I’ve been using different substances on and off since I was a teenager. I grew up in an abusive home–my father was a raging alcoholic and my mother was addicted to pills and obsessed with everything in our family looking perfect from the outside. Then, in some sort of search for love, I ended up in a couple of very abusive relationships. I’m very lucky to be happily married now to a very supportive and loving man. To cope growing up, I started stealing and taking pills, anything I could find. Then I started drinking more during college and now I’m sporadically using alcohol and cocaine together (maybe about once every 1-2 months). It used to be every weekend, but I was able to decrease that by staying home and not going out to bars anymore. But, now I’ve started just inviting friends to my home, and we end up doing the same thing–drinking and doing some cocaine. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to quit. I feel like I use in order to cope with the emotional pain of the past trauma I’ve been through. But, I’ve been in therapy for years. Yes, my use has decreased in recent years, but I still feel like a complete failure. Is this just genetic from my addict parents? Am I punishing myself for some reason? Most of the time I feel like I’m nothing–like I don’t deserve any better. Why not? Sure, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I’m not any different from every other average person out there, so why don’t I deserve to find some peace or even happiness in life? Sometimes I feel like I’m denying myself that on purpose, but why? To teach myself some sort of lesson for screwing up so many times? To punish myself for staying in abusive relationships in the past? Can I forgive myself???