Jungle of Life

I first started liv­ing alone about a year ago. I moved out of town for a great new job. I was accus­tomed to being sur­rounded with sis­ters, and later in life a room­mate. How­ever, mov­ing to a city where every­one is a stranger meant it was finally time to rip the band-aid off and rent a sin­gle bed­room apartment.

I must admit at first the expe­ri­ence was excit­ing for me. Every dec­o­rat­ing deci­sion was mine to make. If I left the dishes overnight, there was no one to com­plain but myself. I got to choose the movies to watch, lis­ten to my music… loudly, and eat over the sink. Such a heathen!

How­ever the shine soon wore off and I found myself dis­ap­pointed com­ing home to the empty cor­ners of my apart­ment. I spent more and more time out alone at cof­fee shops and parks just to be around peo­ple. My pre­vi­ous room­mate and I had a great friend­ship. I would come home to find her relax­ing on the couch. We’d make din­ner together and talk about our days. I missed that per­son to vent with, and our phone con­ver­sa­tions went from every day to every week or so.

I also found myself ner­vous at every creak in the old build­ing, which often started when my neighbor’s keys would hit his lock after com­ing home late at night. I quickly invested in a secu­rity sys­tem at http://www.securitychoice.com and even took a self-defense class. I live in a very safe neigh­bor­hood, but there is some­thing about being alone in a place that sets all my hairs on end. With new secu­rity in place I relaxed.

I remem­bered all the times when I was younger and sur­rounded in a storm of my sis­ters and their curly red hair. I would do any­thing to get away, climb a tree, take a bike ride, or bury myself in a book. I thought how com­fort­ing it would be to have that storm of sis­ters in my apart­ment wreck­ing the place with their crayons and stick­ers. Of course, they are all grown now too, and prob­a­bly less of a wreck­ing ball than I imag­ine. Still, there’s a good chance we would be at each oth­ers throats if we lived together again. Dis­tance makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

Think­ing about my sis­ters led me to go after some solu­tions for my lone­li­ness. Liv­ing on my own poses chal­lenges, but not one to be thwarted I attack my lonely sit­u­a­tion with vigor. I sched­ule evening face to face time with my old room­mate on Skype, and we eas­ily fell into our old con­ver­sa­tions through that medium. I intro­duced myself to my neigh­bor, and we promised to keep an eye out for each other. I joined a knit­ting group and also a read­ing group that exclu­sively reads travelogues.

Now I have friends to invite over and fill the house with laugh­ter and com­pan­ion­ship. It is just after hav­ing guests over that I truly have come to love liv­ing alone. That quiet time fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful get together that filled my rooms with laugh­ter and friend­ship is a sub­lime feel­ing. And it’s all mine.

It can be one of the most har­row­ing expe­ri­ences you will ever go through in your life.

Maybe some­one in your fam­ily is hav­ing a prob­lem lick­ing drug abuse. They could be pop­ping pills, tak­ing painkillers to get through a day or just find­ing a way to relieve stress.

Even worse, the drug abuser could be you.

Accord­ing to the National Insti­tute on Drug Abuse, a reported 22.5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans over the age of 12 used ille­gal drugs in 2012. That was almost nine per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. It should be noted that all but a lit­tle over four mil­lion of these users smoked mar­i­juana, a drug that has gained some accep­tance over the years. Many are cru­sad­ing to have the drug declared legal, in order to devote resources to end­ing abuse of harder drugs.

That said, some of these mar­i­juana users even­tu­ally grav­i­tate to harder stuff. Over six mil­lion users took what are called “psy­chother­a­peu­tic” drugs, or painkilling-type drugs that can be obtained with or with­out prescriptions.

No one needs to tell you that this type of drug use endan­gers health. It can cause symp­toms that range from dete­ri­o­ra­tion of phys­i­cal appear­ance to mood swings. You can become volatile, edgy or even combative.

The good news is there is help. It won’t likely come in the form of an inter­ven­tion found in Hol­ly­wood movies and TV shows, but some­one, whether it be an indi­vid­ual or a group, might come to you and say you or some­one you know has a prob­lem and needs help.

If you live in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia area, maybe closer to the Mex­i­can bor­der than Los Ange­les and its sprawl­ing sub­urbs, maybe a dual diag­no­sis treat­ment cen­ter San Diego based can give you the care you need to get over your addic­tion or help your loved one lick his or her drug prob­lem. Con­trary to what you may have heard, it does not take hit­ting rock bot­tom for a per­son to rec­og­nize there are prob­lems. Hit­ting rock bot­tom is another mis­con­cep­tion that movies and TV shows may present.

You might see some­one hit­ting the bot­tle or pop­ping so many pills that they end up on skid row or in a flop­house. It isn’t always so cut and dry. Drug abuse walks around in all forms of life, from lower-income to the rich. Chances are you may know some­one that has a drug prob­lem or fought to over­come one.

If you are using drugs or sus­pect some­one you love is using drugs, con­tact a treat­ment cen­ter. Regard­less of where you are in the process, experts will know where to step in and guide the fam­ily to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. And it won’t be overnight. It takes time to rid the body of ille­gal drugs so expect some time to heal and get the body back to 100 percent.

The way to restor­ing good health is to rec­og­nize the prob­lem exists. That’s the first step in bat­tling addic­tion. Whether it is you or some­one you love, the time is always right to step for­ward, treat the prob­lem, and seek a solu­tion that won’t send you down that path again.