My Story - Part 4

Mid August, 1988

It took me a few weeks at the new school before I was pointed in the direction of a new connection. I visited him one afternoon on my way home from school, armed with money I had stolen from a fellow-pupil's suitcase. At first, he was reluctant to give me heroin, but when I showed him my fast-fading track scars, he relented, and gave me a bag and some needles.

I went home, locked myself in my bedroom, and shot up. It was the best high since my first. I lay back on the carpet, closed my eyes, and drifted off, reveling in the feeling of being back in my diabolical lover's arms. Some time later, I vaguely heard voices outside my door and someone knocking. I was unable to get up, but equally unable to care.

Later, someone broke my bedroom window, and knelt over me. What seemed like dozens of people milled around me. Someone placed and oxygen mask on my face, others lifted me onto a stretcher. There were sirens, followed by a blinding light. Nothing made sense. There were voices, but they seemed to come from very far away. There were shapes, like people moving around me, but no recognizable faces. I was completely relaxed and unconcerned.

I felt the prick of a needle in my arm, and moments later - searing pain! Every inch of my body suddenly ached unbearably. I retched, felt someone pulling me up by my shoulders, and emptied the contents of my stomach in the waiting bucket. Left on my own again, I lay back, struggling to breathe through the intense pain. After what felt like an eternity, I fell asleep.

When I woke up again, my grandmother was sitting next to my hospital bed. I turned my head away, too ashamed to look her in the eyes. I waited for her to say something, but she just sat there. When I finally found the courage to ask her what had happened, she told me simply "You overdosed, but you're ok". After another aeon of silence, I whispered one word - "Sorry". I'm not sure if it was the complete lack of judgement from her, or the fact that she instinctively guessed that I didn't want to be alone and just sat with me, but it dawned on me that for some inexplicable reason, she cared.

She cared.

October or November, 1988

I woke up in a cold sweat. The dream had been so vivid, so real, that I could still taste his dirty, sweaty penis, the sickening sweetness of his semen. I retched, ran to the bathroom, and emptied my stomach contents into the toilet. I sat on the floor for a long time, my tears squeezing between my clenched eyelids and dripping into the toilet bowl, completely unaware of my surroundings. After an aeon, I got up. I was surprised to feel water splash on my face. I had no memory of rinsing my face. Then my eye caught the mirror...

I had faced violence, even death, but I had never been that afraid before in my life. I stood transfixed, staring in the mirror at the face of someone I had never met before in my life. After a while I looked down, and found a stranger's hands and arms attached to my body. I could move them, but I knew with complete certainty that they didn't belong to me. They were utterly foreign and I wondered in panic if they belonged to the guy staring at me from the mirror. My feet, also, were not my own. My feet didn't look or feel like this - they were different, somehow. I could feel my heart beating in my throat, blocking the air. I couldn't breathe. I took a step away from the mirror, trying to get away, but the stranger kept staring at me. Something snapped in me. I started picking things up and throwing them at the mirror - soap, a sponge, a wash-cloth, a bottle of shampoo... Then I realized that I was throwing these objects with arms that don't belong to me, and the panic grew. I rushed to the kitchen to find a knife to cut off my arms. When the blade cut into my flesh and I felt the pain and saw the blood, the panic faded - these were my arms after all!

OMG. I'm insane!

I collapsed on the floor, crying hysterically, until my grandma found me there. She picked me up, cleaned and bandaged the cuts on my arms, and gave me a cup of warm milk to drink. She asked me what had happened, but I couldn't tell her. I had no idea where to start, and I was terrified that if I did, she would realise that I was insane and have me locked up in an asylum for the rest of my life.

I drank my milk, went to my bedroom, got into bed, and slept through the night for the first time in weeks.

December 20, 1988

I had been thinking about if for several weeks, gathering up all the evidence - the hurt in my grandma's eyes when I screamed at her. The disappointment in my brother's eyes after my relapse. The irritation of my teachers. The indifference of the other kids at school. I had finally accepted the truth:

I was nothing more than a burden to the people around me.

But it was ok, really. It meant I would not have to feel guilty for taking my own life, because no one would miss me. I was free. As soon as I could find the courage, I could escape from this misery called "life". I would not have to keep treading water, trying to stay alive. I could make the pain stop.

