Well you know, lifelong addiction is a real bitch, and every instance of jail was due to it in one form or another.

It took me 25 years and utterly wrecked relationships with my brother, closest old friends, and my lovely ex-wife to start to begin to see the light.

None of them really talk to me anymore, even though I've been pretty much clean for years now.

I drove for 18 years on a suspended license that I was unable to get reinstated for 5 years at time because I spent the ticket money on dope. Many of my arrests were due to driving issues, but certainly not all.

It's been a real mess, and I'm tired. Maybe someone going down that path will read this and think about what I'm saying.

Holy crap that's a tough one. My dad was a serious alcoholic, I've seen from the front row what addiction can do to you and your relationships with others and if anything that taught me in the harshest way imaginable to a young kid to stay away from stuff that I'm not equipped to deal with even in moderation. My dads funeral was a 'small' affair. As in, the only people present there were two friends from his student days, his wife and my sister, me and my eldest. Everybody else either didn't want to come or was told to stay away by his wife. For someone who got to be 69 (in spite of all the booze) you'd expect a few more people to show up but his relationships with the rest of the world were so bad that he died quite lonely.

It looks - by your writing - as though you've come out the other end of this and are on your way to a better life, congratulations, it must have been extremely hard to get to where you are today, I don't think my dad would have been able to achieve what you have done no matter how much time he would have had.

I am sorry to hear about your Dad, and its very ironic in a way...both of my grown sons are super careful about substances so I think I get what you are saying.

I often think the only silver lining to the wreck-that-is-my-life is that I left such an ugly imprint on them both that neither of them really touch anything "evil", and I am incredibly proud of both of them, as I am sure your Dad was of you.

Yeah whew...thank you very much for your kind words BTW. To tell the truth the hard part isn't staying totally sober these days, the hard part is trying to find a place in society for a 50yo man who has none of the obvious material trappings of a successful life and a whole shitstorm of dirty laundry that is only a Google search away.