The first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem. That’s the common wisdom given to people struggling with addiction of any kind.
I know now that I’m autistic and I have ADHD, but I only found out late in my life. For the longest time I knew something was different about me. Some things were so easy that I couldn’t fathom how others struggled. I thought that meant I was… unique. Built for a special purpose. It didn’t help that I grew up in a religious family who would love to spout that “God had a plan” for each of us.
But other things… I struggle to fit in with people, I don’t know where boundaries are sometimes, I have a very hard time knowing what to do when my boundaries are being crossed. And there’s only so much floundering around you can do before you conclude that either EVERYONE ELSE IS AN ALIEN or YOU ARE. Because other people aren’t struggling as much as I do. Other people don’t feel as much as I do. I just can’t seem to function in the way other people are.
I was around sixteen when I started drinking. It was naughty, it was dangerous, and it was sexy. It was also easy to get ahold of, in retrospect. I think I got asked for ID maybe twice in my life and one of those times they sold me booze after I said I left it in my car. And that was bad. I most definitely had a drinking problem. But it was self-medication for a young person going through some really ugly times in their life, with a noisy brain and no idea what they were doing.
Then I found marijuana. I don’t even remember my first time anymore. I don’t remember how I got over the fear of drugs to give it a go. But I knew immediately that this was my life now. This miracle plant gave me the quiet my head so desperately desired. I even stopped drinking, because it was money wasted that could be spent on cannabis.
I LOVE weed. I love the way it feels under my fingers, I love the smell of it. I love the preparation rituals and I love the burn in my lungs and it takes hold. It makes me feel enlightened, it helps me chill the fuck out, it makes everything else feel easier. Or so I tell myself.
You see, back then it became my life. Everything revolved around it. I would put myself in situations that I hated because my regular dealer wasn’t available, just so that I could get high. I would risk arrest by buying from sketchy taxi ranks in the middle of the day. I would wear Rastafarian colors to sus out fellow stoners and would plan everything I did around getting high.
For the first time in memory, I liked myself.
The role of stoner is one of a gentle goofball, their nonthreatening absent-mindedness endearing, their easily amused demeanor infectious. You meet a fellow dedicated stoner and you’re immediately fast friends, going on “missions” and making mischief which are fuel for amusing anecdotes later. No more did I see myself as an alien on my own planet, I had found the missing piece of my programming! I wasn’t broken! I was just a stoner! The only other drug I ever tried was psilocybin mushrooms, which I found the extremes of the trips too much for me. And this cemented the fact that the only drug I would ever want is weed. I wasn’t seeking novel experiences; I was seeking the quiet.
And eventually… it was just too much. I would wake up and have a bong in bed. I would have a bong before I left for work. I would have joint on my breaks at work and then I would come home to spend the rest of the evening stoned out of my mind. And after I had my last bong before passing out, I would pack the bong for the next morning. I found myself having panic attacks because I found myself disconnected from my short-term memory to such a point that I started “remembering” things that just happened. Like déjà vu in real time, leaving me in a constant state of stage fright.
But it’s “just weed,” right? That’s not a problem. There are no withdrawal effects! Nobody ever died from a weed overdose, you just get sleepy! It’s a plant! Name any excuse, I used it. The Government made it illegal because they want their workers nice and productive, not lazy and enlightened! No matter what my mother said, no matter how old friends pleaded with me to stop, I knew better. Weed made me feel special again. Weed freed me from my small life in my shit town in my crap country where there was no escape. History was over, man, there’s no place for me in it. I’m too late, so why not just enjoy the ride. I’m going to be dead by 27 anyway, so why bother?
Teenagers are obnoxious, I was no exception.
A colleague who was very involved in the Narcotics Anonymous group in the area took an interest in me. He was a nerd like I am, and we often chatted about the science fiction and fantasy books we read and were in the middle of reading. He was such a dork, in fact, that I struggled to understand when he talked about his own addiction. Dudes that play Warhammer and D&D don’t do meth! Or so I thought. But he didn’t give me any fucking space to wiggle when it came to recognizing my addiction. You see, he’d heard every excuse, every gambit, every lie an addict tells themselves. My usual bullshit just didn’t work on him. He wasn’t preaching, he wasn’t judging, he just had a counter to everything I had prepared. A week later I was in the NA program, I had quit cold turkey, and I decided to change my life.
