Hi all.

I’d like to share this story as i am currently in the process of coming out of a a drug addiction that spanned 16 years.

Let me start of with telling you a little about my parents as most of the issues i have stem from the resentment i have for them that i refuse to let go of.

My partner is pretty sure my old man must have some form of Border personality disorder. I was an only child and my parents were extremely hands on and controlling. I don’t know where to start.

So I’ll start the time i was about 6 and my father took our friends grandmother who was visiting from another country to the city. I was with a friend of mine, any way we were in a shopping mall and my friend wanted to deviate from the adults and check out some cd’s that interested him at the time. I was very adamant that we would get in trouble as we would get lost.

Ultimately i gave in and followed him, it wasn’t far as the store was an open store in a shopping mall so we walked in looked around and when we came out parents were gone. I can’t remember how long we were lost for but i was very nervous as i already knew how my father would react. Our surrounding never mattered to him, he would always cause a scene by disciplining me no matter who or how many were around. Eventually i see my father and we lock eyes. He is about 10 to 15 meters away and he runs up to me, drags me all the way by grappling me in the arm back to where he was standing when see saw me and just started to belt me by kicking me in my arse as hard as he could in full swing, moving his body to get the most possible momentum to make sure he was doing a good job in punishing me.

As I write this it seems he was relieving all his emotions on me.  To be honest it didn’t hurt as much as it would have looked, It was the constant humiliation that would do more damage. As i grew older i would find myself reliving similar humiliating beatings in front of others.

I can’t remember when, but i developed serious tics as a child. They would change, morph. It got very sever and lasted like this until i was 18. This ensured i experienced constant humiliation, daily. From moment to moment, I would draw parallels to a young girl wearing having a period with white pants and it showing. My primary school days were the worst. I would make sounds, grunts, blink, stick my tongue out, tense my neck and make the most obscene faces to people hoping that they wouldn’t see me. But they would, not even the teacher understood. Most people would have diagnosed me with Tourette’s syndrome, however these weren’t involuntary. Because they weren’t involuntary, i couldn’t hide behind a disability. Kid’s with disabilities get made fun of, but the teachers are very strict about it. These are the typical conversations i would have with enquiring people including adults.

A: Is it tourettes syndrome?

B: No, i don’t have that. The Doctors said i don’t have it.

A: (if it was a child) Then what’s wrong with you? They would continue to laugh because i was fair game.

(if it was an adult) They wouldn’t understand, they would ask then they would make a face like they don’t know as i’m blinking, twisting my head and clenching my neck. I still don’t know what it is apart from stress tics.

When i got older around 16 i began to see that if i just said i had Tourette’s people would be more ok with it than if i just had tics. People would see me as less weird if i had tourrettes than just having tics. They would be more understanding.

I developed, or was naturally talented at playing soccer at a very young age i could just take on the whole team and the first time i did i had never played the game. This feeling of being good about something became my first refuge. And my first addiction. I continued to pursue this sport and when older naturally i wanted to become a professional soccer player.

When i was 15 my father had a connection who was a coach at an under 16’s super league team. The best league in the area i was in for the age. Elite i guess. The problem is this connection had invited me by telling my father for me to come on the last day of trials. I was the best player on field, but naturally as i came at the end of the trials i missed out. I cried so hard.

I had played for poor teams up until 16 when a friend of mine who’s older brother really admired my abilities snapped me out of my self criticism and i joined the “super league U16’s”. The same team my father had connections with the coach which i’m wondering now if he deliberately told me the last date.

My friend at the time played for the club and was so positive and influential in inviting me. In fact he said the coach of last year had gone and a new coach had taken the position. He has remained at the club to this day, He played for his country and qualified for the World Cup, it was the first time our country had done so. He was our coach, this was a big deal.

I will never forget the things my parents said to me when i told them i was trying out.

My mother said something like “ah you won’t make it, why even bother, you won’t make it just like last year. You have a club already and the coach wants you, forget about it you are wasting your time”

My father echoed the same sentiments but really getting to the heart of it ” you are not good enough, don’t even try, you are wasting your time”.

I was a bad student, i didn’t care about anything. All i cared about was football, everywhere i went people would say they had never seen somebody do this trick or that trick. I was so desperately attached to the sport because it was the only source of me being a valued person. It did feed my ego definitely. But i digress, I got in. I wasn’t able to be at the last trial session for some reason so i turned up to the next session trained with them and then at the end nervously asked if i had gotten in. He said yes and laughed.

