Drug addiction – The Reprobate's Guide to Pancakes

Dispelling the Myths that Keeps Us Sick

There are not ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’. We are all changing, always. A few years ago I did mostly bad things, today I do mostly good things. Which one am I?

Some people can’t fathom another way of life. Many people, in fact. The sheer idea of living without substances is enough to make them run out and get high. If you can’t understand this way of thinking, you are blessed.

There is a common misconception that drug addicts enjoy being a addicted to drugs. The enjoyment for a drug abuser is a fleeting experience, when they are still using recreationally. Most ‘normal’ people put addicts in this very neatly defined category where they can be dismissed. They are defined as all that is evil, vile, reprehensible, beyond rehabilitation, unworthy of consideration, devoid of all value. But these are people. These are real flesh and blood people who are labeled similar to that of a serial killer or a supernatural manifestation of evil. I suppose that in most cases, people characterize addicts in this manner because they lack any type of personal experience with the subject and if that’s the case they should get educated or mind their own business.

I love watching documentary style television shows. In fact, those shows are just about the only reason I still have cable. Intervention, Nazi Fugitives, Live PD, Unsolved Mysteries, The First 48, etc., There are so many to choose from! I am glued to the human condition. I want to know what drives a person to become reckless, dangerous and destructive. I want to know the exact day their course was altered, the influence others had on their life, the thoughts and emotions that they felt powerless against, I want to know it all. I want to know what happens after the cameras stop rolling and public interest has waned. One thing always surprises me when I watch these shows. I find that I am far more interested in the culprit, the villain, than I am the victim. The portrait of a victim is the perfect depiction of innocence. It lacks depth. It lacks realism. In these stories, the victim is almost universally good and the offender, well he or she is Satan in the flesh. But in reality, nothing is that simple.

There are not ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’. We are all changing, always. A few years ago I did mostly bad things, today I do mostly good things. Which one am I? If I counted all of the good and bad deeds and charted them, which would win out? Do some deeds weigh more than others? Is there a way to calculate a person’s level of goodness? If so, what is the criteria and who decided it? Is there a bad thing I could do that would be so bad that it could never outweigh any future good? Is there a good thing I could do that would outweigh any future bad? There is no simple answer, so I think of the villain.

People act out their pain in a variety of ways. Drug addiction is just one manifestation of human suffering, and it is suffering. Your average junkie hates themselves. They hate being dependent upon a substance, they hate the way they have treated others. They feel unwelcome, unloved and incapable of changing the course of their life. In my years of addiction, I never once met a person who enjoyed stealing, lying, cheating, sticking needles in their arms, losing their children, watching their friends die, overdosing, going to prison, having no money, being homeless, losing their looks, or any of the other benefits of drug abuse. Given the choice, they’d all prefer to be a wall street banker (yikes!) to a street junkie. They just don’t see the choice, and this is the illusion of the disease.

It is incredibly difficult to convince an experienced addict that they could ever live without substances. Imagine someone telling you that you can live without arms and legs. It’s almost unfathomable. Yes, you know intellectually that people do it, but not you. You need your arms to drive and cook dinner. You need your legs to do yoga and walk the dog. All of your friends have arms and legs and you wouldn’t fit in. Your whole life would be turned upside down. If you didn’t have arms and legs, you would feel helpless and hopeless. That’s exactly what an addict hears at the mention of sobriety. They have lived so long being dependent upon substances that sobriety represents the removal of their most utilized tools. Without addiction, they don’t know who they are or how they will survive—-and they don’t trust you to know for them.

If you were an integral part of someone’s life when they fell into addiction and you didn’t stop it, why would they believe you could help them to come out of it? I’m not saying that you should or could have stopped it, I’m merely saying there is a lack of trust. For most addicts, the world is a messy place full of disappointment. They are looking for a simple answer to a very complex problem, but they, like most people, can’t see the forest for the trees. They are too busy focusing on any given day, any given screw up, any given immediate need that they can’t bother with tomorrow, much less a year from now. And similarly, most families and friends of these individuals are focusing on whatever crisis just happened, or if there is no crisis they are basking in the calm and hoping it is a sign of progress. Rarely is anyone developing a strategy to cure the disease, thus it becomes symptom management.