Hi, my name is Phill. And I’m an addict.
The thing about a twelve-step program is that it works. I have personally witnessed people like my colleague who celebrated decades of sobriety. I’ve seen people turn up looking like corpses and months later they’ve turned their entire life around.
Please, please, please do not use what I’m about to write as proof that it won’t work for you.
But at the end of the day, it’s a religion. It works if you believe. And when I was at that point, it was all I could believe in. You give up struggling, you roll over and you put yourself in the hands of a Higher Power, which they claim can be anything, but the implication was always there.
You can’t. God can.
I could never make that part stick, no matter how much I was told that my personal Higher Power could be the first thing I saw looking out over the parking lot if I wanted, as long as I put my trust into something else. God and I have had a very abusive relationship, so I decided my Higher Power was the group itself and that seemed to work. I didn’t miss a meeting. I worked the program. I gave up all my stoner friends and replaced them with my addict comrades in this secret war. I learned the adages and the lingo, I went to the coffee meetups and I said the Serenity Prayer with the earnest sincerity of a True Believer. I was finally a part of something, part of a group that I could relate to and understand without any substances. We were all broken, but we were there for each other. And for a time, it was good.
I went to my last NA meeting probably a year later, give or take. My colleague, who had been my sponsor, had emigrated to Germany to pursue a job making educational video games. I watched my new friends relapse and fight and squabble about stupid crap in the group. I started seeing the addiction under the sobriety bubble up, how tenuous a grip these people I admired had on their true selves. And worst was that I would sit in the meetings and seethe when I listened to the same story over and over, the same mistakes over and over, watched as someone congratulate themselves on a week sobriety when this was their third relapse this month.
What am I doing here? I asked myself one day in the parking lot. I was clean. I had no more urges, I had broken the habits, all I was doing was martyring myself every week over weed of all things. Some of the people in NA didn’t even consider weed a “real” drug, so I quickly learned not to disclose what my drug of choice was to avoid getting into uncomfortable situations.
The spell had been broken. I stopped going to NA for the same reason I stopped going to church. I didn’t believe anymore.
Now that I knew I could stop, weed would come and go in my life. But never like that, not with the intensity of that first period. You see, the thing about illegal substances is that they’re tricky to get a hold of. You need to know a dealer, or hang around other users, or grow it yourself. I had lost contact with my old crowd, and I no longer had the patience to hang around people I didn’t like just to score some weed I wanted to smoke by myself. And forget about growing it myself! I didn’t have the time, knowledge or patience to do that!
So, for a very long time, I was insulated. I missed being high so much, but the effort to get mediocre weed at the risk of arrest was far too great for me to risk what precious little I had scraped together for myself. I eventually stopped smoking cigarettes as well, my concern for my wallet became greater than my apathy for the damage it was causing my body. I got married, I moved a few times, I found work in completely new fields only to get burnt out. In the back of my mind, I knew I was still an addict. But my addiction was tucked away, guarded by conservative politicians and red tape that never seemed to be at risk of being changed. That part of my life was over for now, I thought. I entertained the idea that one day, when I was old and had sorted my shit out, I would be that cool old guy that would smoke a doobie on his porch in the evening sometimes. But that was impossibly far away.
Years later, my wife and I bought edibles through a bakery on Instagram that kept being banned for breaking the terms of service. This was an experiment, you see. She was struggling with pain and insomnia, I was stressed out of my gourd from work, maybe getting stoned was a relatively cheap and easy way for some relief. We fully expected to be scammed out of our money and were shocked at how professional the delivery and process was. The delivery guy was wearing a branded golf shirt, for fuck’s sake!
