The Hungry Heart

My parents were not drinkers. My dad (not biological) had migraines and said that drinking would cause them. I never saw one drop of alcohol hit his lips. My mom would have a glass of wine on special occasions. Besides my grandma, who never drank, I had no extended family near me. My mom told me that my grandfather was an alcoholic. He died before I was born. My extended family had alot of heavy drinkers in that, but I had only met them on a handful of occasions.

My mom raised me as a Jehovahs Witness. The Jehovahs Witness are an extremely controling cult. Being raised as one I wasnt allowed to make friends, who were not JW. I wasnt allowed to celebrate birthdays with other classmates, salute the flag, all oh which made me became isolated, introverted, whatever you want to call it. I was an only child and there were no other JW kids around.. I was always the good one. I was always being told how "good" I was. I was the only one in class who never got detention. It wasnt that I really wanted to be good, but I was just so afraid of screwing up. Any minor thing in my life was blown out of perportion by my mother. My mother was an over protective, control freak, not to mention a cult member. I always walked on eggshells. I was quite sad and lonely most of the time. I moved before I started high school. I hated having the good JW label and as I grew older was desperate to put an end to that.

I was diagnosed with diabetes at 15. Type one, insulin dependent.

I started smoking weed when I was 17. My buddy at the time asked me if I wanted to smoke weed with him. I had always been curious about pot. I wanted to have fun like everyone else. I had my drivers lincense at the time had a bit more freedom. Not as much as any of my peers of course. I had wanted to try weed sense watching Cheech and Chong movies as a kid. Nothing really seemed much better then escaping reality. If I was a pothead I was something, when before I was nothing. This is how I saw it at the time anyway.
I didnt get all that high the first time. It wasnt very good weed. I kept smoking it though trying to get high. Then I got some good stuff. I became a pothead after awhile. Smoking everyday. I had new friends that I got high with. I started smoking cigarettes as well.

I loved getting high. It was fun, it gave me something in common with others. I loved to just baked in my room at night to the point that I couldnt move. It was like going on vacation without having to leave. I liked the fact that alot of people knew who I was and I had something in common with them. None of them were real friends and some took advantage of me many times. Most came from from families and parents that could of given less of a #$%^ about them. I longed for that so bad, being that I lived with the polar opposite of that.


After high school. I was was hanging out with one of my only friends, who I had known for a few years. He had gotton kicked out of high school for bringing an once of pot to school and smoking it in the lunchyard, under a blanket. (great hiding place, dipshit =) He had gotton arrested and kicked out of his house. He ended up moving in with a drug dealer/ raver. My dad was giving me alot of @#%$ for being around him. I was sick of listening to my parents by then. I ended up trying coke and ecstasy with him. I ended up getting burned by him so I stopped being his friend. He wasnt the best friend, but he was the first person I met when I had moved to the new town.

My first job was at Wendy's. There was an alcoholic working there. He was a nice guy. I wasnt 21 so he would buy me beer. Of course I loved drinking and started drinking every other night. Id be hungover in the morning, thinking my parents wouldnt notice. Id take all my empties and sneek them out of the house when they left. It was fun and I never got in any trouble because of it. It didnt last though. I stared a new job and quit both weed and drinking, mainly due to living with my parents, and not having access to either.

My next job was at a store that had a 'beers of the world' wall. I made some friends there that would get me alcohol. I started drinking again, now I was drinking about a 6 pack of beer a night. I turned 21 and started going out to bars. I was drinking before after and sometimes during work. I got away with it, and I was having fun. I loved the freedom to be able to buy and drink beer whenever I wanted too. I started going out to bars with my friend and drinking as well. i never just drank alittle. I just figured I was having fun, I was young and cocky and wanted to prove I could drink alot. Alcohol was a freedom given to me and I was going to enjoy every last drop of that freedom. I still lived with my parents and still felt trapped. They would give me crap for drinking too much, but I was so used to hearing thier crap that I could really care less what they thought.


