It’s the 17th of October. I fly to Thailand in 2 days for a holiday. I have done all my work, said goodbye to my kids, and have no responsibilities until then. I haven’t had 2 days without business or kids responsibilities for months. I can do whatever I want today. What do I want to do? I want to get wasted. No, I committed to sober October. What do I lose if I ring the bell? I will be abstinent in 2 days anyway when I go to Thailand for a week. What have I got to gain if I stay clean for the next 2 days? I can’t think of a single thing.
“Timmy.” I say to my warehouse manager in our morning meeting. “I think I’m going to ring the bell.”
“No!” He exclaims with a look of mild shock. I’m surprised he is surprised by me not being able to make it clean a whole month.
“I can’t think of any reason I shouldn’t go to the beach and vape some sativa.”
His eyes move up into his head as he is thinking. He scratches his beard. “I can’t think of any reason either. But then I couldn’t think of any reason you even started sober October.”
“I wanted to see if I could.”
“And now you know you can’t?”
“Something like that.” I smile with a strange feeling of relief that I am going to fail sober October.
“So can I go to the beach and get wasted?”
“Sure. There is nothing I need you here for. I’ve got everything under control.”
“I love you Timmy.”
20 minutes later I am walking along the beach at 9.30am about to vape some weed for the first time in 17 days. I take a couple small hits. I don’t want to go too hard and get paranoid. I’m not sure how much my tolerance is reduced. 5 minutes later I feel pretty good, my body is relaxed, my head is clear. Oh my sweet sativa. I take a few bigger hits and the ocean takes on a deeper blue, the music in my headphones pounds through my soul. Oh my sweet sativa.
I review the last 3 months; the trauma, the cptsd, the hardest three months of my life since I was 4. It’s over. I have a sense of relief wash over me. My son has left hospital. I have successfully moved warehouse and personal residence and now have all my businesses under the one roof with a general manager that is the closest thing I have ever had to a brother. I am free. It is over. I am going to Thailand in a couple of days. It feels like my first real holiday since Tommy got sick in September last year. I had a couple week long trips to Jakarta, but I was always concerned about him. Now he has stable careers in his own environment I can relax much more and have a real holiday.
I review the last 17 days. Wow, I tried to stop taking drugs for a whole month and failed. The weird thing is there is a relief in that. I have spent the last 2 years trying to prove I can manage certain drugs, mostly to myself. I failed sober October and it feels good. I am an addict, but I’m not getting clean. I can live a good life getting baked most days and have my periodic psychedelic adventures. I feel so good walking along the beach high on my sativa. I’m not even close to ready to get clean.
I think about NA. What am I missing out on? The love. But is it real? This bunch of sick fucks. I am more manageable than nearly all of them and I am not even clean. They are the sickest of the sick. The only club in town that you can’t get kicked out of. The organisation that has the lowest barrier to entry of any organisation in the world. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop using – you don’t even need to not take drugs, you just need to desire to not take them.
The world’s most unlovable people all come together and love each other. The absolute dregs of society that have been rejected everywhere else they go can come to NA and get almost instant acceptance and love. It’s powerful. It works. If you have the desire to stay clean and avail yourself to the love then the desire to use drugs gets taken away. You go to meetings and bond with the fellowship, surrender to the love of these awful rejects – hugs after the meeting. Is it just another high like drugs, workaholism, sex or gambling? It’s certainly healthier, I will give it that. It also saved my life. My brain needed washing. I was a hopeless, unemployable, soon to be destitute addict when I got clean in my 20’s and it gave me a life.
But shouldn’t the trajectory be to recover from the hopeless condition of mind and body and then go out into the world and find love, bonding, and meaning in the greater society. I have tried that and it hasn’t worked. I don’t find the belonging in regular society. But I still can’t accept the fate of NA just yet. I want to travel. I want to continue to be a single man and travel the world seducing the hottest and youngest women from the countries that I am still attractive in – South East Asia and Eastern Europe. I don’t think I can do that and then come back to Australia and be clean.
I can travel the world and live out my sex addiction and then come back to Australia (where it’s much harder to satisfy my sex addiction) and manage my emotions with cannabis and psychedelics. That sounds like a solid plan. I can probably do that for years. I sit down on the seat by the Woody Point ship wreck and look out at the ocean. I can see the port of Brisbane in the distance. I take another couple hits of my vape. This really is wonderful, the break has made it way more enjoyable. I’m going to try and give up the weed more often. As I look out at the water and ponder the next few years of my life as the travelling seducer and drug connoisseur I consider what I am going to do for the rest of today…. What a great idea, I think. I’m going to go home, get some acid and come back to the beach.
Red Pill Recovery 