My wife didn’t enjoy the experience at all. Her autism panics at what she feels as a loss of control, the unpredictability frightens her. It spikes her anxiety and makes her feel muddled. I, on the other hand, had a grand ol’ time! Too good of a time. Because we bought a special mixed box of treats and had only taken a half of one, the remaining selection of fudge and lollypops now lay in the fridge. They were all I thought about.
I grew antsy about them going to waste. I started getting annoyed that my wife didn’t want a repeat of our lovely spaced-out evening. I eventually ate the rest myself over the next few weeks. This was confirmation to both of us that “moderation” wasn’t a word the reptilian part of my brain understood and that the experiment wasn’t to be repeated. And that was that.
Then comes the 2024, a few years later. It is some of the most difficult times in our lives. Our big, lovable lab/collie cross has completely screwed up her knee and needs a huge surgery, plus an obscenely long time of bed rest that she cannot and will not do peacefully. My other dog’s seasonal allergies get so bad that an infection spreads across his entire body, leaving him in pain and miserable. It becomes my full-time job looking after the animals while my wife takes over as the primary breadwinner. I wrestle with feelings of failure as I am laid off from my part time job in November of the previous year and the task of looking for a new job is insurmountable. My health goes to shit, I have a reoccurring issue with a salivary gland in my jaw that keeps swelling and producing “stones” the size of human teeth. My wife is an angel and tries her best, but with all the pressure she’s under, she too starts having health issues and stress-related problems. But we keep our heads above water somehow, because what else are we going to do?
Then a close friend of mine makes an out-of-character confession: he and his partner have been having “gummy nights,” where they take half a gummy each, make a delicious dinner and watch a movie.
Please note that I love and respect this friend very much; I hold no ill will towards them for what came next, because if it wasn’t this it would likely have been something else. I know that my latest relapse is an inevitable, fixed point in time.
You see, my friend bought these gummies from a shop. A brick-and-mortar shop that you can walk into and then walk out with a bag of honest-to-goodness THC product with your bank card. Somehow, overnight it felt like, the laws around cannabis were getting lax enough that people could sell edibles discretely without threat from the police.
I know I can’t behave myself. That’s why I justify joining my friends for a “gummy night,” I’m not buying anything. This way, I can have the joy of the high in a safe place and then come home to my sober lifestyle afterwards. Besides, I’ve known this friend since high school! He’s a stand-up guy, I trust his judgement implicitly. He’d never offer if he thought it’d be bad for me. Besides, we’ve grown up so much since my last fuck up. I’m in therapy now, I’m medicated, this’ll be different. Just a little treat.
It’s a wonderful evening. We have half a gummy each. The food is incredible, we laugh so hard at a TV show we nearly die. We chat seemingly non-stop for several hours before crumpling off to bed long past midnight. For the first time in months, I feel a release of pressure that was threatening to cripple me even further.
I lay in the dark on their living room floor, listening to the cars rush by in the street. I desperately try to convince myself that I didn’t just spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing if they would notice if I sneak into the freezer and took a gummy or two for the road. I don’t do that. But the thought stains the fabric of my soul.
I still don’t buy any for a while. Maybe this shop is an anomaly? It’s 40 minutes away from where I live, so it’s too far for my impulsive nature to take advantage of. I declare that I will only ever indulge with other people, it’s safer that way. My wife raises an eyebrow, but she’s so fucking tired with all the other bullshit that she doesn’t have the bandwidth to fight me on it.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, another close friend’s father dies. He was always good to me, one of the few older men in my life that didn’t treat me with indifference or disdain for being a weirdo. He gifted my wife and I a lot of the appliances we still use in our kitchen today, because he knew I wasn’t going to get much support from my own parents. He was kind and generous with his time. So, it was an absolute no-brainer that I go to the funeral, even if that funeral was on my 36th birthday. It wasn’t like I had any other plans; my wife was working, we’ve been broke for so long that birthdays don’t really mean anything to us anymore.
