Going public, hello brown paperbag over my head

Dear lord almighty..
Now I've read the article our local newspaper wrote about me. Above that, I've also watched the video that was posted on the internet along with this article.
Guess it was kind of good, but....


1- The reporter never told me she was filming me. She had this camera beside her "just for the sound, it can be good to have". Right there I should have suspected something, but no, I didn't (blueeyes inside and out, yes). So, shoot me for being naive.
2- The headline was a bit too much, I almost fell of my unicorn as I read it...... She didn't tell me about that either. It said "Ambers double life, living with heavy anxiety and hiding her drug abuse".
Thank you lady, that'll be great for my kids (and all their friends) to read. Shoot me again please.


The good thing is that this article (actually a series of articles that's been running for months now) is about how the doctors tend to give prescriptions for heavy drugs without following the patient further on. Too often they give you a "bigpack" containing a minimum of three months usage. Great. If you're addicted. Wich I became. And got out of.
I think it's really good that they drag this out into the open, not a day too late!


I have lived with the thought of me being a not-so-shabby-addict. This headline forced me to see the truth, indeed I was a drug addict back then. In fact, I mixed sleeping pills, morphine and vodka at the end, several times a day, before I finally came around to my senses and became myself again.
I will come to that later too, in an other chapter. Nothing I'm proud of, of course. But getting sober and clean all by my self, guess I can give myself a big pat on the back for that one at least.


Now I've been out of the fog for three years. The struggle continues, but I feel stronger and more calm than ever before. Hurray for that!
As I watched this video of hers, I noticed one other thing. I am not ugly. Not at all in fact. And I dont sound weird when I talk.
That was a surprise!


For all my life I've avoided cameras and all that as much as possible (not easy now in 2016 ...). I've been raised told that I'm too ugly for my mother to even speak to or look at. And I guess I believed her, never questioned it at least.
For these three sober years (and mainly since I got into psykodynamic therapy) I've had the guts to question if I'm really that bad, that ugly, that nasty, that nothing-to-be-proud-of, yadda yadda. At my heaviest days, I've even had troubles going outdoors, avoiding people and all that. But now I really see that this is just an ugly illusion, I'm good enough.


So. The article gave me a lot of good shit in the end. But. I still refuse to go out without my brown paper bag!