Yesterday was my 50th Birthday. And it feels GREAT! Still seems kind of freaky in a way…50 years old. I don’t feel it…but what is 50 “supposed to” feel like. Also odd: I almost extinguished my life in the middle of my 34th year when the whirlwind of my life in active addiction just seemed too much… right before I made the decision to try rehab because nothing else seemed to work and suicide seemed like the best option.
Looking back:
At 20, I was high on weed, hash, hallucinations and Jack Daniels. Uncomfortable with myself and didn’t even know why, let alone who I was. Surrounded only by people who got high and I thought would be my friends for life.
At 30, just a drunk with a extreme fondness for Manhattans or beer with Jager chasers. Surrounded by friends who were barflies like myself and would have had for life if they had not meet their end.
At 40, strung out on crystal meth, weed and cigarettes; wishing I was the Hindu god Shiv with multiple arms and hands, so I could keep a steady flow of inhalants at my mouth. I was in complete isolation and my only “friend” was the meth purveyor.
Of course the common thread through those decades was my dysfunctional thinking fueled by my fear.
Now at 50, and nine years of clean time under my belt, I have a better insight into self and who I am. I am surrounded by a wide range of friends, from those who are rooted in recovery, to “normies” (people who drink, but aren’t ruled by it) to people still struggling with use. But we share honest friendship. I don’t hold an expectation that any of these people will be in my life for long, but some are showing up in my life with more frequence than anyone has in my past.
Obsessions, ya I still have a few..some I am working to let go of, others I still let rule, like sushi/sashimi… I lose myself at a sushi bar.
So maybe it is getting older or maintaining clean time, whatever it is, I am finding my self more at peace, and embrace who I am and where I am at. For all those years of self-induced turmoil, I find myself in a very good spot.
It makes me shutter... 
Joe,
In my near 50 years (not there yet!) I have found that people enter our lives for different reasons. Some will enter it briefly and others for a season, and still others for a few years and only a few will be there for a lifetime. It is the letting go of those relationships that were only meant to last for a time that I struggle with the most. Congratulations on achieving some peace after so many years of turmoil. It sounds like it was hard won.
Michelle