{"id":902,"date":"2025-01-19T00:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T00:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/?page_id=902"},"modified":"2025-01-19T01:45:52","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T01:45:52","slug":"arthur","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/?page_id=902","title":{"rendered":"Arthur M."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be like my parents. But it was harder than I thought.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up in a small town with parents who both had their own battles with addiction felt like living in a pressure cooker. It wasn\u2019t just one person in my family\u2014it was everyone. My dad, my mom, my uncles and aunts, even some of my cousins. I always felt like I was walking on thin ice. The house was full of tension\u2014fights, whispered conversations, sudden silence that would swallow up everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I didn\u2019t really understand the extent of it until I hit my teenage years. I\u2019d see my mom drinking wine, my dad sneaking pills. I remember how the house smelled\u2014like smoke and something darker, something you couldn\u2019t quite name. By the time I was 15, I was already experimenting with drugs. I didn\u2019t think much of it at first; it was just a way to feel like I fit in with the crowd, a way to escape from the constant weight of my family\u2019s addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But by 18, I was deep in it myself. I didn\u2019t want to be like my parents, but I couldn\u2019t stop. It was a nightmare\u2014I didn\u2019t recognize myself anymore. The feeling of being stuck was suffocating. I had been taught, without words, that addiction was just part of life. It was normal. But deep down, I knew it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hit rock bottom after I was arrested for possession. That was my wake-up call. The judge ordered me into rehab, and that\u2019s when I started to understand just how deep my roots in addiction ran. It wasn\u2019t just about using\u2014it was about the emotional scars I\u2019d inherited, the patterns of behavior I had learned from those who were supposed to guide me. The hardest thing I had to face was the truth: I had become my parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recovery wasn\u2019t quick, and it wasn\u2019t easy. But I learned to break those cycles, to understand that addiction is a disease, and that healing starts with acknowledging the damage it causes. My family still struggles, but I\u2019ve come to terms with the fact that I can\u2019t change them. I can only change me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re reading this, and you\u2019re caught in that same cycle, know that there\u2019s hope. You don\u2019t have to repeat the same mistakes, even if it feels like your path is already set. You can choose differently. It\u2019s hard, but it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be like my parents. But it was harder than I thought.\u201d Growing up in a small town with parents who both had their own battles with addiction felt like living in a pressure cooker. It wasn\u2019t just one person in my family\u2014it was everyone. My dad, my mom, my uncles and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-902","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Colleen","author_link":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/?author=2"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be like my parents. But it was harder than I thought.\u201d Growing up in a small town with parents who both had their own battles with addiction felt like living in a pressure cooker. It wasn\u2019t just one person in my family\u2014it was everyone. My dad, my mom, my uncles and&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/902\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyoverdrugs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}