I feel lost... Maybe I just need a friend?

@FPBagel Hello Bagel! First of all, be proud of yourself for this achievement! It is not easy to recover and takes a lot of strength, discipline and perserverance. And yes, I agree. Support is very important (even if you have been a former addict or not). We all need support. Feel free to send me a message! We also have a community here willing to help and listen.

Believe in yourself you got clean and that is awesome. You can beat it!

@FPBagel, as an LPC, I see patients dealing with this conundrum every day. They have many sobriety chips but they are also kind of going through a grieving process sometimes as well. Sometimes stereotypical thinking leads others to presume that once a substance abuser quits, that they'd be happy they did and never miss their drug of choice. Of course, that's rarely the case. For the most part, people trying to stay clean miss the heck out of their drug (or whatever their addiction is -- such as gambling, smoking, shopping, sex, etc). Many of them tell me they even get so bored not being high, which is understandable on a certain level. Therefore, one thing I've found that helps some of my people is to learn more about and practice mindfulness-based stress reduction. Mindfulness is a practice going back thousands of years but has been modernized and westernized over the last couple decades. There are a million resources about it so it wouldn't be hard to learn about it. But the point is to help you get better at looking at the present moment in all it's glory and revelling in it. To stop grasping at the past and to stop feeling repelled by the future. To learn how live with groundlessness and uncertainty. Check out an Andrew Johnson app on the app store as well or download a book by Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzburg or Tara Brach on Audible for help. Good luck! :-)

@FPBagel

Congratulations on your 3.5 years x