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So my name is Joey, and I'm an alcoholic. My story is going to use the word Adderall, but you can happily substitute alcohol into this discussion and it will still apply the same for me. I didn't have my problems with smoking weed. I didn't have my problems with drinking. But primarily, I'm going to use the word Adderall. It's a very long form of cocaine, and it makes someone feel like they are really high, on top of the world. This type of high can last for hours. I think mine, any of my binges, were from eight to twelve hours after I would take a bunch of it.

The other point of clarification here is that this might be a little bit of a triggering story. It might contain things like suicide attempts, masturbation, and excessive amounts of everything. So I just want to make that clear from the beginning.

So, yeah, my name is Joey and I'm an alcoholic. I'm going to skip a lot of the background, because the majority of this really started for me when I was working for a company called Target. While I was working for Target, I was, at that point, taking a bunch of Adderall. Like, I was taking it to do everything. I was taking it in order to wake up. I was taking it in order to be productive in my office. I was taking it to do my job. I was taking it on rest days in order to write. I was taking it in the afternoons to go out and party with friends. I was taking it in order to masturbate more. I was then taking sleeping pills to go to sleep. I was then taking it again to actually get to sleep. I was smoking weed to go to sleep. I was drinking alcohol with friends. It was always that more, more, more. And this type of behavior went on for ten years of my life. That is what happened, and where I finally hit my wall.

But I do want to go backwards here. Sorry if I jump around, but I do want to go backwards and say that, for my whole life, I knew I was fucked up. I knew I was different. I could not make any friends. I was completely just too much. Could you imagine? Too much for anyone around me. All the camp counselors, even back in my elementary school, knew me as the problem child. From an early age, I was labeled with ADHD. I was labeled with autism, with anxiety, with depression, and then put on this Adderall to try to fix everything. They would put one medication on, then put another to fix that medication, then put another medication on to fix that medication. I was on five of those medications at the same time, for years, to try to get myself to a level of stability, to operate. But in reality, I was just slowly killing myself over time.

And to me, I was told from the beginning. When I asked my psychiatrist, "Will I be on Adderall for the rest of my life?" my doctor said nothing. She didn't say anything. She didn't say yes. She didn't say no. She just stared at me blankly, like I had three heads. And that's when I knew. I was sitting at my kitchen table, looking at the very first Adderall pill, knowing that life would be different. Just like when we see that alcohol, we drink it, and we know life is different, I stared at this Adderall and I knew life would be different. But I took it anyway.

And my doctor thought it would be a great idea for me to be on this medication and then take me right back off of it. So I was on an upper, and then I was on nothing. And that's what caused my first overdose. I thought life wasn't worth it, and I tried to kill myself by taking five times the amount. I was up for thirty-six more hours after that, straight wired, eyes wouldn't blink. And I got to see what it would be like if I died, because my family responded as if I did die. They thought my heart would explode out of my chest.

And that overdose, that purple dragon, is what I chased for the following twelve years, up until when I was working at Target. I chased that purple dragon over and over and over. I tried to replicate it with alcohol. I tried to replicate it with marijuana. I just kept chasing that purple dragon. I would just take more and more and more. First it was prescribed, then I would get it on the side. Then I had three dealers. Then I had a fourth dealer, in case the third dealer didn't work out. I would prioritize the Adderall over anything else. The same way we hide our liquor, the same way we always put the alcohol first, I put the little pill capsule in my pocket. Phone, keys, pill capsule. I'm good for the day. That's how fucked up in my head it was.

And even at the very end, people realized I had a problem. I flew up to another state, because that always fixes our problems. Going to another state to run away, but with the pills or with the drink, that always works. It definitely didn't for me. But I ran away, and I thought that would fix it. And these people, who had never met me, from Kentucky of all places, realized I was an addict immediately. And that was the beginning of my downfall.

Because the one person in my life I never wanted to hurt was my mother. I love my mother to this day. But my mother, I stole from her. I stole the money from my dead grandparents out of her closet in order to pay for necessary things, but then unnecessary things, to buy food for my friends, to be the big shot of the group, because I thought that mattered to me. It didn't. And I still haven't even admitted that to my friends to this day. But what I do know is that when my mom confronted me, I admitted it. That was the start of my downfall.

Then my therapist said, "I could fix every single mental ailment with you, but the problem is the Adderall. You keep taking it. That's your problem." And then there's the other fact of life of living in the United States: insurance runs out when you are about to turn twenty-seven. I was about to be twenty-seven, and my mom said, if you don't go to rehab, you're out of the house.

Most people's bottoms are, you know, they're either homeless or close to it. I was lounging in the pool, kicking back, not a care in the fucking world. I'd just gotten laid off from Target. I was living my best life. But that was my emotional bottom. That was my bottom, where I'm like, the drugs weren't working. In April, I would take Adderall after Adderall after Adderall after Adderall, and nothing was working for me. Nothing. And I'm like, this is bullshit. There's nothing left for me besides death. Nothing.

And I had that conversation with my therapist, and I started detoxing at home. My first day of rehab was June 9th of 2025. That is my sobriety date. That was my only white chip so far. God willing, that is my only sobriety date.

And at that moment, life was changing, but I didn't know how yet. Because I was always the first person, when someone would say, "Hey, Joe," or, "What's your name?" I'd be like, "My name is Joey." I was the first person to make an alcoholic joke. I was the first person to make a joke about recovery, about rehab. Like, "Oh, I think you need a... I think they're down the block," when somebody was holding too many bottles. Never, never did I think I was going to be in it.

