Part One – Who Am I? The Story of My Recovery

I want my readers — you — to know me. Honestly. I have no more secrets. I don’t need them anymore. For thirty-seven years, I was an asshole pretending to care about others while really only caring about myself and how I felt. I lived in the moment, ignored consequences, and didn’t think about the future. Looking back now, I understand that some of this wasn’t fully my fault — but understanding it doesn’t change the reality of who I was. So here’s the short summary of my life before everything collapsed.

I was born in February 1986 in Kraków, Poland — three years before the revolution and the arrival of democracy. Times were complicated. We weren’t rich, weren’t poor. We always had food, clothes, books, school. My childhood wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t a horror story either. And before I go deeper, I want to say something important about my parents.

My Childhood, Without the Psychology Lecture

This story is not about blaming my family. So let me keep it simple and honest. My parents loved me. They cared for me the way they knew how. There was no violence, no alcoholism, no pathology. There was stability, food, care, school, and a roof over our heads. But they didn’t understand me. Not because they didn’t want to — but because they couldn’t.

They grew up in a different world. A world of fear, scarcity, and a system where showing emotions was weakness and talking about feelings was pointless. They carried that world inside them into the democratic 90s — while I was growing up in a completely different environment. I lived in freedom. They lived in the memory of restriction. And somewhere between those two worlds, communication got lost.

They didn’t know I was autistic and ADD. They saw a kid who “thinks too much.” When I tried to talk about feelings, they shut it down with: “Stop whining.” Not to hurt me — but because, to them, talking about pain only made pain worse. They compared me to other kids: “Why can’t you learn like Marta? Why can’t you have grades like Grzegorz?” And when I replied, “But Marta has Nike shoes,” they answered: “You are not Marta.”

Inside my autistic brain, this created permanent confusion: if I’m not Marta, why am I compared to her? If I am compared to her, why can’t I want what she has? Contradiction became normal. Rules erased other rules. Nothing made sense, but I didn’t have the words to explain it.

Still — they loved me. They gave me everything they could. They didn’t know better, because nobody ever taught them better. I don’t hold anything against them. Not then, not now. I am grateful for them. I love them. Always will. And this story is about something else entirely.

The Diagnosis

When I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease — a severe variant that shaped everything that followed. When I was twelve, I had my first surgery. Parts of my large and small intestine were removed. Before the surgery, I spent two months on IV nutrition. No food. Not a single bite. My digestive system was shut down while the doctors tried to kill the inflammation that was destroying my bowels.

Back then, infliximab — a biological anti-TNF protein — wasn’t available in Poland. The doctors contacted colleagues in the USA to get a direct-import protocol. It arrived, but too late. They had to cut. Those two months before the surgery were hell. Not poetic hell. Real hell. Pain so severe it erased everything except the scream.

I remember praying to a God I didn’t believe in, begging to die. Begging for the pain to stop. Begging for anything. After one or two weeks of this, the doctors made a decision that changed my entire life. A real butterfly effect. Because if that decision hadn't been made — if that evening had gone differently — my entire future would look completely different. Better.

They decided to give me an opioid painkiller directly into the vein. Pethidine. Brand name: Dolargan. Dolargan. Dolargan. Dolargan. Dolargan became my life. And nothing else mattered anymore.

The First Shot

It was dark. There was another kid in the same room. They moved me closer to the nurses’ station because I screamed too often, and walking the whole corridor every thirty minutes was too much for them. It was late. My mother had already left. The doctor wanted to go home. He was frustrated — not only that nothing worked for the pain, but that I kept screaming.

An older nurse stood next to him. Long grey hair, very tall, grandmother-kind. I didn’t like her because she was too sweet — like she didn’t belong in that ugly reality. They talked for a moment. I stared at them — into their eyes — while screaming, because the pain was killing me. Then the doctor said: “Let’s give him the sedation we use during colonoscopies. Maybe he’ll finally sleep.”

It took time to get the key to the narcotics cabinet and prepare the medication. I had received Dolargan before during procedures, but I always fell asleep instantly. This time was different. I lay on my back, venflon in my left arm. The nurse returned with a huge 50 ml syringe — 80 mg of Dolargan — and she injected it slowly. Very slowly.

I watched the piston move. At 25 ml the pain started to disappear, like magic. At 30 ml the pain was gone completely and warmth spread through my body. At 35 ml everything made sense. Warm inside — not physical, not emotional, something deeper. At 40 ml every problem in my life — school, home, everything — became solvable or irrelevant. At 45 ml: heaven. Floating. Weightless.

I told the nurse I was high. I knew what drugs were — my mother gave me adult books early, and Zoo Station was my favourite. She smiled and said: “Tonight you can fly high.” And I flew.

When the syringe was empty, a pleasant sleepiness came. I counted screws in the ceiling lamps — a ritual that became a part of me — counting again and again for twenty minutes in the best state of mind and body a human can feel. Then sleep. Lucid dreams. Cars. Girls. Freedom from everything.

Six hours later I woke up — shy, silent, in pain again, screaming. Another shot. Pain → scream → Dolargan → counting screws → dreaming → floating → sleep → repeat. This cycle lasted seven weeks, until the surgery.

How I Remember It

I go back to that moment intensely. Vividly. It shaped me more than anything else in childhood. Even now, clean for two years — no drugs, no alcohol — I still feel warm when I think about that evening. This is how the brain works. And I’m lucky I eventually understood the mechanism.

Even today, I can describe every detail: the curtains, the smell of the room, the shape of the lamps, the tone of the doctor’s voice. I remember everything. Too much. After the surgery, one doctor realised what had happened — that they had addicted a twelve-year-old boy to Dolargan — so they gave me a fast detox. Three weeks. Brutal, but quick. Then two more weeks of recovery.

After almost three months in the hospital, they sent me home. And when I walked inside again, something hit me harder than the pain ever did: emptiness. A hole inside me. A silence I didn’t know how to live with. For seven weeks, every piece of pain, confusion, fear, loneliness, and insecurity had been replaced by a warm, perfect state where everything made sense — and now it was gone.

So I started filling the emptiness with the wrong things: hanging out with the wrong people, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer because others did. Trying to be “cool,” doing stupid dangerous shit, building a fake version of myself that looked loud and funny instead of scared and lost.

And then, when I was sixteen, I smoked weed for the first time. The moment I felt it in my body and mind, I knew instantly: this is it. This is what will fill the emptiness for good. I just need money for it. From sixteen to thirty-seven, I smoked weed every single day. I honestly don’t know if I ever skipped a day. I doubt it. But that part — the next twenty years — comes later.

End of Part One

Part Two "2" of this article, will be published on 29 November 2025 - a "2 Years Clean" anniversary.