Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 912 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: stephen-b-nasac-national-convention-johannesburg-2006.mp3 Duration: 00:09:29
============================================================
Hi, I'm Stephen, I'm an addict. When I got the SMS to ask if I wanted to share, I phoned my sponsor and I said, Hey man, these people have asked me to share. And he was like, Yeah, well, congratulations, man. But if you're nervous, just picture everybody naked and sitting on the toilet. So I know it's not a very comfortable position to be in, but I'm not very comfortable up here, so we're even. My story starts at the beginning of the end. I had been fired from my job. My relationship was ending.
I really had nowhere else to go. My life was just so intense that I needed time out. So I just put up my hands and said, Rehab, I need to go to rehab. I need to get away from my life. Anyway, I went to rehab and after being there for about two days, I started thinking, You know what, I was actually being a bit of a wuss. I didn't really have a problem. I just handled it a bit better. And on the third day of being at rehab, I had a seizure and I started thinking, Okay, maybe this is a bit more serious. In the rehab, I got introduced to N.A.
And I started straight afterwards, I started making N.A. meetings. And I managed to stay clean for about six months. And the relationship was ending. I went into recovery and I thought that that would make everything better. But I suppose she didn't like who I become. So the relationship ended anyway. And I did a geographical. I moved down to Cape Town, trying to run away from my life. And when I got there, these guys I was at boarding school with were all living in a digs.
And they'd been there for about three years and they were really connected. And I moved straight in with them and relapsed and life just got hectic again. I was sharing a room with a guy and I had these real cheap foam mattresses. I had two foam mattresses, a duvet that I don't even know where it came from. And I lived like that for eight months. I had a pile of dirty clothes in the middle of or next to my bed.
And that was my wardrobe. And I just rotated the clothes. It's not the less funky. And eventually, I started doing things that I thought, those drug addicts that do those drugs, they're really bad. So I started dabbling in those sort of things. And eventually, one day, I was coming back to Durban for my birthday. And I just left Cape Town, owed people money for drugs and rent and everything, and I just left.
And when I got home, I just said, I'm staying, I'm not going back. And I got back to Durban and continued using, moved up to Richards Bay and tried to open up an illegal casino. Which didn't work because we were all addicts and we all just used all the profits. So it crashed and burned terribly. And a couple of months after that, I eventually realized, you know what, I can't actually live my life this way.
And I do know what the solution is. So I started going to NA meetings again and doing the suggestions. And so I started staying clean and getting one day at a time, started getting some time. And then I met a girl, and she wasn't part of the fellowship. And making four NA meetings a week, plus trying to develop a relationship with this most interesting person you've ever met, and she's so amazing and whatever, NA was just really getting in the way.
So I justified that, you know what, I've heard it all before, and it's the same people saying the same things over and over again. You know what, I don't need it anymore. So I stopped going to NA, and I was clean for about eight months when this started. Anyway, I moved in with this girl, and she used to dabble in drugs, but she drank excessively. And I mean, what a person to have a relationship with in recovery.
But anyway, I tried, and I tried to save her. Eventually, after being clean for three years, I relapsed. And it took me about two months, two months to start getting onto the hard stuff. I was just trying to drink as responsibly as I could, and I managed to hold off for a while. And so eventually, the addiction just got full-blown again. One night, I went out, and I just went crazy. I ended up in hospital. I overdosed, and I was paralyzed in my right leg.
I've got here, my left foot is messed up. I woke up in hospital. I was in there for 11 days.
[00:04:59]
My work came and visited me and my family, and everybody came.
[00:05:03]
It was like, oh, the secret's out. Everybody knows what happened to me. Anyway, that night, I was in there for 11 days. I got out on Old Year's Eve, and my friend picked me up from the hospital. We went back to his place for a New Year's Eve party, and I was drinking and smoking as usual. I was on crutches. I couldn't walk properly, but I could still use. And because my organs had shut down and everything, my body just didn't handle the drugs at all.
I just kind of short-circuited. The next morning when I woke up, that was really my rock bottom. My relationship had ended. I had paralyzed myself. I had nobody to blame. That was really my rock bottom, and I realized that I can't actually continue living my life this way. So I was a bit too proud to go back to N.A. because of how trashed I spoke about it before I left. I just went into the church.
I started going to church and joined a home group and praying meetings and everything. After doing that for about eight months, I was still miserable. I still hated myself. I still wanted to die. This was just no way to live. Eventually, one of the girls from my home group, she thought that she had a problem, and she knew that I'd been to N.A. meetings before, so she asked me to go with her. I went to the meeting.
I got such a message from the meeting that I started going back. Eventually, I hooked up with the old friends again. The guys had still stuck it out. This time around, I realized, the last time around, I never had a sponsor. I never did the steps. All I did was meetings. So this time around, I got a sponsor, working the steps, make meetings, do service. I think I was working step two. There's a little phrase in step two that says, the beginning of faith is believing that what you hope for will happen.
What I hoped for more than anything was that I was going to find my passion again. I was going to want to live. I was going to look forward to things and achieve goals. The best was yet to come. I hadn't peaked already in my life, and the rest was just downhill. When I worked step two, that's where I found my hope again. All the way through the steps, I just had all these light bulb moments. They've helped me so much as a person, because after that happened, after the overdose and everything, being paralyzed, spiritually, everything, it destroyed me.
I felt like the person that I was, that I thought I was, had died. The only person that was left was this afraid person. Anyway, since then, I've started surfing again. I thought I would never start surfing. I thought I'd never surf again. My gay friend Grant and I, we go down to the beach. We go down to the beach pretty often. Really, I feel so passionately about surfing. It's such an awesome thing.
In the beginning, it actually became quite like something bad, because it's something that's outside of myself that makes me feel good. When I started surfing again, I just surfed every single day, all the time. I stopped making meetings. I stopped phoning my sponsor. I stopped doing step work and everything, because now this thing outside of me is making me feel good. My life has just started getting unmanageable and spinning out of control again.
The balance has been brought back. If I surf, I have to go to meetings. I've got to incorporate. I've got these things that I have to do. I have to make four meetings a week. I have to do step work. I have to find my sponsor. That's what I need to do in order for me to be happy. Anything else that comes into it has to revolve around those things. Anyway, that's about it. Thanks for letting me share.
Thank you.