Recognizing A Hero In Addict (6 cont& half of 7)

My parents had made it clear that I wasn't welcome in their home, unless of course I wanted to accept my Father's physical beatings and Mother's emotional ones. I had nowhere to go, so I used the string inside an old laundry bag in my car to tie the passenger door of my car shut. I tried one end to the handle of the door and the other to the backseat driver side door which was enough to keep it from flapping in the wind and completely falling off, and I drove my car to a remote location in the woods where I slept. I hope he doesn't find me. I hope he doesn't finish the job tonight. I hope my life gets better one day. Thank God my bottle of pills is in my purse.

Ch 7

I recently watched a standup where the Asian comedian joked that black people are the only ones cool enough to own their own racial slur. Addicts own their slur too, and it's junkie or drug addict. Unless you've scraped the inside of a bag of dope in desperation whilst so sick you wanna die, but too sick to survive and too sick also to kill yourself. Unless you've been abused, hurt, raped and needed a drug to take your mind far away from that dreaded place it keeps reverting back to to survive. Unless you've been a slave to the very thing that is the bane of your very existence yet needed that thing to survive. Unless you've accomplished the single greatest feat known to man only to be called worthless afterwards for a label you can never shed. Unless you've been treated as less than human for a condition you didn't ask for and can't control. Unless you've been told you chose to live inside a misery that is the equivalent to the deepest depths of hell on earth. Unless or until one or all of these soul crushing experiences has been your reality, then it's substance abuse disorder to you. We addicts like to use dark humor and self deprecating jokes to soften the reality that is this frightening beast. So, to us, junkie isn't what it is to you and it never will be. That's why we own it, and you can't call us that.

When I hear someone described as a drug addict or junkie, my mind doesn't equate it with the negative connotations those labels ordinarily carry. I immediately think that they're likely smarter, definitely more resourceful, have greater endurance, are capable of more empathy and viewing the greater picture than someone who isn't or hasn't been a substance abuser. These are my people, and I know they, we, were forced to adopt innovative, persuasive, and highly intelligent arguments as a means of survival. Some go into sales, marketing, public speaking after active addiction, or even during active addiction, and are the best candidate in their field. That's because every single engagement, our lives are on the line. Our means of survival depends on our ability to deliver, and that's the ultimate motivation. When we go to a doctor and tell them we need medication, it's because we NEED medication in order to survive that day, and unless we want to visit the darkest corners of hell after leaving their office, we better know how to deliver a convincing argument. What we tell doctors is often the truth, slightly tweaked. Look, we might not have just torn our acl or blown a knee out, but I can guarantee you we're in just as much anguish, if not more, as someone who has. We do need that medication, but the reason we need it isn't a socially acceptable reason, so we know we have to bend the truth to something that will fit into your mold of what's acceptable.

We don't want to con doctors, we don't want to wait hours on a corner in the freezing cold for someone who told us they'd be there, but when we get there isn't there and may never come. We don't want to be a slave to the very thing we hate, and forever be at the mercy of that demon, but our body's will completely betray us if we don't. We can't wake up in the morning, and simply dread going to work that day. We physically cannot do so, and worse we mentally cannot do so. Imagine going to work whilst being in the worst pain and agony of your life, and while someone narrates that pain in your head relentlessly by screaming at the top of their lungs. It's not a possibility. But then imagine that there was a pill you could take that within minutes would stop every symptom in it's tracks. You would do almost anything, short of making a deal with the devil to get your hands on that pill- that one thing that makes it all better. Until the next time, when every single day is the same torture you're forced to endure until you'll do almost anything to make it stop, INCLUDING making a deal with the devil. Frankly, we're already in hell at that point, so what's the difference? The choice between enduring that torture, and tweaking or even manufacturing the truth to a doctor, isn't a choice at all. You can't know it unless you've been through it.

