Drug Addiction Stories

I have been in bands for years. Music is my life. I love it. Even now, I have band equipment set up in my guest room. Might as well. Sure don’t have any guests. I have lots of great memories, playing with different bands and seeing different places. Met several of the old greats in my time: Johnny Cash, Willie, Conway Twitty just to name a few. Women flocked around me. 

Yeah, those memories are great but they don’t do me a lot of good now. I have two grown sons who live four states over and want nothing to do with me. It’s my fault. All I wanted was the music and the beer.

I am an alcoholic. Even now, I drink. My buddies and I get together and play music and once in a blue moon one of them crashes on the couch. The rest, well, they make it home somehow. Not my problem.

Till Scotty had his stroke. Now, being as I’m in my 60s, my friends having a stroke shouldn’t be a surprise. Only Scotty isn’t in his 60s. Scotty is only 34. He likes that old time country and loves to play with us. He parties hard, drinking and probably indulging in a couple of other recreational drugs but still, his stroke hit me hard. He is 34 and I am 64. The doctors say he will never recover. He had a bad one.

I see him at the hospital and he can’t talk, he can’t hardly move, he just lies there and tries to smile, saying something indecipherable. He’s being moved to a rehab center soon and we hear he will be moved to a long term facility because his mother can’t take care of him at her age.

I am 64 and my sons won’t see me because I chose alcohol over them and their mothers years ago. I should be grateful they at least know each other since they came from different mothers. Still, I look around my small house and wonder what I really have? A rented place and friends who come to have a place to play music and get drunk.

Why not me?  Scotty has his whole life ahead of him.  Or he did. 

I realize I was luckier than Scotty. That could just as easily been me which would not have been a surprise at my age. Scotty has a mother who can’t take care of him. We both made bad choices, Scotty and I. But maybe, just maybe, miracles can happen. I put my beer down and pick up the phone to make a call.

“Son, it’s Dad. How are you?”

I started drinking when I was about 12. Both of my parents drank so there was always plenty of beer in the house. Mom and Dad worked but when they got home, the drinking started and so did the arguing. God, I hated to listen to that day after day. By the end of the night, I would be drawn into the arguing. They would either argue about me or something I was supposed to do or should do. So, one day before they got home from work, I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator just to see what all of the fuss was about. I didn’t even finish that beer and I was feeling the effects. I understood why they called it a buzz. That night, when my parents argued, I thought it was kind of funny.

One beer soon became two and before I knew it I could down a six pack without thinking twice about it. By the time I was 16 I was drinking 10 cans of beer a night. I wasn’t doing real well in school and I had missed so many days that the school was threatening truancy action. I did get my driver’s license though which meant my friends and I could go cruising and drinking. So, that’s just what we did. I thought it was so cool…I thought I was so cool.

One of my teachers took me aside one day and asked if I was using drugs or alcohol. Of course, I never answered her. I just said “It’s no big deal” and walked away. That same night, my friends and I went out driving (and, of course, drinking). We had the music up and were laughing. We were having what I thought then was a good time. I was going around a curve and I reached back to grab a beer when I saw the truck’s headlights coming right at us. The next thing I knew it was 4 days later and I was in a hospital. My entire body hurt so badly I started to cry. They said I had a concussion, 3 broken ribs and a fractured pelvis. I also found out my best friend who was next to me in the front seat had died. I felt like dying too. How could I have been so stupid? I almost killed myself and I did kill my best friend. I have to live with that every day of my life, but I live with it sober now. I may have thought drinking was no big deal, but losing my friend sure was.