Once a smackhead always a smackhead?

So the bad news today is Pete Doherty is back on the smack?
Which makes me think is it true what people say, once a smackhead always a smackhead?
Its so easy to fall back into. I still have to continuously argue with myself daily, and sometimes its racing through my mind every minute of every day.
I really thought it might have got a bit easier by now?

I can completely understand why people don't break the cycle. To get free of smack you have to be determined, dedicated and ready. You have to know that you are at the end of the line with your relationship with it and that you are certain you want to be done, clean, free. You have to be dedicated to yourself, committed to working towards a better future for yourself? The amount of effort and mental energy that is required is probably about the same as someone who wants to set up their own business?

You have to know that although other people will be there to help you, it ultimately comes down to you, only you can do the actual hard work that is needed to progress. Its you who has to work through all the hard times, put all the ground work in, set goals and tasks and then achieve them. Its you who has to wade through the dark times, who has to fight every inch who has to sacrifice every aspect of your life, which is your comfort zone, you have to up-turn all that, spin it round, shake it up and change it before you settle it back down?

For anyone to do such a thing with their life requires a massive commitment from themselves, to themselves. It requires self belief, will power, desire to grow and change, ability to accept mistakes and learn from them, re-building your own character and life, getting to know yourself, being in tune with your inner self and your feelings, knowing how to deal with things, face things accept mistakes accept yourself.

The irony is of course, that is if smackheads had all these things about them then they would not indeed be in their situation. Being dependent on heroin makes you feel worthless, useless, pathetic, like the scum of society that no-one wants to be connected with.
You loose all hope for the future, there is no future, there is no tomorrow, theres only the here and now. Tomorrow is when you are going to change, when you are going to stop. But tomorrow never comes, it gets lost under the here and now, the never ending present which is the only place you never want to be?

Shame burns you like the summer sun, tinges you and marks you-or so you believe? It brands you, sets you aside from normal people. You walk down the street, paranoid that people are looking at you, reading into your mind, knowing what you are? It prevents you from walking tall, standing proud, laughing loud and smiling like the worlds at your feet, because its not. The truth is your not living. Your existing. Crawling out from under your stone to do your seedy, dirty, scummy deed. Going back under your rock, into your hole to gouge out and rot away precious minutes of your life.

Minutes that other people have lost to illness, death or sacrificed for another's benefit? And there we are, the scum of society, robbing our own futures, our own present, and our own past, tainting our memories, wasting our time, letting life pass us by when we should be grabbing hold with two hands and racing forward doing as much as we can, gaining as much experience creating as many memories as we can. Instead we throw it all away by succumbing to addiction? Theres no life, no future in dependency of a substance, whatever the substance?

The question now is can the cycle be broken? Can a person be stronger than a substance? Its a mind game now, a battle of natures most powerful creation, the mind, against itself. So much is going on, so many thoughts and feelings, contradicting themselves, fighting against each other when they need to be working together? Can a person really over-come such a powerful addiction? Can they really put it behind them? Or will it always be there? Niggling away under the skin, poking at the mind, digging at memories, taunting the future?

I hate the cloud I've created that will now hangover my life forever? I wish I could turn back the clock and have never entered the gateway I stepped through?

But I did, and now I have to accept it and try and make sure that the cloud that hangs, is as high as possible, so it can no longer cast a shadow over my days? And with any luck, maybe my cloud will dry out completely so it can never rain on me again? For now though I think I will carry an umbrella?

x x x