Share Your Story: A Poem on Addiction by Clarence Lewis

This Thanksgiving, we are thankful for our sobriety. We are thankful for our sanity. We are thankful for our fellowship. We are thankful for our friends and family who have supported us. And we are also thankful for our creativity.

If you would like to be featured in this segment, you can Share Your Story by submitting an anecdote about your sobriety, your mania, your depression, or anything you wish — even just how you’re feeling.

THAT WAS MY LIFE

By Clarence Lewis

There was a life I once knew
Where drugs and drinking grew and grew
Every day I felt like I could fly
That’s because I was always high
Cocaine meth and alcohol to
Whatever I could get my hands on I would do
As the days got longer
My addictions got stronger
I got so bad
I would drive myself mad
I started to do more and more drugs
My mind started to get more and more bugs
As my life continued to go down the drain
I started to go insane
Every day I got on the train to nowhere
Not knowing if I really cared
I was thinking in my head
That someday I would be dead
And I just wouldn’t stop the drugs and drinking
And that’s when my life began to start sinking
My life all of a sudden crashes
And my life burnt to ashes
And at that point I didn’t know what to do
That’s because I had no one to turn to
The life I once knew was already gone
But one day I wanted to be done
I wanted to be free
I wanted to be free of a life always on my knees
So in October
I finally got sober
After 10 years of a living hell
Now I look at my life and say its swell
And if I keep on learning
No matter how much I’m earning
It doesn’t matter what I’ve done
Because this ten year battle I have won
And people say with a life like mine
They don’t know why I put my life on the line
No matter what I have tried I just wouldn’t die
I came to realize
With all the lies
Every night I would sit up and cry
As I started to get better
And the life of drugs and alcohol
Is finally done and gone
So on the 28th of October
Ill have one year sober
And this new life that live
I have so much to give
And in these poems that I write
Hopefully I’ll bring someone to the light.

Conor Bezane

Head Writer

Conor Bezane is a music-meister who has written for MTV News, AOL, and VICE. He is a recovering bipolar addict who can be found digging through the crates at a local record store when he’s not attacking his keyboard, writing nonfiction. His first book, The Bipolar Addict, is available now on Amazon.