Honestly, I did not know until recently that there is something like high functioning anxiety, or high functioning autism. As I explored this idea more, I definitely think there is something like High Functioning Addiction.
From what I think, High Functioning disorder is something where you suffer inside but you are not affecting the society in any way, rather contributing in its normal functionality. When your disorder isn't showing on the outer surface, and not making you an outcast.
A little more than craving
A little more than just stopping
Addiction calls from within, it calls loud. The noise is blinding. It calls in your own voice, making it truer. The logics are real. They keep getting louder and more logical. You start hating everyone who tells you against it. Either you want to be using your substance or you are planning to attain it. Its a hell hole you don't want to leave. Endless hopeless insane lingering feeling. Everything just loses meaning, nothing is of any use, or importance. There is nothing to look forward to. The guilt, the guilt of not keeping up with the world, the guilt of letting yourself slip each time, and the need of substance to overcome that guilt. The guilt and anxiety of using it again, the repercussions. The loved ones start getting blurred, their love for you fades. There is a wall, which doesn't let it in, you know that its real, its there, its for you and they are there to help you. But you want to go further behind the wall. You lose the capability to think beyond that wall, you start telling yourself that your love for others is pretentious. Then there is guilt of showing them false love. The love that once was a reality, and may be it still is, alive. Getting up ang going back to sleep, hardly surviving the day. Then there is another day, surviving each one of them, hoping that one day it doesn't have to be that way.
Then there comes the recovery. Recovery is for pussies, that's what you think, afterall that hardcore logic tells you to believe it. But it's scary, because then there is nowhere to run to. It's only you all alone with your thoughts, in your brain, with nothing to numb it down, just timid you and devil, face to face, eye to eye.
But after a while it does get better, wall breaks down. It takes a lot of courage. You have to acknowledge the worst. I don't have an ending, I don't have a beautiful evolution story. There is hope and I think there is more to recovery too. I have been trying to define, understand, and articulate, and that doesn't seem to be happening. At this point, I don't even wish I had a happy ending, but I sure do hope that it was a little easier. I do have a, at the end of the tunnel story, the thing is I don't feel very far away from tunnel, turns out the path isn't so linear.