Managing addiction is about as possible as teaching a two year old how to drink alcohol responsibly. No, that doesn’t even make sense, does it? As a society we try all types of management methods and none of them work. Sorry, drug counselors, I disagree with you on this one. Methadone, Suboxone and all of their friends in the management business, they are a waste of time, money and hope. You can’t treat a chemical dependency with a chemical dependency and I think this is one of the tenets of recovery that most professionals agree on, yet many don’t treat patients with this in mind. We as a society have agreed to manage a problem that often began with a prescription, with a prescription. How daft are we?

We have created a society where chemicals are the answer to everything that ails you. And if the chemical itself ails you, there’s a chemical for that as well. When patients turn to street pharmaceuticals, oh well suddenly there is a problem. The patient has become a criminal and society has washed their hands of them. Are you following how illogical this is?

It is hard to distinguish the victim from the villain. In this story the addict can be the villain, or their family can be the villain, or the pharmaceutical industry, or the medical community, or the legislators who have waged war on drugs but take money from the industries that are catalysts for drug abuse. Guess which of these is the most helpless to defend themselves? Guess which is suffering? Which is profiting? Whose face will you see in the jail blotter? And when you do, recall that there are no villains. Recall that there are only people, some in impossibly difficult circumstances, often beyond your greatest nightmares. Then get on your knees and pray.

Healthy Steps to Loving a Junkie

If you are reading this, there is a very good chance that you either know someone who is addicted to opioids or you yourself are addicted. I’m not just guessing. The numbers are on my side. Warning: Boring statistics ahead.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates there were more than 12.5 million Americans abusing prescription opioids in 2015. That figure doesn’t include the estimated 828,000 heroin users in our country. Since that time, opioid abuse has risen dramatically. In 2017, an average of 90 Americans have died each day from opioid abuse, and the numbers don’t appear to be lessening. I dare you to go compare deaths by guns with deaths by drug abuse. I won’t do all of the work for you.

I’m not a fan of statistics. They make stories dry and dull, but in this case I need them to prove a point. You aren’t alone. And if it isn’t opioids, it’s methamphetamine. And if it isn’t meth, it’s alcohol. And if it isn’t alcohol, well, you can fill in the blank. I am pretty sure I even saw someone overdose on God once.

I’ve met countless parents who have recounted their stories of having children addicted to drugs, incapable of making sound decisions. These stories always consist of theft, jail, poor health, small children caught in the mix and often they end in prison or death. In support circles, the saying is “Prison, death and institutions.” Those are the three inevitable ends for someone who doesn’t recover from drug addiction. Just imagine those choices. Which would you pick? A person addicted to substances knows, at some point in their journey, that one of those three choices is guaranteed for them, but the disease is so strong that it overcomes all logic. A person addicted to substances cannot be expected to suddenly wake up and make healthy choices. This is why it is incumbent upon their family and friends to get honest, get serious and get severe. Is that what most families choose to do? Hell no.

How many times have I told a parent to completely cut their child off financially? Almost as many times as I’ve seen a parent secretly wish to kill me, steal my skin and use it to hide their child from the consequences of life. That would be a very poor decision, for any of you who might try. Life’s consequences are particularly fond of my scent. I get it. I don’t want my children to hurt anymore than other parents, despite what they tell you. But it is surprisingly hard to get people to understand that by perpetually protecting someone from the consequences of their actions, you have set them up for a tremendous fall.

Stop enabling people to self destruct. If someone is exhibiting clearly destructive behavior and your attempts to rationalize with them or provide help have been fruitless, STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE.

The fact is, some things are beyond us. Some things must play themselves out to their inevitable conclusion. If a train is baring down on your child, jumping in front of the train will in no way help anyone. It won’t stop the train and both of you will perish. If you are lucky enough to shove your child out of the way of danger, they are now even more confident that they can stand in the way of a train and not die. Continue this cycle and their confidence in their immunity to consequences will increase. When a train is baring down on your child, let them feel the fear of impending pain, because in this fear is hope. They SHOULD be scared. They should be scared, motivated and aware that their survival is dependent upon their own actions.