One of the greatest disservice to addiction that we can do is to liken withdrawal to the flu. Withdrawal is not like having the flu. Then why do so many addicts liken it to the flu? It's really actually quite logical. There's just no other earthly way to describe it to you, and in our frustration to find a way to do so, we have settled on the flu not because withdrawal is the most similar to it, but because it is a virus that is the most relatable to non addicts and carries the most amount of relatable symptoms. We want desperately for you to understand. So desperately in fact that we undermine our symptoms to our own detriment just to attempt to make you get us. If we tell you the truth that it's more like being a POW being tortured on a daily basis, we know you don't exactly have a point of reference, but the fact is that we ARE a prisoner to this beast. We are tortured on a daily basis, and we have to cling to whatever it takes to survive our current situation or we're going to die. The life these drugs has allowed us to live is no life at all. We're in a cage clawing to get out, but we don't know how. We're held captive by a demonic force that we want desperately to escape from, but if we don't do what this beast wants, we'll be tortured on top of it. Every time you tell us it's our choice, you put another lock on our cage. Every time you tell us we're a drug addict or a junkie with your negative spin and connotation on it, you're ensuring we never escape alive.

Your using a politically correct term to describe us isn't because we're fragile and can't handle the truth. You're not enabling us, or creating excuses. We don't need you to make it harder for us to recover. It's already the hardest thing we will ever do in a way we'll never be able to make you understand. We know you want to punish us, and that we hurt you. You need to know though that we don't need you to punish us. The worst punishment you could ever design would not even come close to what we're already going through. We just need to know that after we endure that horrific, unthinkable punishment required of us to get to the other side, that you're going to be proud of us. Honestly, right now the way society is geared towards us, we need you to be proud of us, but we'll settle for you simply not persecuting us. We're not going to recover if the only thing on the other side of that torturous, monumentally challenging feat is a word in front of a title you use to demean us and in which means nothing to you: recovering drug addict-recovering alcoholic. You're helping to shift the mentality in society that makes us less than human beings in everyone's eyes, and allows us to maybe one day be more than just a "worthless drug addict".

We've already lost hope in every other aspect of our lives to an extent of hopelessness that reaches the deepest, darkest depths of our souls, so it isn't a huge leap or surprise that we have simply lost the drive or hope that that we can describe our condition to you in a way that will make you understand we're not choosing this life. We are resigned to this life by a force that has taken our children, our families, our lives without warning, discrimination, or humanity. The shame we feel doesn't dissolve upon use of this phrase, but it allows us to distinguish from survivors of our disease. It allows us to BE survivors of this disease, and be more than JUST our disease. We addicts don't talk to non addicts the way we talk to one another. We know you think we're the dregs of society, but we also know it's because you just don't know us, really. You know the disease, and in one way or another you will always associate us with our disease. We addicts first and foremost see the person before the disease, and we want you as non addicts to see that person first too. For all these reasons, drug addict and junkie don't mean the same thing to us as they do to you. For that reason, unless you've been through it, please use the human version to describe our very real nightmare: substance abuse disorder.

I endured 40+ hours of active labor with my son, and then ultimately had a c section in the end so they could safely get him out. It is not even a question in my mind that withdrawal is hands down harder than my having given birth to my son. I have never experienced anything as traumatic as full blown withdrawal, and short of anything bad happening to my family, I would take anything over withdrawal. You just can't know it unless you've been through it. Your body, your mind go into survival mode, and in order to survive, you've got to get yourself straight.

Survival isn't pretty, and it's not neat. You don't know what you're capable of doing to survive until you're confronted with a life or death situation. I know what I thought I would do, and I also know what I did. Your body and mind are programmed to do whatever they have to do to survive. Self preservation is instinctual whether we want to survive or not, at a certain point our bodies and minds resort back to their natural urge to survive. You can try to drown yourself, you can want to die, you can immerse yourself in water, and you will fight for air every time. You're no longer in control, and your body calls the shots. Survival is different than living. I never lived in addiction, but I was forced to survive throughout it. Wanting to die, and your body not allowing it is a far worse fate than any literal death I could imagine.

I was copping drugs with a friend who wasn't very street savvy. We were parked waiting for the dealer, and a random thug walking by saw two white kids in the city and correctly assumed that we were an easy target. Before I could get the words, "don't let him in the car" out of my mouth, he jumped into the back passenger seat and pressed his gun firmly into the back of my head. My mind leapt to a place of fear, but I wasn't afraid of the gun, and I wasn't afraid of him pulling the trigger. I was afraid of him taking our drug money. My body and mind immediately resorted to a preprogrammed, instinctual survival mentality and mechanism. Whatever this joker thinks he's going to do with that gun isn't even coming close to rivaling what will happen to me if he takes our money. He did take our money though, and I was right.

