My Addiction Started When I Discovered What It Meant to Take My Mind Off of the Fears and Anguish I Felt
I was born and raised in Avellino, Italy. Growing up I had a hard and difficult life, with a violent father who used force instead of communication. The happiest memories of my childhood were when my mother and I went on vacation alone away from my father.
My journey to addiction started early at 10 years old. I started drinking my grandfather’s wine that was filtered from a bag into a wooden barrel. I got drunk and discovered what it meant to take my mind off the fears and anguish that I felt. As soon as I got to high school I started drinking, I was 14. At 16, I was already using heroin and smoking joints. At 17 I was already a drug addict. My family took me out of school and I started my first rehabilitation program.
I hated everyone and everything. The fears that I kept inside of me were growing stronger and stronger. And the stronger they got, the more I used drugs of all kinds without any exception. My family, and more specifically, my mother suffered, because of her heart condition, she has to be assisted at home more than once by a doctor.
My sister found Narconon on the internet and she had been in contact with a staff member for several months. But getting me to the Narconon center was difficult. Staff members from the center had come to visit twice to invite me to go back to the center with them, but both times, they went back to the center without me.
When I finally did arrive at the center, I was going through full withdrawal. I received assistance and support from the staff and the other guests at the center. But what made me stay, I think, is the strong fear I had of what I had become and I what didn’t want to be anymore.
“During the program, one of the biggest wins I had was to feel love again for my mother and sisters. And to be able to feel that love without feeling like a degraded and squalid worm...”
During the program, one of the biggest wins I had was to feel love again for my mother and sisters. And to be able to feel that love without feeling like a degraded and squalid worm. Another one was the pleasure that I felt from talking with people again and to have conversations with others and enjoy it. I remember laughing really heartily at times, so much, that my belly would ache and I could not stop. And most importantly, I recovered that feeling of being a person with opportunities to live and the desire to live. To explain it better, I realized that I too deserved to be able to live.
During the program, I was able to unburden from my heart all the evil that I had done. However, I did not forget the memories of what I had done. And with that, I was able to carry forward in a direction of creation and each day to work towards improving my survival and the survival of my family and of my group. Sometimes I accomplish this, and sometimes I accomplish this less, but anyway you want to put it, I went from hustling, stealing, robbing, attacking, destroying to the complete opposite.
Each day I have a desire, a dream, a project to want to realize, sometimes I think too many, but I experience everything with the right energy and correct awareness.
The advice that I would have to give to someone who is living a life of drugs is that when you enter the world of drugs you go through three phases and no one can avoid these three phases if you continue to live in the world of drugs. The first phase is the great pleasure that you get from drug use. The next phase is confused survival—you go between thoughts of yes, you want to carry on, and no, you want to get out of it. And then suddenly, death is certain—it’s just a matter of time and bad luck. My advice is that if you want to continue to live, do the Narconon program.
Luca S., Narconon Graduate
