My name is Christian Wright. I was born into a good family in Indianapolis on October 9th, 2004. I had the typical childhood of a suburban kid for the most part. I was a very angry kid. Starting around 8, I often got in trouble at school for my rage spells, so I started therapy around that age. Shortly after, my mom started to become a helicopter mom, but I do know it’s because she wanted me to not go through the pain she did as a kid, and I don’t hold that against her. Fast forward to 13, I started to desire to be popular at school. My sister, who is 2 years older than me was always super popular, and I wanted to be like her. I remember her friends smoking weed and vaping when she started her freshman year, so at the time I was in 7th grade. Being a stupid 13 year old boy, I chose to try smoking weed and vaping because I thought it would make me cool. It actually did the opposite. It isolated me in school, resulting in me being unintentionally forced into the “losers” or “stoners” group. Still, I was okay with it. I felt like all I ever wanted was a place to belong. 8th grade was very rough for me, I was bullied a lot for smoking weed, and the other kids would pick on me for it. I later found drinking, and I had ignored my family’s warnings about my relatives who were alcoholics. It made me not feel the pain of bullying, so I started to drink. a lot. I would go through up to 4 bottles of wine a night or really whatever I could get my hands on. I remember by spring time, I had developed the shakes from drinking, so I backed off a little bit. I found dxm at the time, I was only 14 so finding real drugs wasn’t easy. I then went to boarding school with my sister by choice and it was a really cool place, but my addiction moved with me as it lived inside me. I had started messing up my life, and I would get blacked out every night. At times, I even drank rubbing alcohol to get by and took dxm every day in large amounts. On September 28th, 2019, I overdosed for the first time on dxm. I was hospitalized and shortly sent to treatment for the first time. I went to the wilderness in colorado which, while most people have horrible experiences at those places, I really enjoyed my time there. However, I didn’t spend any time working on myself. After that, I went to discovery ranch in Utah for 8 months, which included all of the covid lockdowns. That place was very abusive, and while a lot of my experiences there should be spoken about this isn’t the place. None the less, I left with very bad PTSD and went back to boarding school by about 3 months in and I had relapsed with pot and then never stopped. The constant paranoia would go away, and I would feel okay again. I started to try new substances such as shrooms and also was smoking heroin for about a week there, specifically with shrooms. I had never felt something like that, and I never looked back. For the next year leading up to 2nd semester of my junior year, I was taking acid and shrooms and 2cb in insane amounts. I got arrested for the first time during that period, too. Then I was raped and after that, I lost my self. I ended up in an alternative school and shortly after became very risky with my behavior. I started taking more acid more often and smoking pot all day. I then found fentanyl. I had done pain pills before when I was younger, but never anything like this and the first one was free from my dealer so I tried it. I was able to hold off from it for a while, but as time went on and my world became more and more lonely, I couldn’t hold off much longer. I did them at least once a week and then I met a girl and we had a very toxic using relationship, revolving around hallucinogenics and I would end up taking acid every day for 9 weeks either with her or only by myself. My world became very isolated and eventually, our connection ended and I was alone again. By this time, I was being gang stalked by a drug dealer and while I still don’t fully know why, it was driving me to insanity. I was staying up all night now only using fent and peaking out the blinds in fear of what could happen to my family. On August 7th, I had an intervention and I was still just 17 at the time, so I didn’t really have a choice. I went back to rehab and the withdraws were awful as adolescent places don’t know how to detox, so I was in a lot of pain and had to stop cold turkey. By the time I had turned 18, I had aged out of that program and went to an adult location. I was struggling a lot and went to the psych ward but got in a really bad fight so I was sent to a detox. I relapsed while there, then went back to the adult program, later getting kicked out for another fight. I finally found myself in Dallas, where I am today. My sobriety date is November 14th, 2022, and I consistently work a program. I am a member of a CA group, which I run an H&I for and have service commitments to. I have a sponsor and I do the work. My biggest gift of sobriety is connection, the ability to mend my old connections with friends and family, and the community that I have found here in Dallas. Dallas is my sober home and always will be.