Dear Addiction,
I need to tell you something, and for once, I need you to listen without interrupting. You have had the floor for long enough.
When we first met, you were everything I needed. You made the noise quiet. You made the awkward comfortable. You made the unbearable bearable. I thought I had found the answer to a question I did not even know I was asking.
And for a while, it worked. You were the friend who always showed up, the solution that never failed, the relationship that asked nothing of me except that I keep coming back. Which I did, gladly.
But you lied. You told me I needed you to cope, and I believed you. You told me I was in control, and I believed that too. You told me that the life I was building with you was sustainable, even as every brick crumbled. And by the time I realised you were lying, I could not remember how to live without you.
You took things from me. Small things at first — mornings, weekends, concentration. Then bigger things: relationships, trust, self-respect, health. You took my ability to feel pleasure without you. You took my ability to handle discomfort without you. You took everything and told me it was my fault for not managing you better.
Here is what I know now: you were never my friend. You were a parasite dressed in a familiar coat. And the hardest part of leaving you is not the withdrawal, the cravings, or the empty space where you used to be. The hardest part is grieving the loss of something that was never real.
I am not writing to say I hate you. I am writing to say I am done. Not because I am strong enough, but because I have finally found something stronger: people who understand, a programme that works, and the smallest, most fragile thread of hope that my life can be different.
You will tell me I am being dramatic. You will tell me I will be back. You have told me that before, and you were right. But not this time.
Not this time.
Yours, no longer,
Someone who is learning to live
Naming addiction as separate from yourself is a start, but meeting others who have done the same makes that separation real.
