Craving and Surviving

I've come to a decision. It's one I've been kicking around for awhile, with pressure towards this decision from my mom but still one ultimately only I could make, since it is my throat the pills will be going down. I've decided to take an opiate blocker. Making a commitment. A white pill, made of what is essentially Narcan, same thing used to revive someone from an opiate overdose. Taken daily, it will latch onto the fucking demanding, hungry, ever twisting and scheming opiate receptors in my brain and then block entirely any smack I decide to shoot. And it works, I've (of course) tested it out before. It helped me before and I hope will help me again. It works for 72 hours after each dose, giving me time to stop and think before I act.

That doesn't however prevent me from deciding I'll just shoot crack instead when I want to run from myself; despite the fact that I hate it, I still sometimes decide it's time to see if I like it yet and try again, which always ends in me puking while my ears ring and my heart beats so fast I can barely feel each beat separately, my chest screaming in pain, while swearing to god if I just don't have a heart attack and die I'm never touching cocaine in any form again. The thing with shooting crack versus smoking it is, with smoking, it's hard to overdose. With IV, you don't know it's too much until after you've already shot it, and there have been numerous times where, had I not had smack to slow my heart down again right away, I think I would've collapsed and died. I've also been known to inject diphenhydramine- Benadryl. You could vaccinate me against every known abusable substance on the planet and if I were so inclined, I would still find a way to get high, even if it meant choking myself till I passed out just for the rush that comes before death. That is how sick my brain, at its very core, has become.

So while naltrexone will help, it isn't a magic cure. Either is the Vivitrol shot, given in your ass once a month and supposed to do the same thing naltrexone does- except I had to test that out, too, and a couple days after the shot, my ass still sore, I discovered I am one of that tiny little tenth of a percentage point of people for whom it is totally, absolutely, 100% ineffective. There IS no cure for addiction. This is a fatal motherfucker of a disease it is impossible to ever remove from someone, no matter what Scientology says (been to that treatment center too, it's where my college fund went, and let me tell you, there's no cure to be had there but many, many memories I'd rather not have of some abusive treatment methods- which is why the center I attended was shut down and the directors excommunicated from the Church of Scientology.) This disease will gladly and calmly wait years and years for me to let my guard down and when I do, there will always be a dope dealer down on Peterboro who will help me give my life away again and smile while he does it.

It's up to me to live the life I choose. A friend and brother in arms named Tripp, who is now in prison for dealing meth, made me write on my mirror here at my mom's house "I CHOOSE THE PATH I WALK EACH DAY" and damn if that pseudo brother of mine wasn't dead on. I've looked in that mirror to inject into my neck what probably amounts to multiple kilos of heroin since then and HATED seeing that phrase every single time. Because sick as I am, I am not stupid. I always knew it was true and I was making a choice to push the plunger. Even knowing what choosing not to do dope would mean, the misery of withdrawal, it was still a decision made to start that cycle again after each attempt at sobriety. The decision of using or of cutting myself loose from smack, what I felt for so long (and still feel most hours of the day, though I know it'll pass) was my only tether to the world.

My life, my existence, was as a junkie. Period. I didn't question that, I never asked why me, though I have wished I had a disease with less stigma, like cancer. I didn't stop to think, I just reacted. Pure animal instinct from the deepest reaches of my brain. What will it take to not be sick today and where do I begin going about that task. That was it. Sober moments, even moments on a withdrawal med like subutex or suboxone, were torturous because I knew I would and fully intended to use again at some point. I don't intend to use again now, though, though I am not nearly naive enough to think it could never happen. I'm terrified, honestly old fashioned shaking in my boots waking nightmare terrified, that I'll slip and use again. I need to have 14 days with no opiate use at all in order to start the pills, and every half hour I'm hit with another stomach churning craving out of nowhere. It's hell, it makes the withdrawal I'm still in feel like day three cold turkey kicking, and my mind just spins circles around that image of, say, a filthy rig that MUST be hidden somewhere in my room or the bushes out front or maybe under that one bush round the block from two years ago that might have a cotton with enough dope to feel left in it's plunger cap.

It is absolutely unreal, the power of those cravings. But somewhere, I read that a craving lasts on average 7 to 8 minutes if you don't feed into it. So when my stomach clenches and that picture of needle in vein blood registering plunger depressing hits me out of nowhere, I find a clock to look at. I look at the clock and think, "okay, 8 minutes. Probably more like ten since I'm a really sick one. I can do ten minutes of this, I've done months in jail and kicked cold turkey for days. I can do ten minutes of wanting to snatch the nearest purse and run to my dealer." And it freaking works! It works. I survive. I don't commit a felony, I don't end up dopesick and broke and homeless, and I don't die right then and there from sheer lack of heroin. I survive.

