My Monkey, Pt. 2

Now towards the end of my junior year, things changed. It is actually somewhat weird. My girlfriend and I broke up and I think I found a bottle of Vicodin on my porch perhaps on exactly the same day. I remember going to her house where I knew she was going to get in a fight with me and probably dump me with this bottle in my car, and I remember just a feeling of numbness as she was crying and screaming, because it’s kinda fucked up, but I was probably thinking, Fuck this, I’m just going to pop some pills and get high and none of this will matter. That was pretty much how my drug use started again, after this long period of abstinence. My urge to get high had never really gone away. I had just given up on it as being something which I couldn't do for availability reasons. But fuck it, I was finally free and single, and nothing was going to stop me. That whole summer I think I was pretty depressed and empty feeling, since I had been in this relationship for a good four or so years by this point, and it’s not easy to give that up. When I got back into drug use, I think I wanted to keep away from opiates and addictive drugs. I did things I had never done before, like acid, ketamine, and molly (powder MDMA). Of course, my old addictive signs were immediately beginning to rear their heads, as I decided to IV the molly and ketamine (these are kinda a no-no, but I was such a needle fiend, I would put anything into that barrel just because that’s what I loved). When the option came up to get opiates, how the fuck could I turn it down?

This is when I got into really heavy opiate use, on an unprecedented scale for me. I was doing IV Dilaudid and OC almost every day. I finally found a good heroin source, and when I first shot that up, I knew there was no other opiate for me. IV heroin topped them all. There was seemingly no downside. It was so cheap and lasted a long time and the euphoria was great. It didn’t turn me into a nodding-out mess, but made me sociable and happy and energetic and motivated. I don’t think a day went by from when I first got heroin that I didn’t shoot it up. I knew that I was going to become physically addicted this way, but I just didn’t give a fuck. It got to be that I needed a heroin shot to get out of bed, because I couldn’t face the day otherwise. Eventually I knew I needed to stop or I was going to get really hooked, so I made a pact with myself to not use for a number of days. Almost immediately I started getting feverish, feeling miserable, every bone in my body aching, sweating while shivering. This was the first time I had really felt somewhat serious opiate withdrawals (when I was doing coke back in the day and shooting OxyContin for the comedowns, I had had my first bout of any sort of withdrawal, but it was relatively minor), and I made it all of two days (which I see now as being pretty damn good self-control compared to what I turned into) before I had to fucking give in and shoot some more H. Ah, the motherfucking relief! Eventually, I made it through some more heroin and detoxed, which was pretty rough, but soon enough I had bought more and more heroin. I used opiates basically every single day that entire semester, 3 or 4 or 5 times a day. It was just a routine, and you grow to need it completely. Every single morning I would wake up freezing cold, stomach retching, feeling like absolute shit, but that was what I loved, because that first morning shot of heroin was absolute bliss, turning your nightmare into a heaven-like happiness where you felt on top of the world.

Eventually, I had no more money and knew I needed to stop, because I had a heroin problem and it just sucked living your every day by the dose, just waiting for that next shot so you could go about with your life. I had to go cold turkey again. This time was a fucking nightmare. I have never felt so goddamn cold in my life (withdrawals in the wintertime suck), and it was like the cold was out to get me, to literally inflict pain on me. Sick to my stomach, couldn’t sleep properly for days, drenched in sweat. Ugh, never want to go through that again. This was when I made it my goal to quit opiates.

Of course that did not last long, and soon enough I was back on heroin again. I don’t know how many times I’ve relapsed since I said I would quit, but it has been a whole lot. I’ve realized that it’s simply impossible for me to quit on my own. I need help, I really do. Very few serious drug addicts can quit on their own. When the option came up and when I had the money, I would always end up buying more heroin and coke to shoot up, because I was such a fucking fiend. It’s tough coming off heroin after a long time, because even after the withdrawals, you just feel so depressed and low and without energy, since the drug depletes your brain’s ability to produce endorphins naturally for a long time. The most I made it in this period was just a little over 3 months without using, which was actually pretty good.

Eventually, I found more and more sources at home, which was bad (previously I was getting all of my drugs from people who shipped them to me). This was basically when my most recent binge began, and never really ended until now. Over time, my usage also escalated greatly. Whereas I always used to pride myself on using moderately, because this conserved more drugs, was safer, and produced a more manageable high, I turned into a binge-monster. I started shooting up really big quantities of meth, which would leave me a freaked-out, paranoid alien up for days at a time, and this became just one more rush that I was addicted to. I would binge on IV heroin and cocaine. Whereas before an 8-ball of coke could last me days if I was shooting it, I could barely make it last one now. Whereas before, cocaine was the most euphoric substance to me—albeit with a nasty comedown that needed to be corrected with a shot of heroin—it became a nightmare. Even from the very first shot onwards, it turned me into a paranoid wreck. I would hear voices that weren’t there and feel like my heart was beating out of my chest, because the rushes were so strong. Almost no drug use was fun anymore. But I just couldn’t stop—I was such a creature of impulse, subhuman.

