Personal Opinions and Stories

My father's an alcoholic, and so is my aunt. When I found out my aunt was an alcoholic I was not very understanding of my cousin's feelings of guilt, shame, and embarassment. Soon afterwards I learned my father was an alcoholic, and the same feelings my cousin felt were feelings I was feeling. People tell me that his drinking problaem is not my fault and things that he did and said when he was drunk he didn't mean. I've been able to accept the fact that he has a disease even though I still get angry at him when he relapses. I still can't forgive him for the things he said and did when he was drunk. I guess I'm stubborn.
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I think I must have been 12 yrs. old the first time I tried a cigarette. I remember it now, five years later, like it was yesterday. My friend was a year older than me and was pressuring me to try one. I took my first puff and coughed like I was choking. I didn't even get a chance to inhale the smoke, but after that I was so intrigued, I kept trying till I got the hang of it. I stopped smoking until I was about 14 yrs. old and was hooked for about a two month period, but quit soon after. My most recent experiance with cigerettes was a bit different from when I was younger. This time I was smoking a half a pack a day or more and was fully addicted. I had developed a "smoker's" cough and was experiancing frequent chest pain. I knew I had to do something about my bad habit and I did. I threw my entire pack of cigerettes away and thus far haven't smoked in two weeks. I feel healthier, and proud of myself for quitting. Don't get me wrong, quitting was not easy, especially because I went "cold turkey", without any help from the patch or gum. But luckily I hadn't been addicted for that long that it was very much of a problem. Quitting was one of the best things I've done for myself in a long time.
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For some reason, I never felt the desire to drink. Even when my friends started to, none of them were very into it, and they didn't pressure me to. I just thought that there was no reason to drink except to get drunk, and I'm such a control freak that I would hate to be out of control and drunk. Still, more recently all of the people around me got deeper into the drinking scene. They were pretty pathetic about it to, and talked about it often. We all knew when some people were going to get drunk and we were very careful about making sure that one of their friends who was not drinking could go pick them up and take them wherever. We were smart in that sense, but pretty dumb because we spent a lot of time trying to hide things from our parents.
That was really dumb. One night, a very close friend had too much. She was with three others getting drunk, when I showed up with another three people, all sober. We were going to pick up the four who had been drinking and go on with our plans. My friends was drunk, but you couldn't even tell. But through the night, she kept getting worse and worse. Eventually, we made her go home with the other friend who was driving. At her house, she passed out and her eyes rolled back in her head. After many gruesome details, she eventually ended up in the hospital. By sheer coincidence, I stopped by at her house to check on her just as she was being loaded into the back of the amgbulance. I thought she was dead. I have never been so scared in my life. Friends that were in the car with me actually had to remind me how to park the car because I was in shock. My friend was fine, but the doctors told her that there was enough in her system tokill herhad her body not rejected it.
That night was definatly a wakeup call for all of us. No one close to her has had anything to drink since, and all of our parents know the truth. We talk about it, and can now joke about it-sort of. I guess sometimes it just takes a shock to make people realize that their harmless behaviors aren't really all that innocent. ________________________________________________________________________________

"My Time in Hell"

Well this is my story. I smoked weed for the first time when I was in grade 7. It was a fun thing that me and my friends used to do every now and then when one of us had enough money to pay for it and we were all extremely bored. Over the course of the year, the amount of weed I smoke got bigger and bigger. Through grade 8, I experimented quite a bit, trying LSD, coke and alcohol for the first time. I took an immediate liking to alcohol when I first tried it and my usage of the substance became greater and greater. Throughout grade 8, I did drink a lot and do a lot of drugs, but not nearly as much I did in the summer between grades 8 and 9 and first three months of grade 9. As soon as my summer came along, I had over 6,000.00 dollars in my bank saved up from a job I had that year and all the money my grandparents had sent me for Christmas and my birthday since I was three. My dad gave me access to my bank account that summer, which was a mistake. Almost every night I was drinking as much as I could and smoking more weed than anyone I knew. At the end of July that summer, I had tried injecting herion and decided it was a high I really liked. I was drinking and injecting herion constantly. I skipped a lot of school in the first three months of grade 9 so that I could be drunk, smoke weed and do herion. I was seeing my dealer as much as three times a day. My grades in school were horrible and my life was a mess. My self-esteem had dropped drastically and I had attempted suicide four times. Finally November when I was down to $150 in my bank account I finally had a serious overdose. It was November 19, 1996 and I was in the hospital for a few weeks in a semi-coma state. When they let me out I had to face my parents. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. When we got home, they didn't say anything to me, but I knew I was in trouble, or so I thought. My parents basically told me that they were very disappointed that I had done this to myself, and they would help me through it. Withdrawel was hell. For a week I felt like I was being beaten up be six heavy weight boxers. I had seizures, blackouts, cold sweats, the whole thing. I stayed the next few days after the real harsh part of my withdrawal was over, but I was really weak and pale for a few weeks afterwards. I'd lost forty pounds since the beginning of the summer of 1996. After all that I have been through, all of the stupid things I had done when I was drunk and/or high, and all the people I had hurt over the course of those few months, I can't understand why kids do those kinds of things to themselves. What people don't realize is that you will never go through life just smoking pot. I though to myself that I would never get involved in any serious drugs when I was in grade 8, but a year later I was injecting herion and drinking almost every day. I hope that by reading this, the least someone will do is reconsider going out and getting "totally wasted". I never thought that I would end up the way I did, but it's a fact of reality that it can happen to anybody.

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