I absolutely have! I completely understand where you’re coming from on this. I went homeless at 16, then fell down the rabbit hole of sex, drugs, and was looking for euphoria. However, all I found at the end of the tunnel was isolation, depression, ADHD, and Anxiety. It wasn’t until my later years that I decided to throw a Hail Mary and join the military. Throughout my career I struggled hard.
eventually I came to find out that I have a Bi-Polar disorder, MPD, and what it finally boiled down to was High-Functioning Autism. For me, I’ve always looked for new stimulants, and with each one I became happy short term and then it boiled down to a dark pit. I constantly struggled to look for happiness where I could find it.
Eventually after speaking with some like-minded people, I found out new ways to cope and deal with my problems. I found out that us as humans have deep seated roots to find something to create a purpose, as well as a better being in this world. It’s a long and hard journey to find out what we want as humans yes, and so it’s easier to temporarily distract ourselves with things that make us feel good to feed a growing pit. Eventually we slip and fall in without realizing it.
The best thing I was taught was to create short term goals. Medium term goals, and long term goals. With that I was personally able to find and establish a purpose and meaning with my life on a deeper level. Short term goals are ones that give the instant gratification we need to keep moving day to day. Medium goals are set to be the more important but still realistic goals we have. The reason these are set, is because they can take some time, but when we loose hope, we turn to short term goals for that motivation and drive to keep pushing for larger goals.
Long term goals are used for things that can take from months, to years to complete. Like; better schooling, mental health, addiction issues, or anything that takes time to figure out how to better handle. Even things like; buying a car, buying a house, marrying someone of your dreams. It could be anything. But the other goals can be helped to achieve the long term goals.
To make better sense of it; If you want to buy a house. Sure you can go to the bank, but if you don’t have the credit. You can’t pull a loan. So short term goals could be finding a job, or finding a side hobby to make money. A medium term goal is to get a credit card, or if you have one already. Pay it off, and slowly buy big things and pay it off on time. Then once you have enough credit, by then another medium term goal is saving enough to put down. So when you hit your long-term goal, you have enough saved to put down, but also pull a loan for the house.
This has helped me with my addiction and struggles, it’s re-defined my purpose to fill that hole I had before. Slowly but surely I’ve found reasons to keep fighting my addictions, and keep pushing myself for a better future. Another thing I found helpful was books. Learning, and reading novels and memoirs wrote by people. Gave me a better, and gainful insight into things that I was also dealing with on a personal level.
I hope that you can understand what I am trying to say? Just remember that there is always a light at the end of every tunnel. I don’t remember who said it, but. “ there will always come a rainbow after every storm.” Or, “ trees that survive a hard storm, grow their roots even deeper.” The last one I took to heart because even after everything is said and done. Only you can choose to get back up and keep going. The harder you push, the more you learn how to personally deal and cope with these thoughts and feelings. The stronger you mentally become, and the more you can withstand, understand, and overcome.
