Hi my name is Thomas and I am an addict in recovery.

I was born in 1967 and I have a sister that is 3 years older than me and she is still using today.

My parents were workaholics and I remember at dinner time there was never any conversation at the dinner table. If we talked we were given short commandos such as `if you`re through eating then carry you`re plate into the kitchen` or `go upstairs and do you`re homework`. The family was only together during dinnertime or in the morning when we needed to be quickly in and out of the bathroom because my parents were on their way to work and we were sent off to school. I guess my parents wanted the best for us so they sent us both to the best private schools in Copenhagen that money could buy. I needed love and attention so I got it at school by joking and making trouble in the classrooms. I was kicked out of the first school at age 12. They arranged another private school where I managed to get kicked out at age 14. Then I was sent to public school where I went for 5 months before they kicked me out. Lastly, another public school where my record was set at 17 days before they threw me out. My parents gave up and sent me to my first institution at age 15. I stayed at the institution for a year and at that time I already had used hashish for 2 years every day. I played drums in a punk band and we smoked hash 24/7. When I came back to the civilization, I moved to a youth pension in Copenhagen where I graduated. I moved to the center of the city, I was 16 years old and I was ready for the world. I was a part of a creative punk culture and I played lots of concerts with my band. I was good looking and it was easy for me to make friends and I had a lot of girlfriends. I started using speed and doing acid and I was a regular party boy, always under influence of drugs. At one of the many parties I went to I was introduced to heroin. I asked if I could try some and I got hooked on heroin immediately. The first repercussion came when my band threw me out. I was devastated but I went to my dope dealer to buy some heroin to shut off my feelings. I was selling speed to junkies to supply my own habit but I didn’t consider myself being a junkie `cause I didn’t fix. But after a trip to Thailand, where my addiction took over and after my supply ran out, I started to shoot heroin. I swore than I never would shoot heroine but like any other promise, made by me to me, I couldn’t keep it.

I became a street junkie, shooting, using and I didn’t care about anything else than getting the next fix. My girlfriend and I did all kinds of crimes to supply our habits and I went to prison for fraud and burglary. In prison I went through a quick methadone detox but I smoked a lot of hash and took a lot of downers so I never became clean. When I got out, my girlfriend and I tried to get off of the drugs by seeking help. But the place we went to didn’t have a program, didn’t understand the nature of the disease addiction, and even if they did I´m not sure that it would have worked on me at that time. I used everything. I smoked hash, did methadone, took downers and if I could get cocaine I would inject it. I was a hardcore criminal and me and my girlfriend were living in some sort of sick symbiotic relationship. Her parents died under tragic circumstances and she inherited a large sum of money which we spent on drugs. We went to Indonesia on a pure drug trip and it was a disaster. Back in Copenhagen we did nothing but shoot heroine and sleep. Then we went abroad again, this time to India. We arrived in Delhi and I immediately went to Paharjan Area to buy some dope and we were stoned all day long. We went to Goa and we did absolutely nothing but shoot and sleep. Back in Delhi we heard that Dalai Lama was blessing people and we thought, in a moment of clarity or desperation, that he could be our savior. We went to see him and I will always remember the meeting. He looked at me smiling and put his hands on my head while his head was shaking. It was clear to me that he couldn’t help and I feel as if I was doomed. I was convinced from that moment on, that I would die using.

Back in Copenhagen I went and isolated myself. I had reached the darkest period of my addiction and I was 28 years old. I only went out on the streets to get my methadone at the clinic and to buy hashish and pills. I spent a maximum of 2 hours together with other people a day. I didn’t eat, I didn’t bath, I didn’t have sex with my girlfriend and I did not have any contact with my family. I was alone and isolated and I felt like shit. I continued living like that for six years with the same daily routine. I woke up sick and I went to bed sick and I was sick in my sleep. I was like a living dead. And I had no hopes for the future at all.

One day in 2001 I went to the clinic to collect my methadone. I cried and I was sick and I broke down to one of the employees. I remember saying that I couldn’t live this life anymore and that they had to send me away. I`m not sure what happened after but I remember the day that the employee came and told me that they had found a rehab center for me and that I was going to treatment 10/1 2002. I was terrified. I had been stoned since 1979 and now I was going to rehab …..I experienced the worst fear in my life and when the day came to go to rehab I bought 50 grams of hashish and 100 5 mg Valium which I smuggled into the rehab center. I was unsure of what it would mean to be in a treatment center, so I thought that I had to bring my own little stash, just in case. I remember feeling sorry for the addicts I met, because they didn’t have any drugs. So I started giving them some of my Valium and inviting them to smoke some of my hashish. The therapists soon figured out what went down so I was called to the office where they told me that I had to leave the rehab but that I was welcome back when and if I surrendered myself. I didn’t know the meaning of surrendering. I thought that it was something you did during the second world war, so I went back to Copenhagen, to my junkie girlfriend and to our junkie flat, and to the same junkie world that was the only world I knew.

