Recognizing A Hero In Addict ( Ch. 9)

Chapter 9

Time in addiction isn't a straight line. It's scattered and messy; nothing is neat and orderly, and the best way to measure a timeline in addiction is to base it off the amount of drugs you're consuming. After my unsuccessful stint in rehab, things got even messier, but what I do know for certain is what made me spiral into being an intravenous drug user. There are a lot of ways you can help an addict in their quest for recovery, but putting them in jail isn't one of them.

I was driving home from work one day, and I took a quicker route on a back road, but I was pulled over by a police officer that was fairly steadfast in his thinking that I was driving on this backroad to smoke weed. He asked me if I was smoking weed, and I made it clear I wasn't. When you're an avid drug user, especially for as long as I had been, it becomes next to impossible for another person to tell when you're high. Being high becomes your normal, and I functioned exceedingly well high, and in fact far better on drugs than off. Your body becomes accustomed to that new normal, and my body's normal was a copious amount of narcotics. The cop clearly had some time on his hands, and stated that he pulled me over due to one of my lights being out, but now was prying into anything and everything else in my vehicle in an attempt to bust me for something else. He didn't actually think I was high, but he made me aware that the road I was on was notorious for kids my age smoking weed while driving on it. I followed the standard protocol of license and registration, but the cop had something else catch his eye. I had a suitcase in the backseat of my car which coincidentally enough had been the dreaded case of nostalgic horror that I had most recently packed from my rehab stint. The cop asked me to search the suitcase, and in retrospect, I should have allowed it. I hadn't had any real run ins with the law yet, and as a result, I was naive enough to actually think I had rights. I, indignant as always, informed the officer that I knew my rights, and no he didn't have my permission to search it considering he had no probable cause to do so. Haha, I think about how cute I was when I actually held the belief that that would be the end of this interaction, and I would be going on my way. The officer coolly informed me that I would need to step out of my vehicle so he could transport me to the hospital to have a drug test administered for suspicion of driving under the influence of marijuana-a dreaded DUI.

FUCKKKK. This fucker didn't even know I was on narcotics, and remarked that my car reeked of weed, which I wasn't and hadn't been smoking. Now I was going to get a DUI because this sandbaggin' sonofabitch had nothing better to do. I was a petite woman, and this guy pushed me up against the side of my car face first, and slapped the handcuffs on me from behind, and tight too. Well, fuck it, he's already going to give me a DUI, so there's no point in even being polite anymore.

Look fucker, I'm a 21 year old, 100 lb woman who you're manhandling. Does this make you feel like you're in control now? Do you feel better tightening my cuffs, you piece of shit? He was getting off on this power trip, and this asshole was about ready to ruin my life so he could satisfy his own demented issues. Hey buddy, it's a 45 minute drive, do you think you could maybe cuff me in the front since we have a cage between us anyway, or will that take away from your little fantasy of overpowering a young, helpless little girl? This asshole talked the whole ride to the hospital, and actually had the audacity to hit on me halfway there. So Andrea, do you have a boyfriend?
No, why, do you want to be my boyfriend after you finally take these fucking cuffs off me, or will it turn you off to give me a choice? This guy will see me in the mall in a month from now, and he'll actually have the balls, if that's what you wanna call it, to ask me out on a date. He'll tell me I'm one of the "best stops he's ever had", whatever the fuck that means in cop talk, but right now I'm in the backseat still blissfully unaware of just how much more of a piece of shit this guy can be. There's doing your job, and then there's trying to pin something on someone so you have a job to do, and this guy was most definitely doing the latter.

If receiving a positive result for drugs was winning the lottery, then you could say that this cop just hit the jackpot once my blood test results came back. I'll never forget what he said to me regarding the methadone.

Do you knows that shit's what heroin addicts use?! Why do you have that in your system. I told him that I had gone on vacation to the beach, hence the suitcase, and I took a pill from a guy I didn't know. That must have been it. It must have been laced with these 20 some different drugs that were registering in my system. He seemed satisfied with this "truth". That's cognitive dissonance for you. It's a powerful phenomenon that even, and especially, cops are certainly not immune to. This guy could not fathom that a pretty, young, white, professional woman would have a drug habit, and he, satisfied that he could now explain how I had this many illicit drugs in my system, warned me on the dangers of taking drugs from strangers. He did not, however, let me off with just a warning. He gave me a DUI, and I would have to be placed on a probationary period, assigned a probation officer, abstain from drugs and alcohol, go to court, hire a lawyer, and pay an absurd amount of fines.

