I suppose I was a heavy drinker for many years from my teenage years, I was successful, I wasa head of department in hotels all my career. I would usually go home after work most nights and drink 1-2 bottles of wine, or other drinks, I could not leave anything in the bottle or until all the cans were drunk. On nights out I was the party animal that never knew when to stop drinking, the concept of just going out for a few did not exist. I would be the one that would be staggering and falling all over the place at family events. I never classed myself as an alcoholic, heavy drinker maybe.
When I was around 30 I was introduced to drugs, the usual clubbing ones even though I was anti-drugs before that. My confidence went through roof on drugs, and I could remember the night and was much more fun. When I was 32 (2006) I was diagnosed with HIV. Up until that point, things were just about ok. 'Functioning'. I had just bought a house. After the diagnosis it all changed, started to isolate, the drinking increased, the drugs increased much more and the different types of drugs. Falling deeper into a pit of self-pity, as well as self-destruction. The spiral downwards continued, them internal negative condemning voices getting louder, losing more and more of myself, drinking and using more.
Within one and half years I had gone bankrupt and lost everything. I had lost my well-paid job, had to move back to my parents. Manage to find a new job, but a much lower position, that passion for work had gone, it had one purpose to fund my drinking and drugs. This continued for a few more years, I had lost several other jobs but also losing self-respect, friends, family relationships. Isolating more, loathing myself more. I did start to admit to myself even though I had been told many times that I have got a major addiction. I would never dream of admitting I had a problem with other people. Looking back, I wish I had, the self-destruction continued, unemployed, unhealthy. Ending with, looking like the stereotypical perception of what society calls an addict.
It continued to get worse in every respect until January 2016. When the one person in my life that had not given up on me through everything, my mum, threw me out, I went upstairs took an intentional overdose and left somehow, I had found myself walking to the hospital. That was my rock bottom, and it was at that point that I decided enough was enough. I engaged with services, got myself a council flat and started to slowly rebuild my life.