I was 14 years old when I touched alcohol for the first time.

I got absolutely wasted, blacked out, and woke up the next morning with both eardrums burst and two black eyes. I was a mess. I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me. That much was obvious. But I had no idea why. Or how. Or by whom.

It’s been 23 years since that day and I still don’t know what happened or why it happened. I remember as much of it today as I did the morning I woke up. But it isn’t much. Just a few incoherent snapshots.

I remember being chased out of a club by a bouncer. I remember my roommate falling in the street on the way back to our hostel. I remember a knock on the door. I remember standing with my back against the wall of our room and looking up at a huge man staring down at me. I remember being slapped in my face with the back of a hand. I don’t know whose hand. All just fleeting images.

Obviously, it was a traumatic experience for a 14-year-old kid. But make no mistake, I’m pretty sure I caused some serious shit to deserve what had happened. Evidence from the following morning suggested that the door had been kicked down. It was dangling on its hinges. Whoever did it must have been very angry.

It was an experience which you’d imagine would scare me away from ever getting that fucked up again. But it didn’t.

Throughout high school, I drank alcohol and blacked out more times than I can remember. Getting drunk was relatively normal, lots of kids at school drank, so I didn’t think much of it. But, thinking back now, it wasn’t everyone who drank until they became unconscious, time and time again.

Following high school, other substances became more readily available and I tried many of them. Some I liked, some not so much. But generally, I participated in anything that would alter my state of consciousness. I liked cocaine and if it had been cheaper I’d have done a lot more. It’s maybe a good thing I didn’t have much money then.

Marijuana on the other hand was cheap, available everywhere and, very conveniently, was easy to justify using. That became my drug of choice.

I first smoked marijuana when I was 16 and started smoking every day during my final high school exams. And, as soon as I finished school, I smoked it several times a day. For years it was the first thing I did when I woke up and the last thing I did before going to bed. And everything else I did in between was planned around when and where I could get high. And very little, in fact almost nothing got done without first getting high.

Slowly everything else, even alcohol, gave way to marijuana. This of course gave me a completely false sense of moral superiority.

I have no problem with the substance itself. I’ve seen it being used medicinally. And I’ve experienced that myself. But, as an addict, it’s also the easiest thing in the world to justify using. It is perhaps the most dangerous substance precisely because it is so benign.

I worked hard after school to save money and travel as much as I could, and I used marijuana to keep me going, working minimum-pay jobs, 18 hours/day, 7 days a week. Only to blow it all travelling and starting all over again a few weeks or months later.

Using drugs started out as a very social exercise, getting fucked up with friends and sometimes doing life-threateningly stupid things, like driving while completely wasted. On more than one occasion I woke up with an empty tank, while I knew I had arrived at the party the night before with my car’s petrol tank half full. It’s scary not knowing what happened with all that petrol.

This madness slowly turned into a form of self-inflicted solitary confinement. Being an addict is a progressively isolating exercise. The fewer people I used with, the fewer people I had to share with, the more I had for myself, the more I could get high. Until eventually I spent almost all my time smoking weed completely alone. I preferred it that way.

My earliest memories of addictive behaviour are from my childhood. I was 8 or 9 years old. We’d gone on a hike for my birthday and had packed hot dogs for lunch. I remember stuffing myself with those hot dogs way beyond the point of being hungry. And I remember the odd sensation I experienced while eating. I knew I was already full but I kept stuffing myself anyway. That first instance, acting out my addiction, like all the others that followed, started with the obsessive pursuit of pleasure.

By the time I finished school in 2003, I was a full-blown addict. I started working odd jobs the following year, to try and save money, to travel. That year I applied for a job where we were forewarned of a drug test as part of the application process. Already then I realised I couldn’t stop. I told myself that I needed at least three days to get the marijuana out of my system, just three days without smoking. But I couldn’t manage. I smoked up until the morning of the drug test.

Over the years I tried this failed approach many times. “Perhaps I’d stop for just a day or two” or “Perhaps I’ll smoke only twice a day” or “Perhaps I will only smoke when so and so happens” but it never worked. I was compelled to return, I had no choice and it slowly dawned on me that I had no control.

Trying as hard as I could to ‘make the right choice’, I was confronted by the reality that it wasn’t a choice. Something far stronger than my thinking mind compelled me to do something that did not serve my interests. I continued smoking daily, several times a day, long after I realised that this wasn’t really what I wanted.

This went on from about 2004 until 2010, which was the year I got married. Very unexpectedly. Most people who knew me thought I’d completely lost my mind. Because for years I womanized and slept around with multiple overlapping girlfriends.

Sex wasn’t my first drug of choice, but it was one of them. Alongside alcohol, cocaine and bad food. I didn’t father any children (as far as I know) nor did I pick up anything unwanted. But that could very easily have happened. In fact, it’s surprising that it didn’t, considering how much sex there was with strangers, and how often it involved first getting completely wasted.

After three years of asking nicely, talking about it, and watching me pretending that I could manage my use of drugs, my wife gave me an ultimatum. That was 10 years ago, in late 2013.

“Either you go and talk to someone, or else I…”

Which I did, rather reluctantly. It was (and still is) the most difficult exercise imaginable to admit that I couldn’t solve this problem on my own. I spoke to someone, I joined a 12-step program and started attending weekly meetings. But it took another 4 years (and one particularly desperate rock-bottom experience) before I finally decided to accept that unless I shut the fuck up, and listen to someone wiser than myself, I was never going to grow out of this.

Today, God willing, if I don’t relapse before 11 November 2023, I will be 6 years clean. It’s the most valuable gift I’ve ever received, and keep receiving, and it’s never cost me anything other than continued commitment, personal responsibility, and a good amount of effort.

I’m sharing this because I’m clean as a result of listening to other addicts. People who were willing to share their stories with me. The 12-step program I attend and practice (to the best of my imperfect abilities) is very simple.

It isn’t easy, it’s fairly dense and layered, but it’s also not particularly complex.

1. Realise and admit there’s a problem.
2. Listen to other people talk about their problems.
3. Don’t give advice. Ever.
4. Share my own problems.
5. Look for similarities and overlook the differences.
6. Implement steps to address the root cause of the problem.

And what is the root cause? What is addiction? Again, the answer isn’t complex, but there are multiple layers to it.

Simplified, addiction is the pursuit of pleasure as an attempted escape. It’s an unsuccessful attempt to escape the basic reality that life happens and (far more often than not) it’s entirely beyond our control. Addiction is an attempt to fill that uncomfortable void with pleasure. A void that can instead be filled with a connection to a higher purpose.

Essentially, a human caught up in active addiction has missed the purpose of life. Whatever that may be for them.

I know there are other addicts out there. And I know they’re suffering in that same void I once did and sometimes still do. I wouldn’t be clean today and relatively happy and at peace with myself if it weren’t for other addicts sharing their stories with me. Freely.