I am an addict

You can't make me clean, though I know it is what you want for me to be. But until I want it, I won't be. You can't love me clean, because until I learn to love myself I won't be. I know you must wonder how can I learn to love myself when I am caught up in a life style of self-hatred and self-destruction. I can learn from my own experiences. I can learn from the things that happen to me along the path of my own mistakes. I can learn by being allowed to suffer the consequences of my choices. Life has a funny way of teaching us the lessons we need to learn.

I know it devastates you to watch me hurting myself. I know you want to jump in and save me. This helps ease your pain, but I don't think you understand just how damaging it is to me.

You see, although I look and sound like your loved one. I am not. That person is in a self imposed prison way deep down inside of my being and what you see before you is an addict ruled and reigned by my addiction. I am an addict and my main focus is to feed the addiction. Every effort you put forth in the name of "helping me" falls prey to my addiction giving it more power to shackle me down a little more each time.

I feed my addiction enough. So please don't help me.

The only way for the real me to get free is to be free. FREE to fall as far down as I need to go in order to find the strength to fight and find my way back. To break free.

How can or will I ever be able to get clean you wonder ...

The same way I gave myself over to my addiction is the same way I can give myself over to my recovery. BY MYSELF

By not enabling me you will be allowing me to reach "rock bottom". By trusting the process you move over and allow me to find my own way back. You see, it is in the fight to get free that I will find myself. It is in the fight that I will learn to love myself and the more I love myself ... the more I will start to do to better myself, but I myself, must do this.

I am aware that when I use I am playing Russian roulette with my life. I know this, but that is a chance I take when I use. The addict in me is willing to take that chance in the name of getting high.

Rock bottom is but a circumstance away. I can't reach it you are blocking the entrance.

I know you love me and you only want what’s best for me ... but that very love keeps you blind sighted to just what truly is best for me and causes you to act from/out of fear and emotions.

Please for my sake don't try to stop me... just let me go ... move out of the way and let me fall as far down as my addiction is going to take me ... as far down as I have to go reach rock bottom. Don't try to cushion the fall. Just believe in me and trust the process. Pray for me that when I do hit ... it is not with the impact that leaves me for dead (I know that is your greatest fear), but if it comes to that, be sure to tell my story so that others might learn from my mistakes and live.

Let me fall as far down as my addiction is going to take me, let me walk the valley alone all by myself, let me reach the bottom of the pit...trust that there is a bottom there somewhere even if you can't see it. The sooner you stop saving me from myself, stop rescuing me, trying to fix my broken-ness, trying to understand me to a fault, enabling me ... The sooner you allow me to feel the loss and consequences, the burden of my addiction on my shoulders and not yours...the sooner I will arrive...and on time...just right where I need to be.. me, alone, all by myself in the rubble of the lifestyle I lead...resist the urge to pull me out because that will only put me back at square one...

If I am allowed to stay at the bottom and live there for a while, I am free to get sick of it on my own, free to begin to want out, free to look for a way out, and free to plan how I will climb back up to the top. In the beginning as I start to climb out...I just might slide back down, but don't worry I might have to hit bottom a couple more times before I make it out safe and sound.

Don't you see ?? Don't you know ?? You can't do this for me... I have to do it for myself, but if you are always breaking the fall, how am I ever suppose to feel the pain that is part of the driving force to want to get well. It is my burden to carry, not yours.