The First Step...

The First Step…

There was no denying it any longer. What had started with recreational use had blossomed into a monster I could no longer control. My addiction was in full swing and I had to do something concrete before it finally swallowed me whole and destroyed me. My sense of perspective had disappeared and I felt unable to separate the fantasy of what I was doing from the reality and the reality was it was slowly turning my mind to useless mush with each and every passing day. For every positive effect of my addition there seemed to be 10 more truly deleterious effects. Effects so bad that the mental addiction had finally outstripped the physical addiction. I simply couldn’t stop no matter how I tried such was the depth of the physical side effects.

Addiction is so insidious as to first enslave the body and by natural consequence enslave the mind in short order. Physical addiction, while not easy to overcome by any stretch of the imagination is a mere pittance to the mental addiction that can follow. The human body, being the amazing machine it truly is, can shuttle poisons from the body in a relatively short time, usually within 3 days to a week. In that time, the body filters and removes the physical poisons that it has become accustomed to but it may take even longer for the body to learn that they will not be coming back.

The mental aspect of addiction however, is a much different animal requiring weeks or months and in some cases even years to overcome. It’s often said, “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” As a current smoker and former drug user I can attest to the accuracy of that statement. My drug addiction is far behind me now but when I find myself in the presence of my old favorite I still feel the wistful longing of what it used to do to me. I also remember what caused me to finally some to grips with the fact that I had a serious problem with it. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to properly set the stage for the inevitable conclusion.

Barstow, California 1989

As the paramedics worked on me, explaining that I was suffering what they called a “drug induced stroke”, the smoke began to clear and I could at last see what I had become. After a particularly nasty bender of snorting crystal meth for a period of nearly 12 days, my brain had finally had enough of both the drug and the fact that I had nearly starved myself of the most basic essentials needed to sustain life, food, water and sleep. My body began to physically seize up and shut down. Feeling faint and weak, I sat down on my favorite chair and slowly, painfully, the muscles in my body began to lock up and tense of their own volition. I could neither move nor speak as I sat there terrified at the changes I was going through. My hands slowly turned into claws and my arms and legs began to stiffen as if being pulled outward on some horrible, invisible rack. It truly was torture in that the muscles began to pull so tightly that I felt physical pain from the effects of it.

It was pure agony and had it not been for my roommates recognizing what I was going through I might have sat there all night envisioning my eventual death at the hands of my own weakness and frailty.

Through clenched teeth because of a jaw that would not respond to my commands to open and speak, I hissed, “Call...an...ambulance.”

Although the rest is still something of a blur, I vaguely remember two male paramedics asking me questions and connecting probes to my body. Despite my claims of not doing any drugs at all, why, that would be bad after all, they knew what they were seeing and my denials fell on deaf ears as they did their work.

To this day I am still not sure what, if anything, they actually did to bring me out of the state I was in. My roommates later claimed that the EMT’s merely monitored me for any serious distress and let the episode run it’s course. I remember the mental haze clearing enough to hear one of them asking me if I wanted to go to the hospital to be checked out further. With the muscles in my jaw finally beginning to slack just a little I weakly croaked, “No.”

Even in my weakened, drug addled state, I knew that going to the hospital meant more trouble than I was willing to accept at that moment. My wife, who was out of town just then, would definitely find out and my boss might find out through the grapevine. It was too risky to even entertain the thought of being hospitalized for what would eventually be called, true or not, a drug overdose. Besides, I couldn’t leave the house just then anyway. My nearly 2 year old son was asleep in his crib at the time and had been so during the entire episode.

After the truth I’ve just imparted I won’t lie and say my parental responsibility was the sole factor in my decision to skip a trip to an emergency room. It was fear. Naked, unadulterated fear of being labeled a drug addict prevented me from seeking the medical attention that could have, at minimum, helped me understand what I had just been through and at best, given me a path to recover from it.

The days and weeks that followed were both painful and difficult to deal with considering I had a son to take care of and  job to be accountable to. The immediate aftermath left me with involuntary muscle spasms and a pronounced stutter. In fact, for the first week or so, I was unable to speak clearly because the stutter still gripped me so badly at times that I would simply stop speaking and write out what I wanted to say. As time passed and my body began to rid itself of the poison I had been pushing into it for so long the physical side effects began to wane. The muscle spasms finally stopped but the stutter remained though to a much lesser degree than when it first manifested. Even now, nearly 30 years later, I will still catch on a syllable or word and the stutter will return. I’ve developed enough mental focus over the years to overcome it most of the time but it still remains dormant as a reminder to me of the dangers of my obsessive/compulsive personality.

