Why I write what I write
Before we start this chapter, I want to share my story with you. I hope it will at least partially justify why I feel competent talking about personal transformations.
I was a smoker, an alcoholic, and a drug addict for years.
Curiosity is something that was always driving me and at some points in my life, it led me to the wrong path. I remember how I was picking up cigarette butts on the street when I was 5. At the age of 6, my friend living next door bought a pack of red “Magna” and we smoked the whole pack — 10 cigarettes each. I reckon our neighbors were curious who was sending those smoke signals behind the house. We wanted to try things and thought that smoking was fun. There should have been a compelling reason why adults smoked.
I became a full-time smoker at the age of 14. I had surgery that year and a doctor forbade me from all kinds of physical activity ruining my plans for the summer. So, as an act of protest, I started to smoke. I thought: “If I can’t exercise, I am going to be a real RocknRolla.” I was a rebel, a nihilist and a complete idiot. Judging from 30 years of life experience these 3 words appear to be synonyms.
At the same age, I started to drink beer. It was sort of a tradition to drink a bottle with my friend after finishing my math tutoring class. A month after I turned 15, I tried vodka for the first time. I was drinking it since then. I spent countless days with my drinking buddies and we were consuming alcohol not a “glass-of-wine-on-Sunday” style but “bottles-of-vodka-bottoms-up” Russian style. It was hardcore. When you wake up in the morning with a hangover you flush a couple of millions of brain cells along with all of your memories of the previous day down the toilet. In my case, I erased years of my life — years I have almost no memories about.
When I turned 20 I started to smoke weed. I fell in love with how cannabis shifted my consciousness. I became an addict. I smoked weed not the way normal people smoke sharing a joint with friends once in a while. I was a junkie. I was waking up in the morning, charging my bong with weed and tobacco 50:50, and blowing it up so strong that my legs were faltering, I was almost fainting. Coughing and panting, I was creeping back into my sleeping bag (I didn’t even have a bed at that time) and falling asleep again. I would be waking up hours after, snack some food to kill the hunger and the loop would repeat again.
In my experiments with substances, I tried ecstasy, amphetamines, methamphetamines, LSD, DOB, and mushrooms. Luckily, I didn’t lay my hands on heroin, cocaine and crack when I had opportunities. If I had done it, chances are you wouldn’t be reading this book right now.
I was deliberately destroying my life for 8 long years. I had chronic suicidal depression. I was a person you’d never believe I was if you’d meet me now. Indeed, looking back it feels like all the things that happened to me, happened to someone else, it feels like they happened to a stranger.
Dragged down by my addictions, I fell so low that I almost hit the bottom. I saw the end of my life and it scared me. I knew that there were only two options left for me. I knew that either I start crawling my way back to a normal life or perish. I knew that if I don’t change my life I will die in the obscurity of some old dirty motel. That seemed like a logical ending for my short and pathetic life.
I chose the former.
I started to rebuild my body, rewire my mind and heal my soul.
If we meet now, you will not be able to find the traces of past weakness in me. People think I was always mentally strong but the person who was on the brink of suicide is forever concealed somewhere in the depth of me.
Today I am not ashamed of my past anymore. I am not embarrassed to expose what I was because this is not who I am anymore. I am way past the phase of regrets and mourning over the wasted years.
The day to share my story has come because I realized that what is written in this book may help someone who is lost just like I was in the time of my self-destruction.
For those who doubt, I am living proof:
People do change.
If you hit a low stay calm. If I could find my way from the black hole so can you, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your current state of mind is. Believe in yourself and fight bloody hard for the person you have resolved to become. It’s worth it.
Thank you for reading my book “Meditations of the Millennial”.
If you want to support me on my mission, please, share this book with someone you love. Maybe they will find what they seek on its pages.
