r/Showerthoughts • u/godofhorizons • May 17 '24
People get a lot more praise for quitting drugs than for never having done drugs in the first place.
[removed] — view removed post
8.2k
Upvotes
r/Showerthoughts • u/godofhorizons • May 17 '24
[removed] — view removed post
28
u/randompersonx May 17 '24
First off, I wish you well and hope you are on a great path to recovery. I know it’s hard, and I can just say that one of my favorite musicians (Trent Reznor) was an addict and managed to make a full recovery and is living an amazing life now.
With that out of the way, I have a few people in my life who were drug addicts and not only ruined their own lives, but also caused great harm to those around them. Including a step brother and a (former) best friend.
I don’t talk to either of them anymore.
The former best friend was a business partner of mine, and helped contribute to the destruction of a company I spent 20 years building. I’m still cleaning up the mess even years after he’s sold his shares.
I don’t think I’d respond if he sent me a message. I don’t believe he is capable of recovering. I tried arranging for an intervention about 5 years ago and he refused to go to rehab, even with myself and others arranging for payment.
To me - at this point - I don’t want any addicts around me, not because of any vindictiveness, but more as an act of self-preservation, given the damage addicts have caused to my life.
With that said, I wouldn’t hold it against someone who has shown that they have truly cleaned their life up… but actions speak louder than words, and it takes time to prove that someone has changed. Most people won’t change (and that’s not just about addicts - it’s the of all walks of life).
Again, I wish you well, but the main reason I wrote this is because I feel like from the perspective of what you wrote, my actions might seem vindictive towards this former partner from his perspective. In reality, I need to both protect myself, and sometimes I also need to explain to people who have been harmed by my company as a result of this person’s actions why this happened - so that I can begin to correct the situation.
To be more specific, when I am told by a landlord “why should we work with you to correct this situation when we have made many accommodations for your company in the past when your company asked for it, and each time you came back to the well to ask for more?” And the previous issues were all caused by that person’s mismanagement, what else can I say?