From Alcoholic to Blockchain

Hello fellow Steemers,

This is my first time using the Steem Platform, so please bare with me as I am not entirely familiar with it yet.

My name is Jonathan, I am 31 years old and from the North-eastern US. I was raised in an extremely religious family and was home-schooled from the age of 10 on. I suffer from aspergers syndrome and social anxiety. This is a little bit about me.

I have always gone to church growing up, although I have stopped for the past 8 years or so. I consider myself an atheist at this point, but still hold onto a very high sense of moral duty. Growing up in a church was different. With a big tight-knit community comes a lot of death.

When I was 12 years old a kid in my church passed away at 8 years old after battling Leukemia for 4 years. I have a big Italian family and Great Aunts and Uncles started passing away frequently. On 9/11/01 my Moms cousin was lost to time in Tower 2 of the WTC, her remains still never recovered. Her name was Diana O'Connor. She had a 1 year old daughter when she passed on. It was an extremely rough period.

Two years before this in 1999 my Father had taken up a Pastoral position in a Presbyterian Church. We had to move a county over, I was 15 at the time. It was very difficult for me with the form of autism I have. In June of 2002 I was arrested for graffiti, which is a story of its own. I was arrested in Yonkers, a place I came to love during my community service there. I plead guilty in court and did 50 hours of work for the city. I actually enjoyed it surprisingly.

After the arrest I lost faith in myself. I started hanging out with some people from Brooklyn who had a really bad rap sheet. I had a hell of a few years hanging around that scene, and the drug and alcohol use just got worse as my self esteem and faith dwindled away in a circular loop of madness I had created for myself.

At this point I met a beautiful woman who I am still with today, going on 8 years soon. Everything was great for a while and I stopped everything except for weed and a drink here and there. Then I found the "incense" as I called it. A friend smoked some with me, that K2 crap. I never felt such a great weed high in my life. It wasn't K2, but the Mr. Nice Guy brand. I fell inlove and things went downhill rapidly.

After about 2 years of smoking this incense crap, I wasn't even touching bud anymore, strictly incense. Offering me bud was like offering a wine cooler to a raging alcoholic. I started ordering the pure chemicals and plant matter myself online after a while to save money and making my own smoke. It was embarressing as hell how far it got.

Then I found this new cheap as hell brand of incense online, which I won't bother naming. They had some new legal chems in it, but it was more like meth then it was bud. At this point I was smoking the stuff at my job in the bathroom every 30 minutes. One hit was all it took, and it barely smelled at all from one hit. I thought I was the slickest guy around. But the edge was too much. So on my real breaks I'd go out to the car and take a few dollar shots of vodka and chase it with an AMP energy drink. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where this leads.

The paranoia from the drugs became so much that I was suddenly threatening suicide to my bosses just to get out of work I was so anxious. They had me admitted. I conned my was out by telling them what they wanted to here but I lost my job.

At this point things got nuts. I had no job so I just started smoking and drinking all day. Then the worst thing that could ever happen to a drug addict happened... my supplier disappeared and my drug of choice was suddenly inaccessible. I tried finding other alternatives online, but the laws at the time changed things drastically. I ended up going through the worst 3 days of physical withdrawal ever, highly comparable to heroin withdrawal. Without the incense the drinking went through the roof and to the moon. I started drinking 1.750L bottles of Georgies Vodka every day. I'd nurse the bottle 24/7. I stopped eating entirely, I could no longer keep anything down. For over a month I consumed no calories outside of vodka. I couldn't get out of bed, I became weaker and weaker.

Then began the seizures. At first it was just a few here and there, nothing to worry a raging alcoholic like I was. At some point in a drunken rage I started threatening my parents or something for the way they raised me and home schooled me. I ended up kicked out on the streets. The drinking got even worse, along with the seizures.

I remember laying there on the ground in my own piss and shit, just having had a seizure, 2 people standing over me telling me to stay laying down and help was on the way. I ended up in the hospital on an IV of morphine & anti-anxiety meds for 2 weeks. I went through some crazy hallucinations, was convinced the nurse had smuggled me in a bottle of vodka and that it was in the closet of the room, but the damn alarm on my bed would go off everytime I got up in the slightest. I was out of it, my dick flopping around with my hospital gown all open infront of my Mom and I could care less. Extremely pathetic time of my life.

This was July, 2014. I was homeless for another 2 months after release, but I stayed off the alcohol. Something in me entirely changed. I began to despise alcohol, hate everything about it. It's funny, I have no cravings at all to drink whatsoever, and for me that is a miracle for sure.

Around late October I found Bitcoin, and finally I was sober enough to dive right into a new hobby. I wanted more from life for the first time. Money became more to me, and for the first time I started putting away as much money as I possibly could. From there I've messed around with a lot of different blockchain techs, and finally landed on Ethereum. I am a fan of all things blockchain, I have no fanboy preference or extreme views. I see all of these to be in great competition, and for the most part, to have their own unique place in the blockchain ecosystem.

Without these new technologies, I am not sure where I would be today. They invigorate my mind on a level I never in my past had felt before. I started just craving knowledge, reading everything I could find, trying out everything I could. This whole ecosystem keeps me on my toes, is fast paced, and keeps my mind busy and focused on something far more beneficial then just getting drunk & high.

I have been sober from alcohol since that hospital visit, 2 years now. I contribute most of the thanks to the great people working in the fine field of blockchain technology.

That being said, I am an extremely open person and would love to hear what anybody has to say or ask or whatever. It is great to be here and I wish you all a great path forward in your own respective lives. :0)

Yours sincerely,
The Hatter