The funeral home where his service is being held is a scant two blocks away from The Store That Sells Gummies. I shake the thought loose and go inside to sit among strangers to support my friend and to honour a man who made such a difference in my life. It’s emotional, it’s uncomfortable, I’m surprised at the grief I feel when I awkwardly excuse myself afterwards, my friend promising me that he was okay and that I’m welcome to go home before the traffic gets too bad. I get into my car and once again I am two blocks away from The Store That Sells Gummies. It’s my birthday and I’m sad, don’t I deserve a treat?
Stop that.
What, you’re going to go home now in your feelings and then spend all day… doing what exactly? It’s been a fuckin’ long year. C’mon. Just go check it out.
I spend the drive home vibrating with nervous energy. I bought a packet of the same gummies my friend buys, plus a cheeky little treat for myself: a “birthday cake” flavoured cookie with about the same THC as a handful of gummies. I know my wife gets an SMS every time I buy stuff on the card, so I know I can’t hide it from her. I don’t need to hide it from her! I’m an adult and this is just a little treat! Because it’s my birthday, my love, and I wants it! I spend the trip rehearsing how I’m going to rationalize it to her over and over again to drown out the alarm bells in my head.
I get my way, of course. I play it off as a little bit of mischief, a little naughty treat. As if I were diabetic and this was just a little bit of ice cream cake on my birthday, nothing more. My wife has concerns, but I assure her that it’s all under control. I genuinely believe that she believes me, so overwhelmed am I by the need for that little peace these gummies promise me. I’m just gonna have this cookie treat today, then I’ll have half a gummy every Friday once I’m done with my chores for the day. Maybe every other Wednesdays if it’s been rough.
Half a gummy becomes a whole. Then two. I planned to have the packet of 20 last more than a month. I don’t think it makes it past two weeks.
My mood darkens, I become restless. I want to believe it’s because life sucks. I’m working so hard, trying to get my life together and nothing works. I ask my wife for my own money each month, I tell her it’s because I’m psychologically struggling with not having any independence. Just because I’m unemployed doesn’t mean that I’m not working! Don’t I deserve to have some of my own money without having to ask for it like a 50s housewife? I try to believe it myself.
I spend almost my entire first “allowance” on some sub-par edibles from a local dispensary that just opened. I show my wife the haul and she balks at the price. But it’s my money, you see, so it’s okay! This is enough for the entire month!
It is not.
I go over to my friend’s house for another Gummy Night, but this time when I stop at the local mall for snacks, I am delighted. There’s a kiosk out in the middle of the aisle where I can purchase a pre-rolled joint in a cute little container. It costs less than the bottle of wine I just got to take along. The evening is delightful. We don’t drink the wine.
I declare that edibles are too uncontrollable. They take far too long to kick in, you see, and by the time they do kick in you don’t know how long you’re going to be high for. Or you can get “duds” like I did last time, what a waste of money. My wife and I have a terse conversation. She is worried that I’m going off the rails. I say anything I can think of to assuage her discomfort. I’m just going to have half a joint every now and then! It’ll be a shorter high, it’s just a little fun! I do everything she asks of me for the day before I get high, and then I’ll only get high when she’s busy with work or some other stuff. I convince myself that she’s okay with it, as long as I’m honest with her. The first joint I have alone on my porch is magnificent. The heavens open up and I feel my nervous system light up to the tune of Ode to Joy. Oh. Oh, how I’ve missed this. I feel a peace that I haven’t in years and I never want to let it go again.
Nope, I declare. Joints are gross and messy. I need a bong. More bang for your buck this way, you use less, and it hits harder. And the water is a good filter for the bad stuff in smoking. Plus, I’ve always preferred bongs anyway. I tell myself that the worry in her eyes is from the stress of her boss. Together we ask my psychiatrist about occasional cannabis usage, who hesitates to give me the a-okay I so desperately need to carry on. He very diplomatically warns that every benefit cannabis provides in the short term is a potential detriment in the long term. See, my love? He didn’t say no! I briefly talk to my psychologist about it as I promised my wife I would, but I talk about how much joy it’s giving me. How it’s just a toy that I’m enjoying. I try hard not to bring it up again.
