I never thought I had an addictive personality. I never drank during my teen years, or even in my early 20s, so when I started drinking at 25, I didn’t realize how much I was drinking right out of the gate. I would drink three or four times a week, at least 6 drinks per night.
Within a few months, a friend pulled out some Vicodin one night and I swallowed them down without hesitation. That began my addiction to pills, and without even realizing it, I had already become addicted to alcohol. I never let up on the drinking. If anything, it increased in number of nights spent consuming alcohol with friends, and my nightly limit jumped to about 8 drinks.
Meanwhile, my Vicodin addiction was just developing. The euphoric rush that came with the Vicodin was like nothing I had ever experienced. Then, a total and complete relaxation would follow, taking away all my stress about work and worries about the future. Eventually, my tolerance increased and I needed more pills to deliver the same feelings. I gradually worked my way up to consuming around 25 pills a day.
Even at this point, I felt like I was keeping my life together. I was still managing to hold my job, but just barely, and I was draining my bank accounts to buy the pills. But later I started to have a problem focusing. During a meeting with my boss, I practically kept falling to sleep during the conversation. In the following weeks I found I was overly anxious and paranoid and my moods would go back and forth from elation to anger to depressed. Coworkers later told me, at my intervention, that they were scared of me.
At my lowest point, when I couldn’t pay for the illegal pills anymore, I started trying to fake injuries to try to get doctors to prescribe me the pills. When I tried to see my third doctor in the same month, I was caught. No more pills.
Around the same time, my friends, family, and coworkers staged an intervention at my apartment. I thought my drinking was normal. I thought I was hiding the pill use. It turns out that I was…I am…completely addicted to both.