I found a way for the first few months to get out of testing positive for drugs, and still not paying the dreaded consequence of jail time as a result. If you have a surgery, or are prescribed meds by a doctor, then you have an excusable and valid reason for testing positive for opiates. I had my wisdom teeth removed during this period of time even, in an attempt to provide a valid and necessary excuse for why I kept testing positive for drugs. The urine test your probation officer administers is far less invasive and explanatory than a blood test. A piss test, as it's commonly and crudely referred to, only told my P.O., short for probation officer, whether I was positive for opiates or I wasn't. Unlike the blood test, it didn't show which specific opiates I was testing positive for exactly. That meant that as long as I had a doctor's prescription validating my taking, say vicodin, for pain or a medical procedure, that I could in turn still take whatever opiates I wanted to, or rather had to in order to survive, without being found out and prosecuted for it. I was still taking immense amounts of methadone, along with various other forms of narcotics, unbeknownst to my PO. I wasn't aware though that my PO could make house calls.

My apartment was on the third floor, and it was unique in that when you entered the door, there was a staircase you had to ascend it order to be in my actual apartment. I had no reason to believe anyone would be showing up, and I had a bowl and weed sitting out beside the bed, because I just passed a drug test, and wouldn't have another for at least a month. I only took a few pills that morning, and was meeting my dealer within a few hours to get the rest I needed before I turned into something less than human. During this time I had a knock on the door, and when I went to check, it was my landlord's handyman saying there was a leak on the second floor, and that he may need to come take a look in my apartment shortly, to fix some sort of potential pipe issue. No problem, I said. In almost 4 years of living there, that handyman never came before that knock, or again for that matter, after that knock.

About five minutes later I had another knock on the door, which I obviously assumed was the handyman fulfilling his promise to return and check on the pipes. I descended my staircase of about 13 stairs, with the bowl and weed still sitting in my bedroom through the door at the top of the steps. When I was almost at the bottom, I called out,"coming", cheerfully! That cheer quickly faded and transformed into an all out panic when I heard a woman's voice ring out, my probation officer's voice. Oh, FUCCCCKKKKK!!!

I ran up the thirteen stairs, trying to quickly devise a plan for the weed and bowl. I have since this day, thought of approximately 72798263857 better alternatives of what to do with the paraphernalia, other than what I actually decided to do with it. When she heard me run to the top of the stairs, she started yelling and demanding to know what I was doing. I was so crunched for time, and I just completely panicked. There was a hole in my bed that I typically used to hide my pills, and in which was currently empty due to my dealer not having met me yet today. I shoved the weed and bowl in that hole, then covered it with the fitted sheet slid back over it, and the comforter over top of that. It wasn't slick, and it certainly wasn't my finest moment, but she was at the bottom of the stairs screaming for me to open up while at the same time pounding on the door. I did the best I could, and then I descended the stairs again, and opened the door. Anybody that has had a PO can tell you the same as me, that in this moment, I am absolutely and completely fucked.

I just didn't realize how fucked I was. She followed me back up the stairs, and I kid you fucking not, that she went directly to the corner of the bed that the weed was under, and sniffed it out from it's very location in a record time that would put a German shepherd to shame. It was as though she had a fucking camera in my house. I thought maybe she would find it, but this shit was ridiculous. If I wasn't so scared, I would have been incredibly impressed in the moment, because I am in retrospect. This lady was her own drug sniffing dog, and she put my hiding efforts, if you can even call them that, to absolute shame. I was fucked. I am fucked, I am going to jail, and I know this for sure because she's told me as much.

I begged her not to take me to jail, because I knew, I thought I knew, the hell my body was about to be enduring, and the only thing worse than going through severe withdrawal, is going through severe withdrawal IN JAIL. I didn't know that quite yet then, but I am about to, and it makes me physically ill to revisit the fiery depths of the deepest, darkest, most hopeless Hell I have ever known up to this point at twenty one. If you want to meet the devil, visit the jail cell of a tortured soul being forced to detox in it cold turkey, without MAT, because that is where he'll be.

There's absolutely nothing that can prepare you for detoxing cold turkey in a jail cell. Whatever Hell you thought you visited simply withdrawing, you find was merely just the waiting room to Hell, when compared to detoxing in a jail cell.

