Wow. That wasn’t easy. But I fucking did it! I am sitting in my office with a view of my infinity pool, from my newly renovated villa, that cost me less than AUD 200K. My 9 month old baby is making noises in the other room with my sweat wife. I have a new home. I escaped the matrix. I still have a company in Australia, but I can walk away from at any time because I have enough BTC to retire.
I escaped Australia before the next crime on humanity is committed by the fake politicians elected in the fake elections running a fake country. I don’t know what comes next, maybe nothing, but I wasn’t hanging around to find out. Could Australia be the next Ukraine? I hope not, but if so, I have a base in distant lands to hide and maybe even to evacuate the family I have left in Australia.
I remember walking along the beach in Redcliffe a few years ago. I was a success. Finally, after 20 years of failure I was an overnight success. I was clean, had a great business, beautiful wife half my age, kids that loved me, health better than ever, and I had just bought a sports car.
What more does a man want but unlimited love, sex and money? Well it turns out a bit of fucking freedom. Not long after that beautiful sunny day I was told I was only allowed out for an hour and had to wear a mask. Fuck you! Then I was told I had to inject myself with an experimental gene therapy or I was a bad person. Well, if that makes me a bad person, so be it. But then I wasn’t allowed to go the restaurants. What else am I meant to do with my hot wife and all my money. Fuck you!
Stage one of the war against humanity called Covid wrapped up and stage two a month later with the Ukraine war started. That was the final straw. I wasn’t staying somewhere where I could be conscripted to sacrifice myself for the profit of the holy bankers. I made plans to leave, outsourced the business warehouse, travelled to Lombok, confirmed we could live there, and bought my wife a villa.
I came back from Indonesia and partied like the 80’s for a few days. I said goodbye to my sweet son – again, and had an amazing time. A few days later on about the 4th day after taking Molly, where I often have an emotional awakening, he came to me, but this time instead of saying goodbye, he said. “I want you to get clean dad.” He looked on me with love and I realised all the people that loved me wanted me to be clean. Even my budding addict teenage daughter encourages me to be clean – she also encourages me to relapse because I give her access to the cooky jar – such is the disease.
I cried. I cried while I vaped a delicious sativa and walked along my beach. I’ll get clean soon. A few days later I’m high on LSD. It’s good, but not strong enough. A few days later I’m high on LSD again. I take another one after an hour. I take another 30 mins after that and throw one to the wind saying. “This one is for you Tommy.” An hour later I’m really high. So strong – so messy. The world is whooshing around me like a kaleidoscope. I get back to my car and re-pack my vape – like I can even feel it, like I need any more drugs. I’m hungry. I’m lonely. I’m too high to drive. I ring my wife.
“Hi Baby. You ok?”
“Yeah, I’m ok, but I’m a bit hungry and a bit lonely, and a bit too high to go to the shops and buy some food.”
“Do you want me to get a taxi to you.”
“Yes please.”
She leaves our 5 month old baby with her mum and comes to the beach to accompany her 47 year old husband who has got himself too high on LSD and can’t drive home.
I wander aimlessly along the beach until she arrives. She runs to me with open arms and gives me a big hug. I don’t really deserve this, but I sort of do. She is a sight for saw eyes in her tight hugging leggings and crop top – her body has already bounded back. She takes me to the café and I eat the most delicious cheese and ham croissant and then level out and pretty smoothly tripping we walk all the way to Scarborough hand in hand like long lost lovers. It’s a beautiful day and we have an awesome time. We talk about leaving Australia and our future in Indonesia. We celebrate the life we have and the future ahead of us.
I wake up the next day. I have to get clean. Sure things had worked out and it was a bit funny, I felt half genius, half idiot, getting myself into such a mess and then having my beautiful young wife come and look after me and then having such a nice day. But this has to stop. I have less than 2 months to move out of the country. I do an NA meeting. I’m home. The therapeutic value of one addict helping another.
I stopped NA for a few years and did AA and MA, and just about every other A there was. I’m all the better for it, but for now it’s NA. I left because my using wasn’t as bad as everyone else’s there. I still hold that my life using weed and psychedelics is better than most of their lives clean, but never the less we have the same disease. I am an addict. I get addicted to everything and only the 12 steps can help. I like it that NA says we are powerless over our “addiction” rather than a specific addiction like alcohol or sex etc. It’s so encompassing.
I felt a bit shaky for a few days, but like always I recovered quick and before the end of the week I was back in my routine and making progress at work and with the move. But I suspected that it would get harder at around the 2 to 3 week mark when the anxiety starts to kick in.
Moving was hard. The last time I moved house was in 2019 and I really thought I was going mad until God gave me a book on C-PTSD where I realised I was having emotional flashbacks of my 4 year old self. This move wasn’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t easy. I’m not sure if the drugs made it better or worse. It was what it was.
I stood in my office and looked around. Shit everywhere. Good shit that had cost me thousands of dollars. I couldn’t take it with me, the cost of a shipping was so expensive. It was cheaper to throw it out and start again. I opened the draw; 20 years of stationary shit. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. Everything had a memory attached to it from the stapler to the laminator, I am the worst person to clear out this place, I thought. Then I repeated it. I really am the worst person to clean up this place.
