Drug Addiction and Trusting the Process

Since I started this blog I’ve discovered the pleasure that comes with creating something just because you enjoy doing it. I have always loved to write but my whole life all the value of my work has been contingent upon a massive letter grade at the top. Now I can write freely without the expectation of some judgement in return. I am simply doing it because I love it and that is new for me. Given the events that have occurred these past 7 months this makes even more sense. I am often provided with a cathartic release when I finish a post that is personal and/or recovery related. This is why journaling can be so effective when it comes to coping with mental illness. I’ve also noticed a sense of power that comes with these personal posts. It’s me, telling my story, and nobody else has the chance to tell it for me. I am in control. Part of addiction is struggling with shame and the feeling that people are judging you behind closed doors. “How much do my friends know?”, “Who has my family told?”, “What do they think of me?” are questions that eat away at me after a relapse. My go-to strategy has been to escape and avoid. Of course this literally never works. Now things are different. I am confident and secure enough in who I am to tell my own story. The best part is I genuinely don’t care what anybody thinks at this point. I am who I am and am no longer going to live in shame or embarrassment. I am Mo Pinto and this is the story of my drug addiction. This is the story of an escape artist.

First, let me say I did not give myself that nickname, and don’t actually refer to myself as “the escape artist.” It was given to me by my therapist. It makes sense, though, because no matter where I am, what I have, or who I am with, I have the unfortunate tendency to escape from my own head. I am quite good at it too. I identify with the cliché state of being that Alcoholic Anonymous calls “restless, irritable, and discontent.” Since I can remember I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin. People say this all the time, but for me it means my thoughts are constantly racing at full speed. Sometimes it’s as if my thoughts are two steps ahead of my physical state. When this mismatch occurs it is hell. It goes both ways as well. I sometimes have a somatic experience that my head cannot make sense of. My chest might be tight but I am unable to label it as physical anxiety. I then ruminate on this which creates even more discomfort. One of my biggest triggers is being physically uncomfortable. My head and body are at a constant war and it takes something drastic to get one to raise the white flag.

I was an “addict” before I ever used drugs. In fifth grade I had an obsession with Scooby-Doo Fruit Snacks. It was also the year I got my first laptop. Those two things set the stage for how I preferred to use drugs: alone and on my terms. Everyday in my 5th grade class all I could look forward to was binge-eating Scooby Snacks and watching Doogie Howser M.D. My parents had to take my laptop at night and hide the fruit snacks. Being the little miscreant that I was, I often crept around the house at night and raided all the hiding spots. I wish there was footage of this because 10-year-old me most definitely looked like a fiending addict when he discovered a hidden stash. I had little control when I ate these things. I’d organize them by color and eat till I felt sick. Even with a grueling stomach ache I kept going. I couldn’t let any go to waste, what if they were to be seized by my mother the next day? What if they stopped buying them? I didn’t find them last night, so don’t I deserve to eat double today? It sounds ridiculous but all you have to do is replace Scooby Snacks with any drug and you have addiction. This is exactly what I did.

I remember smoking weed for the first time in 7th grade and having the time of my life. I got so high I filled a plastic cereal bag with milk and used a ladle as a spoon. It was awesome. I always thought to myself “Why would I not want to feel this way all the time?” Feeling good sure as hell beats the way I normally feel, right? My whole life I lacked the crucial ability to successfully navigate my emotions. If I felt something too strong I had to shut it down immediately. If I could not suppress my feelings, I was in for an intolerable emotional and physical meltdown. I was afraid of my own emotions. As I got older it became easier to keep myself numb. I had more agency thus more access to methods of escape. Obviously these methods mostly consisted of doing drugs. Everyday I looked forward to getting out of school and getting high by myself. Sophomore year of high school was literally weed pens, chipotle, and Minecraft. It was awesome and it felt fantastic. At this point I still have the emotional capability of a ten-year-old and couldn’t stand being sober. I have a long history of depression so that definitely played a part, but I simply preferred to be in a mind-altered state as often as I could. It just made things easier. I got high before, during, and after school, and thought nothing of it. At this time it was only weed, but marijuana is no different from any other drug. I do not care what anybody says, you can most certainly be addicted to weed.