I survive. I have survived a long, long time in a hard, hard lifestyle, one that the president of the USA couldn't survive and I hope never has to. I wouldn't wish what I've survived on my worst enemy. But I survived and am at this point right here, right now, with four days totally opiate free and I think nine or ten days totally heroin free- and for the first time in a very long time, I have every intention of staying as sober as I am right now. Even if it does mean I start crying because one of the 25 cent ghost shrimp I bought today died on the way home, or crying simply because I started crying and then laughing because I can't figure out why I'm crying, and then feeling absolutely nothing for a second before crying again. I feel awkward, totally like a teenager in middle school again, don't know what to do with myself, but I am clean and sober.

I survive, and I am clean and sober. And I will keep surviving no matter what, and someday, I will find myself LIVING again instead of surviving. And that's why I'm clean and sober- because I'm ready to find out what living is like.

Alliances

My father was my one true ally. No matter what. He is the one who taught me all the most important things I know: never pull the trigger without a totally clear shot because to cause an animal to suffer for even thirty seconds while you get off another round is atrocious, and to show that animal compassion and gratitude and the utmost respect for the sacrifice it made for you. NEVER hunt for sport unless you intend to eat or use (not just mount on the wall) every piece of the game you take. That you ALWAYS have enough money to spare some for a kid's lemonade stand. To be self sufficient. To trust people to be good on the inside. To be kind to everyone no matter what. To help people fix flat tires no matter the time or weather. To use words rather than fists when you are angry. To catch and release once you've got enough fish for what you need, and always be gentle and quick in the death of those you keep and grateful for the gift they've given you. To show mercy towards everything and everyone. To make amends for your wrongs no matter how small or how old they are or how angry you feel towards the person you wronged. To never hate- ever. How to raise pigeons in the attic and calmly deal with the fallout that caused with your neighbors when they shot and killed my favorite one, Chirps. How to train dogs to sit, stay, hunt, retrieve and do anything else you need them to do- always with respect and compassion. That there is always something you can do to help a stray, be it a dog or a human. The name in English and Latin of every wildflower, every tree, every animal, insect, bird and fish in Michigan. How to identify a bird by sight, sound, eggshell, nest, or sillhouete. How to stand in the middle of a stream, flyrod in hand, and simply exist in peace with my surroundings. How hard work pays off if you allow it to. How to live in the city peacefully while your heart lies farther north. 

All of the lessons and knowledge and skills I need to live a life I only dream of now, while cravings and thoughts of blood mixing with brown liquid pain relief gnaw at my guts and cause me to retch. Nobody at the squathouse ever cared much about birds unless it concerned flipping them to cops. Nobody I bought smack from ever asked what variety of elm it was we met under (American, rare now thanks to Dutch Elm Disease.) It sure wasn't secret hunting spot locations I was begging for by the freeway ramp. And it wasn't great perch fishing conditions I was running from. Why then is this my life and not the one my father spent countless hours teaching me how to live?

My childhood was spent in the northwoods. Seeing in me what he knew in himself, my dad ensured I spent not a single weekend in this city. Friday after school, Dad loaded all the gear for our next adventure into the car and we were off. My childhood up until age 10 was absolutely, 100%, pure as driven snow PERFECT. I cannot ever remember being unhappy. I excelled in school and excelled in learning what my dad offered up in lessons Up North. Even our own backyard- the wildflower garden that after his death was allowed to go back to nature, which I've now turned into a wild berry patch with tangles of bushes filled with raspberries and blackberries dug out of Michigan soil with my fingers and transplanted there. It'll never be called anything other than "Dad's garden" though. We would catch a garter snake, bring him home for a week, and then I'd learn the lesson of why wild things belong in nature for myself, watching Slithers sit silent and miserable in an aquarium rather than slipping through the grass or sunning himself on a rock in the field where I captured him. It was always by the following Tuesday that I was begging my dad to let me skip school so we could go take Slithers back to his home where he belonged. Or Hissy. Or whatever kiddish name that one had been given. I did this same thing over and over, it being a hard lesson for me to accept, that I could not bring the wild I so loved home with me and have that wild be the same as when I visited it. That the snakes and birds and baby raccoons lived in their home, and I in mine, and our homes were not the same. They were not happy in my home like I was in theirs. 