So I got to rehab, and I didn't know what the hell to expect. I'm in this room, and I'm just barely weaning off of this pill. And this pill takes months to detox from, because for some people, when they're on it excessively like I was, it is ingrained in the psychology of my brain. It wired me every day. I didn't need coffee. I didn't need sex. I didn't even need cocaine, because cocaine wasn't enough. Adderall did everything for me. So at that point, my brain was rewired.

So showing up to rehab every day to learn these basic lessons of not cheating, not stealing, in my head I'm like, I'm here, might as well learn something. Might as well try to repair the life that I've broken and destroyed behind me: the relationships I destroyed behind me, the family that was running from me, the friends who were pissed off about my blackouts, because I did have my drinking blackouts too. I had my crossfading blackouts too. And I don't remember them, for good and for bad. But what I do know is that in rehab, I learned what it meant to be a person, and what it meant to be there for people. Because before, it was just about me, me, and more me. What's in it for me? I'm talking to my friend because they're in crisis. What do I get out of it? That was my MO. It's, what's in it for me? I didn't care. I didn't give a fuck what was going on. Someone could have a heart attack outside my door, and if I needed to write something, I needed to be writing. Fuck you, I need to be writing. I need to be doing what I need to do.

But in recovery, we're all stuck in this Titanic ship together, and we've got to navigate it together, because we are all that we've got. Because we're the only ones who understand how hard this disease is. My friends to this day say to just stop going to meetings, you're fine. I'm like, if only it were that easy. If only it were that easy.

But I exited rehab, and I'm sitting there with my therapist, and I go, "Okay, so now the fuck what? Now what?" And they're like, "Well, there's a thing called AA." I said, "Well, I didn't drink, I just used." She's like, "No, no, that's for drugs too. Go to AA." So I go to AA, and people were loving to me, were accepting of me, were kind to me, expecting me to do nothing for them.

My life had been transactional this whole time, where if you do something for me, then I want to do something for you, and vice versa. It was always a transaction. It was never authentic. But after rehab, and in AA, I got to just be given love that I never got. And the deeper meaning behind what we do here isn't not drinking and not using. It almost isn't the steps. It's the development work we do on ourselves. That's my view. That's my program.

My program is very weird. It is not normal to have three sponsors. It's absolutely not normal for me to focus so much on forgiving myself and accepting myself for the mistake of taking the pill, the mistake of overdosing, and to accept myself, and that my character defects are fucking awesome. I'm a selfish son of a bitch, and I love it. I'm a manipulative asshole. I am, to the core, a control freak. And I love that, because it gives me a challenge, something to work with. Like, what do I do today? How do I keep that on the wayside? How do I focus on helping others to get out of my own head? Because in my head is the drug, but out of my head is helping others who are going through what I went through. Out there are people I get to have the opportunity to be there for, in whatever capacity, whether that means listening at an event, whether that means just being there for them, whether that means giving advice inside and outside of the rooms.

And with the program comes this thing called Fellowship. I see it here. We all fuck around. When we get in here, we can just mess around, have different voices, talk to your people, make jokes about shirts, make jokes about sports. And the deeper meaning behind that is an understanding of each other, that we've been through a lot, but we can laugh at it. Because for me, I didn't know how to be myself. I always had a mask over my head, to not be this, because this type of personality, where I'm loud, everywhere, all at once, sweating up a storm, but just by talking, like, no one wants this, except in the rooms. In the Fellowship, people love me for just me. I don't have to shy away, put on a mask that's formal and proper. No, fuck that. That's bullshit. I just want to be who I am. And that might come out as brash abrasion, but in a way, it's the most authentic self I can be.

Understanding my character defects, working with them, understanding them and loving them, because they are a part of me. Getting to integrate who I used to be as a user into who I am today. Because I just heard it last night at a meeting, that I can't be the person who used today while sober. And that, to me, was profound, because I struggled. I white-knuckled this program before I did the steps, because I wanted to hold on to who I used to be. Because who I used to be was really fun. That was a really fun thing to do. Getting to control my writing, getting to control the variables, was a really fun thing to do for me. But now I get the opportunity to put it all in God's hands, and I don't have to worry. I don't have to think about it. I can just enjoy the flow, enjoy the meetings, enjoy life. Because I never did that before. I was always controlling everything.

About those twelve steps. And that's where I'll finish off, The twelve steps of AA. Those steps, for me, I was like, good, a blueprint, because I need instructions. I need to know what to do. Because when someone comes in, and when I came in, they were like, "Okay, just be a good person." Okay. Ha. "Take inventory." What is an inventory? I need step-by-step-by-step outlines, which took me a while to find: that sponsor, working through that. But for me, those twelve steps were an outline for everything. Not just not using, not just not drinking, but how to be a better friend, how to be a better boyfriend, how to be a better son, how to be a better brother. All of those were there.

And when I made my amends, when I got to my step nine, for me, I thought the best thing to hear would be, "Just keep on moving forward." What I found out through the book seminar was that that's the worst thing to hear, because that means I'm not forgiven yet. My parents have not forgiven me for stealing, for my dad having to beat me to the ground because I was raging off the Adderall. My mom did not forgive me for stealing from her, and the money I still owe her. My sister didn't forgive me for the night she was worried, because my mother had to call my sister all the way across the country to tell her that I was freaking out and banging into furniture and losing my fucking mind. I'm not forgiven for that yet. But progress.

And when I made my amends, I said this: me giving my amends doesn't excuse the bullshit that I've done, but it sets a precedent that I understand the gravity of what I did, and I'm working toward a better future for us, to make it easier for us. And it's not by me saying I'm sorry. It's by the actions I'm doing every single day.

So with that, now I'm going to end. And now you can clap. My name is Joey. Thanks for letting me share.