After 8 days on my own I had enough. During the first period of my rehab I had been showing certain signs. I had found out that there were other addicts and that these addicts were clean and that they supported each other in the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. I was curious and one of my neighbors was a former cocaine user, my old connection, and he was going to N.A. I met him and we talked and he asked me if I would like to go to a meeting together with him. I said yes and we went to the meeting. At my first meeting I was overwhelmed. I met 2 guys that I thought were dead and whom I had known back from the start of my addiction. They both shared that night, they both said that they were happy to see me, and that I had come to the right place. I will never forget the feelings that I felt during that meeting. It was a bit like the first time shooting heroin. I felt warm inside and I felt like I was coming home from a very long distanced journey and for the first time in many years I felt relaxed and hopeful. And I felt these feelings even though I was on 40mg methadone. I felt stronger than ever after the meeting and I made a decision that night. I would go back to rehab and I would do whatever it took to become clean. This was my first sign of surrender.

Back in rehab I became clean and a regular old timer. I managed to celebrate 30 days clean and 60 days clean and after celebrating 90 days clean we were all participating in the annual Danish N.A. convention with American speakers, meetings and services of all kind. I was new to the N.A. language so I didn’t understand words like `recovery`, `denial`, the 12 steps and Traditions were like a foreign language to me, and the slogans were a mystery to me. But I saw a lot of people who I thought were dead and again they told me how happy they were to see me and how glad they were that I had survived my drug addiction. In the evening on the first day of the convention in went to the bar and I met a girl from the fellowship who had 5 years clean and who worked the steps. I asked her if we should go to her place and she said yes. We made love as soon as we came back to her place and I instantly fell in love with her. She was my first obsession after quitting the drugs and when I came back to rehab I told everybody that I had found the love of my life and that we were going to be married. After all, I had 93 days clean and she had 5 years of recovery so I was convinced that I could stay clean on her love. They told me that I was obsessed with her and I said `no I´m in love` so I left rehab, moved back to Copenhagen, and in with her.

So I found myself on a bicycle surfing the streets of Copenhagen for N.A. meetings during the day and holding hands watching crappy TV shows at night with the love of my life. I was a happy addict recovering with a lot of courage for days to come. One day I decided to go and pay my sister, who is using, a visit. I had my 90 day key ring and I was very proud of it and I was looking forward to showing it to her. I went in, waved my symbol of my clean time to her, she said `congratulations`, and showed me a bag of cocaine. We used together and on my way home to my girlfriend I wondered what went wrong. Back home my girlfriend confronted me, accusing me of using, which I denied then admitted to. I told myself that a relapse had to be over several days or weeks or months so my relapse didn’t count. Idid not want any one else but her to know that I had relapsed. So I continued as if nothing happened. I went to meetings celebrating my false clean time and I felt worse and worse for lying to myself and to everybody I knew. Three weeks after my relapse we had an argument. I decided that it was all too much, I went to see my old girlfriend who was using, I found myself in my old junkie flat with my old junkie girlfriend shooting cocaine in my throat. When I woke up I was terrified. I was scared and confused and I hated myself for having relapsed again. I decided that I wouldn’t go back to where I came from so I found a meeting and I shared about my experience during my relapse. The relief of being honest was greater than my shame of having relapsed and from that day on I decided to surrender to the entire program of Narcotics Anonymous. I found a home group where I made coffee and I found a sponsor and I started on my 1st Step. I talked to my N.A. girlfriend and I told her that I needed to focus on my recovery and that we had to split. She was devastated, she started to use and relapsed. I had a lot of help from my sponsor and my friends in the program telling me that her relapse was her doing, not mine. It was a tough period of my recovery.

Today I`m 5 years and six months clean. I married a wonderful women and she is not a member of Narcotics Anonymous. We were married 1st of July 2006 and she gave birth to our son December 11th 2006. I have a job I like, play drums in a cool rock`n`roll band, my mother and father are back in my life, I am a loving father to my son and stepdaughter. I am blessed with having a beautiful, loving wife, and being a part of her family. I would love to see my sister in Narcotics Anonymous but I have accepted that it is up to God`s will, not mine, to make her clean. I`m working the steps, I have sponsors and I attend one N.A. meeting per week, and I owe everything to Narcotics Anonymous. There is no doubt in my mind. The decision I made to try to get clean, has proved to be the most important decision of my life. I am suffering from a disease that is telling me that I haven’t got a disease. I really need the help from other addicts in recovery to conquer my addiction on a daily basis in order to stay clean one day at a time.