Tell me about it.

I've ruined myself for life from drug and alcohol addiction, I will never be quite the same person I was before I got into the "strong stuff."  My cognitive functions are permanently damaged and underactive.

Take heed before it happens to you and realize that this is where self-loathing takes you.

Not everyone on this earth have had somebody to comfort and care when they felt sad as a kid.
How are they then supposed to know how to comfort themself?

That wasn't really the reason I got into drugs, although it played a small part in it, I guess.

I know some people with bad selfesteem or depression see this as a solution because of lack of self-comfort-skills or lack of ability to live their own life and appreciate small things.
like:"life is so horrible.I have to get out of this feeling,if only just for a while."

Ironically, I started doing drugs as a teen to "fit in."  Once people knew that you were a head, any strange behaviors were attributed to being high on something. About 10 years later I stopped doing drugs because I didn't like where the 30-something druggies were in their personal lives.  I just sort of looked at them and said, "Nah, that's not where I want to be in 10 years." And I left. Very simple.

It becomes a loop that snares you and takes you deeper and deeper into the abyss. That abyss that you tried to escape. It levels everything until it's all a blur. Just this one; then I'll quit... well, after one there's another one, and another. Addicts are lonely people who only think of themselves. They may think it's cool for a time... that's just how drugs work... that hollow feeling that was filled by the drug grows bigger and bigger. If you didn't hate yourself before - you will when the drug shows its teeth and bites down hard like a rabid dog...

I quit the occasional pot smoke in 1992 and the occasional drinking in 1993. In the summer of 1992 I got a new upstairs neighbor who was an alcoholic and pot smoker. He was a mess and made a lot of noise. I had an electric guitar and amp. It became like a draw that sort of worked. Over the years he asked me time and time again if I wanted some. NO!!! I DID NOT WANT SOME!!!

A few years ago he started to be away most of the time working and only came home over the weekends. I began to go up there and sit with him and have a beer instead of sitting in my flat fuming in anger of the noise he made. By that I could somehow control him. It worked.

Come 2004; the year when my NO! started to crumble and shift. Suddenly I sat in my flat experimenting with pot in an extremely cautious way.... slowly I became more and more familiar with how the drug worked. Jump. Fall 2005. I took the tram to another part of town and scored from a contact I'd been trusted. It was an adventure... WooHoo, I met with some strange people that winter...

June 2006. I call a guy I'd met accidentally one night, then go to meet him to score. The minute I hand over the cash and get instructions on how to proceed I get the feeling that I'm being conned. Right! So what, I think... My friend K went bananas on me and said that what I'd done was what he'd expect EJ to do, because he's aspie, and I replied, well, so am I; which K knew.

At 2am we encounter the con men again. I'm so pissed that I just shamble around while K isn't that blasted. They're for some odd reason angry at us and now they're going to really rip us off. They shove me to the ground and run away with my camera and K follows them to try and get it back while I'm getting up on wobbly legs, anxiety pounding away like mad mad mad, tunnel vision, shock, confusion... suddenly the conners are gone and so are K... When I reach him again over the phone, he's a few blocks away, hiding inside a block after being jumped by the conners, robbed, beaten senseless... MAJOR ***... I find him, he's throwing up, police arrive, ambulance arrive...

What A Bloody Mess I Made, I think... I'm a bleedin danger not only to myself but to others as well... I trust people unconditionally until they show me otherwise. They don't have to fool me. I'm very good at it myself...

Same here & boy has it got me into difficulties.

me too

Re: the bold print, I think that describes some Aspies fairly well, too.  Aspies feel misunderstood and left out, and some can become "cocky" and a bit narcissistic as a result of social/family dysfunction (well, I know that's how it happened for me.)

Anyhow, you describe the pattern perfectly.  I wouldn't and still haven't accepted the idea of rehab or AA, or even reading the AA stuff and following it on my own--I don't know if it's sheer laziness, unwillingness to change, or what have you.

Ive never experimented with addictive drugs. But 10 years ago I did ecstacy a few times....wow, it sure makes you feel So good. But I havent dont much in the way of drugs for the last 6 years after having a truly harrowing trip on a designer drug called 2CT7.

I wanna add: Ive been pescribed stimulants for my ADD and they certainly do NOT give me social confidence! Quite the opposite: they make me feel extremely anxious and talk incessantly to myself out loud. When the drug starts to wear off the withdrawal period makes me Extremely angry and think violent thoughts. Weed for me has a very similar effect on me as alcohol: I get happy but very silly and uninhibited.

I guess I must be the only one here who developed a rather dangerous addiction, to a rather dangerous substance.

That kinda makes me feel like a fool.

What substance was that?

What does it matter?

A physically harmful drug is a physically harmful drug, to which addiction should be avoided at all costs; but I didn't bother to pay attention to reason, because I thought I could get away with it.  I couldn't and as a result my health is damaged at the age of 26--it definitely "came back to bite me."

Now how do you "magically undo" physical harm?  You can't.