I became highly addicted to opiates around this time, and when I had legal problems that really made me depressed and scared, I just binged harder on them to cover up the anxiety and pain. My tolerance grew so much bigger then it ever had before. Whereas before, a one-bag shot of heroin would’ve knocked me on my ass, soon I was shooting 5 or more bags at a time and not really even feeling much other than the disappearance of the creeping sickness which reared its head every 8 hours or so. I’ve always liked the monkey on your back analogy for whatever reason. You have to silence that monkey constantly, just to keep him in his cage, with a shot of heroin. Even before I’m sick, I start to feel anxious and uneasy, and I have to think about where that next shot is going to come from. If you wait longer than this, you really start to feel bad. You lose your voice, your stomach is churning, your hands are shaking and clenching. I hate how merciless heroin addiction is. Every single fucking day is like that. Once my addiction had become bad enough, I would begin almost every day by throwing up because of how sick I was, then digging up whatever used cottons I had to try to get a measly bit of heroin out of them so I could at least somewhat appear presentable, but this is a terrible way of living. I would never feel really normal until I got a bunch of heroin in me, and even then it never seemed to be enough to get me a satisfactory high anymore. I can’t remember the last time I had a really good heroin high.

I need to stop, I need to stay quit. I can’t go back to that lifestyle. It throws away all your money, but more importantly, it destroys every shred of self-worth and happiness you have. I hate it so much, but find myself blindly drawn to it, because somehow I never feel normal in life without drugs in me. I was actually starting to before I started this last binge, which has gone on forever. It just takes a long, long time to feel normal again. You can’t expect to just quit heroin after you have been using it for a good long period and feel happy. It’s a long process and it takes tremendous amounts of work. If nothing else, I don’t regret my drug addiction because it has made me a more positive person. I realize that I have to work for things in life instead of sitting here waiting for them to happen to me. That includes my own happiness. I don’t regret ever taking that first pill, because it took five years to do it, but my drug addiction has taught me that. It has also taught me to not judge others with problems and to show more empathy towards others. We are all in this world together, and though it sucks an awful lot of the time, the best we can do is help each other through it.

I do not feel that a serious drug addict can ever quit drugs unless they want to do it for themselves, though. Others can help, but it's really their own path to follow. You can't push it on someone else to quit drugs unless they are willing to do it themselves. They might act better and act like they are going along with the program, but I guarantee they are just putting on a mask and lying to you. I tried to quit drugs for my girlfriend who I loved, and it didn’t work. I didn’t really want to quit until I had gotten myself deeper into drug addiction. Though I ultimately lost her because of my problems, I guess that is how things were destined to be. I also don’t view drugs as being “evil,” and I don’t necessarily think they should be criminalized at all. Our government wastes countless millions and billions of dollars on a war on drugs that it is clearly losing terribly, and the ghettos of the world are in shambles because the black market of drugs there have destroyed them. Whatever happened to my life wasn’t heroin’s fault—it was my own. Everyone has a choice about whether they abuse these things or not, and though they are addictive, I think the responsibility ultimately rests on the user’s shoulders and on the user’s shoulders alone. That being said, drug education is a very important thing and I strongly believe in it. Some of our country’s drug policies disgust me, like places that ban needle exchanges where addicts can pick up clean, fresh needles for themselves instead of sharing needles and spreading diseases, or our infatuation with throwing drug addicts into jail simply for doing drugs, turning them into more hardened criminals who will ultimately turn into repeat offenders. But that just seems to be how things work in our country, so I don’t have much more to say about it. You can research a lot of these things to find out more. I don’t like to preach. But I do know that opiates, amphetamines, and cocaine are not good for me, and that is something I have learned through experience, so I have made it my goal to never do any of these substances ever again. I have long since learned that I cannot do any of these things in moderation, because I am an addict and it is simply impossible for me. Total abstinence is the only way. I also really don’t feel like binge drinking anymore, since that isn’t particularly good for me and is merely replacing one substance for another. I know I can do this, but I can’t do it alone. I plan to seek out therapy and attend meetings and just try a variety of things to stay clean, because I’ve been trying to get clean for over a year and a half now.

--Edward