My Story - Part 6

Tough Love

April, 1992

My grandma had joined a support group for family member of addicts at the beginning of 1992. The other members urged her to apply "tough love" - to kick me out of the house until I was prepared to get clean and stay clean. She resisted at first, but around my 20th birthday, she finally gave in. She sat me down and told me that I had a choice: either I entered rehab, and committed myself to staying clean, or I had to leave. She didn't want me to bring drugs into her home any more.

I sat rooted to my chair, staring at her with my head spinning. The light in the distance had been switched off. The one person who had always been there for me, was abandoning me. After a moment of silence, I exploded. When I came to my senses, I was standing over her, screaming at her that she was a horrible person and a terrible mother. That she brought up one monster and now she was creating another. That if I died on the street it would be her fault, and that I hoped the guilt would ruin the rest of her life.

The hurt in her eyes only spurred me on, I don't know why. Perhaps I enjoyed the power I had over her emotions. Perhaps I wanted her to feel some of the pain I was feeling. Or perhaps I just didn't know how to stop. After a while, she quietly got up and walked out. When she reached the door, I fell silent. She turned around and looked at me with intense sadness in her eyes, and then turned back, left the room, and closed the door softly behind her. To my ears, however, it sounded like a gunshot.

I had made her abandon me.

When I left the house, she was waiting on the front porch. She softly touched my face, and whispered that she loved me more than the air she breathed, and that she'd be waiting for me to come back and say that I'm ready to go into treatment.

Confused, I turned away from her and walked down the garden path and out into the street.

I had no idea where I was going, but I knew that I had at least three more doses of heroin in my pocket, so I'd be ok, at least until the next morning. Beyond that, nothing really mattered.

I surfed from couch to couch for a few months and eventually settled in a graffiti-filled room with a filthy mattress in one corner in an abandoned house. About half a dozen other junkies called those window-less walls "home". We used to build fires among the rubble strewn around what must once have been the lounge and sit around it, smoking or snorting or shooting up. We shared food, drugs and girls. The drugs and the girls came around more frequently than food, but it didn't bother us too much. Heroin is a very effective appetite suppressant.

I still saw Louise from time to time. She would give me food, stolen from her mother's kitchen. The drugs calmed my anger, making me easier to get along with, but it also killed my sex-drive and left me struggling to make conversation. We mostly just lay together, holding each other. That was all I was capable of most days. I never took her to the house where I lived. Whenever I was capable, which wasn't very often, I was happy to have sex with any girl that any of the other brought home, but she was above that scene, somehow. I would not share her with other junkies. I could not drag her down that far.

Sometimes I would go back to my grandma's neighbourhood, hide in the bushes in her neighbour's garden and watch her go about her business. I wanted nothing more than to walk up to her and say "here I am, grandma, please say you still love me", but the track-marks on my arms and hands stopped me. I knew she didn't want to see me like that. I didn't want her to see me like that. So, inevitably, I would sneak away again, back to my hovel. On some of those days, I watched my brother leave for work, or come back. He was making something of his life. I was happy for him, but also envious. Seeing him on his way to success made me feel even more inadequate and crave drugs even more.

Sometimes, when I had money, I called my grandma from a payphone. She would always be relieved to hear that I was still alive. Sometimes she'd ask if I wasn't perhaps ready to get clean yet, but I would always answer no.

I wasn't ready to feel.

I still loved my drug dealer more than I loved myself.

January, 1993

One bright Tuesday afternoon, Louis told me that her parents had enrolled her at a university in a city on the other side of the country, in an attempt to separate us. It took me about to seconds to decide to follow her. She hugged me impulsively, but then sat back, and asked me, but how will you get there? How will you live?

Silence.

"I'll just have to get clean, and get a job."
"You'll do that for me? Just to be with me?"
"Yes. I'd rather be clean than without you. Besides, it'll be easier to stay clean down there, 'cause I won't know the dealers."

It was decided. She helped me taper down over the Christmas holiday, and by mid January, when she had to leave, I was clean. She bought me a bus ticket to where she was going and left with her dad.

I went back to my Grandma's house to fetch more of my clothes. She was distressed to see how thin I was, but the fact that I was clean more than made up for it. She sat me down to the first warm, home-cooked meal I'd had in months, and then helped me pack some clothes in a bag. She even drove me to the bus station, and hugged me goodbye, wishing me well and telling me to call her when I got there.