I didn’t stop until I could taste the tracks and sometimes this is what it takes. If you are in this position, I am glad for you. Crisis is an opportunity for healing! If you haven’t hit a crisis yet, step out of the way and it will come.

My recommendation, based on experience as both an enabler and a junkie, is to let people self destruct. Stop providing money, legal help, housing, medical care, transportation and employment to someone who is incapable of treating you and the assistance you’ve provided with respect and maturity. Stop abetting their illness by ignoring the symptoms and dismissing their decline. Don’t place blame for their situation on their employers, spouses, probation officers, lawyers, neighbors, etc., Don’t allow them into your home. Don’t allow manipulation, guilt or fear to making you a willing party in their disease. When you support a junkie’s lifestyle, even if out of love and loyalty, you support their death.

Loving an addict is hard. Addicts will take advantage of the people who love them most. They are capable of manipulating your genuine concern into a means to support their ‘habit’. It’s not a habit, by the way. It’s a monster and you don’t fight monsters with delicate pleading or passive agreement. You fight monsters with strategy, cunning and an end-goal that you never lose sight of.

The goal is and will always be, in these cases, to save a life. You cannot concern yourself with their job, home, school prospects, spouses, or diva demands. If they die, all of that is gone. Remind yourself of this constantly.

If you find yourself in the fortunate position to be of help to an addict in crisis, there are a few things you can do to lend to their success.

1. Be prepared for the swing. An addict who has just missed a fatal impact with a train is thrilled at the prospect of going to treatment. They will tell you how badly they want sobriety and how much they want to change their life. They will apologize for their treatment of you, of others. They will say everything that might give you hope that you have reached the promise land of recovery. Do not, for even one moment, let your guard down. I went to detox somewhere in the range of ten times and each time I was thrilled to be there. Guess how many times I went back to my dope fiend lifestyle? One less time, because a few people in my life did exactly as I am recommending to you now. If you take the right measures, you have a shot at helping them. It may take a few times as we junkies, by nature, are incredibly willful and arrogant.

2. After a couple of days, they will convince you that they are doing great. They will convince you that they are doing SO great that there is absolutely no need for them to remain in detox or proceed to a rehabilitation center. You will be so excited to see in them the person that you once knew, the person who wasn’t a manipulative pariah, that you can easily be swayed by this act. Don’t be. Don’t fall prey to the game.

3a. Negotiations. This is by far my favorite part of the ‘junkie writes the rules’ act. An addict is keenly aware of your desire to help them, to see them recover and thrive. They also know that you would love nothing more than to welcome them back into your life and your home. They will capitalize on this. They will make a very persuasive argument about how they can become healthy at home—-your home usually. Usually these moments consist of statements like “All I need is to get a job and..” or “This time is different. I promise I’m going to do A, B & C as soon as I get home.” When you hear these statements from someone with less time in recovery than it takes a pancake to cool, ignore everything they are saying. Smile, nod and tell them that you aren’t playing their games anymore.

3b. When their amiable act doesn’t work, they may resort to three year old tactics. Prepare for fits, tantrums, anger, vile accusations and unreasonable demands. Some people even become violent. An alternative to the angry approach is the sad, fearful approach where they break you with their tears. Either way, become a stone. Stand up and walk out, or if you are on the phone, hang up. End their reign as the puppeteer of your emotions.

3c. Demands are a last ditch effort for addicts to regain control. This most usually manifests in threats of suicide. If that happens, you must remember that they were ALREADY committing suicide, albeit slowly. Most addicts and alcoholics do not actually wish to die. They are far more committed to removing pain than to exiting life. Frankly, it is irrelevant. This is one of those things that is beyond your control and submitting to the demands of their disease will not guarantee you more time with them. It may actually do the opposite, hastening their death.

