I wasn’t indulging heavily. My thoughts was, if I could get upstairs it is a wrap for there asses. I thought seriously I was going to get my ass kick 1st. but when these assholes let me get upstairs in my or her house, I rented but was in her name, I thought about coming back downstairs and clear out the block, fuck my house only. I don’t like witnesses. I was trying to donate some blood. I knew I was going to volunteer the rest of lifetime to the farm (prison). Miraculously, I thought about the consequences. I got upstairs looked around at what were left I had to lose and the only thing that appeared was I in the mirror. The disease told me, don’t do it we aren’t finished using yet. Mind now I had just won a couple major cases so this one would have added insult to injury in the judge’s eyes.
What couldn’t happen happened and it wasn’t just in my mind. My mother fuckin bitch at the time had been flirting with Johnny Law and got my last high strip taken right from under my nose. By then the coke was starting to call me, hell crack was on my- door steps. I mean them mother fuckers was outside selling packs like they was 7-11 store open 24 -7, but I couldn’t stand what it did to people, so that wasn’t my hook yet.
To make a long story short, the police was staked out ready to take a niggah down. Till this day you not going to tell me she wasn’t giving one of them toy soldiers some pussy the way they started fucking with me. But then something came over me. It felt like the skies opened and said, “This is not you. Examine what you have become.” Then the same voice asked, “What plans do you want? Do the bitter ends, jails, institutions or death, sound good to you? Or do you want to investigation the options of help self?” I had met a real powerful sister who just happened to give me a break and saved my life. I felt like I gave her permission. What I did from that point changed my whole life and it is still working today in my life. It works, because after the multitude of unsuccessful trial and error attempts I know I couldn’t tell help how to help me. So what I did this time was ask the court’s to help me. I wrote the Judge that saved my life month’s prior. She directed me to a self-help program, called Young Fathers Responsible Fathers. That was the changing point of a periodical timetable of unmanageability.
Note unmanageability doesn’t mean you don’t want to gain some sort of control of the events in your life. In some cases our upbringings failed us. We acquired the same mismanagement techniques because we didn’t know any better. We fell under the assumption we got the best guidance from our parents but heres the hit, you don’t have to remain. First thing in order to stop failing, is release that ego we confuse with pride. If it sounds likes you welcome the message. Take advantage of the much-needed help, even if it sound like someone is trying to control you. Hell think about someone with higher power (on earth) then yourself telling you where and what time to eat, shit, go to sleep, or telling you this is not yours get out, give me that back, or no your ass can’t have this. Then after you think about how someone can help you own some shit like your self esteem, property (other then what is on your back or you can gather up in 15 minutes, then you will see maybe they are not trying to control you, but instill some in your ass. I was there to the end of the road, and then I learned I could cut the corner and find another direction. Hell and if it wasn’t one I could construct a road and not dwell on any dead ends whether job, relationshits, family dilemma people using as ammunition to shoot down your goals. Thru the0 program it was designed to support me. I learned quickly I don’t have to be a bird and fly over certain situations, with the ability to use what was instilled in me I can think of another avenue to cruise down and get past that situation to safer grounds.
Thru this program and the mentors I had develop a sense of direction. My attitude went from ABM: Angry Black Man to a manageable respectable growing man, who was able to be a better communicator, I had reinstalled some positive responsibilities back into my life. No longer was I hunting for someone with responsibility so they could consume mine. I wasn’t any longer a burden others would accept because I was easy to be controlled. It was a give and take situation; because I had some good tricks behind my zipper and they didn’t mine giving. My manipulation tactics was used to get my way through the program, I accomplished my GED in a matter of months and 30 days later I was getting credits from an institution. Not an institution I was destined for where some individuals wore white uniforms and name tags. Hell I even become employable no longer was I a risk. I was always articulate, but I had expanded that learned sense and took that on the road. I had become an advocate for fathers and mothers, I had taught classes at Universities. Here was a person that stood near universities and served students shit to keep them up running around like a lab rat in a cage. I was doing some heavy shit and I thought I wasn’t even strong enough to carry my own weight. You never know what you can do, if you never appreciate what you ask 4 and especially, if you don’t utilize what God gave you a chance at CHANGE. Hell I was one that never thought my television would do nothing for me, but show me other people. Then one day that it tells lies to your vision (television) had me on it telling people the truth. And as a matter of fact on several programs that went nationwide. I was presenting to men and women, change is available if you want it. Tell me God wasn’t good and I wasn’t trying to honor his wishes. I was and felt I was recovering. Recovering in MY BOOK means CHANGE, not just you’re outside appearance, but your insight, intellect, and attitudes. How as are they going to identify with your expectations if they don’t meet in the middle?