I moved into the flat that Louise's dad was renting for her. It went well for a short while. I even got a job waiting tables at a restaurant - my first legal job ever. But my addiction ran deeper than just access to drugs, or the lack thereof. As my body and braid adjusted to the absence of drugs, reality hit me full in the face. Mental illness once again ruled my life. My nights, when I managed to sleep at all, were filled with nightmares. My days were filled with triggers. A wrong word could trigger a flashback, a look from a stranger in the street a panic attack. I developed an ability to turn anything that was said to me into an insult, and would then proceed to take violent exception. I became progressively more difficult to interact with. I struggled to function from day to day.

And then there was the terrible, terrible emptiness; feeling so disconnected that at times I questioned my own existence.

It couldn't last. After a few weeks I lost my job. This was the last straw that broke the camel's back. I went to the docks and asked around until someone pointed me in the direction of a dealer. I spent my entire week's tips on drugs, went home, cooked up a dose, and injected it. By the time Louise came home from class, the first rush was just over and I was sitting on the couch, more relaxed and happy than I had been since I had moved in with her.

Regret, shame and self-loathing would come later, when I came down.

A few days later, Louise noticed that I was having trouble focussing on a conversation. She immediately confronted me, asking me straight if I was using again. Of course I tried to lie and deny it at first, but I was soon forced to admit my relapse.

To my surprise, she wasn't angry. She looked me in the eyes and asked my to explain to her why I used, why I could not stay clean.

I stayed silent for a long time before I told her that heroin was the only thing that made life bearable for me.

We stared at each other over another eternity of silence.

"I want to know, " she said, in barely more than a whisper. "I want to know what it feels like."
"What?"
"Listen, I've had a really crappy day. I hate my life, I hate my parents, I hate my studies, I dread my future. I want to have at least one day of blissful oblivion. I know it's a spectacularly bad idea, but I also know you won't let me get addicted. Plus, then at least I'd be able to understand what you are struggling with".

I will regret my response to this naive little speech for the rest of my life.

I fetched my works from their hiding place, cooked up a dose, and injected her. Then I held her as she collapsed back into my arms. I will never forget looking down into her face, seeing the ecstasy, and feeling a combination of terror and the most intense regret I had ever experienced.

I had delivered my beautiful love into the clutches of my own daemon...

Of course she asked me again the next day, and being high myself, I didn't have the resolve to say no. A few weeks after the first time I dosed her, she dropped out of University. We spent our days sitting in the flat her father was still paying for, doing drugs that we bought with the money her parents sent her to cover her living expenses.

It took several months before her parents found out that she had dropped out of university. They were livid. Her father cancelled the rent on the flat we were living in, commanding her to come home immediately. Unwilling to go home as strung out as she was, she refused, telling him she'd get a job and pay for the apartment herself. After a long and very ugly fight, he consented.

22 May, 1993

Fate intervened before we needed to figure out how we were to pay the rent.

The morning of 22 May, 1993, Louise went out to find some food for us, while I went to get drugs. The plan was to shoot up together after breakfast. But I was too strung out to wait until after breakfast, so I swallowed a hand full of painkillers from the stash I had been hiding from her before I left the flat. I got back before her and, unable to wait any longer, I cooked up a dose and shot up.

When she came in moments later, I was lying on the floor, barely breathing. She immediately ran out to a couple of friends who lived in the block next-door. They dragged me out of the flat, down to the car, and drove me to hospital. When they arrived at the hospital the friends wanted to leave, but Louise stayed. By the time they had helped me, she was going into withdrawal herself. With incredible courage and even more sense, she told the nurse that she had been using too, and needed help. She kissed me, told me she loved me and to call her when I was sober and intending to stay that way, and walked away with the nurse, into rehab.

Two weeks later she went home to her parents.

Mercifully, she never used drugs or alcohol again in her life.

August 12, 1993

I had been out of my own for months. Louise was back at home, recovering and waiting for me to get clean. Even if I had the courage to contact my grandma or brother, I didn't have the means to travel across the country, back to them. So I walked the streets by day and slept in shop entrances, under trees or on park benches at night. I ate only what I could shoplift. I picked pockets and snatched handbags to pay for my drugs. I did occasional deliveries for drug dealers, in exchange for drugs, but most of the drugs they gave me never reached the buyers. This, of course, did not promote a friendly relationship between them and me, necessitating me to buy my drugs from various different dealers.

