Addiction to Recovery : The Diary of a Cocaine Addict
Sarah Ibrahim is a Transformation Coach for women in recovery from cocaine addiction using a very honest account of her own substance misuse to educate, inspire, and support those who are following a similar journey that might benefit from her experiences and learning. A big thank you to Sarah for sharing the following account:
So here I am 13 weeks into the journey of abstinence, on the recovery path, clean from cocaine and booze after many, many years of abuse and carnage.
I feel privileged to be invited to share with you here, on this platform, as for me it symbolises turning pain into power. It means that all those years of neglect, of poor decisions, of messing up, of letting people down, of lies and deceit – they weren’t for nothing. They have turned out to be what has provided me with the lived experience that now enables me to share this story from a lived experience perspective and to use my life as an example of what not to do up to a certain point.
So where does the story even begin? That’s what I have been asking myself and these are the questions that have been surfacing again and again:
How did I end up here, as an addict?
What made me this way?
Will I be able to sustain this abstinence?
Why me?
Do we ever really ‘recover’ or ‘heal?’
And so in this short article, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on all of that using my own experiences as the guide in this. Please note: I am by no means an ‘expert’ on this subject, however, what I do have is years and years of lived experience as an addict and while I appreciate we all experience it differently, this is my story. So lets dive right in…
In order to answer the questions about how I got to be here in the first place and what made me this way – I believe that on some level, there has been trauma experienced – whether that be in the now, or in the past – and that trauma resulted in a coping mechanism that involved running away from whatever pain it was that I might have been experiencing, masking it, seeking distraction, playtime. Getting on it in other words. Getting shit-faced. Getting high.
Forget forget forget.
Only we don’t and that in itself perpetuates the problem.
Now there is a VERY significant point that I need to make at this juncture. For the longest time, I was unable to take on board the suggestion that perhaps something in my past may have led me to a self-medication method of alleviating pain. I have had periods where I would say I was quitting and of course, never did, cos in those moments, my back was against the wall. I’d been coerced, guilted into it or just plain caught out. In other words, I didn’t choose it. And because of that, I was always going to fail in my mission to quit. Quite simply, because I didn’t really want to.
So…during one hiatus, I started to have group acupuncture as a means of staying clean. Well, this one particular session, as the needle was removed from one of the points in my ear, an overwhelming sadness came over me and I was powerless to stop the flood, to put a dam in the flow of this raw emotion pouring out of me. It was hideous. Messy. Super snotty. Incredibly heart-breaking….and I didn’t have a fucking clue what the actual fuck was going on!
It transpires that this one pressure point related to grief. The response that my body was showing, clearly demonstrated a huge outpouring of said emotion.
So what happened?
Well, my dad had died around maybe 15 years earlier and I believe that this was what was being processed in that moment. I was 17 when my dad passed at just 49 years old and it devastated me. I am the oldest of 4 and was a proper Daddy’s girl. He was my pal. Then he was gone.
To this day, 22 years later, I do not remember a single day for over a year after his death; I don’t recall anything. Not how I was, how I coped, who was around me, none of it. I had my 18th birthday just a few months later. This is a blank space in my memory.
Knowing what I do, I’d say that this was so traumatic for me that my memory has blocked it out as I’m not able to deal with it.
This is scary. 22 years. No recall!
However, I’ve not tried to remedy that by asking my mum or my friends as I accept that when I’m able to face this, the memories will surface. Or perhaps they won’t. Who knows?! In any case, we digress slightly…
So the needle is removed, this symbolises grief and my body is responding in a way that fully concurs with this. So the lady tentatively suggests to me that perhaps my drug using was a way of dealing with this grief. A way of processing the pain. Of running away from the feeling of abandonment.
Well that was it. I royally lost my entire shit in that moment.
‘HOW DARE YOU suggest that when I’m getting smashed it’s to escape the feelings around the death of my dad’ – that was the basis of my shit-fit.
As far as I was concerned, it was ME. I was why I was doing drugs. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I’m a party girl and that’s just what I do. All of it was on ME.
I absolutely could not accept even the hint of an implication that maybe there was more at play
And why?
Cos it felt like a blame game. It felt like by even considering that there was a reason behind my choices, I was looking to allocate the blame for my addiction to others or to circumstances and I just could not handle that as an option.
I was hell-bent on making it about ME.
But I have now come to see that perhaps there was more truth to her suggestion that I wasn’t ready to hear at that time. Understanding that addiction isn’t about the drugs, or the sex, or the shopping, or whatever it is, it’s about not being able to cope with whatever it is you’re running from. It helps us to see that trauma has a huge part to play in the addiction cycle.
So, when we treat the symptoms of an addiction – the withdrawal, the comedowns etc – we are missing a key piece. The REAL reason behind it.
Now I am certainly NOT saying that I was thinking about escaping my dad’s memory when I did it. It came up in conversation a hell of a lot at those times admittedly, but I never consciously tried to ‘escape’ it. But thinking now through the lens of sobriety, it is entirely possible that I found this so traumatic that I wasn’t able to process it through any other means that was available to me. By which I mean I found this method effective in numbing myself from the pains of the world.
My divorce. Cocaine got me through it.
Any kind of family fall-out. Cocaine got me through it.
Bad day. Cocaine got me through it.
Good day. Cocaine got me through it.
You see where this is going…all roads led to cocaine for me and I blindly thought it was cos I was simply ‘enjoying myself.’
What a joke that truly is.
I can clearly see that it was an outlet for me – to be free from responsibility, to laugh, to drink, to be me…
TO ESCAPE.
How I didn’t see that before I have no clue. It’s glaringly obvious now. But until we are ready to see or hear the truth – that there is more at play here than just the symptoms of addiction – then we cannot delve into how we ended up here or what may have led us into this lifestyle.
I believe that there is a reason for each person’s addiction. Me personally, I’m still diving into my past and looking for clues and patterns that will help me to unpick this so watch this space.
But I have some inklings now, which I didn’t before. And this information has helped me enormously cos it means it’s not just ME. I’m not a dysfunctional mess. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with me. I simply was unable to cope in a more rational way.
To be clear, I am not advocating or condoning using recreational drugs as a method of dealing with life. However, I am being truthful about the reason that I believe I ended up there.
Things have happened in my life, perhaps in childhood, some later on (e.g. my dad passing) that left me feeling hopeless, helpless and unable to choose better. This seeming like a good choice is indicative of the level of pain being experienced cos really – with a clear head on now as I have – how that ever seemed the best choice, I will never fucking comprehend.
But it was.
For so very long.
And now, here I am, clean and sober barring one lapse last week but I got straight back on the horse and am now digging into how and why that happened. I continue down the recovery path.
That’s all for now folks. Thanks for reading 😊
I am excited to share my latest offering, Truth, with you. This programme has been designed to help women in recovery to:
Align with your truth and show up authentically
Work out what to do next – you have all this energy and a burning desire to pay it forward, but how?
Start living your purpose
Design and create a life that you don’t need drugs to escape from
Give yourself permission to play a bigger game
Be fully who you are and who you’re meant to be in the world
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If you would like some therapeutic support on your own journey to sobriety, feel free to contact Clarendon Counselling here.