I picked up a razor blade, and walked to the bathroom. I had always imagined being scared, or excited when the moment came, but I was simply numb. I locked the bathroom door, opened the taps and sat down under the shower without taking off my clothes. I pulled up my sleeves and slowly ran the the razor blade across my wrists. I felt giddy, watching my life run down to the drain. My head started to spin and then the darkness took over.

I woke up to brilliant lights. Confused, I did not realize that I was still alive until I saw my grandma sitting next to my bed. When she looked at me, I saw that she had been crying. Unable to find words that could pinpoint the tumultuous feelings chasing each other around my mind, I turned my face away, refusing to look at her. Rather than face the pain I had inflicted, I convinced myself that she was trying to manipulate me with her tears. It was easier to deal with anger than with guilt. It would take several weeks before I was able to look her in the eye again.

After this, my grandma found me another therapist. This one was easier to talk to than the first, but still unable to completely win my trust.

No one knew how to react. My brother was furious. The kids at school whispered, snickered and pointed. The teachers looked at me with irritation and contempt in their eyes. My friends avoided me, and when they did talk to me, it was with forced, uncomfortable cheerfulness. I felt more isolated and lost than ever before. Within days, I reached out to the only thing I knew that could kill my pain - heroin.


By the end of January, 1989, having all but destroyed the veins in my arms, I started shooting into the veins on the backs of my hands. It was a stupid thing to do. By now, my grandma knew track marks when she saw them.

Two weeks later, I found myself in in-patient rehab.

"Hi. My name is ... and I'm an addict."

Step 1: "We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and that our lives had become unmanageable"

I was powerless, that much was true. Powerless over just about everything in my life. But my life had become unmanageable long before I started taking drugs.

28 days later I was sent home with instructions to attend 90 meetings in 90 days and to find a sponsor. I lasted about 3 weeks before relapsing again. This time I was smarter, and managed to go about 2 months before my grandma found out again. I convinced her that I didn't need rehab again, and that if I went back to my meetings I'd be fine. I wasn't fine. I didn't even make it through detox before relapsing.

The night after I relapsed I was sitting on my bed, contemplating what I had done, paralysed with fear and shame. Why could I not stop? I remembered how my grandma had reacted before, how she had never been angry. How her first priority had always been to help me.

Impulsively, I scooped up my needles, spoons and other paraphernalia, and went to my grandma's room. I stood in the door with my heart beating in my throat until she looked up. When she looked at me, I broke down. I fell to my knees in front of her, dumping all my paraphernalia in her lap, and sobbed I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please help me...

Without saying a word, she pulled me up onto the bed, put her arms around me, and rocked me as if I was a little baby. It was strangely comforting. Exhausted by my outpouring of emotion, I eventually fell asleep in her arms.

The next morning, she made arrangements for me to go back to rehab, this time for 90 days.

But something much more significant than a boy confessing to using drugs happened that night. For the first time in my life, I trusted someone. I had trusted my grandma to not be angry, and to help me, and she didn't disappoint me. I had made a tiny hole in my fortress walls, allowed her to look in, and was rewarded with a tiny taste of relief.


Even with my grandma in my corner, staying clean remained a massive challenge. I had mastered step 1, but step 2 stumped me.

"We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"

The only "higher power" I knew of, was God. I believed in God. More precisely, I believed in the existence of God, but I couldn't see how or why God would lift a finger to help me. I simply didn't believe that I was worth it.

By early September 1989, I was loosing what little hope I had of being able to kick my addiction. I sank deeper and deeper into depression, until even the small breakthrough I had made with my grandma seemed fantastical. After one more night filled with terrifying flashbacks, I broke. I left a note this time. My brother, sensing my distress in the way only a twin could, frantically searched the house for me. He found my note instead and saved me before I had completely lost consciousness.

Disgusted at another failure, and heart-broken at being sent into in-patient treatment afterwards (something I interpreted as being abandoned by my grandmother), I picked at the stitches with a ball-point pen until I succeeded in re-opening the wounds. A nurse found me on the bathroom floor, barely conscious.

After my third attempt, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Mood Disorder and placed on various medications, including anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, Lithium and Xanax. Even though the diagnosis was wrong, the medication did make me feel somewhat better, at least until I went back to doing heroin.

Not surprisingly, I crowned a year filled with unprecedented turmoil by failing at school. After missing almost 100 school days, as well as most of my mid-year exams, my grandmother was notified that there was simply no way they could promote me to the next grade even if I managed the unlikely feat of passing my year-end exams, and that I would have to repeat grade 11.

Part 5: My Angel