I came very close to dying a couple of times from drug overdose. I've been diagnosed as insane in the hospital before, and I have been in jail. So to some of us this cliche rings true. I can't speak for other people or judge whether they should have been sent to a program or not, for all I know I am the only kid in the universe who really needed to be in the program. But the truth is, I did need it, and without it I would have continued with these behaviors and ended up not insane or in jail, but dead. That's because when you go insane or go to jail, eventually you get out. When I get out I go back to using drugs with a voracious appetite, one that would suggest I don't really value my own life at all. Perhaps that's true, I can't really say and sometimes I do wonder about it, but I believe there is something inside me, something dark, that has never completely disappeared. This darkness prompts me to self destruct, at a rapid pace, and when I get in that state it usually takes an outside force to save me from myself.
So for me it's not a matter of low expectations, it's accepting the inevitable. My most important priority is maintaining some kind of control over this darkness and preventing myself from falling down that rabbit hole once again. I've done fairly well at just that for the past couple of years, and part of that was accepting who I am, and to do that requires an honest examination of myself, despite the depressing conclusions I sometimes reach. I used to blame the program, and my parents, and whatever else I could to prevent me from having to realize that I was the cause of most of my own problems. I realized it's not the part of me that wants to succeed that causes problems, it's that darkness deep inside that wants nothing but to destroy it's host, like a cancer. When times are good this darkness goes into remission, but it can come like an overwhelming tidal wave, when it's least expected. So to me it's not about low expectations so much as a warning of what could have been, and what might be, if I do lose control again and the darkness takes control over me.