But mostly, I've been dealing with an inner struggle that only seems to come back and bite me when I think it's gone forever: my ongoing sobriety and struggle to stay clean.
As a teen, I hung out with drug users. I didn't do it at first, partially because I was scared, and partially because I'm cheap and didn't want to pay for it. I'd tried smoking weed before but didn't like it, so that left only harder stuff for me - which is expensive. Unfortunately, my behavior and habit of sleeping away from home made my parents think something worse was going on than it really was. At that point, I was still a virgin, had tried and shunned pot, and nothing more. I guess I was endangering myself with some of the things I was doing (hanging out with a much older crowd, going to bars and nightclubs, stealing cars), but for the most part I was careful.
They didn't see it that way, and threw me into a rehab for damn-near 6 months. Whatever chances I had at reclaiming my freshman year was obliterated, seeing as how I missed most of it, and when I was released (only due to insurance coverage coming to an end), I was miraculously cured. Mind you, I had spent almost half a year with people who had legitimate reason to be locked up and hopped up on meds. My first roommate had been admitted 2 days earlier for trying to kill her parents in their sleep - and I was put in a room with her. I became friends - forced, in some cases, through group therapy and trust-building exercises (chokes) - with people who had serious, serious addictions.
It was a joke - all of it. None of them truly wanted to get clean, and I could see why. They explained every drug and what it did and how it made them feel. What they didn't tell me, we learned through our drug education and PDAP meetings. I was being armed with all the information I ever needed to quell that voice of fear that had always prevented me from using in the past. I mean, honestly...if my roommates had abused drugs to that severity and they were still okay, surely it wouldn't kill me if I did it a few times, right?
When I was released, I began dating the drug dealer at school. I learned more about drugs (and sex, truly) from him and his friends than I did before. And I started doing them. For free, of course. After all, my parents had already done the worst to me. The insurance coverage was for a one-time lifetime thing, so they couldn't send me back, even if they wanted to. There was nothing they could do to me! And as long as I didn't get popped by the cops and had the courts order something, I was home free to do what I wanted to.
"What I wanted to" ended up being years of excessive drug abuse. It started out with LSD, to the point of doing multiple hits every day (i couldn't cope with life if i wasn't tripping, apparently). I was able to get just enough to maintain a certain level of weirdness, although it took significantly more to make me feel crazy effects. I was never a big hallucinator, anyway, so that was one thing that allowed me to maintain that lifestyle. It's not like I was seeing blue rabbits on my parents' heads or anything.
Then I started mixing LSD with Ecstasy, which I learned pretty quickly was a bad, bad, bad idea. And honestly, I didn't really like Ecstasy anyway, because I always threw up at least once. Vomiting is my least favorite activity and was why I had stayed alcohol-free up to this point in life. My silly little teenage mind didn't realize that you didn't have to go balls-to-the-wall with everything, and I didn't know that you didn't vomit every time you drank! LOL! I mean, all my friends sure did!
After some time, I began to meet people who could indeed hold their liquor, and I began drinking every night. Not always to the point of falling down drunk, but you wouldn't see me without something alcoholic in my hand. I remember the first thing that came out of this guy's mouth upon meeting me: "Are you always drunk?" He'd heard about me from some mutual friends. We ended up being very close later in life.
In amongst all of this, I got thrown out of school for a multitude of reasons, took my GED, tried to go to community college, moved into an apartment with my best girlfriend, got knocked up by a guy who broke up with me before I even found out I was pregnant, had an abortion, stayed drunk and high all the time, acquired two stalkers at the same time, and was basically throwing my life away. I realized something had to change...I needed to...move out of the suburbs, into a part of town where all of this was more acceptable! Brilliant!
When I was 17, I met a tattoo artist and we moved in together. I was in love. I thought I was going to get married. I had quit school again and was playing housewife. He worked late hours and did coke. I was scared to, so I just did copious amounts of MiniThins (they contained a ton of ephedra) and lost weight and stayed up all night. One night, I almost overdosed on it and I literally thought I was going to die. But that didn't stop me. I kept doing it. Eventually, TattooGuy and I broke up, and I was living in my truck. I didn't stop partying, though. I crashed at people's houses, sometimes went to my parents' house...I had ways of survival.
And then one of my best friends died from a cocaine overdose. I'd been kinda smitten with him, and we were supposed to go on our first date two days later.
Eventually, I let the partying lifestyle dictate my life's path - if you can call it that - and I began working the circuit of upscale nightclubs downtown. I had managed to hook up with a man nearly twice my age - I was 18 and he was 34 - and we worked in different clubs together. Our clientele would tip me not only with cash - or their phone numbers (blech!) - but that was how I got started with cocaine. I had tons of it after each night. I didn't know what to do with it - I'd planned on selling it. But then, one time, I decided to try it. And it was all over from there.
I became addicted to coke and lived that way for years, on top of my alcoholism. One night, I was pulled over for a burned-out taillight. The cops searched my truck. I went to jail. But being young, innocent-looking, and from a good family can get you out of tight spots. I convinced the judge that someone had left it in my truck and that it wasn't mine. I bleached and dyed my hair the day before the drug test and it came back clean. I lied my way out of serious trouble and into a year's probation. But I still didn't stop.
And then, the love of my life, whom I had dated on and off, depending on where we lived in relation to each other, died of a heroin overdose. He was in a coma for days before finally dying. I went into a depression that ended up lasting for 10 years - but that depression isn't what's important here. I was told he died while I was a mile high and it wasn't until I came down several days later that it really sunk in. While he was in the hospital, I'd been so high and out of pocket that no one could get ahold of me. And when I did call, his housemates lied to me about what was going on - because it was their fault it happened, which is another incredibly long story I won't get into here. But I still didn't stop.
