I’ve been doing a little thinking today and came to the conclusion that it would be better to start with the current situation and then start working back from the beginning. I feel that it would be best to start with a mostly positive situation with my recovery and then delve into the negative experiences in my history of addiction and mental illness. Although with my impulsivity and stream and consciousness, my posts will probably be more like Okazaki fragments in DNA synthesis; discontinuous bits that will eventually be pieced together in the end.
As I have previously mentioned on my blog, I am currently in recovery and working towards continued sobriety as well as rebuilding my life. The pronounced start of my recovery can be traced to the start of my initiation and involvement in the mental health court of the county I currently reside in.
I will go into more detail with my two arrests, but to keep this post succinct, I will just state that my involvement in the mental health court is to dissolve my three charges I received during my arrest on Christmas 2019. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that I’ve been given because not only do I get my three charges completely erased (after successful completion in at least 12 months), I also get the support I need to sustain my recovery.
I wanted to reverse the order of those two motivations, but initially and even still, I feel that the eradication of those charges is a stronger motivation to support my recovery than my desire to work on my recovery. It hurts me to say that, but I need to and have been working on honesty with not just others, but also myself.
However, my desire and motivation to work on my personal recovery has slowly grown since I started my participation in the mental health court in the beginning of March 2021. I will admit to some envy and admiration of those I have interacted with that are truly in the throes of recovery and reaping the benefits.
As for myself, I have been foolishly stubborn and obstinate in my efforts of personal recovery. While I know that denial can be a huge barrier in the beginning stages of recovery, I would not say that that has ever been an issue. For most of my adult life, I had known that my substance abuse was detrimental or at least offered only false promises of satisfaction in life.
Nonetheless, I continued to drink intermittently during my participation in the mental health court. I still don’t understand the reasons why I continued to drink despite the high risk of consequences; I had to comply with a color line which involved checking a site or calling in to see which colors were called for the day, Monday through Friday. If my color was called, I was expected to go and provide a urine sample (UA) to test for recent substance use (including alcohol of course).
I have had many, many positive UAs for ETG (a metabolite of ethanol) since my introduction into mental health court early into 2021. Instead of doing the proper action of self reporting my relapse to my treatment team and courts, I instead kept it a secret until finding out about a positive UA from my probation officer (PO).
Regretfully, I attributed the first few positive UAs to “accidental” absorption of ethanol such as through hand sanitizer and mouth wash. Of course, it is safe to say that my PO and the court could safely assume I had consumed alcohol, I was given the grace of acceptance of my explanation. That being said, I still received sanctions through the court as one would with noncompliance and did have to do things such as write a paper, volunteer, and do work crew.
As time went on, the sanctions increased in severity of punishment (as it should). I am incredibly fortunate to still be in the mental health court despite my frequent relapses and non-transparency until confronted with a positive UA.
I am sad to report that I feel my recovery hasn’t truly started until the past month and a half. Due to my many, many positive UAs and seemingly disinterest in being forthcoming in my relapses and enthusiasm in treatment, I was ordered to undergo treatment at an inpatient facility for 28 days. I was initially stubborn in the order, but did eventually agree with the other option being exit of the court program and subsequent jail time along with losing the opportunity to erase my charges.
I am extremely glad to have undergone the 4 weeks of inpatient treatment and learned a lot. I feel that I’ve been fully committed to my recovery and fulfilling my obligations over the past few weeks, even despite my recent relapse with alcohol on Christmas 2021. After treatment, I was ordered by the courts to either move into an Oxford house or exit the program, so I have been living in a wonderful Oxford house since this past Friday, the 31st of December 31st.
It seems almost poetic that my full commitment to recovery and last clean date is before the beginning of the new year. It is nice to start with a clean slate and feel extremely dedicated to remaining sober, if nothing but for myself at this point. I have found that social connection and involvement in the recovery community is vital for me (at least) to be successful in my recovery and work towards bettering my life.
I really appreciate anyone reading this and hopefully it can be of benefit. At the very least, I am thankful to myself to starting this as it has already been a fantastic outlet for my thoughts and feelings. I look forward to writing more here. I expect it to be somewhat challenging to write about my prior experiences with mental health and addiction, but ultimately feel it will be for the better.
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