I just found this sub, and I figured I'd share a little bit since I haven't been able to get to a meeting in awhile anyway with the virus stuff going on.
I am an addict in recovery, I have been clean for over 3 years at this point, and just based on where I was at my lowest I'm truly blessed to have the life I have now. This pandemic and quarantine has been tough. I was laid off this week with rent and bills looming, and a young daughter who I need to care for and feed. I'm pretty scared about not having medical coverage for us anymore. I've been extremely stressed and not sure how I'm going to be able to manage financially. I applied for unemployment as soon as I got laid off but who knows how quickly that will be here, and I doubt it will be enough anyway.
I posted on r/Assistance yesterday because I figured it was worth a shot. I was in a much more emotional place yesterday and wrote a pretty heartfelt and vulnerable post detailing my life, my struggles with addiction, how I was at my lowest, and how I've since then made amends and gotten my life together. I figured even if no one could help me I could at least talk to some people going through a similar situation and commiserate.
As soon as I posted I got a couple DMs of people with brand new accounts phishing for my bank info. Fine. Scummy thing to do but scammers are scummy and this isn't my first time on the internet. No harm no foul. But after that I just received vitriolic message after vitriolic message. Messages telling me I deserved to lose my job, that I didn't deserve to even have a child, fuck junkies, I'm a piece of shit, all of the usual things. Again, it's nothing I haven't heard at one point in my life or another, and honestly things that I have thought about myself in the past, but just the amount of hate on a sub dedicated to assisting people really shocked me. I'll be the first to admit that I was selfish and hurt those closest to me during active addiction, but my relationship with most of those people is better than it has ever been right now. I've made amends and it's frankly no one else's business.
I thought that public perception was starting to shift a bit, at least on Reddit which seems to flaunt it's liberalism and acceptance. But I guess not. I've had a hard week, I'm stressed about how I'm going to get through the next couple months, and I haven't really been able to make it to any meetings lately because of everything going on. It's just really not what I wanted to hear yesterday especially after opening myself up and getting vulnerable asking stranger's for assistance which isn't something I've ever been super comfortable doing. But it reminded me that there are a lot of sick people out there. Addicts have easy symptoms to point to when they are using drugs or alcohol and people tend to push them to get help. But there are a lot of people that are depressed and just want to hurt others because they're hurting themselves, or they're bored, or they have some void to fill. With people like that, who really could benefit from therapy or self exploration, it's harder to say you need to stop everything you're doing and go work on yourself; especially when admitting there's a problem may come to them even less readily than it does for someone using drugs or alcohol.
Despite all my current problems I am so grateful for the life that I have now, and I know that one way or another we'll make it through. Just be thankful for wherever you are at because I truly believe that addicts - in recovery or not - are all special people. We've been given the chance to better ourselves and the rest of humanity that not a lot of people get. So if you have 25 years clean or you just got high but feel like you're getting sick of this lifestyle just know that you are special and you can do whatever you put your mind to. And if you need any help along the way there will always be others here to help you.