I don't know quite how to describe what bullying does to a kid. How it totally and irreparably kills them inside. But the fact that the power of those kids' cruel and totally wrong words and actions and thoughts about and towards me eventually became more than the power of what my dad put in my head my entire life- that I was awesome, I was perfect, I was smart and I deserved every bit of my inner happy- goes a long way towards explaining. The words and the actions and the shunning the kids started doling out completely destroyed me. It demolished me. Set fire to my confidence and burned my happiness down. I became haunted, afraid, alone and scared of every new day. I could only fake sick to skip school so many times. I tried my hardest to live for Friday afternoons, when my dad and I would take off north together and the kids didn't matter, but the day came when those kids' words followed me North. They haunted me through the woods, shadowed me along the riverbank. That pain became a piece of me I couldn't escape from anymore.

I internalized their words. I started trying to be like them, stopped going North with my dad. I willingly and consciously pulled myself away from the one person who always understood me, always supported me, always loved me and always encouraged me. I willingly and consciously stopped going with my dad to the few places I always, always belonged- the woods and his embrace, the passenger seat of his car, I-75 North beyond Birch Run with old hippie music on the radio and my best friend at my side, the field with a shotgun against my shoulder and a dog out in front of me on point, Dad speaking encouragement and correcting my stance before asking the dog to flush the pheasant. The very last places and times I felt completely whole and content. I look back and I want to smack myself. Hard. Wake myself up to the reality that those school years do not matter. FAMILY matters. Inner peace matters. Joy matters. Wherever I found that joy and peace is where I should've stayed. I should've fought tooth and nail to stay there. And to walk away from my father? To willingly give up those weekends, those moments in the backyard, because it wasn't cool to be who I was? In all these years between that day and now, in my entire fucking life here in this realm, I have never and most likely will never again do anything else so absolutely stupid. So blissfully ignorant that that choice would end up being why I sit here now, running out of the suboxone I've now got myself hooked on to try to make this easier and planning my escape. 

My father passed away on March 16, 2008, at 57 years old. I had 17 months sober. I had gone hunting and fishing with him a few times in those months, was working back towards what we once had. Making amends. Living the lessons he taught me with him by my side again at last. I had just flown home from a visit to my sister in San Francisco the day before, and we went out to eat together, me, my dad, and my mom. Before I'd left, my mom had asked my dad if he thought I'd be okay in San Fran, if I'd stay sober. My father told her he trusted me implicitly. Over 17 months I had done so well and had earned that trust. But on March 16, my dad got up early to take our new dog hunting, his first work in the field on live birds, and he never came home again. With no history of heart trouble, my dad had his first and last heart attack in the field and died within an hour, the ambulance having just gotten there. My dad died on the half-frozen ground of March in the fields where I shot my first pheasant, with his dog by his side. I'd like to think he would've wanted to go just like that, but I know better. He would've wanted to go surrounded by his family. 

I don't get to ever feel that all-encompassing security of childhood again, but then no adult does. I stayed sober another six months before I let the same thing that sent me to the street the first time send me back again- the loss of that bond with my father. The night I went back, Devil's Night, I screamed and cried and pounded the steering wheel of my truck, begging my higher power to stop me, to send a flat tire, a car crash, ANYTHING to stop me. That was the first time I shot dope against my will and the first time I truly understood the power of the heroin I'd gone running to so long before to kill a pain I could've solved with the tools I had, the person in my life that was always on my side. 

I believe my father paints the sunsets. Delusional, silly, whatever. It is what I choose to believe. What I need to believe. And I'm starting to think he sends the storms that seem to follow me wherever I go when I'm getting high. Sends the sunsets to remind me he is always there, that it is up to me to come back to safety. And sends the storms to remind me what I'm doing is violent, vicious, and unstoppable once started. I watch funnel clouds spin and twist over the lake and I think how they are so much like addiction, striking with seeming randomness, not caring if you're rich or poor, inner city or suburban, a child barely out of pink sweatpants with cartoon dogs on them or an adult with a better grasp on life. 

This disease is cunning, baffling, and powerful, and I don't think there's a way out for me anymore. Some days I grab elusive hope, but usually it slips from my grasp and the world just spins on around my nodding empty shell, leaving greasy tracks along my skin as it passes me by. I miss my dad. His death isn't why I get high anymore; I get high because I can't stop. Or won't stop, don't stop. But really, I can't. Because I'm not willing to face that pain and shame and guilt and regret. So, so much regret. Regret unlike anything I've ever felt before, that crushing weight and stabbing pain and so much that's never far from my mind. So much I want a redo on. Just a do-over on those months between the start of my withdrawal from my dad and my discovery of heroin withdrawal. If God could just give me that one do-over, maybe this story wouldn't be the one it is. Maybe it wouldn't end the way I know it will. 

Maybe I'd have a shadow of a fucking chance.