I’m getting close to 6 months clean. Workaholism has got me. This feels familiar. It was October last year, orders were pouring in. I was making 30K a month, but the resultant work load was high. I was tired, but pushed through. I had never made that sort of money and wanted to take advantage of it in case it dried up.
But I wasn’t able to turn off. My free time was spent thinking about business; what I was going to do with all this money, how I was going to continue to make so much of it, how I was going to fix my processes so I didn’t have to work so much, and then of course where was I going to invest it. The corruption of the system was being exposed, a great recession was being predicted and I was obsessed with how I was going to protect my assets.
I had good reasons to be hyper alert, but the body, mind and soul needs rest and love, and I didn’t know how to turn off. So by November last year I decided drugs were a good idea. They were certainly a solution to workaholism. When you drop 500 mics of acid you can’t do any work, the phone has to go on airplane mode and the emails have to wait. But a solution with consequences. Self-centredness increased, love reduced, and I couldn’t stop for more than a week – when I wasn’t high I was thinking about getting high. I’m an addict, the solution of drugs creates a bigger problem.
I surrendered to the AA big book and had a spiritual awakening. The desire to use drugs was taken away, I felt propelled into the fourth dimension, and the promises came true, but the disease really was doing push ups in the corner – I will get you my pretty. I have a solid recovery routine; my home group face to face AA meeting on Monday night and online DA meetings on the weekend. I keep in touch with friends on the phone and make it out to the NA men’s meeting dinner in New Farm regularly. The rest of the time I work, play with my hobbies, and spend time with my wife, daughter and puppy.
It’s idealic, but the last few weeks I have slipped over the edge. I no longer feel balanced. I feel like I felt back in October last year before my relapse. I am restless, irritable and discontented. The world is fucking crazy as the scamdemic rages bringing the world closer and closer to economic collapse. I look to cryptocurrency as the solution, a parallel economic system that will rise out of the ashes of the current one one controlled by evil bankers and corrupt governments.
Then I get addicted to trading. It looks pretty straight forward. The price oscillates up and down 2 to 7 percent most days in a somewhat consistant pattern. I buy low and sell high on a daily basis and figure I can make good money. I see it as an honourable way to make money since the more people that do this the less volatile the assets become and more likely they will be able to be used as a real alternative financial system. I test for a month with $1000 capital and pretend it’s $100,000. At the end of the month the prices are the same as the beginning, but I have been buying the dips and selling the peaks and have made about $100, which would equate $10,000. I think I am onto something.
I increase the capital and then I discover margin trading. That brings me undone. Fear and greed take over and I can’t think clearly with real money on the table, especially with the margin trading – that is basically gambling, and my nervous system and addiction receptors can’t handle it. I lose about $10,000 and crumble in a mess. I decide no more trading on margin, but I still believe in crypto and have to put my money somewhere in an asset that criminal organizations can’t print more of.
Do I go to Gamblers Anonymous? Maybe. In the meantime I double up on Debtors Anonymous (DA) meetings. I feel I am there for my workaholism. I have no desire or temptation to get into debt. Even the margin trading was secured debt so technically not against DA’s rules. I search for Workaholics Anonymous (WA) meetings and find a heap of meetings online.
I’ve been doing meetings most days and the denial around my workaholism is peeling away. I work to avoid intimacy. But I can’t stop and now I am doing WA meetings it is just making it worse. I have to push through. I will commit to 90 meetings in 90 days. I can do them online. God please save me I don’t want to relapse again.
Red Pill Recovery 