4. If you make it past #3, you are truly experiencing a miracle. This is not the time to offer financial support, though. If you survive to this point, offer emotional support. Assist them in finding a good rehabilitation program. Remind them that you are willing to restore your relationship with them. This is the best support you can give. The rest is between them and God.

I highly, highly recommend an inpatient program that is at least six months long, preferably longer. Detoxification can take months to complete and many symptoms caused by years of poor nutrition and drug use can even remain for years. Sadly, most detox facilities allow a patient to stay 5-7 days, which is often a very crucial period where someone may easily slip back into drug abuse. Many rehabilitation facilities are as short as 30 days. At 30 days, I was just remembering how it felt to have awareness of my limbs. That is not even close to an exaggeration. I was far from capable of returning to society as a productive member.

There is no exact science to recovery. If physicians, counselors and politicians had the answer, we wouldn’t be plagued by drug abuse. I don’t pretend to have every answer either and there is no guarantee that your best efforts will bring a positive outcome —but it’s worth a shot.

There is love in resistance. There is love in the word ‘no’. There is love in stepping back and allowing God to take over. There is love in admitting your limitations. There is love in saying the things that hurt the most. There is love in the truth.

This is a very painful place to be for anyone, most especially a parent. Your fears and your worries are legitimate and you most assuredly aren’t alone. Millions of other people are feeling exactly as you do right now, holding it all inside and praying that God will provide a way out. Millions of people are staying awake at night in fear that this will be the night that they receive that dreaded call. Millions of people are sinking into a depression and feel helpless to fight against it. Do not lose hope, above all else. I am a living miracle, a person who beat all odds. I am the success story you never hear of. I am the person that broke a needle off in her neck and considered suicide her only way out. I am the person that destroyed every relationship, ruined every opportunity, lost her children, her joy, her faith and all hope of recovery. But it is because of people like you, people who loved me despite my disease, that I am able to write this for you today.

If any of you need someone to speak to, please reach out to me. I am happy to share my experience and advice or just listen, without judgment or condemnation. Send a message through the contact form on the website.

Swimming Without Shores

I don’t watch movies. They bore me. I rarely watch TV. It irritates me. I can’t be scared anymore. I don’t get butterflies in my stomach or feel ignorantly hopeful about anything. I make no assumptions that my time on Earth will be OK. I’m never surprised when things go poorly. I assume the worst of strangers, the best of no one and consider all of my words will be used against me. I clean when I’m anxious, cry when I’m out of ideas and when I’m both, I sit very quietly and allow it to crush me from all sides. I pray and then pray that I will know what to pray, the perfect sequence to unlock the will of God. Friends are few and at a distance, family is inside but not beyond my guard tower. Everyone is subject to removal. They call this Fear.

I read books. They fuel me. I write stories. They cleanse me. I am amazed by the power of my own mind and the places it takes me. I am electrified by the formation of a thought I’ve never had before and giddy when it flows effortlessly like warm butter. I am always surprised when people prove me wrong. I forgive the worst of strangers, expect the best of no one but myself and consider that if I am willing to say it, I better be willing to stand by it. I sleep when I’m content, share with everyone when I’m creative and the two make a magical pairing. I forget God in the midst of my mess and kick myself for relying on my own understanding. The friends who remain love me more than I deserve, family, beyond all cause, and only because they choose. Everyone is necessary. They call this Love.

I had more ‘friends’ in addiction than I do today. Indiscriminate, I had a home in my sick heart for all. Today, I live in world, I’ve found, that very few may enter. It’s healthy, it’s lonely and it’s what I must do to survive.

There’s a kind of shock that comes when you wake up from a nightmare. When you wake up and realize that, beyond all belief, the nightmare was real, the shock settles in for good and becomes a part of your arsenal. Christ tells me to fight this fear with faith, experience tells me to respect it by instinct. The two war daily within me. I am forgiving and condemning. I am love and hate. I am surrendered, I am my own God. I am patient, I am incensed. I am given over to emotion and a controlled demolition. Every day I put my feet on the floor, fail, cry and take a step.