I rang my handy man. “I’m moving to Indonesia and only taking luggage. Can I just walk out and have you clean up; sell what you can and throw the rest in the bin, then do a bond clean and hand over to my landlord.”
“Sure mate. No problems.”
That was a bit of luck. I’ll be fucked if he cancels, I thought.
They say moving house is up there with divorce and death. I can testify moving country is hard. When I was almost 4 my dad died, my dog died, my mum gave birth, and then we moved house. I had gone from an only child on 10 acres with horses, with happy loving parents enjoying their (extremely handsome and charming) three year old, expecting their second bundle of joy. To a baby sitter that hated me, a mother stricken with grief and unavailable, and then we moved house.
Even though I didn’t have to clean up I still had a lot to get through to make it overseas. I had to pack over 100 pallets and load them all on trucks to my new warehouse. It was kind of cool loading the last couple of pallets and thinking I may never drive a forklift again. Then there was my personal effects. I had to choose what to take, or more accurately chose not to take. I was triggered by a lifetime of emotions at every object I looked at. The baggage I had dragged with me from house to house, 47 years of things I had collected, deeply part of my psyche. I didn’t need any of this shit I decided. It was time to purge, I threw it all out, old photos, trinkets, medals, gift cards, diaries, I said goodbye to my past and dumped it in the bin.
Truth be told I just didn’t want to decide what came and what stayed. I couldn’t deal with it so threw away the problems. I did the best I could. I pushed on and got close a to a month clean. The anxiety was horrendous, but I felt like I deserved it for using drugs. I was a bit pissed I couldn’t enjoy it. I had a month to go and was actually way ahead of schedule. Logistically the move was pretty sorted. Emotionally I was a basket case. Most of the time I was the little 4 year old who had lost his Daddy and was in crisis mode, full of anxiety and fear unable to enjoy the present.
Then the thought came. Drugs would make this better. The thought was not inaccurate. Weed would help this. Sure I would have to go through the anxiety all again a few weeks after I stopped, but I would be in our new villa in Lombok by then. It was my 48th birthday coming up and I had booked a large 100 sqm 2 bedroom luxury apartment in Mon Komo on Redcliffe beach. The teenagers were coming and we would have a couple days holiday. Should I invite Molly and Lucy to the party. Fuck yeah!
My parcel turned up the morning we were to check in and I was off and running. I walked along the beach with my daughter. Dad’s certainly in a good mood. It was pretty damn awesome. But I am still a bit embarrassed. It’s a shame I can’t have that sort of intimacy and closeness with her while I’m straight. I also feel like an idiot turning 48 and having a birthday party like a little kid. But I was also right. The drugs took away all the anxiety of moving and I got to say good bye to Redcliffe in style. I rolled those beaches tripping like I had dozens of times before. I said goodbye to the peninsula that I really did love in the way I wanted to.
The party lasted a couple days until I ran out of Molly and then I hit the cannabis edibles and vape to get through the comedown, which at this age takes about 5 days. My plan was to get through that and then have an LSD trip, then get clean. For whatever reason LSD a week after MDMA is always a lot of fun. But before the full recovery from the Molly is pretty awful. It takes a bit of discipline being a drug fiend.
Day 5 I’m still in the horrors. It should be getting better by now. I lie on the floor in the foetal position praying. It doesn’t really help. I don’t want to feel this pain. I have tramadol in the drawer above me. I’m pretty strict on not taking opiates other than for legitimate physical pain. This pain is so bad it’s almost physical I justify to myself. You know if you take that tramadol that is a real relapse of your bottom lines. If you take it you will really have to get clean tomorrow and miss out on your last LSD trip. I reach up and grab the pills and take a couple.
Ego battered and bruised I go to an NA meeting the next morning. I stay clean and we leave Australia – business class in style. I am over 3 months clean again and can’t believe how lucky I am. I love my new villa and I love having escaped the matrix. Wife is good, baby is good, and we have a wonderful life ahead of us. The last few months haven’t been easy. While moving is hard, settling in to a new country is not that much better. We had to move out of our villa for 6 weeks while we renovated. I felt homeless. But now I feel I have a home. I fucking love it here.
I don’t know if the drugs made things better or worse. I certainly don’t want to do anymore. The good thing is when you work the 12 steps as hard as I have been doing and do meetings daily it’s very easy to stay clean. I have not had the desire to use drugs in over 3 months. It makes it very easy to stay clean when you don’t want to use.
I want to say sorry – to absolutely fucking no one! I followed my heart; sometimes to the gates of heaven and sometimes to hell. I am where I am as a result of the path that got me here. That windy path of ups and downs, twists and turns. I sincerely hope drugs are not in my future. But one thing I know for sure is that, just like the past, the future holds weird and unexpected events and opportunities. I will handle these with my intuition, sub-conscious, my perfect imperfection, my high power. I will trust what I believe to be God’s will for me and suffer the consequences as well as the rewards.
I fucking made it. Again!
Red Pill Recovery 