One night, when my 35-year old boyfriend was cheating on me with another girl - well, a woman - I was sitting on the windowsill of our 4th story apartment, higher than a fucking kite, thinking to myself that everything would be a lot better if I would just jump. It was the dead of winter, freezing temps, but I was in underwear, with my legs hanging out the window, sweating my ass off. A cop drove by and saw me and, before I knew what was happening, there were cops trying to break in the door. They were 4 stories down and I couldn't really hear them (i came in as soon as i saw the cruiser stop), got dressed, and when I answered the door, I managed to somehow convince them that everything was fine.
That was when I realized that my life was not normal. That this was not acceptable. I looked at my face in the mirror and didn't recognize the ex-model staring back at her. Yes, I was skinny, but I'd become ugly - not just the hollow, vacant eyes and pallid skin, but on the inside as well. I was empty.
So, then and there, I decided to stop using drugs. I had to break up with "The Old Guy," as my best friend called him, get rid of most of my friends, quit my job, and find a new place to live. It sucked. It was lonely. It was hell. But I stuck with it.
For awhile. (you knew that was coming, didn't you?)
But I only slipped up one time. I don't know if it was a test on myself, to see if I could do it once and not fall back in, or if it was my 'last hurrah' or what. It was horribly self-destructive and terrible but, at the same time, it was one of the best nights of my life. I remembered all at once why I loved and hated cocaine so desperately much.
And that, my dear readers, was the honest-to-god end of my drug use. But not the alcohol.
And then, my then-boyfriend died after a night of partying. The alcohol and drugs reacted with his blood pressure medication and who knows what else and he died. And we were supposed to get married someday.
No. My alcohol use didn't stop. Not after losing jobs to truancy, not after ruining relationships. Not after trying to drink away the pain of losing so many people I loved to drugs and alcohol. Not after my then-boyfriend and I literally beat each other into unconsciousness. Not after the open container tickets, not after the bloody vomit, not after the wrecking of cars. I gave up alcohol only in an attempt to save my marriage, which didn't work, because my husband wasn't willing to give up addictions. We sobered up - no alcohol or drugs for him, no alcohol for me - and he began to overeat. Then he began to work out obsessively. Then, he picked drugs back up again. I threw him out, started drinking again, and filed for divorce.
I don't need to explain what happened next. Newly-single woman hits the club scene again with vodka in-hand. You can fill in the blanks. It's a sheer miracle I didn't start using coke again, because my next two boyfriends had serious habits. But no, I managed to stick to drinking and highly-self-destructive behavior. How I avoided a DWI or killing someone, I'll never know. It must have been some kind of divine intervention, because Lord knows I wasn't trying to be careful.
Eventually, I met a good man whose only flaw was that he was an alcoholic. Of course. Because people like me attract people like me. 'Opposites attract' only refers to genitalia. Before it ruined us, we both decided to sober up and stop the drinking. While I can go to a bar and not drink, he can't. So we became homebodies. That stuck, until my grandmother died. It was...traumatic and tragic and a horrible strain on me, and he gave me a free pass for one night. I freaked out in the worst kind of way and although I don't remember any of it, The Boy swears he'd never been more frightened in his life. And this man's been to war, y'all.
At that point, he told me in no uncertain terms that I had to promise that I would not drink anymore. And, like a true alcoholic, I slipped up again. But just that once. I've managed to stay sober since then.
The problem is, I've come to realize that it's a painful, internal battle that rages on daily. Not because I want 'just one drink.' It's not that. I want to drink all night, do a few lines, dance, socialize, see a good band, and fuck somebody in the bathroom of the bar.
Seriously. That's what I want to do. I can't tell you why. I can't explain why I feel like that's a good way to live my life. I know that's what I used to do. I felt happy then. I had a lot of friends and I felt like I was living life - even as I was destroying it - but at least I wasn't squandering it. And I feel like I am presently wasting my fucking life by sitting here, reading, editing photos, cleaning house, and not being *out there* doing stuff.
Every day I have to struggle with whether or not I'm just going to bust out of my home wearing some skanky boots, tight jeans, and a vintage tee and rock and roll myself to the mother of all hangovers, leaving The Boy to stand in the doorway, wondering if I'll make it home alive and realizing that he won't know, because he's not going to wait around to find out.
He'd leave me. I know that. I'd lose my house. I know that, because I'm barely making the payment now without buying extra stuff like $300 worth of cocaine and $100 worth of vodka a week. I'd probably manage to keep my vehicle and my job - hell, half the people I work with are either alcoholics or drug users, and another quarter are both - but I wouldn't be good at my job anymore. I could probably cope with it better, though. I'd be just maintaining the career to make money to pay for my addictions.
My rational, sober brain can see the consequences of the actions before I commit them. My rational, sober brain knows I would lose all I've worked to earn.
So, can someone please explain to me why, on a daily basis, I find myself yearning for that dead-end lifestyle? Can somebody please tell me why, after being drug free for 10 years, I still go through the motions in my mind of setting up lines on a mirror, and the rush of the first one? Why can I still taste it in the back of my throat and feel the ache of my joints after being up for 3 days? Why - someone please tell me - can't I just let this go and stop thinking about it?
Right about here is where somebody would say something like, 'Dammit! I wish I could go back in time...I'd NEVER touch any of it!' But I'm not going to say that. It would be a lie if I did.
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