It was the best day of my life. I took such pleasure in telling and proving my parents wrong. My mother made nothing of it and my father had another connection from a coach in another sport that he wanted me to come to see him. So that he could tell me, that my achievements had meant nothing. And that the reason my coach said i was a good player was not because it was true but to boost confidence. All my life i has searched, begged, argued, discussed with my father why i couldn’t be a pro. Because i wasn’t good enough.

I wanted to be a professional so bad, i would look at national team photo’s and cry and the immense pride they must have felt. Deep down the words my parents beat me down with always made it feel like an outside chance. Once i was 17, alcohol and drugs entered my life until then i had stayed away because as bad as a student i was. A student of the sport i was a good kid. Stuck straight until then.

But i’ll talk about my addictions a little later. Every Christmas dinner, i knew there was going to be a event. My father would sit at his seat on the end of the table with all the visitors present it was important for me to keep a good face not to be humiliated. I could just see my father bubbling in his corner, face going red not saying a word just stewing in his head how i’m not doing good in school and i should be better. All the while he was getting more and more angry until someone would say something and he would explode. Sure enough he always did. Every dinner 100% he would explode ‘SHUUUUTUUUPP, YOU’RE NO GOOD” and then we would proceed to explain in detail every little i had done to the others and that how hard he was trying and that i have no respect. Every dinner he would tell me i would never achieve what i wanted because i just wasn’t good enough.

This i admit, i had no respect for them and the older i got, the stronger i got and the stronger i got, the less he acted out because i tell you. I was my fathers son, and i had zero patience for his antics. As soon as he started  i took great pleasure in approaching and threatening him if he does not stop, i won’t either.

Many heated arguments where all they would do is threaten to call the police after they initiated everything, come into my room yelling at me, and at that point i just stopped paying attention. Because i did this they would escalate things until i reacted, then they would threaten to call the police i would get very angry. Then they would start laughing at me that i was so angry. Patronisingly. So i would sit there, disconnect, and just hate them i hate them i hate them i harte them. Every week. Every day my mother would complain about me to her friends and i was always percieved to be made fun of by them most of the time whilst speaking down to me.

I was offered little support and only criticism, i developed a way of interacting with them which was very distant, serious/agressive like you need to walk a fine line with me now or you will pay for it.

When i first met my partner my parents had a unit at hte back where we stayed shortly. My father went through the rubbish, found a bank statement of hers. Because he’s old school he got her surname looked it up in the phone directory and got a few addresses. And sent the bank statement to each address with the idea that he was returning the bank statement to the person but didn’t know who to send it to. And the idea was then whoever replied was her relatives then he could make contact and talk  to them about my personal story. About my addictions and how i should stop. I was 30 at the time.

He would turn up at my friends parents house uninvited and the early hours when my friends had already moved out years ago and talk to them about me, even though they had never met. This happened constantly when i was growing up and it was just another thing that helped isolate me further to others.

He always made it his purpose to dictate what i should do and was a wall when talking back to him even when begging him to listen. He was just waiting until you would stop so he could then say whatever he wanted. He is so self interested that his goal of being the provider meant that my mother couldn’t work or do anything unless it didn’t make money and i had to do everything his way. Which i can’t tell you how much hate, opposition i have for this for his impact on me in life.

My addictions just like my tics morphed through the years, from marijuana to alchohol where i was a skinny lad and ultimately got to 110kg when my normal weight would be 80kg. This happened in my 20’s as alcohol was the main player. I was a mess and still am in ways. Currently addicted to opiates i have never forgiven my parents for  being so self entitled and interested only in their beliefs and goals to the point i believe they don’t really care about me because they don’t know what true care is. They fulfilled their contracts with goodness and the hell with me, my ideas, feelings, beliefs and goals, that was irrelevant. It always was.

To this day, i have dreams of returning to the club i played for, but i’m ashamed because i just left to pursue drugs with not even saying bye. They let me train again, i get back into things and start playing. I’M BACK! Then i realise it’s a dream and i cry and i cry and i cry. This was not always a dream i was aware of but i have come to be aware of it to the point now i can cry of these things in waking life. But there was a time i was so detached the only was i could cry and it still rings true is in my sleep.

I made pacts with myself when I was younger that i would kill myself if i had not achieved being a professional player. Stuff like this carries a large burden over me. I could go on by i think i’ve said enough.

If i don’t meditate daily, i will relapse as ultimately i just want to feel good about myself. Any ideas?

• This topic was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by misterman.