Tonight I saw an acquaintance in line at the grocer. I don’t know which I bowed to in that moment, Christ, fear or both in concession. He was/is in very poor condition with tremendously swollen legs and cracked soles and no, I don’t know the exact cause. Were I to give an educated guess, I would say a heart infection brought on by drug abuse. I may be off base. Either way, I turned and left without speaking to him, leaving him to walk home on his injury. I don’t feel bad and I would hope that my relationship with God is so that I would know unequivocally if I had erred. I am a brother in Christ but also a mother in Christ and thus I feel a responsibility to stay far removed from people in these situations. This is the tightrope I walk between love and safety.

I will pray for him and truthfully, there I am most powerful. I don’t know how to function well between these two places without erring. It may be impossible. I am only sure that it isn’t my job to save, only to obey. I’ll leave the saving to Christ, he’s far better at it than I.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

When Gifts are Gutters

I’ve never been very good at isolating what I want in life. I know what I want in food, in friends and fun, but the big picture is an obscure galaxy of possibilities. I have always had the sense that I exist somewhere outside of my body, somewhere outside the laws of physics. My true self is always just a little beyond my reach. When I was young, I would lay very still in my bed and suddenly I could feel the separation between my spirit and my body; two independent entities working together. My spirit felt trapped within the burdensome confines of my body. If you’ve ever cooked pasta al dente, that was how I perceived the experience. My spirit was hard, structured and tangible like the core of a noodle and my body was soft, vulnerable and incasing, like the exterior of the noodle. There was a definite separation between the two, though they were formed to fit one another. It feels strange to describe it today, but I can still visualize and remember the feeling to it’s most intricate detail. I would try to force my spirit free of my body with no success. I have always been trapped in this foreign prison.

It’s not that I hate my body. I just don’t identify with it. I am lithe, agile and ever expanding, soaring in all directions, dimensions and caving inward just as quickly. I am electric, reaching out into every space and engaging. Every thought, feeling, idea or desire is within my reach. Every pain is mine and yours and shared and there are no barriers between. My body, however, is a sloth. It separates me from all other things, defines my space and attributes, eliminates possibilities and engages only in within the limits of some laws I can’t understand. It tells me no, slows me down, forces pauses and structure and consumes too much of my time with it’s demands for nurturing.

When I was young I thought everyone felt this way. I think we all assume the rest of the world thinks as we do. I was wrong. My friends liked it here on Earth. They had Whitney Houston, dance recitals, Keds and fudge pops. They thought about things they could feel and touch and never felt the kick of their spirit as it slammed against their kidneys. So, where does a ten year old go when they have no one to identify with? My friends were too simple, adults too preoccupied.

I went from wanting to be a doctor to wanting to know why I was here. Many nights I prayed that Jesus would appear before my bed and just tell me what to do. Simple request. I’m glad he didn’t though, because telling a ten year old they will become a heroin addict probably won’t lend to their journey. And why even try? I was heading there all on my own.

I dove into books on history, poetry, philosophy, religion, mystical practices, psychology and anything that might explain what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I should have had my Master’s Degree by the age of twelve. I knew I had a job but no one was telling me what it was. I scrawled quotes into the undercarriage of my bunkbed, wrote poems, songs and stories. And when that wasn’t enough I fell into a depression.

The summer that I turned twelve, I fell into a deep hole. I can recall laying on our couch and crying into the cushions. I knew. Somehow I just knew my life was about to change forever and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew that my time as a child was over. I knew that there would be pain, long-suffering and consequences. I knew I wouldn’t run in the woods or steal gum from the soda shop. I knew I wouldn’t get a pass. I knew that I wouldn’t dance to The Bodyguard or play king of the hill. I knew it was coming and it came like a freight train, mowing down the life I had known. It was a terrible summer and I’ve never been the same person since.

Most of society has such a weak perception of drug addiction. All you have to do is read the ignorant comments on a news article to find out that most people are small-minded and inexperienced on the subject. They want them all thrown in jail, they think they are all horrible people, they call them scum, low-lifes or wish they would die. Those are easy conclusions to come to from their cozy suburban homes. The truth is, junkies are more complex, more feeling, more intuitive, sensitive and intelligent than your average newspaper subscriber.