I am in a full blown fucking panic and hyperventilating on the way home calling every dealer I know, including my parents. Everyone is out, and I'm out too thanks to the gun man. Oh my fucking God, no! God, please, if you're there, don't let this happen! The withdrawal was already starting to come on while we had been parked and waiting for the sweet release of the drugs that never came. I'm starting to yawn now, and that means I don't have much time. Yawning is to withdrawal like the sirens are to the fire. They are the dreaded warning that comes before your world is incinerated while you are alive inside your body with no way out. Only no one is coming to save me like they would if there was an actual fire. I am alone. I am helpless. I am panicked. I am now in full blown withdrawal from hundreds of milligrams of methadone, dope, percocet, soma, xanax, and various other substances. I am in hell and I'm burning alive. It hurts; oh my fucking God, IT HURTS! Seconds are days. Days are years. My body is in a full blown panic, and it's racing with so many thoughts that's there's no room to even wish I was dead. That goes without saying, without thinking.

It's been almost 10 years now since this day, and I shake as I relive this fucking horror. My mind keeps jetting away naturally, and for the first time I keep forcing it back into the flames. I am now running into the burning building, and the consellation of knowing I will escape alive is of no relief. I am engulfed in the terror that is this beast at it's angriest. I have never fed the beast this little, left him so hungry. Now it will dine on my mind, body, and soul. I can't stop my mind from knowing now that that man's bullet, had he pulled the trigger, would have provided a far sweeter release. But he didn't, and for you now, I run back into the flames...

Anyone who has ever told you you can't die from withdrawal, has never had a serious drug problem. I am writhing in pain. I'm shaking, sweating, and screaming words I don't know are leaving my mouth. It's so horrific that a part of my brain shuts down to shield me from the full effects, but not even close to enough to prevent the full body attack. The words coming out of my mouth spew without thought or registration. I am praying to every God I've ever heard of in hopes that one will grant me the sweet, beautiful release of a death I simultaneously know won't come. I can do nothing but ride it out, and I know this, but my mind and body's natural instinct of self preservation has kicked in, and my mind is suddenly polluted with horrific calls to action. Sick, degrading, terrible, previously unthinkable things fill my mind in the interest of self preservation. I have never sucked a dick for drugs, but this seems like a swell time to start. I live across the street from an elderly home, and I know a dirty old man who has a decent supply of meds, but he doesn't want money. I have never demeaned myself for drugs, I have never stolen, and I bought my drugs the old fashioned way by spending my hard earned money on my habit. But this is different. This is not like every time. You can't know it unless you've been through it, and everyone who says it's a choice, that my thoughts are reprehensible, and that you'd never stoop so low, should be thrown into this God forsaken inferno that is the mouth of this beast for even just a second. If there's an orifice of your body you wouldn't sell to keep the beast at bay, I commend you, but until you've been through it, you can't know, you can't say what you would do. There's a place you go to where you'd sell your Momma's soul to make it stop. If my Mother had a soul, I might have sold it.

The thing about combatting heavy withdrawal though is that you have to formulate an action plan before you're in the throes of it. If your action plan involves being anywhere near another human being while in withdrawal, especially sober ones, you have to have the details finely ironed out before your brain and body go to mush. Christ, can you imagine being someone who's never done a single drug seeing me, seeing you, in this condition?

That's where the plan of a trade for sexual favors gets foiled. The whole having to walk and attempt to function around other human beings was completely out of the realm of possibility. I never sold myself throughout my addiction, but the thought of doing so in this situation crept continually into my brain. You just can't know it unless you've been through it.

By the time I started seizing regularly, the situation escalated to an unfathomable level of unbearable. I was trying to walk to my bathroom a room away, but every few feet I would wake up on the floor. I knew this meant the seizures had begun. You don't know when you're in the process of seizing other than that you lose time and wake up in a different position than you were previously in prior to the loss, typically stunned and with bruises. I was trying to get to the bathroom to throw up and simultaneously expel the build up of excrement packed tightly and abundantly in my filled intestines as a result of approximately 14 years at this point of almost non existent and irregular bowel movements.

7 Cont...