This is a story about not being anonymous...

I'm not powerless over drugs and/or alcohol. My life has become pretty unmanageable, but I don't need a higher power to return me to sanity. I don't consider myself an alcoholic or an addict and I don't go to meetings.

I certainly have trouble turning down subsequent drinks, after I've had my first 2 pints of strong European lager and I'm enjoying the company of friends or work colleagues. It's probable that I will keep drinking until I've had 6 or 7 pints and I'm reaching an intoxication limit where I'm starting to slur my words and be unsteady on my feet. I won't keep drinking though... I'll normally bolt for home & bed when I've hit my limit.

I don't think I've had an alcoholic drink before midday on any day except Christmas Day, and even then, only a handful of times. I'm pretty sure I never went more than about 10 consecutive days where I got drunk. I know I did 115 days without a single drop of alcohol. I didn't cheat once, even though there were times that I was very tempted to bend the rules.

There have been times when my drinking was getting out of control, with beer every lunchtime, long Friday afternoons in the beer garden, drinking again when I got home, drinking all weekend. I'm not sure it ever qualified as 'problematic' though. Drinking was quite ingrained in the lifestyle of my friends and the work culture, to the point that despite many years of being half-cut in the office, nothing has ever been said, except for one day I was so hungover I didn't make it to my desk until 2pm.

But alcohol really isn't my problem. Supercrack is my poison of choice. Certainly if I have this drug in my possession, there is limited chance of me doing anything sane or rational. There's the added problem of unplanned binges as well. Once you pop, you can't stop.

When I am struggling with active addiction, I tell myself all sorts of lies. The main one is that I will act in some kind of reserved, controlled way. Once Supercrack is coursing its way through my drugstream, there is very little chance of me seeing onrushing death and health damage as any reason to curtail my foolish actions.

Do we think that the many relapses that I've had mean I'm an addict for life, and as such, should always attach that label to myself, even when I'm 'clean'? Well, it's certainly true that once experienced, things cannot be un-experienced, and there is disappointingly little dissipation in the desire to continue to use a drug that one has been addicted to, if there were no consequences.

Aversion therapy, is using negative reinforcement to break the addiction to something. If you link and associate enough unpleasant experiences with your addiction, the downsides start to outweigh the upsides, and it's not so difficult to stay 'clean'. Could you be said to no longer be 'addicted'?

Human memory is a strange thing though. Negative memories seem to fade faster than positive ones. When you recall some event that was extremely harrowing at the time, each time you think about it, it loses some of its pain and regret. Humans are programmed to be optimistic and take risks. Otherwise, we would never have risked leaving our caves to hunt and domesticate sharp-toothed & clawed predators.

Another lie that I tend to tell myself when I'm slipping back into active addiction, is that there will be some way to satisfy my addictive demands with some harm-reduced and risk-managed 'lapse' that will stave off a full relapse. In actual fact, this then gives the excuse for the next addict lie, which is that the use of drugs can then no longer cease until I'm fully satisfied that I have extracted the maximum possible from the experience, even though the trend is clearly destructively spiralling downwards.

This drive to end a period of addiction on your own terms is kind of laughable, if I look at myself with a harshly critical eye. I can see that there is never any recapturing the initial high that you experience when your tolerance is low and your body in a healthy state. Your days are literally numbered while you're in the grip of a dangerous addiction, and refusing to acknowledge that continuing is futile and foolish.

Most people run out of money or run out of luck before they have exhausted their demand for their drug of choice. The common street drugs have been on the market for long enough to find a price point that has been optimised to fit the addictiveness of the drug to an affordability that ensures steady demand.

I feel very grateful that I never became addicted to Cocaine, Crack Cocaine, Heroin, Crystal Meth or other street 'hard' drugs. They say a fool and his money are easily parted, and so, the street drug addict must be the biggest fool of them all.

Or is it so clear cut? With street drugs, at least you have some direct human contact with your dealer, who has a symbiotic relationship with you, and therefore a reason to not let you tip over the edge into total self annihilation. Often, social groups might form around drug use, and there's a kind of safety in numbers. Even an addict might heed the advice of another addict when somebody says "I think you've probably had enough".

Having essentially unlimited access to the drug you're addicted to, with virtually zero oversight or social ties, is like playing a game of chicken where you're invisible to an oncoming bus driver. Only you can jump out of the way of the bus. The drug will never blink, never back down.

And so it is, I find myself able to relate to most of the stories I hear addicts and alcoholics tell, but there is something terrifyingly unknown and isolating about being amongst the first addicts to have become ensnared by mass-produced Chinese legal research chemicals, and with unlimited access to the world's hardest drugs, with a few mouse clicks on the Dark Web.

Governments have no idea what the consequences of trying to head off the cat & mouse game of criminalising novel chemical compounds will be. The invention of the Dark Web and the synthesis of these new 'designer' drugs is surely a reaction to laws and prohibition. Who could have foreseen that this would create new drugs, new markets, trap unintended types of people into the horrors of addiction and criminal justice?

That's a rock of Crack Cocaine that I was offered on the street soon after moving from North London to East London. Disruption in somebody's life can expose them to things that they've never experienced before.

Tags: #drugs #addiction #notanonymous