I stop giving my wife a heads-up before I get high. I wake up at the crack of dawn to have a few stoned hours to myself before I need to deal with the needs of other people. I find myself anxiously looking online for deals, for new dispensaries having opening sales. More terse conversations. My wife isn’t just concerned anymore, I’m sensing an anger creeping in. She just doesn’t understand, I tell myself. I wish I could make her understand that SHE’S the one making things awkward. SHE’S the one making me creep around my own house like a fucking junkie. Each time the subject comes up, we set a new boundary that I plow through before the month is up. I’m wracked with guilt, but I need my beautiful, quiet mornings to myself or else I might as well just fucking kill myself. This is the only fucking thing in the world that has ever made me feel good in my own body! Why can’t I just fucking have this ONE FUCKING THING?!
I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing. I know there’s a huge shit-show coming. She’s going to give an ultimatum and then I’ll have to give it up for good. I may as well enjoy it while it lasts.
And it is then that my salivary gland goes into melt-down. Within days it swells up to a six-centimeter ball that pushes against my throat and makes eating difficult. Despite antibiotics, I have constant fevers that leave me shivering under several blankets on 40°C days. On the drive to see an ENT the abscess in my mouth explodes and I am forced stop to spit out the fountain of pus pushing its way out. I am in hospital by the end of the day, dosed to the gills in painkillers and antibiotics. It’s very stressful for all involved. I fucking hate hospitals.
We’re advised that this will keep happening unless the gland is removed. I find myself pleased that this big scary medical drama is a reprieve from the conflict brewing in my relationship. Surgery is scheduled. Overnight in the hospital and then a few weeks recovery, they say. My wife begs me to not smoke anything as there’s still hole inside my mouth. My solution is to buy a disposable vape pen. It’s not smoke, see? I see she wants to say something. She doesn’t. I should be chuffed that I found a loop-hole, but I’m not. I ask Google how long one of these pens are supposed to last. The consensus is about a week. It lasts three days.
I’m out of the hospital the Wednesday after the surgery and I’m in sensory hell. I’m told to keep the bandage dry and to come back for a check-in two weeks later. My neck is covered in a plaster that forces my head to tilt at the slightest of angles at all times, the bruising makes swallowing painful, the swelling is pushing on a nerve that makes the left side of my tongue numb and any attempt at sleep is an ordeal. Whenever the anti-inflammatories and painkillers wear off, I’m woken by the pain and I’m forced to weather a fire in my wound until the pain goes away. It’s a mess. On Saturday evening we go to the ER because pus is streaming from the bandage and we have no idea what else to do. We get it redressed, but it’s a losing battle. I cannot eat solid foods. I’m back in hospital by Tuesday. But this time, I’m given a private room. No other patients to distract me. I’m left alone with my thoughts for hours between nurses pulling my bandages off my ruined skin and flushing the gunk out of my wound.
Here I am, an absolute disaster, in a private hospital, while my wife is forced back to work to make sure the metaphorical boat that is our precarious little life doesn’t get wrecked any further. And here’s Phill, hiding in the gunpowder room so that he can light his bong in peace.
What the fuck am I doing?
I cry a lot. I miss my dogs. I miss my bed. I don’t want to be touched by strangers anymore. I want to sleep without being woken up every two hours for blood pressure tests. I want the drip out of my hand. I want my fucking neck back. But most overwhelmingly of all, I miss my wife so much that it hurts. I want to do better for her. I need to be better for her. She doesn’t deserve this.
A week later and I’m finally home. I’m going to do better, I promise myself. The pain is basically gone and what’s left is a dull annoyance more than anything else. We go see the surgeon for a checkup and get the all clear. I’m feeling good, I’m getting ready to leave until my wife asks the doctor a question.
“So, Phill doesn’t smoke cigarettes, but he does like to indulge with weed every now and then. Should we hold off for now or…”
Mother FUCKER!