I got a girlfriend and a new job where I made more money and moved out for the first time. This made drinking easier not living with my parents. At first I just drank alone. I found a new group of friends at a bar downtown. I started going there several times a week, sometimes everyday in the week.
My dad got me a job working construction for the state. For the first time I was making REALLY good money. The job was a 2 hour drive both ways. I had to leave no later then 5am to get there by 7. 8 hours of work. Then it was 3 hours to get home. It was the best money I had ever made, but also the hardest i had ever worked in my life. I wasnt used to being away from home so much. I had my own place that I never saw.

Shortly after I started I found out that my dad had cancer.

The job was out in the middle of nowhere, up a hill and dirt roads. There was one little store up the hill. I stopped there with a buddy from work and he bought me a beer for the trip down the hill. This turned into a daily thing (not him always buying it for me) and turned into a 6 pack. Id drink half of it on the way home.

My friends were calling me to come out the bar more and more. I started smoking pot again. Then I started smoking alot of pot. I usually only went on the weekends. Sometimes Id show up on a weekday but I was usually tired from work. Concidering the drive it was about a 12 to 13 hour day. Coming home my my freeway was aways backed up, but the one to the bar was always clear. So i figured Id stop in there for one or 2. That rarely happened. They closed at 11 and I usually stayed til then. Drinking hard liquor, beer, whatever I could. Sometimes I would goto another bar til 2. Id sleep a hour and drive to work at 5 still drunk. The whole day Id be think about how all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. Then I would do the same thing after work again. It was hard to say no to my new friends, or to myself. I spent most of my checks there. All the money I waisted there, I could kick myself. I had money to spend, I was finally on my own, I had friends, a good job. The only bad things in my life were no girlfriend (something I had grown used to but was still not easy) and of course the fact that my dad was dying.

My dad died. I kind of freaked out. I wasn't around him nearly as much as I should have. I was too busy being selfish and spending most of my spare time with my friends drinking heavily. Id drink til I threw up and keep drinking. I put dents in my new truck. I was using alcohol to drown my problems. I dont know if I was just in denial or running away from it. I flaked on my mom and dad so bad during the cancer I still cant forgive myself.

I moved next to the bar with one of the bartenders. I lost my job. I lived at the bar on unemployment checks. I felt bad about not being there for my dad. My mom was alone and calling me non stop which I hated. I was trying to be happy and forget.

Unemployment ran out and a friend offered me a job working for him. The night before I started I went out and drank 5 or 6 gin and tonics at some dive bar. Rode me bike home, crashed into a tree and broke my arm.

I moved in that same guy and another friend and it was a party everyday. I had a new job making half way decent money. We went through a bar sized bottle daily, and a case of beer. I started doing coke too, trying other drugs. Never got addicted to it. It would of been easy to though. I drank myself to the hospital at one point. The doctor said I had torn something in my throat from puking too hard. I called him an @#%$. I tried to quit drinking after that, it lasted about 20 days. Being sick did help me quit smoking. When I wanted to smoke Id smoke weed instead. I was getting high 24 7. Plus I lived next to a medical pot grower/ user who sold. So it was always available.

My roommate ended up moving away out of state. I quit my job. My boss was a complete douchebag and the money wasnt woth putting up with. I got a job loading trucks because they didnt drug test. The work was backbreaking, but they liked me. I didnt make very much money so I had to move back in with my mom. As more time passed I started to got more depressed and embarrassed over my situation. I lost touch with most of my friends. I was still smoking loads of pot. The only person I stayed in regular contact with was my dealer. When I would run out Id scrape every pipe I had, over and over and over just to try and get one more hit.

I got in an accident. Their fault. I was stopped and got rear ended. @#%$ up my back. Couldn't lift hundreds (literally) of boxes a day anymore. Yet I still tried to for another couple months. I finally quit. I got an insurance check from the accident and spent most of it on going out, cases of beer and weed. Screw paying bills. My back hurt like hell.

