Life starts at 14 but Pints, Grams or Years?

Just over 14 years ago I had a cocaine overdose. It made no sense. I had a lot of what people wanted in their lives. I was pretending to be at university for the fourth time and in the third different country. I was running away from something and every college major I took was in drug interactions with a minor in dysfunctional behavior.

Then 14 years ago today, 12 January 2005, I was standing in on the deck of my house in Surfer’s Paradise Australia and I got a phone call. My girlfriend, who hadn’t been my girlfriend for 4 years called me. “Every day I wake up thinking today’s the day you’re going to die.”

That hit home like a bullet to the heart or more like a mortar shell to my thick skull. She’d been the only woman I’d ever felt truly cared and loved by. I knew I was going to die if I kept going. That’s why I was keeping on going. I wasn’t going to commit suicide but massive and increasing drug use would get me there without me having to pull the trigger.

She said one thing “promise me you’ll never drink or use again.” Now of course that’s the classic cheesy movie miracle line that works, right? Well, yes sort of, sort of.

Ironically it did work because I needed an excuse. I needed a reason from someone else to do something for myself that would be genuine self-care. She could have said “seriously, why can’t you be functional like everyone else?” If she had I suspect I’d have carried on the way I was going.

At that time in my life most of my desire was to die. I had this constant fear and debilitating shame that I’d had ever since I could remember.

When I’d overdosed three months earlier I bought ten grams of cocaine and a bunch of alcohol. Then 36 hours awake later I climbed onto a 5 foot wall and swan dived into a 3 foot deep swimming pool. I spent 7 hours unconscious in hospital and the next morning woke up in my own bed, in a mud puddle. Anyone who’s used a lot of coke will likely tell you “drugs are glamorous is only half the story.”

You’d think that having 2 black eyes, a concussion and a near death experience would shake me. Shake me from the psychotic horse I was riding to the burning stable of my life. It didn’t but I did realize I needed to change tack.

I realized I could not control coke especially with the huge levels of alcohol which came with it. I may have had an unconscious desire to die but I had a conscious desire not to end up in a wheelchair. It had been a pool tiled with mosaics and I suspect a couple of them match the 2 inch laceration down the side of my nose where I’d bounced off the pool bottom. Hitting rock bottom would need to wait.

When I woke up I didn’t care about my messed up face, necessary explanations or even the need to dispose of the “sheets” before my girlfriend, at the time, got home. I figured coke was always so “more’ish.” I could never keep a baseline buzz. So in a stoke of genius or madness, it’s a fine line I’m told, I switched to speed, that is amphetamines sulphate.

That genius addict decision probably kept me alive for a few more months. I bought this big bag of pills, hundreds of them. The guy had told me they were speed. Whatever they were they did the job. I’d dose regularly through the nights and days and continue to drink to balance it out.

A few of us would go out on Thursday to “International Student Night” and the night would finish on Sunday lunchtime when I’d fall into bed. Waking up on Monday morning with a bed sheet with a halo shaped salt stain around where I’d sweated out detoxing.

In those three months I was admitted to hospital a couple more times. Twice for unexplained stomach pains which I was convinced were a rumbling appendix coming back again but more likely a huge dose of denial. Then once for having splashed hydrochloric acid and lead paint in my eyes. Life wasn’t dull but the light inside me certainly was fading.

I lived in a great house with a car I really liked. I didn’t have to worry about money. The more I spent the more would arrive in my bank account. Life seemed to be magic if only it hadn’t all been in the pursuit of death.

Most addicts have crazy war stories and why I have I brought you through this one? It wasn’t the craziest and I’d certainly had far more sophisticated periods of self destruction.

Today I’m 14 years clean and sober. No alcohol or narcotics for 14 years. As I sit here in my still unconventional life in Panama I can look back with 14 years insight. But what I’m really doing is looking back further than 14 years.

(At this point I'll add that I am not anti-drugs, anti-alcohol, etc and I'm a big believer in CBD, alternative medicine and that big pharma harms more than heals. Ayahuasca, DMT and San Pedro are on my radar where they have been for a couple of years. Every time I drank or used I ended up in the gutter or hospital. As that doesn't happen to most people what would be the justification for stopping their use? I'm certainly not going to tell someone to stop something they don't have a problem with and if it doesn't hurt anyone else. - Future post coming on natural law and legal is synonymous with psychotic.)

