My name is Justin. I am a 44-year-old gay male from East Tennessee. I want to write this blog to inform folks of what addiction to meth looks like- where I’ve been, and where I am now. I want you to know that you can do more than just survive meth addiction. You can thrive and be an amazing, healthy version of yourself that you never thought was possible. I didn’t think I would ever be any more than what I was. At some points in the past, I didn’t care that I would never be more than I was. I was stuck in my day-to-day life and thought that “this was life” and that was the way it was going to be until I died.
Six years ago, I had an off-and-on boyfriend. The relationship was highly toxic. I’m not going to comment on what he did; I just want to tell my story. Just know that the relationship wasn’t going well, hadn’t gone well for years. I was an alcoholic. I drank a fifth of vodka every night, I smoked weed every day, and I smoked a pack of cigarettes every day. I was also eating whatever I wanted and a lot of it. If I made a pot of chicken and dumplings using a whole chicken for dinner, I ate the whole pot, half a pan of mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and half a loaf of bread. I can imagine living with me was quite a nightmare. I had the attitude of a child who knew everything, didn’t need to learn anything new, and certainly wasn’t going to be told what to do or how to do it.
One night, my ex got into an argument with the management of my apartments and long story short, he was told that he was no longer allowed at the apartments. This turned out to be a blessing for me because it gave me the out that I was too afraid to make on my own. I told him that we would move to another apartment that I would start moving our stuff and that would be that. Being an alcoholic at the time, I didn’t do anything very quickly because as soon as I got home from work, I had only one goal: getting drunk. This turned out to be a blessing because he eventually got annoyed because I wasn’t moving fast enough and broke up with me. Our relationship had ended just like that. When he left, I had no car, a work cell phone, no money, no one to make dinner, no partner, and no one to keep me together. I decided at this point that I wanted and needed to change.
I spent the next month or two trying to decide what I wanted to do. What I wanted from my new life and how I wanted to live and be seen. I was 37 years old and I wanted to make up for lost time. I wanted to prove to myself and anyone else that I could do it all. I wanted to start dating again, I wanted to lose weight, I wanted to work all day as hard as I could to make money and I wanted to play all night. I wanted to make up for the time I had lost being a drunk and being in a relationship. I had a hard time at first. I would get on Grindr and not get anywhere because I was overweight (250lbs) and negative. I was unhappy with my situation, unhappy with my body, and unhappy with my drinking, which I just couldn’t seem to shake. I fell deeper into depression and continued to drink. A month or so passed and I continued to do the same things: work, drink, smoke, drink more, eat, repeat. This continued until a friend stopped by unannounced on a Saturday afternoon about one o’clock. He had come over to ask me if I wanted to go somewhere with him. I answered the door and he asked if he could come in. He saw that I was drunk and also found my bottles of vodka under my bed. I would buy three fifths on Friday night and drink them over the weekend. He asked me if I was drunk and I told him no and that if I was it wasn’t any of his business. He told me I was lying and that it was time to grow up. I told him he could go f*** himself. He then said “fine, lay here and kill yourself.” He then took my last bottle of vodka, opened up my back door and threw it down the hill. He turned back to me and said “the sad part is you’re going to go chase that as soon as I leave.” He turned around and walked out slamming my front door. I whispered thank you-and then went and found the vodka that he had thrown. That was the last fifth I ever drank.
A few weeks went by before I messaged him again and I told him thank you and that I wasn’t drinking anymore, that was a lie- I had cut back a lot but I hadn’t quit. I told him I was looking for weed and asked if he could find me some. He said he didn’t know where to get it and asked why didn’t I quit that. He said you want to lose weight, you want to work, and you want to have a nightlife too, why not try meth again. I had been a meth addict for three years, fifteen years prior. I had forgotten all the bad times and all the s*** it caused the first time around. We tend to do that, I think, when we look back on things. We forget the bad and romanticize the past. I thought, yeah, I used to work and club and stay up all night, no problem. I was charismatic, I could talk to strangers, I would be what I thought was me uninhibited. We drove around for what felt like hours trying to chase down the person we were going to get it from. I was drunk, so I just remember it being hot and us going a lot of places. I remember thinking that this might be a little much because I had forgotten all the running around from the first time. It can be quite a circus. We finally got the meth and bought a pipe and headed back to my place. Ironically, we ended up back in my room sitting on the corner of my bed just a few feet away from the door where he had thrown the vodka bottle just weeks before. I remember looking at him as he loaded the pipe and saying, “Are we really going to do this? Do you think this is a good idea, to get me hooked on this again?” He handed me the pipe and said “Yes, why not? It’s better than drinking yourself to death.”