The rest of my actual drug history is pretty straightforward. Later in high school I am frequently taking opiates, lean, Xanax, and of course smoking everyday. I don’t mean to gloss over this stuff, it’s just harder drugs served the same purpose as weed and Scooby Snacks. They just did a much better job. All it took was a couple pills and I’d drift off into oblivion. Of course I did a lot of this stuff with friends as well (s/o the 6), but I never gave anybody insight into the disaster that was my internal state. My friends also had the ability to shut drug use when it was time to do so. I obviously did not have that ability. When nobody was around I found myself deeply depressed or anxious, and narcotics were the only way I knew how to cope. I am by no means unique in any of this, but it was all I knew for the longest time. So freshman year of college a combination of depression and drug use puts me in treatment for the first time. At this point I refused to label myself as a drug addict. I was not going to be one of “them.” I was not a junkie who had no self-control and no will power; that was not me. News flash: it was. In my 5 months of inpatient treatment in 2018 I relapsed twice and nearly got kicked out. It was clear I was indeed a drug addict. Somewhere along the way I had made the remarkable discovery that drug addicts are people too! Like millions around the world I suffer from a “disease” and that is no fault of my own. So my first ever stint with sobriety began on September 23, 2018. From that day I would remain completely sober for nearly four years.

After inpatient I spent the next couple months in sober living while attending an outpatient program. Eventually I left sober living but continued to do outpatient because it was incredibly helpful and still required me to take a drug test every week. After wrapping up outpatient I have around nine months of sobriety under my belt. I figured I might as well stick with it because I’ve come this far. I decided since I am done with treatment it’s time for the ultimate comeback story, and it partially was. I somehow managed to get into NYU and maintain a 3.9 GPA graduating Magna Cum Laude. In the first 3 years of sobriety I exercised almost daily and was in the best shape I had ever been in. There was only one problem: I was completely isolated. It’s one thing to be sober in your early 20’s, but it’s another thing to be sober at a school in which making friends is a challenge in and of itself. Even worse, my first full semester was cut short by Covid, and we all know what that was like.

Through Covid I bounce around between Boulder, Long Island, and Connecticut. I managed to stay sober throughout it all, mostly because I discovered the video game Apex Legends. At first I was just playing for fun and used it to wind down after hours of studying. But then I got pretty good and started to grind its ranked mode. I was hooked. It became what is called a process addiction, which is simply a non-drug addiction. For the video game lovers I am sure you have experienced the “just one more game” phenomenon. This was me almost nightly spending ridiculous amounts of time climbing the leaderboard. I couldn’t end on a loss or I couldn’t sleep. I just needed one more game to be satisfied. One of the things I am ashamed of is my total hours spent playing Apex. It is a ridiculously high number that I will never reveal. When I wasn’t playing I was thinking about it or watching professionals play. One night I entered a game and met two guys who had been playing together for a couple weeks. Our first game we played pretty well together and we played as a squad the rest of the night. From that point on “Cheekyblindr”, BrenterBadger”, and I would play every night for 2 years straight. Shoutout to the CMB boys, these guys became my close friends and I would not have survived the pandemic without them. We have even linked up in person a couple times. Great guys, better gamers. Mind you I am living with my sister and mom at the time, and am otherwise completely isolated. It was class, exercise, Apex, repeat. One thing I will note is I never let Apex get in the way of school, my classes came first and the evidence for that is pretty clear.

In September of 2021 we return to campus for my senior year and things pretty much spiral from here. I came back knowing nobody and often found myself alone on weekends riddled with sadness. In all fairness Covid did me no favors during my college experience, so I partially blame the pandemic for all this. Regardless, I am not in a great spot and barely survived the school year. If you read my previous post you’ll know what this was like. I was addictively playing video games, eating sugar, and dating just so I did not have to deal with the effects chronic loneliness had on my internal state. Like I said in my post, I might as well have gotten high because at least I could have experienced the artificial happiness that comes with opiates. But I manage to abstain until an almost perfect storm hits me in summer of 2022.

I had a friend pass away which obviously amplified the already intolerable depression I was experiencing. But I had two fantastic trips planned for the summer. First was in North Carolina to watch the first in-person Apex Legends tournament in three years. Honestly it was the most fun I had had in a long time. I love competitive Apex and got to meet a lot of the professional players and link up with my gaming boys. From there I went to Bozeman to visit a friend and had a blast hanging with him and his crew. It was an incredible two weeks but the reality of entering my lonely NYC apartment was soul-crushing. I went from high to low, and that was the lowest I had felt in a while. I had a surgery scheduled for a week after my return from Bozeman (removal of a pilonidal cyst, not great) and did some research on post-op procedures. All I saw was it was common to receive a prescription of Oxycodone post operation and it was in that moment that I relapsed. In A.A. they say the relapse happens before you actually use drugs, and this couldn’t be more true. It was that moment I made the decision to break my sobriety a week before I actually got the script. I was at the point of no return and physically relapsed on July 22, 2022.

