It's been a bit more than a week now since I've gone very public about my struggles and I noticed today how much less my phone has rung and I kind of chuckled a bit. The old using friends have now all found out that I'm clean and no longer have anything to offer them and their lack of calls are welcome. It's an unwritten law and fairly understood among users that when one gets clean that the others leave them alone. It's a mix of wanting that person to succeed as they wish they could and an inherint distrust of their former fellow user...it's just the way it goes. Once fast friends through thick and thin, through the daily hustle to keep everything together and everyone dosed simply disappear off the face of the earth. There are remnants of their existence around that I am still finding around the house....a G-bong made out of a soda bottle under the sink or a lone CFM shoe under the bed but they've all scurried off and found another place to get high or another buddy to fix with who will listen to their babbling story of regret, remorse and justification.
It's not just them though...it's all the others who I knew in my "other" life...the business contacts and the non-using friends. Those are the ones who I can only assume feel betrayed by my revelations and to those all I can say is I'm sorry but I didn't become an addict just yesterday. I've been one since I was 12, long before I met you and I've never hid this fact from any of you and quite to the contrary have always been very upfront about it. Did you think I was kidding? Do my open discusssions about my situation embarass you? Make you uncomfortable? Make you want to distance yourself from me? It's ok if they do...distance away if you must but I'm still here, still me...just clean now...not long to you perhaps but to me 10 days is like 10 years.
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