The surgeon’s body language is almost identical to the stilted acquiescence the psychologist had months ago. “Yeeeeaaahh… look, there’s no way of knowing what contaminants are in the smoke, so try holding off for a week just to give it a chance to heal.”
Haven’t I waited long enough?! It’s been a fucking month of suffering and still I’m denied the one fucking joy in my life for another week?! Fuck you, for all I know your incompetence is the reason this fucking exploded in the first place, you smarmy shit!
I’m taken aback by the rush of anger. For the first time in a very long time, I hear the alarm bells clearly. I tell myself everything is alright, but I don’t believe myself. I don’t believe anything I say anymore.
That was Monday, April 7th, 2025. For the last few days, I have been at war with myself. Trying to convince myself that I hadn’t decided to quit, that I was being dramatic, that I was actually addicted to the drama and tension that I was causing and not the weed, that by the time I can smoke again everything will go back to pre-crisis days, that I’m blowing this out of proportion. The reason this is a problem is because I’m “not allowed to” and if everyone would just get off my fucking back I’ll be able to use moderately like a normal person.
I couldn’t sleep. I spent hours combing the internet, looking for anything that would give me another option other than quitting. I can’t trust this source that says weed is bad, it’s on the website for a bloody rehab! Of course, they want you to feel guilty and afraid, so that they can milk you for more money! But I found little joy in the positive opinions either, for they too were hosted on sites selling paraphernalia or weed products. I couldn’t fool myself any further. I looked up nearby NA meetings, only to have a panic attack at the thought of diving back into that world. I knew it was the end of the road. I wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but I knew.
It all came crashing down yesterday. On the 10th of April, I couldn’t stop the screaming in my head anymore. With all the joy of an exhausted nanny giving in to the demands of a toddler screaming of candy, I rolled a joint. I don’t need to get all my stuff out this way, I reckoned. I used a “King-Sized” paper but with a comically large filter so that I would only use enough to get a slight buzz. Or so I bargained with myself. I didn’t feel a buzz. I didn’t feel good. I felt… a tired relief.
This is my St. Patrick’s day. I just needed a little reprieve to get to the end of Lent.
I immediately jumped into the shower, letting the hot water wash over me. I’m begging myself to relax, to just enjoy it, nobody’s going to find out. I’m not listening to myself anymore. I’m no longer in control and I’m on autopilot. It’ll be fine. Sure, whatever you say.
My wife asks me to bring something to her office as she’s getting ready to go into a meeting. I try to move swiftly, to avoid her gaze, praying the shower was enough to mask my stupidity when she looks into my eyes. I’ve known this woman for almost half my life. I know when she’s masking her feelings, I know when she needs to take a nap before she does, I know when she’s hiding her anger or when she’s successfully fighting the urge to laugh in someone’s face.
I see her face flick through several emotions within the half-second of our eyes meeting. First is concern that my eyes are bloodshot. Oh god, is Phill sick again? Was he crying? But then it shifts to surprise for the briefest moment, before disbelief, then resignation and finally, rage… before she was back in the business mask she needs to wear at work.
And that was it. I knew I had reached the cliff’s edge. Either I stop, or the most important relationship I’ve ever had ends.
“Your eyes are very red, my love…”
“Haha yeah I just got out of a hot shower.”
I rush out the door as quickly as I can.
She went into her meeting, and I grabbed the first notepad I could find to frantically start writing an apology. I held on to that shame and I admitted to her, explicitly, that I knew I was full of shit and that enough was enough. I’m done pretending that everything is okay. It’s not. I’m not. Shit’s fucked, yo.
We had, what I sincerely hope is our last terse, conversation. I put up a mediocre defence to give myself some wiggle-room, but I think we both felt my heart wasn’t in it anymore. We calmly talked about our next steps.
I’m going to see my psychiatrist for help and, this time, I’m going to be honest. I really, really don’t want to spend more time away from home or tell my life story to a group of strangers… but if that’s what it takes to make it stop, so be it.
I love my wife more than anything. Anything.
Hello. My name is Phill, and I’m an addict.