The cops took me to the County Jail, and not just any County Jail, but one that, at that time, was deemed one of the top ten worst County Jail's in the Country. I don't remember the exact criteria that was used to make that determination, but I can tell you the criteria I fucking used to agree with their findings.

The inhumanity of the guards, satan's helpers surely, was so zealously on display. They hated who I was. They hated what I represented. They hated that I was a living, breathing monument to a new threat they never even knew could exist. They hated that on top of the junkies they could easily identify and discriminate against, now there were the sneaky bastards like me that they couldn't. To them, this new generation of junkie that I represented, was just as worthy of hatred, if not more, than all the previous ones also were. They hated that I was able to escape their prejudice on the mere technicality of appearance, but now that they knew, they were going to make up for it. They hated that society hadn't taught me properly, the way it does most junkies, that I was worthless. They were going to have to teach me that lesson themselves now. They hated that I existed, but they loved that they could make me wish I didn't. They hated me with a passion, and I hated them right back with the same passion, only stronger.

It's a tough job hating an entire group of people, and somehow I managed to slip through the cracks and escape their efforts all these years. Not anymore, they were going to show me what I'd been missing all these years. I wish I could have saved us all a great deal of time, and informed them that I already knew how worthless I was without their additional efforts.

I had made a mockery out of them by parading around all these years pretending I was a nice, young, pretty, white, professional, when in fact, I was nothing but a worthless junkie. Who did I think I was, having the audacity to think I could hide in plain sight amongst the respectable people that actually contributed to society. How dare I not don the colors that they used to so quickly identify those they hate, those that are so deserving of their persecution. How dare I make them think they liked me because of a skin color I wasn't worthy of wearing, in a neighborhood I wasn't worthy of residing within. I made a mockery out of them by simply existing and making them think I belonged to their prestigious club. I belong in the same club with minorities, residing in the ghetto, immune to preferential police treatment, but I stole a costume that made them believe for so long that I didn't. They are going to make me pay for that theft, and they are going to ensure that they make me pay forever by putting it on my record. Never again now, in the future, will anyone make the same mistake they did of believing I was worth something more than those they hate. That wasn't enough, not by a long shot. They are going to show me what I get for pretending I was one of them. They are going to make me wish I was dead. I wish I could have told them that I already wish I was dead.

We now have a certain understanding that unless you've been there, you can't come along to where I'm going. You can never visit, and even if I told you what it was like, you luckily can never really know. I'm going to a place so dark that even eternal darkness is a far less scary place. Erica, my best friend's sister, chose this path. I don't blame her. Erica knew she was about to look the devil in the eyes, watch him disembowel her while the guards looked on and laughed at her. Those were her options, eternal darkness or a place far darker, and there was no ray of light in the form of suboxone, to prevent the beast from dining on her mind, body, and soul. So, she fashioned a noose in the form of a sheet, and she hung herself. I wasn't that lucky. They took my sheets, and now I have to travel to the place Erica escaped. God help me, but because God doesn't exist where I'm going, he can't help me, and neither can you. I have to take this journey alone, but I can help others not have to. I'm in the cell, and it's getting dark now. God help me, but there is no God here, so he can't. It's just the guards, and they're all laughing at me. They're laughing while the wild animals fiercely ravage every inch of my body, and I can barely hear them over the sounds of my insides being ferociously devoured, over my mind screaming in agony with the wails of torment and torture behind every pathetic plea for help.
I can barely hear them because I am being eaten alive by the pack of wild animals that tear at my skin and bones from the inside out, and I wish I were just being eaten alive by a lion, because then I might at least pass out from the insurmountable pain. There is no going anywhere to escape the pain for me, and I can barely hear them because the intensity of the pain is screaming over their voices, but I do still hear them say, "junkies don't get special treatment in jail!" They were right, and I knew then that I was less than a human being, and as a junkie, that I always would be. In order to receive medication assisted treatment, they would have had to treat me as though I was a human being, and junkies don't get special treatment. We don't get any treatment.

At one point they felt I wasn't being tortured enough, in fact, and one of the women guards got me up and forced me to sit on one of the metal picnic tables surrounded by concrete floor.

That's the last thing I remember before I woke up again, covered in blood with the woman binding my hands together at the wrists, above my head. The seizures had begun, and I fell from the picnic table, where my head broke the fall onto the cement. The guard wasn't helping me, she was using my wrists to drag me on the cement floor back to my cell while I marked the way in a stream of blood.