Greetings from the ocean floor and from the eagle's vista perched high above, for the beauty of sobriety--after an extended stay in the rusty cage of intoxication/experimentation/growing dependence/physical addiction/depravity/hopelessness--finds me in a state of mind where I feel that I'm exploring the entire world again. Like a child, those of us who are newly sober have to learn how to do everything over again. To stumble over our feet, yes, but to get up again. Everything is so new, and our bodies feel like a raw nerve, but that is the beauty of life, something I have missed out on while constantly numbing myself for the last 7 years of my life. Whether through the warming embrace of opiates, the vicious implosion towards coma of alcohol, or the sheer white light of cocaine rushing through my bloodstream into my brain, I was seeking ways to hide from life. From feelings. From relationships. From responsibility. From growth. And I suppose ultimately from myself. All of these things are scary at first, but I finally feel like everyone else. I feel a comrade of those in the street, struggling against the everyday grind of existence, whereas before I was hiding from the beast, putting on a mask to pretend that I was like everyone else, when in reality I was a coward.
So let me backtrack to where my last post left off. Through the help of my sister and parents and a therapist, I found myself in the Inova CATS Day Treatment program. I had just had a two-month heroin relapse, after months of alcohol addiction, and I was throwing my hands into the air in surrender, because I knew that drugs were a force stronger than me. Why try to tame something which will in the end kill you? I knew from experience that I couldn't win that battle. With trepidation I went into the hospital for my check-in and first day. I wasn't really sure what to expect, other then an environment like the previous AA and NA meetings that I had been to. I was not a big fan of these, since I always felt that they had a cliquish environment which I found to be socially intimidating. Furthermore (and I know that the 12-step programs help a lot of people, so God bless it), I have always found the AA type of person to be excessively boring. They always seem like the lame, New Age type of person who believes more in meditation and sipping herbal tea than they do in humor and fun. I figured that this detox/rehabilitation program (technically, inpatient and day treatment at CATS is detox-only, since most stays there don't last more than 7 or 8 days) would be something similar.
So I went into the waiting room, and after much paperwork and slightly anxious waiting, I went in to see the admissions nurse. She asked about my health, bare-bones questions, and then asked me to tally off my abuse of all the various drugs that exist in my 7 years of intimacy with them. It was a rather sobering moment, and made me feel like a bigger addict then even I normally do, since I had to tell her about my dozens and dozens of alcohol black-outs, the thousands of times I've stabbed myself in the arms (and other places) to inject heroin, opiate pills, stimulants, or even far worse substances (which make me cringe even more than the more notorious drugs, since these undoubtedly did far more internal damage to my body), and basically the sheer variety of drugs that I had tried. I once prided myself on trying as many drugs as possible (and using the most potent ways of administering them) for research's sake, as if by doing this I was gaining some compendium's worth of worldly knowledge, instead of letting my soul slowly rot from within. However, as my various posts on Demons can show, I have never had a difficult time being honest to those around me about my addiction problems, except to those who would "get me in trouble" (i.e., girlfriends and my parents), so I tried to be as true as possible in my details.
I was eventually let upstairs to the more hospital-like section of CATS, which was where the inpatient people met and slept. As part of the day treatment crew, I would come every day from 9 to 4 to go to meetings and basically do everything that the inpatient folks did, but at the end of the day I had the freedom to go on my very merry way back home. Most of the people there were inpatient, not day treatment. And I think it's also safe to say that the majority of those there were alcoholics, as opposed to other kinds of drug addicts. However, this isn't to say that they weren't all just as bad off as me. I know a lot were worse off. Alcohol has some of the worst withdrawals possible--worse than heroin's if you are a bad enough drinker--and most of the people in early alcohol withdrawal stages simply stayed in their rooms, medicated into near-unconsciousness to prevent the incapacitating tremors and ghastly hallucinations of delirium tremens. I saw some people come to meetings that would talk nonsense, and a lot who were still shaking all over from the tremors (luckily I had only had minor bouts of this from drinking--I can't imagine what a full-blown bout of alcohol WDs would be like), so I always had a particular brand of sympathy for the alcoholics there.