Somewhere the disease caught up with me and had me entangled with my will wondering was I trying to continue to make believers out of doubts. Meaning the longer I continued to deal with politicians, judges, different programs, I slowly started developing a dislike behind certain shit that I wasn’t groomed for. See no one was ever schooling me about the bullshit I would face, how character assassination didn’t discriminate and how those around you calling themselves your mentor really had other designs with their program, I wasn’t suppose to see. After I was bashed in the face with reality, I had assumed maybe I was used up in the political world. I thought this was just an opportunity I could utilize without the use of the participants I was surrounded around. So when I dismissed myself out of certain circles that were protecting me my mind I began to unmindfully wonder back towards the barbershops and the corners near there. I wasn’t missed and I was welcomed back slowly by the disease. My visits was slowly shredding my accomplishments, harming my spiritual values, my trust in God was starting to look bleak. I wasn’t asking of his guidance as much and he didn’t seem like, TO ME, he mind. Boy was I wrong. Soon that disease made using again and taking back my will seem like it wasn’t such a bad idea. Shit I wish I could turn back the hands on my dumb broke watch. It was only right twice during the day when I began using again and time to cop. Then I lost my watch and everything was all about getting and using. I had caught up to that same person I thought I had lost.
Today’s approach is my correct guidance. The days of yesteryear blinded me and my ego with the help of the disease lessened my ability to recognize I was starving, because I didn’t have the help of a 12-step program. I was applying the applications’ to recovering, but was my plans about recovery or was it concentrating more on the fame? To receive and accept recovery then please tell me I was wrong. Make sure you can point it out in black and white. I don’t want to have to try and figure out what phrases of the text are manipulated to satisfy your opinion. I thought if following the path of your spiritual was identified and equally displayed then what could be the problem? I had been questioned “is there recovery, if you are not in a 12-step program?” And farther more is everybody process, experience, or timetable the same? I think, just talking about my belief and me until, God answers that question then I guess the book is more proof then burden. People with their views are burdens thrown out there to hinder your process. Stop being so hard on yourself, because simplify is what us newcomers are adapting to. So what the tools are the run of mill trial and error tools you didn’t had when you came around. Hell those of you should appreciate us, because it much is some shit you missed that you know you need now. And since it has been made so much simple maybe you can help and study side by side with the new comers, like myself. No I am not thinking you don’t know nothing, but give yourself a break and never stop learning.
In this process getting a 12-step program is critical. It is valuable to have a set of men and women just like yourself, who you can see yourself in. Yes, being able to identify you wasn’t the only person in the world that couldn’t beat drugs is what many of us need in order to identify, being clean is the way you arrest the problem. Some of us go on for years challenging the process. Some actually think time or timing is the way to handle addiction. Never once would we just accept we got fucked up by something that can’t talk, walk, or feel, but the ass whipping down the road it have waiting was crucial... Too many of us don’t want to accept defeat. Never once has it entered in their head you not relapsing because of the drugs. The drugs were just the option after you changed your mind. If our obsessive thinking isn’t open to change we will always be bothering time and never giving ourselves a break to recover. I personally know what parts now to change and why, because some scars aren’t visible but internal. I am not afraid today to give myself a break again for the third time. This time I must make it a charm. I plan on working it, because thousands of addicts before me proved it works.
I can honest say the year just before I got here I once again found out that self help process doesn’t work!!! Don’t try to recover on your own. You are wasting you time. Without the information, a fellowship, a sponsor, the steps and especially God, you are in trouble. Now if you have God and you ask for his guidance and 12-step processes keep popping up in conversations with other addicts or whomever, take the suggestions it works.
A time of illness was another lock that I didn’t have the key to. If I was equipped with a bunch of addicts I would have been all right when I found out I had lymphoma. I wouldn’t have got so entangled up with all the different drugs and found one I liked and as a result found me some baggy clothes people with the medicine I was use to. My rite aid was located in the alley or stashed in their dip under their balls, in Reynolds wrap or in reseal able bags between their ass cracks. I wouldn’t have thought the skittle color bag or tops with that mixture would make me think purple hearts, green clovers, and yellow stars was my lucky charms. I wouldn’t have thought of them mother fuckers at Johnny Hopkins was killing me with the after effect of their medicines, so why not try my own regiment of suicide. It might be slow, but oh it feels so good, ONLY when you have money. It won’t feel good if you are BROKE!!! So don’t go broke to them Baggy pants boys they might kill you and then the game is over.
