Hi.
What a long strange trip it’s been. At least it seems like a long time.
When I first posted about my…. ahem… situation… I was still pretty messed up. I actually made it four days clean after that post… but then I woke up one evening on the couch, drug paraphernalia on the table, and I couldn’t remember shooting up or with whom I had done it. Couldn’t remember how the drugs made it into the house. Then I read a post on this BBS saying something along the lines of “I heard Nash told his parents and he’s now in a treatment center”. Gosh did I ever feel like an idiot. Because…. nope. I'm not sure where that came from, but it certainly didn't happen. Shoulda though... I’d make it clean for a few days, then break down, then five days clean, then another couple… It went like that for, I guess, another couple of weeks. Finally I gave up on the idea of doing this alone. I just couldn’t.
I booked myself into a detox clinic and stayed there for 5 days. That was pure hell. The guy in the bed right across from me was actually snorting heroin…. All day, all night. I sat in bed hardly able to even move – just watching this. He ended up cuffing a couple of guys I made friends with there, and they went to the washroom to get high. So now I’m near death and surrounded by 3 of these bastards… all ‘I feel fantastic!’ and jumpin’ around. That was it. I got the guy to cuff me some, but the problem was that I didn’t have a rig – no way to get the stuff in my system except to smoke it. So there I am in the can, hands shaking from excitement/withdrawal as I pour the stuff out onto the foil from inside a cigarette pack. The idea is, light the bottom of the foil which heats up the heroin resting on it and you inhale the smoke. Well, I’m sitting there in a stall all freaked out with anticipation because everything is about to get just a whole lot better for me but as soon as I hold the lighter to the bottom of the foil POOF the whole thing goes up into a ball of fire and I go back to bed just Miserable. Pathetic isn’t it. Hmm… Not sure why I wrote all about that particular episode… In the last couple of months I’ve racked up a fairly good share of odd little anecdotes.
Moving right along then.
My little plan was to clean up in detox and head back out to get on with my life. Uhn-uh. I was told by just about everyone that this was a stupid idea. What really helped with my decision to get further help was attending this panel that had a couple of guys named Garth and Bill who talked about… stuff. These guys, you could tell, were hardcore. Same age as me, kinda like me in alotta ways, and they effed up huge like me also. But these guys, after a couple of months of treatment, had their ***** Together. I mean… completely solidly together in a way that I rarely see in anyone. Hard to explain. Whatever it was they got, I wanted in on it.
So, I ended up going to a drug treatment center and lived/learned there for the next couple of months. Sorta like bootcamp for the soul. It was quite surreal…
The days began at about 6:30 am. Breakfast at 7:00. Then there was this thing called “reflections” at 8:15 which I guess was sort of like a religious service although they didn’t really force anything on anyone, short of telling you that you really should have faith in some kind of higher power whatever that may mean to you. By 9:00 we split up into our “small” groups for a couple of hours of, like, talk therapy. At 11: 00 we converged on the “food line” where we worked as dishwashers, cooks, ladlers, plate scrubbers, garbage men, security etc., feeding approx. 700 homeless people. At noon we ate lunch. Class would begin at 1:00, where they’d teach us about various things such as loss, forgiveness, anger, fear and, of course, addiction. These were pretty interesting. At 2:00 we’d have one on one counseling, then we’d be free until 4:00, which would be dinnertime. At 5:00 we’d work the food line again. At 6:30 we’d have more classes – mostly about relapse prevention. After that we’d usually split up into our various little cliques of friends and head out to a Narcotics Anonymous (or Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Methadone Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous or You Name It They Have A Group For It Anonymous). It was mandatory to hit at least 4 of these meetings a week.
On top of that there was a whole ton of written work we had to do…. Journaling, going through the ‘12 Steps’ questions (pages and pages and pages) along with various other exercises (‘Lifeline’, ‘Family Tree’, The Wall’ etc.).
As to free time, there sure wasn’t much of it. Curfew is at 11:00 pm and you cannot even think about leaving the building unless you’re with a “buddy”. The treatment center also served as a halfway house for convicts coming out on parole, and actually these were the guys who I ended up getting along with the best. Most of my free time involved going to Starbucks then hitting the gym to lift weights with a few of those guys. Between that and eating healthier I’ve worked myself into pretty good physical shape.
Hmm…. I’ve gotta stop typing and get to bed. There’s plenty more, so I’ll finish up where I left off sometime tomorrow. To sum up, I feel great and am ready to put a really long period of being stupid behind me and I look forward to… life.
To be continued…
