I’m 29 years old and 15 weeks clean from meth.
Right now I work at a fast food restaurant.
A few years ago, I was making six figures fixing cars. I had been with the same employer for more than ten years. I had a house, a newer vehicle, two kids and a relationship. I was good at my job and living pretty comfortably.
Then I spent about two years abusing meth and managed to lose almost all of it.
The strange thing is that while it was happening, I didn’t necessarily see my life falling apart the way everyone else probably did.
Before meth, alcohol was my problem. I was a chronic alcoholic, and at some point I started taking Adderall to deal with my hangovers. Eventually Adderall became harder for me to get, even through a doctor, and meth entered the picture.
The mother of my kids was the person who first gave it to me. We did it together.
She was able to quit after about six months.
I wasn’t.
At first, meth seemed incredible. I’d done cocaine and other drugs before, but this was different. The rush lasted for hours. I actually used to brag about how long I could stay awake.
That should tell you something about where my head was.
Within a few months, I was addicted. It’s hard for me to identify the exact moment where recreational use became addiction because that line is blurry when you’re the person crossing it.
Eventually I was injecting it.
At the same time, I had this strange belief that I had somehow outgrown my career.
I’d been fixing cars for years and thought my job had become too easy. I thought I wasn’t being challenged anymore. I thought I was basically the best of the best at what I did and there wasn’t much left for me to learn.
Looking back, I can see how ridiculous that was.
I wasn’t the best of the best. I was decent at what I did. There were always more complicated repairs I could have learned and ways I could have improved.
What I thought was stagnation in my career was actually me stagnating because of drugs.
That’s one of the weird things about addiction. Your life can be collapsing while your brain is busy constructing explanations for why everything you’re doing makes sense.
Then the psychosis started.
The lack of sleep was probably a huge part of it. I could stay awake for days.
I started seeing what people call “shadow people.”
And when I say seeing them, I don’t mean knowing they’re hallucinations and seeing something vaguely moving out of the corner of your eye.
They seemed real.
My thinking became increasingly paranoid. I would talk about the government and law enforcement and cameras. I’d become obsessed with things that made perfect sense to me at the time and probably sounded completely insane to everyone around me.
I’d drive places for absolutely no reason.
Sometimes I’d drive until the vehicle ran out of gas even when I had money for gas. I’d leave the house thinking I needed to accomplish something, drive around for hours, and eventually realize there wasn’t really a destination or purpose to what I was doing.
My emotions became completely unpredictable too.
One of the early things I noticed was crying.
A tiny amount of stress could make me break down. Eventually I’d have these massive crying episodes where I’d talk extremely fast and say a bunch of nonsense. I’d finish the conversation thinking I’d explained myself perfectly.
I hadn’t.
My memory of that period is strange. I remember a lot of things, but the details are blurry.
Eventually my life became almost unrecognizable.
At one point I was essentially living in a vehicle that was missing a bumper because I’d hit a deer.
I had no reliable access to plumbing where I was staying. There were times I defecated in garbage cans.
I destroyed parts of the house I owned. I ripped out drywall and plumbing for reasons that I can’t even really explain now.
I ended up in the hospital during one psychotic episode telling people I was Jesus Christ.
Then there was the walking.
God, the walking.
I would run out of gas or abandon my vehicle somewhere and just start walking. Sometimes I wasn’t even high anymore. I could go several days without using and still be psychotic.
The longest walk I remember was around 20 miles.
I had barely eaten. It was cold. I didn’t have money. I’d stop at fast food restaurants just to get water.
One time I abandoned my vehicle while some of my most expensive and sentimental possessions were still inside it.
They’re gone now.
That’s one of those decisions that makes absolutely no sense when I look back at it sober. But at the time, my brain found some way to make it seem reasonable.
I became extremely poor.
Whenever I managed to make a little money delivering food, eventually I’d have enough to buy another bag and the cycle would start again.
I was hungry constantly. Dehydrated. Walking everywhere.
There were times I felt so physically weak I couldn’t lift a gallon jug of water.
Meanwhile, the mother of my children had gotten clean.
She’d been sober for more than a year by the time I finally stopped.
I tried quitting on my own for a few months and failed repeatedly. I didn’t really have anyone supporting me. My family knew what was happening, but knowing someone is an addict and knowing how to help an addict are two different things.
The person who finally got through to me was my former partner.
She told me she wanted me to stop. She also told me she wanted us to have a chance to work on our relationship again.
Then she asked me to go to rehab.
I said yes.
There wasn’t some dramatic moment where I threw the drugs in the toilet and suddenly decided I was a different person.
I’d injected meth only a few hours before she picked me up.
I had no meth left.
I had basically no money.
I was incredibly hungry.
And she drove me to rehab.
That was June 2, 2026.
I’ve been clean ever since.
I’m not going to pretend everything instantly became great.
I lost my career. I burned the bridge with the employer I’d worked for more than a decade, along with relationships with other potential employers.
I lost my house.
I lost my vehicle.
I lost possessions that mattered to me.
And probably the hardest thing to think about is what I lost with my kids.
My oldest is six. He has some memories of that period. We were never intentionally cruel to him, but I know we didn’t give him the attention he deserved when he was younger.
He’s in school now, he has friends and he sees a therapist.
My younger son is three and spent much of that period with his grandmother, so hopefully he was shielded from a lot of it.
Their mother and I are working on our relationship now. We’re looking for somewhere to live within my son’s school district.
Right now, I work at a fast food restaurant. I started about a month after rehab and I’m already training for shift management.
A few years ago I probably would have considered that a massive step backward. Now I’m just happy to have somewhere to go every day and people who trust me with responsibility.
I still think about getting back to where I was. I want another car. I want to make good money again. I’ve thought about going back to college or changing careers completely.
My instinct is to fix everything at once.
But I’m starting to understand that I don’t have to.
People ask if I’m proud of being 15 weeks sober. Honestly, “proud” isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
Relieved is closer.
I’m relieved not to be hungry all the time. I’m relieved to have a job. I’m relieved that the mother of my children is talking to me again and that I’m getting to be part of my kids’ lives.
I’m still only 15 weeks into this. If somebody put meth directly in front of me, I don’t know that I’d trust myself to walk away. So I’m not going to pretend I’ve beaten anything.
For now, the fast food job is enough.
I show up. I work hard. I stay busy. I don’t use meth.
I spent two years destroying my life.
I can’t expect to rebuild it in 15 weeks.