My name is Max. He grew up in a complete family: mom, dad, brother. Now none of my relatives are alive: my father died at the age of 46 from heart problems due to smoking, my mother – at 69 from alcohol, and my brother – at 37 from a drug overdose. At the age of 15, I started having problems with the law. I learned all the delights of prison life as a child. After prison I was supposed to be taken into the army, but I did not want this and fled to another city, where my brother already lived by that time.
These were the 90s. I was involved in criminal matters and used alcohol and drugs.
I have always loved sports and started going to boxing classes. In the summer, there was no training – and I started drinking and using without measure, I could not stop. Every year I waited for the fall, so that the beginning of training would help me to stop using. I could no longer control myself in this.
The first time I was coded from alcohol at 21, because I realized that I was drinking and I could not do anything about it. Clubs appeared in my life where my friends and I used ecstasy and cocaine. We went to raves in the cities.
Then I got married, a child appeared. But after 3 years I was already divorced. The family was gone, there was little money. I drove by car, constantly smoked pot and drank, then coded. I had a lot of encodings, 10-15 pieces, but I always came back to use.
Times changed, money got better, more drugs. I was afraid of heroin, because more than once people OD away from him before my eyes. I preferred cocaine. My brother taught me to use it intravenously. In between the use, I somehow studied, worked, sometimes went in for sports. Before that, I always told myself that I can use, because life is hard and there is little money. And so my situation changed, I started making good money through dishonest means, but I did not quit drugs. Now I explained my use by the fact that since there is money, it is easy to buy drugs, why not use drugs.
My brother has died. At his grave, I swore that I would quit drugs. Two months passed – and I again found myself in a brothel with a syringe in hand. Nothing stopped me.
I got a second wife, I didn’t live with her for a long time either: after 2 years we parted. There were constant fights and scandals in our relationship. After the divorce, I began to change women, perceiving them as a high, a kind of drug. Having a successful, semi-criminal business, money, women, I did not give up drugs, I used more and more.
I made promises to quit drugs, took breaks, but then I still took cocaine and used it intravenously. When another woman with whom I wanted to build a family ran away, I locked myself in my apartment and used so much and for a long time without interruption that I realized: this is the end, death. I started looking for help.
I called the doctors, wanted to be encoded, as I did with alcohol. But I was told that there is no coding from cocaine. And so one of the specialists told me about the program of Narcotics Anonymous. He suggested that I go to the clinic for long-term treatment, and then come to the groups. I decided that I would quit drugs myself, and if I couldn’t, I would take his advice. For half a year I smoked weed and drank, and then I injected myself – and agreed to treatment at the clinic.
On the very first day after I was discharged, I sat on a group of Narcotics Anonymous. Attended 90 meetings in 90 days as recommended. And I keep coming.
Today I have been living without drugs for 6 years and 8 months. I made new friends. I got married for the third time, we have been together for 7 years, and I like my family life. In my sobriety, a child was born that I can take care of, watch him grow and be happy about it. My family and I travel the world. We want to leave for a couple of years to live in another country. I am drug free, I have a choice of how I live. I am grateful to Narcotics Anonymous for that.