I went to my first meeting there, and quickly, before the meeting, several people, including a very nice alcoholic woman, already introduced themselves to me and assured me that the place was full of "good people." Almost from the get-go I found CATS to be a much more welcoming environment than the various 12-step meetings I had been to before. I found it very easy to participate in the meetings and to interact with my fellow patients. I believe this is because we were "all in the same boat." When you go to a NA meeting, you are often surrounded by people who have been going to the exact same meeting with the exact same people every week for years. You are surrounded by people who have been sober for 2 years, 5 years, sometimes 10 or more. It's pretty easy to feel like an outsider at AA, especially since they have their own particular lingo, a shibboleth that consists of phrases such as "One day at a time," "Keep coming back, it works if you work it," and "One is too many, a thousand is never enough" (although, like most of their quotes, these do all have some truth in them). But it is the way they say them--in unison, timed exactly correctly, and so dispassionately that they sound like robots--that makes them feel like some foreign tongue to the newcomer. The air stinks of groupthink. But at CATS all of the patients are newly sober. They have come into the day treatment/inpatient center to detox from being on drugs, so even if they are followers of the 12-step program, they aren't sitting on their high horse anymore and are right alongside you in the trenches.
Another aspect which I love about this sort of professional treatment (which thank God I have insurance for) is just that: the fact that it's professional. 12-step sober support groups are a great idea, and clearly work for many, but they all have the feel of being rather amateur. This is even worse in the one SMART Recovery meeting I went to (SMART Recovery is an "alternative" to the 12-step programs, in that it promotes a recovery plan that doesn't depend on the "higher power" of the 12-step groups, as well as a more individualistic approach to recovery), which lacked even the basic organization and focus of an AA meeting God bless ya, I love all addicts on some level for the connection that we share, but most of them aren't exactly the smartest cookies in the batch, so it's nice to be in a program run by medically-trained professional doctors, nurses, and counselors, who have researched all about the disease of addiction and the treatments for it. One of the biggest things I get out of my continuing time in the CATS program is the sense of structure that it provides me in my recovery. The counselors work with each person to try to come up with an individual treatment plan, and while they are inevitably swamped with patients, at least this is better than AA/NA, where everyone is expected to do exactly the same thing, which is go to meetings all the fucking time to talk about what you are doing to get your life back on track (instead of actually doing things to get your life back on track, since you are spending all your time at meetings) and to get a sponsor. Everyone says that without a sponsor (someone you talk to as often as possible who has been sober for a while and is in the 12-step program; their main task is to lead you through the "12 steps" of the AA/NA program) you will fail. I find this to be a bit presumptuous. Why can't we be open with the people in our everyday lives instead of relying on this sponsor? I know that you are supposed to have close relationships with other former addicts, but I just don't see how this should replace the meaningful relationships that are already in my life. Perhaps this is because most addicts find themselves in lives surrounded only by other addicts, but my life is full of (relatively) sober people, and I think I can trust in them. What concerns me most about the 12-step programs (which even the professionals of the CATS program tell us to attend regularly) is the sense that it is like a lifetime without freedom. You are supposed to always go to meetings. I heard a member tell us the story of a woman who had 33 years of sobriety under her belt. She relapsed, and when this person went to ask her what happened, she said she had stopped going to meetings and that's why she relapsed. There is this sense of group pressure, much like organized religion, weighing down on the shoulders of a newcomer to go to the famed "after-meetings" (which I assume are just trips to a food establishment to hang out with other group regulars [what if I already have friends that I want to see that I like for their personality, instead of just for the fact that they have a shared group identity with me as a person in recovery?]) and to get a sponsor and to "work the steps." I wouldn't care if I thought the people at 12-step meetings were cool, but honestly (and I know this is the child in me, but I can't help it) I just see them as being the opposite. I see them as being people who can't fit in on the "outside," so they stick with their AA friends. And let's be honest, if you are friendly to anyone at an AA meeting, they'll be your friend (there is a saying that [and this is paraphrased] there are no strangers at an AA meeting; there are only people waiting to be your friend). I don't want that. I don't want forced phoniness, like any sort of organization breeds. I want to do my own thing. So that is my big beef with AA. The people just all seem so fucking New Age and, frankly, unintelligent, because anyone who follows anything--whether it be a religion, a political party, a way of life, or whatever--blindly and without hesitation or individual thought I believe to be a fool. I do see the point of AA. Many addicts aren't the smartest, or are surrounded by a world of poverty and unfairness, so for them AA is a group that provides them strength where they are weak. And I do aim to get the most I can out of the 12-step program, whatever that may mean in my future, but I don't plan on being a devout member the rest of my life.