So here I am a year later, no job, no girlfriend, living at home and drinking and smoking like a fish. I was going out to the bar on a regular basis. Partying with the owners, getting alot of free drinks. I alwys had beer in the fridge. I found a new bar and started doing karaoke on a regular basis. The karaoke bar had horrible beer prices so I started drinking long islands.

I left one day with very little gas in my tank. My regular bar was closed so I went to the Karaoke bar, by myself. The bar was empty. I dont know what compelled me to get that last drink but I did. Then I left without paying my tab. Drove home without getting gas. I ran out of gas on the freeway. Like a drunken idiot I pick up the roadside phone and tell the operator that I ran out of gas on the freeway. When I made it to the gas station the CHP were waiting for me. "Is that your truck?" yes "Have you been drinking?" a few "Stand on one leg and count backwards." They pushed my truck off the freeway and took me to jail. I went to court a month later but they didnt hear my case for some reason and sent me home. I went to the DMV Court the next day and they told me Id lose my license in 10 days. I was drinking more then a 12 pack a day if I didnt go out.

I was freaking out. I was getting it all in while I could. A few days before I lost my license I went to my favorite bar. The owners boyfriend asked me if I wanted to get high...duh. He told me had some really good @#%$, but I had to stay in the bar over night if I smoked it. I asked him what was in it. He said pot, coke and oxy cotton. I didnt know what oxy cotton was. I heard that Rush Limbaugh was hooked on it. I was apprehensive, but he said he just smoked one, and he seemed fine. He was better then fine actually, he seemed to be having a great time. So I said Id try it. We went in the back and smoked. He kept pressuring me hit the joint harder and harder. At first I got pretty high. Not good though, my heart was racing, I was paranoid as hell. I stayed the night there. Joe kept pressuring me to do more, saying I wasnt doing it right. I wasnt sure why I wasnt jumping off the walls like him. I ended up smoking 3 more joints with him. I didnt feel any more high though. Joe likes too sneak up on people and scare them when they arent paying attention. SO I was watching my back all night. I was also afraid to walk through the bar because I believe it to be haunted and it was night. I was obviously alot higher then I realized. Joe had the jukebox blaring the whole night SOOO loud it was unbearable. I didnt want to ask him to turn it down. Finally it stopped and I fell asleep.



I drove home, stopped to pick up 2 40s first. The bill was 6.66. That freaked me out so I bought some chapstick to change the total. It didnt help, I had no idea what I in for. I was fine the next day. I drank my beers. The next day I started puking and didnt stop for 2 weeks. I didnt eat, drank only water. I trid pepto and it made me puke worse. I kept drinking it to try and get it out of my system. My lips were chapped as hell and of course the chap stick fell in my bucket on like the second day (back to 6.66)

I was praying the whole time that l would get better, not die and most importantly that noone would find out this was from drugs. Finally all of a sudden it stopped. Just like that. I was so weak I could barely walk. My mind was all messed up, I was nauseous, dizzy, emotional. I was clean though. I made a promise to got that if He got me through this I would quit drinking and never do coke or any other drug again. I said Id quit weed until I got a job.

Well I did get through it. It was another good week or so. Slowly I got my strength back. I over did it each day each day because I was impatient. I made a list of all the things that I had put off and needed to do or fix in my life and set out to do all of them. So far Ive done pretty good. Working out. Reading. Cleaning out my old junk. Not drinking. Doing whatever I could. I felt like a differnt person or the person that I once was. My system was fianlly clean and I wanted to keep it that way. When I was sick I had alot of time to think. Thats all I did was think and pray. I think I ran through my whole life in my head.

The same day I break my promise not to drink, I got the job offer. Get a job was definitely a high priority on the list.

So here I am. Thats my story. I hope you all dont judge me too much. I never said I was proud of it. I figured I might as well just put it all out there on the line. Thanks for reading