The overwhelming fear I spoke of is what ultimately helped me overcome that addiction. I was frankly terrified when I remembered what had happened to me. It was, at the time, the most physically traumatic event of my entire life and I had no desire to ever experience it again. Fear can be a powerful motivator when used in the proper context. It can also destroy you if not controlled effectively.

All that happened in 1989 and since then I have not touched that drug even once so strong is the fear of it. In truth, for the first year afterward my overdose I did nothing at all. I didn’t even dare to have a drink after learning what my OCD nature could potentially lead me to. I smoked my first joint after about 5 years and continued on and off until very recently as we will learn shortly.

It did take radical changes to my life to truly beat the thing completely. I left behind the friends I had used with and began to limit the ways in which I might be exposed to it. I was, at the time, a professional musician so limiting my exposure to both the drug and the people who seemed to always have it on hand forced me to find like minded people who had no desire to be high as often as they could. As a musician, drugs are an occupational hazard that require discipline and focus to avoid successfully. Cutting the people and the drug from my life allowed me to gain the necessary mental strength that was imperative to ultimately gaining the control over my life that had slipped away so easily before. It took many years to finally be around people who used and have the willpower to walk away from the invitations to join the “fun” as they called it. I knew the truth of that “fun” and what it’s eventual cost would be to me. I did not preach to those who used, I simply walked away firm in my mind that the only person I could truly save was myself. It was enough to resist for my own sanity and health. It took herculean effort now and then to walk away unscathed. It was all I could do to save myself let alone save anyone else. I don’t feel particularly selfish for not reaching out to others who might have come to the same ends that I did. I am responsible for myself only. To be completely honest I told only a very few, very select number of people about my overdose and only then in the most comfortable terms possible to assuage my own guilt about my failures with substance abuse.

This is the very first time I have spoken of it in these terms. Accepting that I was, and probably still am, a drug addict with self destructive tendencies is the healthiest and smartest thing I have ever done.

I know addiction. Intimately, personally. Like an old lover whose embrace is remembered but not wished for again. After about ten years I was at last able to say that I had beat it for good and I mentally had a conversation with the drug that turned out to be the most cathartic  part of the whole experience. It went something like this.

“Look, crank, this just isn’t working out anymore. We have to stop seeing each other because we’re just not good for each other. I need to be on my own for a while and work on me and I can’t have you there anymore. It’s not you really, it’s me and no...we can’t still be friends afterwards.”

There are the rare instances when we still manage to cross each other’s paths but they are few and far between and I am much stronger than I was before. I see that drug now as a former lover who nearly killed me and I have absolutely no desire to ever feel that cold, deadly embrace again.

I relate all that in preparation for the second part of this sordid little tale. This first part was simply my way of setting up what is to come. I felt it was necessary to show that I understand addiction perhaps better than some and to a degree that most will hopefully never experience in their lifetimes.

You see, my overdose was my first step, albeit a very painful one, to recovery. In the intervening years after my overdose, I learned a great deal about addiction and recovery both from a personal level and from research and exploration into the subject. I learned that my OCD nature is merely the table upon which my addiction was set. I learned slowly over time that my nature was such that I could lose perspective easily and lose control even more easily and I learned ways to combat it effectively and safely. I learned to use that nature to my advantage at work and in other aspects of my life that could prove useful and beneficial. When I unleashed that nature towards music, for instance, it served as the catalyst for an explosive burst of both personal growth as a musician and a talent for creativity that I did not even know I possessed until I turned what was a character flaw on some levels into an engine for self improvement. There were costs to be paid for that as well but in comparison to my overdose, they seemed an acceptable loss. I was not perfect in any respect but I was better than I had been. As it turned out, I still had a long way to go but this particular misery had ended and I had escaped with my life and mind still intact.

But enough of the past. Let’s turn the clock forward to explore how I let that nature once again rear it’s ugly head and the cost it is now exacting on my modern, “drug free” life.

I often remind myself, in the context of my relationships with other people, that humans are flawed, imperfect beings who are ultimately slaves to their baser desires even when they are unaware of it. I try to see myself in everyone to help me understand that there is a potential drug addict in all of us. Human weakness and frailty knows no bounds and that fact helps me process my own disappointments with people. I am them and they are me. We are all the same underneath it all and it is this that has given me a much happier outlook on life in my later years.

That is until very recently. Once again, recreational use has led to an addiction that has changed me in unexpected and quite unwelcome ways.