Tag: caring

A Calm Before the Storm


As I walk to a meeting tonight, I can’t help but think that this is what my life has become. Not one single thing defines me, but more like a cluster of things, and to which most I’m not proud of.

I wake up and go to work (if there is a job scheduled), and in the evening I work my other job (if I’m scheduled), or I sit in a chair that invisibly has my name written on it and listen to either how great or not so great a fellow addict is doing. The rest of the time I usually do nothing because I can’t afford to do anything. I’ve stopped going to the gym because I can’t afford it or I lack what most people have: a bank account, in which the gym can access and pull my money. I refrain from traveling the city of Boston looking for work because most weeks I can’t afford a transportation pass needed to ride the trains or buses. Because of these minor issues, which mend together as somewhat of a cluster, people’s conception of me turns sour and like a shotguns recoil, I agree.

Little things added together make something of a larger scale. Like the many baseball teams become the MLB or a handful of songs become an album, or because of my nearly homeless income becomes a false portrait of me today, addicts doing well can relapse due to this same scale.

Many people I know have died this month along with many more people I’ve never met but learned about, and the majority of their demise have something in common; they died from the first use in their relapse. Upon hearing their stories from others at meetings, people I live with, from social media, or from the funerals and wakes I have attended, it seems that by following each individuals problems or issues, events or lack-there-of, a cluster had been formed of mediocre catastrophes shaping into one giant one; resulting in their relapse which in return resulted in their death.

I strongly believe that through communication, networking, and humility, these people may as well be alive today. I only hope that we as addicts and the people who love us can start seeing the slow and sometimes fairly visible downward spiral that usually arises before the end. Like tremors to an earthquake, we become more aware and sometimes prepared for the apex of this disease.

My heart and prayers go out to everyone we have just lost from addiction and their families.

If You Build IT, They Will Come…


“This is just the beginning”, someone told me my first time at an AA meeting. And that is exactly what I am saying here. “This is just the beginning”.

I have dreamt millions and millions of things throughout my 32 years on this planet. Anywhere from what I wanted to be when I grew up to how I want to ask this pretty girl I’ve only just met out on a date. This here, thewakeupjournals, is one of those dreams, one of the only dreams that has happen thus far. Now, at the age of- let’s say eight- I wasn’t imagining that I’d one day be both happy and nervous about setting forth an idea I have based solely upon how awful and unmanageable my life has been, but a lot can change in time, especially when you only live your life, One Day at a Time.

Since getting clean, or sober as some of us call it, I have wanted to help other people like me. Other addicts and alcoholics. But bouts of self doubt and insecurities have always stopped me from completely opening up and talking about who I REALLY AM to someone other than a man or woman sitting in a chair with a cup of coffee or an energy drink in their hand and introducing themselves as… “Hi! My name is_____ and I’m an addict.” But like my dreams and the world around us, I have changed and now feel quite comfortable talking about whatever it is I feel like sharing about my life and either who I was or who I am. Let’s call it humility. Or just being humble. Whatever name we may give it, it is an act that for generations has helped one addict or alcoholic help another. And by doing this, people have saved countless peoples lives, families, jobs, relationships, and in the process have saved themselves. So in hindsight; I’m just returning the favor someone did for me.

So, without an education, without any professional certificate or degree, I am going to completely, honestly, and most importantly…humbly, open my life and all it’s losses and it’s wins, it’s feats and it’s failures, to you, the reader, the interested, and hopefully reach out in the process and help at least one human being away from continuing on a path of self destruction and imprisonment to the confines of addiction so they can simply wake up one day smiling. This I plan on doing as follows: sharing the stories from myself and other addicts/alcoholics in recovery of our experience, strength, and hope.

I can promise this; the stories are not going to be perceived always nicely. They will be horrifying, terrible, sometimes grotesque and illegal, but they happened. Some will be sad, some may make you mad, and some may be painfully close to the heart. See, addiction is everywhere around us though it only comes out into the limelight when something horrible goes on, and deservingly so because it’s a horrible disease. But it’s a factuality in everyday life to millions of people and if your reading this now, chances are you know someone who wakes up and fights this battle day on and day off. I know people who will read will respect me for my honesty and some won’t. Actually, some people will hate it so much that I will somehow get blamed as being a “type of person” who causes this or causes that, and that’s just fine with me. A large part of humanity ignoring this disease is plain and simple: ignorance. Most people are not raised to commit crimes and hurt others so obviously we were raised that anyone who does so is a “bad” person. And, a lot of times when your already convinced someone is bad then you think it’s best that you stay away from that person. So if you decide to stay away from somebody you don’t care much for then why on earth would u ever take time out of your own day to learn about why they are bad? And I don’t blame you cause I am ignorant towards a lot of stuff in life as well. But not with this, with addiction, and to those of you who are considering reading along or stopping by this site- I applaud you and ask one question: what took you so fucking long?

This is less of a post but more like a bio about what we are trying to accomplish here on thewakeupjournals but as the days, the months, hopefully even as the years go bye, this blog can get the attention of enough people who want to help another suffering person in this world, and even if it can aid the recovery of a single individual…well, then we’ve succeeded.

Because how can you consider yourself a part of humanity if you don’t have the decency to help it in every way it needs it?