August 12 was a particularly good day. I had scored some junk from a dealer, in return for doing a drop-off to a rich housewife in an upmarket suburb. She had tipped me generously, thus enabling me to buy some cocaine to go with it. I shot some of the heroin, and then proceeded to walk out of a liquor store with a bottle of vodka under my too-baggy sweater. At dusk, I sat down under a tree in a park, downed half the Vodka and cooked up and shot a strong speedball.

I walked around the dark city streets in that strange kind of high for what felt like a very long time, until the cocaine started to wear off. Suddenly, my legs could no longer carry my weight, and I was struggling to breathe. I collapsed in a shop entrance and watched the city receding further and further, until I could no longer see it and my world went black.

When I woke up again, everything was very white and bright. My body ached unbearably, I was nauseous and the lights blinded me. I lay still for a while, trying to determine if I was dead or alive, before a nurse came in and gave me the answer.

A terribly unsympathetic doctor told me that I had been unconscious for almost three days and that I should count myself lucky to be alive. He also told me that my brother had called and was expecting me to call him when I was able to. How he had known not only that I was in hospital, but also which hospital, is a mystery that neither of us could understand.

I also learnt that I was in hospital, and therefore alive, only because of the efforts of a couple who had made it their mission to walk the down-town streets at night, ministering to the junkies and lost souls that populated the dark spaces in between the clubs and restaurants. They saw me lying there, unconscious, and took me to hospital. Unfortunately they refused to leave contact details, or even their names, so I have never been able to thank them for saving my life.

August 25, 1993

After a brief stint in inpatient detox, I flew home on a ticket that my brother and grandmother had pooled their money to buy.

I was 21 years old. I weighed 45kg - about two thirds of what would have been a healthy weight. My senses, dulled by drugs for so long, winched at the least bit of stimulation. Above all, I was terrified. I had looked death in the face, and, perhaps for the first time, discovered a desire to stay alive. I also knew that I was in very, very deep trouble.

I volunteered for rehab. John suggested I needed long-term, and I said yes, please. Put me somewhere for as long as it takes, because I probably won't survive otherwise. I went into rehab a few weeks later, and stayed for 6 months. I was prescribed Suboxone, supposedly to manage the cravings. I was more committed to rehab than I had ever been before. I worked hard. The staff was all very impressed with me. They even made me a group leader after three months, and after 4 months they gave me some admin duties.

When I got out, still on Suboxone, everyone rallied around me - they were all determined that I would be ok. I moved in with John and his girlfriend, promising to get a job and start paying rent as soon as possible. A few days later, I called Louise and told her that I had just completed 6 months in rehab, and begged her to give me another chance. She agreed.

My grandma even offered to pay for me to finish high school.

I knew what I had to do - 90 meetings in 90 days. Finish school. Get a job. Settle down. Do the right thing. Stay away from booze and drugs. Stay away from my old drug-buddies and dealers. Build a life. (Choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family...) There was no logical reason why I would fail.

I had lists of things to do, lists of things not to do. I had dreams - things I wanted to accomplish and places I wanted to see. What I didn't have was a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted a career, but I didn't know in what. I wanted a healthy social life, but I had no healthy friends. I wanted the big television, the washing machines, cars, compact disk players and electrical tin openers, but I had no idea how to get there from where I was.

I was completely overwhelmed. I was surrounded by people who loved me, who wanted everything to be just fine. People who heard me say that I wanted to get my life in order, and who believed that I could, and would do it. But it was scary. I felt powerless. Perhaps I had learnt step 1 too well. I procrastinated studying for my high school certificate, because I was scared I would fail. I couldn't get a job, because I had so little faith in myself that I couldn't sell myself in an interview. If I did get a job, I was so convinced that I'd be fired soon, that I didn't even bother trying not to get fired. The longest I kept a job was about 3 weeks. I got deeply depressed. I needed to earn money. Eventually I started running deliveries for my old drug dealer again, telling everyone that I got a job at a courier-company, delivering packages. I convinced myself that it was temporary, just until I get something else. I even convinced him to pay me in money, not drugs.

Part 7: Rock Bottom, or did I just decide to stop digging?