In my late teens, I started hanging out at nightclubs like the legendary Studio 54 in New York City. For my first few years as a club kid/party boy, I drank a lot, but I did not use drugs. My nocturnal activities parlayed their way into a successful career as an entertainment journalist, but by the time I was in my early twenties, I had become equally successful at something else—snorting and smoking cocaine.  From the first bump I snorted one Sunday morning at brunch at a prominent New York restaurant, I was hooked. Cocaine made me feel talented, successful, popular, and on top of the world; it took away my inhibitions, insecurities and fears.  It made me feel normal. I thought I had found the magic pill that I’d been searching for all of my life.
 
Over the following few years, the club scene moved on, and so did I—into becoming a casualty of my environment, and a full-fledged cocaine addict. There was lots of cocaine around in those days; it seemed as if everyone was doing it. Even though I was snorting and smoking a couple of grams of cocaine per day, I managed to keep my life together. I eventually burned out on the scene in New York, packed up my life, and moved to Los Angeles. I thought a geographic change would quell my drug problem, but it didn’t. I was at a very high point in my career, serving in a pressure cooker position of running the west coast bureau for a high profile magazine.  It was around this time that I was introduced to crystal methamphetamine.

If cocaine was my magic pill, then methamphetamine was the extra-strength version. It made me feel smarter, faster and stronger.  It blurred the boundaries between reality and the fantasy celebrity world that I was covering as a journalist. For awhile, I was able to keep my professional life and my meth life separate, but my efforts were futile.  Soon, my whole life was tied into getting loaded. I was luckier than most people because help was available to me, yet I continued to live a hopeless cycle of going into in- and out-patient treatment programs.  My employers even paid for services to help me, but my detoxing from meth always hit a point, at day three, when my physiological cravings and anxiety forced me to leave the programs.  The beast of addiction was stronger than me and I had no control over it once it was out of the cage.

There would be several more attempts to get clean on my own over the years, but none resembled a victory over drug dependence for me until about seven years ago. For five years, I kept “the beast” at bay through a combination of psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and attending 12-step recovery meetings.  I accomplished many goals that I wanted to achieve in my life, including obtaining my post-graduate education, becoming an addiction therapist, working in a treatment center and having a private practice. 

I was so busy helping everyone else, however, that I stopped going to meetings and counseling—the necessary work I needed to do for my own recovery.  And “the beast” was always lurking in the background. When my relationship of five years ended, the pressure proved to be too great, and I collapsed under all of my personal and professional pressure, and relapsed.  Using meth for the first time in five years was like inserting a biological key into the ignition of my addiction and putting the pedal to the metal.  The grip of “the beast” was so strong that I knew I was not going to be able to stop until I either crashed and burned, or ran out of gas.

I learned about the PROMETA program from a friend six months before I chose to participate. I thought it sounded too good to be true, so I didn’t explore the program option immediately. My addiction progressed, and my life began spiraling downward in fast forward. I was using exorbitant amounts of meth. I was living in the purgatory of wanting to stop (because I knew I was about to lose everything), but unable to stop, because the biological cravings were just too strong. I was desperate. I agreed to try the PROMETA program. I didn’t believe that the PROMETA program would work for me, but I was desperate to give anything a chance. 

After a couple of false starts, I finally made my way into the PROMETA Center® to begin treatment for my addiction to meth. From my experience as a therapist working with clients during the early stages of recovery, I had enough of a point of reference to know that I was not an easy case. I was malnourished, dehydrated, and had not slept more than a couple of hours during the previous week. I was irritated, anxious, depressed and angry because I thought I was going to have to go through the physical and emotional hell that I had previously experienced during the detox process from meth. Every step of the way, the staff at the PROMETA Center treated me with dignity, empathy and respect. The unconditional care and compassion I received at the PROMETA Center was something that I had never experienced at any of the other treatment centers I had experienced.

Up until the third day, on which I historically relapsed over and over, I had remained very skeptical.  But on this day, after my third PROMETA program medical treatment, I experienced a shift that affected me physically, mentally and emotionally. It was as if my fog had lifted, and the horrible feeling that I believe had led me to relapse in the past, had been quieted to a whisper.  After the PROMETA program I felt free from the physical grip of my addiction, and I felt able to handle the emotional aspects of my disease, which would not have otherwise been possible.

Life after the PROMETA program seems very promising.  My energy, clarity and sense of purpose have returned. Instead of destroying myself, I am staying in balance by participating in 12-step programs, therapy, exercise and following the nutritional guidelines I learned while doing the PROMETA program. I have returned to working as a therapist, empowered by the experiences learned during my relapse and grateful for the renewed opportunity to make a difference not only in my life, but also in the lives of others. When friends or clients are suffering in the grips of their addiction, I unequivocally recommend the PROMETA program.

Kevin

Los Angeles