My name is Wesley and I’m an addict.
I was born on 19 May 1991 in a hospital in Zevenaar and my sister was born 2 years later. Those early years of my childhood were carefree but it all changed when I started primary school, where I quickly felt I was a bit of an outsider. I was on the heavier side, which worked against me. At first, I tried to stand up for myself, but my confidence slowly crumbled and eventually, I just let it happen.
In the years that followed, the bullying only got worse with even the teacher joining in.
I hoped that secondary school would be a fresh start, with new classmates and everything, but with some of the old bullies ending up at the same school as me, it quickly became the same old story. That summer, before my first year began, my grandad passed away, which left me heartbroken. I never learnt how to talk about my feelings and I turned to eating to suppress my negative emotions. I started having suicidal thoughts for the first time around then too. Every day when I passed the railway, I thought: ‘No one’s going to miss me anyway’. But in the end, I never went through with it.
To me, my grandad’s passing marks the start of my addiction. After two years, I switched to another secondary school that placed more emphasis on practical education. It turned out to be a great decision.
Looking back now, I realise those two years were the best of my entire school life, a time when I could truly be myself. Unfortunately, that changed when I went to vocational college (MBO), and I ended up in a similar situation to the one I was in at primary and secondary school. During that time, my emotional eating turned into excessive exercising. I felt I needed to do something about myself, but I took it too far. I lost nearly 30 kilos in just a year and ended up weighing only 70 kilos.
After leaving vocational education, I got a job. Things were actually starting to look up until my mum suffered a cardiac arrest. Thankfully, she survived.
But again, I coped by numbing the pain. I started going out and drinking a lot because for me, it’s all or nothing. I never really talked about that time. I simply didn’t know how.
After the drinking came the stock trading and gambling. It was a way for me to let off steam without anyone telling me what to do.
I got my own place, worked 40 hours a week, and I even ran my own web shop on the side. Even though I kept myself busy all the time, I met Netty. Not long after, we moved in together. I left everything behind and moved to Assendelft to start a new life. Looking back, I can see that it was doomed from the start: moving house, taking over a business and then Covid-19 hit. I had no social network, no money and no way of changing the situation. That’s when everything really fell apart.
Without Netty knowing, I gambled away all our money and racked up a lot of debt.
We started arguing more and more but I was never the one to blame: it was always someone or something else – that was, until she found a pile of unopened letters and confronted me about it. A month later, she ended our relationship. We had to sell our house and my sister and dad stepped in to confront me. Soon after that, I went to Connection SGGZ for an addiction assessment. During my treatment, I underwent EMDR therapy to address the bullying in my past, I received debt counselling and took the opportunity to move into a safehouse.
Now, 20 months later, I’m happy to be living in gratitude, I have my own place again and thanks to Connection SGGZ, I’ve been able to take my first steps to recovery.
Life has its ups and downs but now, I can finally talk about it. I’ve built deeper friendships than I have ever had before, all because I’ve learnt to talk about my feelings, about what’s going on inside my head or how something affects me.
This recovery story was written on 25 October 2023.