From here I surprisingly do not immediately spiral. I stayed clean for a couple weeks until I started abusing adderall (it was street adderall so it was pretty much meth). I eventually get prescribed Lyrica, Gabapentin, and Valium for nerve-pain which begins my descent into full blown addiction. I acquire some blues (30mg Oxy) and pretty much just use all day everyday. I’d snort adderall and blues in the morning, keep both in my backpack at work, use at work, and use at night. Rinse and repeat. Like any drug addict I did a lot of lying and manipulating, mostly with my family. I showed up to family functions high and would lie about why I was acting so weird. Addiction is a never ever ending battle of cognitive dissonance. I vowed to never use at certain times, or be high around certain people, but these promises were always in vain. I was fully aware that this addiction would kill me or put me back in rehab, but I literally could not stop. I was going to get high at all costs and the only thing that could’ve stopped me was death. It seems I had determined my own fate. On December 23, 2022 death was minutes away before my brother miraculously found me overdosed in my bed and saved my life. I knew what was next: Withdrawals, detox, and treatment. Just as I predict, I start withdrawing, go to detox, and after a week in detox head straight to Carbondale, Colorado for my second stint of substance abuse treatment.

I won’t go into much detail of rehab in Colorado. It ended up being a lot of fun and I made the friends I had desperately needed for so long. I did really well and made the decision to continue treatment there and do another 90 days in the step-down program. It’s safe to say I was riding a high. I was once again enjoying life in sobriety and had all the confidence in the world moving forward. Then reality hit me once again. See the thing about inpatient treatment (expensive ones at least) is life can be super easy. Every part of your day is planned out for you. This includes meal times, TV hours, and even fun stuff like skiing and trips to Moab. You literally did not have to think about life because you operated on a strict schedule for 90 days. Wake up, eat, group therapy, eat again, more group, chill, eat, then either chill some more or go to a meeting. It was monotonous at times but we made the most of it. So in the second part of the program you get more autonomy and are expected to get a part time job. Guess what happens next. I decided not to get a job and instead play Apex all day. In my defense, the thought of getting a job in Carbondale was seriously overwhelming. I hate that town with a passion and working at the local Ace Hardware was not something I wanted to be doing. I felt trapped and experienced a bombardment of existential dread. All my head could tell me was, “Your life is going nowhere.” A little over a year ago I graduated with latin honors from a prestigious university, and here I was absolutely hopeless in a town I despised. At some point I mentally relapsed and made the genius decision to physically relapse in treatment. Then I left treatment altogether telling nobody about my whereabouts. This time I didn’t even use opiates but found myself back in the same hospital I was in 6 months ago. I was right back to where I started, and this was my rock bottom.

So now I’m back on the seemingly endless merry-go-round that is the cycle of addiction treatment. Once again: hospital, detox, rehab! But this time treatment was different. It was less 12-step and community based, and focused more on intensive individual therapy. I did a lot of work and made huge progress. The biggest thing I learned was what I shared earlier in this post: I was an addict long before I ever used drugs. This has helped me relieve myself of the narrative that I am just an inherently flawed person who makes bad decisions (though the second part is definitely true sometimes). I developed a pattern of behavior before I could understand why I was doing it. Part of my behavioral development was simply out of my control. It was a massive “aha” moment when I first brought these memories to consciousness. Looking back, I have always used anything that makes me feel good as if they were drugs. Even with small things like music. When I hear a song I really like I keep it on repeat and it’s the only thing I will listen to until I get sick of it. At a certain point it just does not hit the same because I’ve listened to it nonstop (kind of like tolerance). When I try a new food I like, it’s the only thing I’ll eat until I can’t stand it (this started with Dominos lava cakes). I am first and foremost a process addict, but once all that stuff stops working drugs are the obvious next step. Opiates just happen to be the final boss. Again, one pill and all of your issues go away. How the hell was I going to stay away from that? I didn’t need to roll anything, I didn’t have to hide wrappers anywhere, there were no incessant Youtube tutorials to improve gameplay; all I had to do was pop (or snort) a little blue pill.

So now after several relapses and all this newfound knowledge, how am I going to stay sober? For starters I’m on Vivitrol (opioid antagonist) so I literally can’t get high. But the key for me will be monitoring my relationship with all the behavioral processes I’ve mentioned throughout this post. Of course I am going to eat shitty food and of course I am going to continue gaming, but I cannot let it get to the point of misuse and escapism. Once I begin to isolate and obsess, I am doomed. It’s a delicate balance that must be mitigated by mindfulness for the rest of my life. It sounds overwhelming but it really is not. I’ll have good and bad days, but as long as I maintain a healthy routine that allows for some fun, I should be fine. I feel good and right now I trust myself. However I do not, and will never trust the process.

Happy and Healthy