I didn’t stumble upon drug addiction. I went there naturally. I was born into a world that didn’t respect feelings, spirituality, existentialism or originality. I was told I should fit into a specific set of socially admirable criteria and if I didn’t, I was a failure. I was told to like crap music, care about clothes more than people, want money more than freedom, regurgitate facts and be the best fleshy little robot I could be. And when I couldn’t do that, drugs got me there. Drugs allowed me to stop thinking and start operating on a low-level. Drugs eliminated my desire to know God, to know my path or to reach beyond my body and grasp the things that can’t be seen. The first time I snorted an oxycontin, I heard angel’s sing through the sound of my own vomiting. I thought I had found an exit from my pain, but instead I had entered hell on a straw.

There is a part of every junkie that was snuffed out with their first hit and usually it was the best part of them. Usually, it was the part of them God created especially to bring joy, love and beauty to this world.

Today, I’ve come to an agreement with my body. Sobriety doesn’t relieve every struggle. We aren’t exactly friends, but I make it work for me. I let it exist in the world I’ve chosen to create, like an annoying guest that I’m willing to tolerate for a time, because I know one day it will die and with it, my prison. And at night, I fly.

In Every Stock Photo Lies a Killer

If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship.

Look at this ridiculous stock photo. The photographer never thought “This will be the photo that makes National Geographic!” No, he thought, “This new iPhone is amazing! I can zoom so far I see my career!” I like it though, because somewhere far below the range of the shot there is a hidden culture of creatures, diverse and distinct, devouring each other, fighting for space, food and survival. Our world is just like this. We wear pants and keep our elbows below the table but behind all of the pretense, we are no different. If you have ever spent time in a Walmart parking lot, you’ve witnessed this reality.

Ocean Stock Photo

I used to believe that some people had it all figured out. They wore watches with fancy little numbers and dials, changed their oil on the recommended date, avoided nitrates and instilled a love for the classic writers in the hearts of orphans. Only someone on dope could believe such nonsense. All it took was a few weeks of sobriety for me to realize that everyone is fucked up in their own unique way. Some people smell bad and that way is never going to land on my list of acceptable oddities. Others hide their issues behind iron gates and decorative corbels —equally offensive. Some of us play our sickness out in a parking lot or jail cell. Pick your poison, you’re spilled milk like the rest of us and I love you for it.

I’ve always preferred those who offer up their demons like business cards. If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship. If you say you’ve just been released from the mental institution and you are selling hand-carved soap to support your dope habit, I’ll happily give your eulogy. Most people in society look down on these folks, but they are far more respectable than your garden variety politician or housewife. You don’t have to worry whether they will betray you. Of course they will! And doesn’t it feel good to know where you stand?

Three of the best weeks of my life were spent in a psychiatric facility. During that time, I met a respectable housewife who suddenly believed she was talking to God. I also met a respectable furniture craftsman who thought he WAS God. They had been placed in the ER together, divided only by a curtain and their families were lucky enough to hear them talk to one another, God and his child. Both had experienced some sort of mental breakdown which resulted in unmatched comedy. After they both exited their delirium, we found out they worked across the street from each other but had never met! I felt like the luckiest witness on the planet. What kind of good dope junkie must I have been to have stepped into this mess? I will never forget them and the hope they gave me. Anyone can be bat-shit crazy—-anyone. There was hope for me yet.

I feel sure that both of them went back to their suburban lives without testimony to others. They returned to their dinner parties, business meetings, manicured lawns and never spoke a word of it, not even to their most liberal friends. Maybe they saw someone slipping, maybe they saw an acquaintance with that look, the look that begs for help but holds the mouth hostage, but the impulse for honesty was buried deep. They are you and I and everyone in-between. But I know, and now you do too.

None of us are exempt. I’m a mother of two with a felony drug conviction and a vault of stories that would make most men cringe. I’m not dumb, I’m human, we all are, and for that I am forever thankful. Without mistakes, this life would be bland, boring and utterly devoid of killer stock photos.