Hey Hexbear, I'm gonna tell you a story. Around 2007 there was this guy that moved to Pueblo Colorado after his band broke up to be closer to a friend he knew from highschool. Things were pretty great at first but as the friend and him grew away from each other he started using substances. He tried weed, E, MDMA, and some other drugs before, he thought they were fine but after he did cocaine for the first time he found something that would help him cope with the failure of his band breaking up and losing his friendship and shortly after that, his job at the local vitamin cottage due to the 2008 financial collapse. He'd party and take a couple of bumps and make up business plans he'd never follow up on until he met someone else. A little later his new friend showed him meth and not long after that his lease ended with the original friend he moved to Colorado for which he wasn't prepared for. The scare of suddenly being homeless and living out of a tour van scared him enough to pick up a job selling with his dealer and struggling to not smoke his profits.
He managed to save up enough to get a studio apartment! He was really trying to impress the original friend he moved in with he even tagged the fuck out of his bathroom because he thought he was going to live there for a while but dealing doesn't provide pay stubs and since he couldn't provide proof of income (despite trying to forge one) he was kicked out. He failed again. He still had his van though and his job dealing but the shame of not having a home or provable income ruined him. Somewhere along the way he was jailed and around 2009 his parents heard that he wasn't doing well and found him and brought him back to Florida and after seeing his teeth put him in rehab.
But the shame of being a failure to his family, his former friend, he got out of rehab and started smoking meth in Pensacola. Around 2012 he managed to sober up enough to get a job at the local Lowe's and pass a drug test! But he lived in a halfway house with another tweaker.
A friend he met in Navarre found out that he was doing meth again and rented a uhaul and moved him out and in with her. She set up some ground rules to live in her house. He thought the rules were stupid but tried to follow them. He fucked up a couple of times but his friend didn't kick him out and he eventually started to feel guilty about ruining her life that she openly welcomed him into to help him.
Around 2014 he fucked up real bad but she waited until he got home. She laid into him when he got home. To the point he laid on the hardwood floor in front of her and contemplated suicide. But she still didn't kick him out. I heard that was the last day he smoked meth.
But I'm obviously just telling someone else's story and didn't cry multiple times writing this up. Any of you got some successful sobriety stories? Any friends that got someone sober? Share them below.
(transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."
And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."
And i was like, ohok and he continues.
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.