friends help: i’ve forgotten myself. - Help.com

Everyone can relate, to an extent. That’s being a teenager - you lose yourself, and you find yourself. It’s normal, though you sound as if you may have fallen in with a bad crowd, and that isn’t helping. Try to stay away from the drugs and alcohol, or at least use them sparingly and only on vacations or for special occasions. You might consider changing schools, if possible, or living elsewhere with a relative if you are, as you seem, truly unhappy and stuck being someone you don’t like. Peer pressure is, as you say, an issue for you, and the only way to really avoid it is to disassociate yourself from those friends. You make new ones - likely better ones - elsewhere more quickly than you think.

Your boyfriend is, as you no doubt know, bad news. The best advice I can give you is to distance yourself from him - but love being what it is, my advice probably wouldn’t mean much. If you must be around him, try to be a good influence. Stay in school, of course. I speak from experience when I say that if you do fail, you’ll only end up doing it over again later, and it’s even less fun the second time around.

I don’t know all the particulars of your living situation, of course, but things would probably be easiest for you if you moved or at least changed schools. Talk to your parents and tell them why; they’ll likely be more agreeable to something like that than you think. There’s no shame in it; they will help you and you sound like you want that help. If you absolutely can’t do any of that (and even though it’s not easy, you’ll likely be a lot happier with yourself once you’ve done it) try making some new friends. Join a club or team or some such. At the very east, tell your current friends you’re trying to fix your life and you only want to drink and drug on vacation; ask them to help you stick to it.

Talk to someone. Life shouldn’t be so hard; if you spend one night letting someone who can help know what you’re going through, it can change very quickly for the better.

Let me just share my experience. I started dating my high school boyfriend when I was 13. He was drinking and smoking pot. I did the same thing occasionally but he did it all the time. He went into rehab. I stuck with him. I saw the good person in him. I knew he had a good heart. He was just in pain. Well he did not stay clean long at all. He continued to do more drugs. He Ended up quitting school. The drugs took more and more control of his life. I stopped seeing that good person inside of him. I finally left him when I was 17. It was not easy. By this time he become controlling and would call and tell me he was going to kill himself. I will shorten this story. He ended up in prison. When he came out he was almost beaten to death over drug money and now is disabled and mentally damaged. He has two children whose mother is also a drug addict. Her parents have custody of one of the children and his mother has custody of the other. The one his mother has is now having a difficult life to say the least. I so wish I did not waste so much of my life trying to save him. I wish I would of worked on myself instead. I tried to kill myself at 14. Did not get help for my depression until 22. Now at 36 life is good. I hope my story shows you what can come out of your situation. Take care of yourself and seek help from your family and friends. They do care.