Looking back on things has been difficult and helpful I suppose. My child hood was normal. Good parents, siblings, and school. I got in fights, I had decent grades. So, to really try and pin point a downfall that led me to where I am is extremely unfathomable. To those that don’t understand the complicated equation of how addiction works, and I can’t say that with anymore sarcasm in my being, there isn’t always a turning point. Sometimes its good kids making a poor decision.
I don’t know if I even would qualify myself as such, however my parents always said that I was. My decisions came fast and steady as they usually do for young adults. My turning point was just one of many poor decisions I was about to make. In the back of my head, I should have known. I was naive to the fact; it wasn’t such a topic that it was always in the news. For fuck sake, we were still doing current events in high school at this point. It all started at a party, harmless yeah, I know, but still where it all began. The alcohol, and the drugs. Some hard, some not. What really interested my soft and suicidal mind, was how to make things quiet, with out, the finality of pulling a trigger.
I found it, in that one instance, I was just calm, not thinking about what needed to be done the next day, or, worrying about what my parents were going to think of any of this. Because it didn’t matter. The needle hit the vein and I depressed that brown fluid into myself, slow and steady, and bam instant relief. That's how it started. I don’t know who brought it, or how I even came across it. All I knew was in that moment in time, I liked it, and I liked it a lot.
Now just to back track a little bit, because hindsight of course is always 20/20, my biological father was an addict, and well it happens to be in some other parts of the family as well. So, if I knew then what I know now? Would that have made any difference? I can almost with certainty tell you that it wouldn’t. The high lasted for what seemed like forever, a high I had never experienced before, and holy fuck was it amazing, and the only thought I had while coming down, was that I had to do that again...... so I did.
That just happened to be poor decision number 2.... or was that 3? Not sure, but it probably is irrelevant anyways. But what's to come, at least for me, defined me and who was around me in a way that you could never imagine if you haven't been touched by addiction. The pain is relevant in every aspect of my being. The slow push of a needle, the immediate relief. Rock bottom came quickly, between the suicide attempt, and the most devastating event of my life time, which didn’t coincide with what I thought was possible. Rock bottom is usually the turning point of someone's life. For me it was a jumping off point, but in what direction was still uncertain.
When I would use, everything sounded like a good idea, if the high kept coming, it didn’t matter. But even while high, you get to a point where you just want it to stop. It's being possessed and not having any control. It is pushing the ignition switch but having ultimate failure. My ignition switch happened to be Russian roulette with my so-called best friend, that happened to be a junkie as well, and as I use that term so lightly, just know how I hate it. The game is straight forward as we all know, and it all came down to a coin flip. Heads was my call, and as that coin rattled around on those pine floors, it fell to tails. This moment has led to more nightmares then I can even count, if I so in fact did care to count them.
The spin of the rolling chamber and that distinctive click, that it won’t be me type of attitude, but really hoping it to be, so the madness will stop. The turn happened quickly, the shock has lasted the last 13 years, the sound still echoes through my head, the spray felt like water, like sitting at the ocean right on the shoreline during a storm. The disbelief of what I had just seen should have set me into oh fuck mode. But I sat there, staring, unable to move. Not a sound came out, no screaming, no emotion, just a blank expression. A coward looking for a way out, was partly responsible for another who had found the wrong door unknowingly, and absolutely hated him for it.
This was by far the lowest point in my life, I needed a way out, and had to find one. I found solace in writing, as the notebooks started to pile up, and the meetings kept coming, while trying anything to get me to where I needed to be. Nothing has come easy since, its been so long, but I can remember things like they just happened. The more I write about things, the more I remember of how I was. I loathe who I was, with every inch of my being. To me there is almost nothing I can do, to atone for my sins. The more friends I bury, or watch start on that path is insane, and when the masses don’t have the definition of insanity, well they are doomed to repeat it.
The meetings I attend now, I look to see what I can do to help, it makes me feel more human, a way to cope with the all the destruction I caused through this little adventure of mine. The streets are littered with landmines and trying to dodge them to stay sober is so stressful in a way, that this will surely bring me to an early end. Its all been worth it in the end. we all start on this journey in a similar fashion, and while the middle is always different for everyone, the outcome has always remained the same. Get clean or die!
