I’m happy to say that after a long battle, I’ve triumphed over addiction. Years of heavy, heavy substance abuse almost took me down, but I can now report that I’ve bounced back stronger and better than ever. The least I can do today is to pass on what I’ve learned from this fight, and hope that readers in the midst of their own struggles can benefit from my wisdom.

To beat drugs and alcohol, I’ve realized, you have to have a strategy. It’s not enough to want to win; there has to be a real plan to get on top of this thing that’s trying to kill you. Like a boxer in the ring against a tough opponent, you can’t just go in punching wildly – you’ve got to know the other guy’s weakness, and lay out a strategy of what moves will work and when to deploy them. Early on in my personal bout, it dawned on me that drugs and alcohol have a crucial vulnerability in this matchup: overconfidence.

Once I realized this, I knew how it was going to go down. My first step, therefore, was key: let drugs and alcohol think they were winning. It’s the old rope-a-dope tactic, the underdog taking his time and letting the odds-on favorite wear himself out. So, for me, there were no tearful promises to reform, no 12-step programs, no interventions, no admissions that I had a problem – that’s just what drugs and alcohol are expecting! Basically, I fooled drugs and alcohol into a false sense of dominance, so that when I finally got around to quitting, they wouldn’t know what hit them. I had to be patient. I had to play a long game.

Lying in the gutter and covered in my own filth, the remains of my career and relationships scattered around me like so many empty bottles, discarded pipes, and used needles, I was certain that drugs and alcohol had bought into my ruse. By then it would have been easy to spring the trap – too easy. No, I had to carry on the affectation for a little while yet, to a point where drugs and alcohol were basically giving me up for dead and moving on to their next victim. So I stole loose change out of parked cars, drank shaving fluid for a quick buzz, and sold my faithful dog Keef to an animal testing lab to pay for a hit, all in order to make it look like drugs and alcohol had “ruined my life.” I played this role with conviction, perhaps too much conviction. Sometimes I had to ask myself, where does the real (clean and sober) me end, and the (unemployable meth-crazed) alter ego begin? That’s when I knew it was time to take the mask off and confront drugs and alcohol. They would sure be surprised.

Sixteen years and several incarcerations later, my plan paid off. I beat drugs and alcohol but good; they had totally assumed they’d exerted some kind of hypnotic power over me, when all the time it was I who’d been stringing them along. Who’s the real addict here? I laughed. Me, acting all drunk and high for a handful of decades, or drugs and alcohol, for pretending they weren’t right in there with me every step of the way? Pathetic. To anyone out there going through their own conflict with drugs and alcohol, I’m here to tell you: there is hope. You’re not alone. Most of all, don’t rush. Rehab is for quitters.