reply to post by Cedik
Good post. S&f For you.
I've been awake most of my life, though in my youth, pre-teen, and a few of my teen years, I didn't even know it. All I knew was that I was
different. In my late teens I got tired of feeling that way and started medicating myself with alcohol, marijuana, and coc aine. For the next 12
years I was "asleep" for lack of a better term. I paid no attention to the outside world around me. All that mattered were my drugs. I was walking
around every day in a fog.What I remembered of "reality" from the past, I didn't like. Mainly about the part of not fitting in. Think about it,
people that are awake and people that are asleep have very little in common.
Let me digress now for a bit. Bear with me, it has a point.
You know all this talk about sleep paralysis that has made it's rounds here? Well, when I was about 4 or 5 I had a bout with that. I would close
my eyes to go to sleep and it would feel as if the blackness would envelop me and I was unable to move. Well, being 4 years old, this scar[r]ed the
s##t out of me. I didn't know what was happening. [It might help to know that my father was a RAGING alcoholic at the time of my conception]
Now, fast forward to age 31. 12 years after starting my self medication phase. Alcohol was my drug of choice. I finally had enough and checked
myself into a halfway house for addictions [government paid of course, I was poor
]. Well,3 days and nights after no alcohol and drugs, I laid down
and closed my eyes to go to sleep. I'll give you 3 guesses as to what happened next. That's right, sleep paralysis. The EXACT same kind I had 27
years prior.
My point? Most of the answers here to the question the O.P. posed have been drugs. And I agree. There's a multitude of reasons, but I think drugs
head the list. And I also believe, based on the events I described above, that whatever type of drugs your parent or parents have in thier system at
the time of your conception, get passed on to you. [You've heard of crack babies right?] And if you don't wake up, if you don't stop putting
whatever type of drugs into your system, the cycle continues to the next generation and it just keeps getting worse. You can replace the alcohol your
parents drank with a pain killer your doctor prescribed to you, but it doesn't matter. A drug is a drug. It keeps you from realizing your full
potential. It keeps you from.............WAKING UP!!!!
The truth is, I don't see the majority of the people who are asleep having the intestinal fortitude or even the constitutional make-up required
to "wake up". I used to detest, hate and despise all of the "asleepers". But I've mellowed through the years. Now I just feel sorry for them. I
really do. My honest opinion at this juncture of my life is that people were either meant to be awake or asleep. You may be asleep now, but if you
were meant to be awake, you will be eventually. I'ts entirely up to you.
I think some people know they're asleep while others don't. It's the one's that do that I feel the most pity for. What kind of life could that
possibly be? It's like being in a mental coma while you can still physically move.
Anyway, let me leave this on a positive note.
Skip back to the halfway house. I had been clean and sober for about 2 weeks and really started to feel the fog lifting. I was in a common room
with a bunch of other people watching the news when a story came on, I can't remember what it was about, that left myself and everyone else in the
room feeling shock and disgust. I remember getting up, turning around and walking out of the room while saying to no one in particular, " I sobered
up and woke up to this? Please, somebody get me a f###ing beer!