Here's the thing, I detested myself and prayed to die, every night. I’d been told there was a god and regularly told that I was going to Hell. And he certainly fulfilled his promise.

Much of my the “personal development” (guts work) I’ve done has been a mixture of two darknesses.

Early on in my life I took on the idea that I was imperfect or “wrong” by another name. Every thing I did was either wrong according to god’s law or to some adult’s law. Often the “adults” could point to the place that confirmed my worthlessness and the home I was preparing for myself in hell.

That was my experience of Evangelicalism. The guy that was viciously tortured and executed for me did it because he loved me. He was perfect and he did it voluntarily. To repay the the debt that he paid I needed to live perfectly.

I could start by signing the “Jesus Contract.” When I was 6 years old the idea of burning in eternal damnation with satan and his horde of the fallen was terrifying. Jesus was the answer. He was the guy in the illustrations with kids and lambs and with sometimes with blood running down his face.

If I, as 6 years old Mark, would accept Jesus Christ as my master and savior and agree to live as he would have me live than I would be saved. No eternal damnation and no getting consistently forked by devils.

Problem is as a 6 year old I was unable to reason any of that stuff. But you know the contract sounded a simple way out of what sounded very scary indeed.

I’ve been told kids lack the brain development to reason before 8 years old. That’s why now, as a 42 year old, I can see how I signed the contract. Then when it didn’t get rid of the feelings of shame, fear and guilt I signed it again, and again. Week after week, month after month and year after year. Until about 14 years old when I discovered alcohol. Now there seemed to be a solution

Now I need to point out that there was never actually a “Jesus Contract.” Obviously any adult with a piece of paper for a kid to sign his life away to something he doesn’t understand, that adult is, well a number of things... for a different post.

I’ve been to rehab a good number of times. I’ve also worked anonymous programs along with psychoanalysis, EMDR and a lot of shadow work. I’ve learned a great deal about diagnosable personality disorders and the shadow that each one of us carries. If you had a childhood then you have a shadow. If you didn’t have much of a childhood then your shadow is probably bigger than most. If you didn’t get to have a childhood then I suspect a lot of the time it feels like hell. That’s my experience.

And I’m certainly not perfect. My shadow seems ready to do what it does any time I’m ready or not ready. The less I watch it the more it grows. There are days when I feel very little light in my life and I’ve had a hell of a few years.

What I know for sure. Mostly everything I’ve been certain of at some point in my life turned out to be different or opposite. Each new thing I find and I need to be honest about is really painful to start with. That’s usually because I’ve been looking at it through my shadow and it’s a version of reality or just plain fiction.

I was told good mental health, and the antidote for addiction, is committing to my reality at all costs, no matter how painful it is. Turns out that’s pretty much the definition of spiritual awakening too.

Looking back I can see as a kid I was mentally beaten by different people in different situations everyday. It was confusing any the time. Sometimes it’s still confusing now. That’s my shadow. Today the fear about talking about it is less because the fear of going back to it is more.

I usually make videos but the past three months have been extreme in terms of life circumstances. I haven’t been able to overcome the shame of speaking on video so I’ve written this. I have no doubt it’s the catalyst back onto camera. The post above is an eclectic series of ribbons interweaving situations I’m still processing.

I believe there’s a whole bunch of us who’ve had similar experiences, who feel shame and loneliness and at times a crippling feeling of sadness. In this moment, this one, I feel how you feel and I know that together we can get to rewrite the script, both of the past and of the future. Sounds a little cheesy but I’m alright with that. I’ve always been a little cheesy.

I’m a scapegoat, an empath, a lightworker and someone who’s been made incredibly strong by working through the hell of other people’s darkness I have took on as my own. I take that heavy darkness and turn it into light and call that emotional alchemy. “They” hate that but then “that’s” not my shadow work to do, it’s theirs. I’ve got enough of my own.

May you always feel the light even if you can’t see it. May you always know you are loved even when you can’t see those who love you. And as we create a new world may those of us who are ready hold our hands up to show others they are supported. Thanks for reading.

BTW: My former girlfriend who asked me never drink again… I never saw her again. I realized shortly afterwards I’d need to do it for myself. I did always think she was heaven sent, maybe I was right… there's certainly more to this life than I can see and that's probably why I'm still alive.