Anyways, sorry for that extended rant. It is one of the biggest issues for me in recovery, as my peers and counselors always tell me I should be attending sober support meetings. To not do so seems almost out of the question. So I feel some sort of guilty need to do so, instead of actually ever wanting to (and the meetings I have been to have really done nothing for me--especially compared to my various CATS meetings, which do a lot for me).
I met some good people while I was in my day treatment program there. Most of the young members were opiate addicts like me. There was some heroin addicts, and some painkiller addicts. I met a very nice and well-spoken alcoholic man that said that he had blacked out every single time he had drank in the last 2 years, and was caught two nights in a row naked in a fancy hotel somewhere in Eurasia, blacked out and locked-out from his room, with nowhere to hide except behind a window curtain, which he wrapped around himself when he strode downstairs to the front desk. This isn't too far off from my own story of being awake for 2 or 3 days on amphetamines, finding myself locked in at my office building, late at night, trapped without a pass card, locked out from my car keys and phone, and without pants or underwear. Such is the craziness that drug abuse causes.
I met people who said they spent in the excess of $100,000 on painkillers, and those that stole tens of thousands of dollars from their parents and others to get money to buy them heroin. I met a man who spent 16 years of his life in prison (he is 42 years old), with a very gruff voice and an eagle-like intimidating stare, but that I feel has the heart of a teddy bear and remains one of the core members of my outpatient support group. For the most part, everyone was pretty damn cool I met. What made them cool is that we all shared our own minds, our own pains, and most importantly, our own personalities. 12-step groups have a way of erasing the watercolors of our personalities into a blank slate, where everyone repeats the same phrases and tell their life stories using the exact same narrative (the only thing changed are the names of the people in the stories). There were lots of AA/NA-devotees in the CATS detox, but there were lots of others who weren't. I found this mix of people to be very refreshing, and we all brought different viewpoints to our daily discussions and activities.
On my last day I was even a bit sad to leave. I wasn't quite sure when I would leave the day treatment program, since they told me I had to test negative to drugs two days in a row before I could leave. A slip-up that I eventually admitted to the staff of CATS when questioned had occurred after my first day of treatment. I got off at 4 and immediately went to buy some cocaine (which turned out to be crack-cocaine). I had had it on my mind all day, since I still had some money in my account and a hook-up for it, so immediately that went into my arm. As it goes, I do not regret this slip-up, since it proved to be a deciding factor in my sobriety this time. I ended up overdosing that night, surprisingly, since the shots that did me in were just 3 spoons' worth of remnants from all my previous shots. It actually took two needles full of vinegar (to dissolve the crack) to shoot it (I shot one, then immediately pulled it out and shot the second), and what hit me was the most intense rush on my lifetime. For the last 4 or so years I've been trying to find new heights in terms of IV rushes, but this one was the cap of my career as a rush-junkie. The bellringer started coming on before the first shot was even injected, but heedlessly I pulled out that shot after its completion and pressed down the plunger on the second. Even typing these words my heart starts beating fast and my mouth salivates and I can imagine my pupils dilate somewhat. IV cocaine has a way, like no other drug, of bringing about sensory recall when I remember the rushes. I think this is because it has the most intense of all rushes, so the body can easily recall it again. I believe that IV cocaine causes the greatest dopamine release in the brain out of all drugs (the sound effects that the bellringer is named after are caused by such a massive amount of dopamine flooding the brain at once--dopamine being the pleasure neurotransmitters of the brain), so it's no wonder that the body can recall its effects even months and years later. But this particular bellringer just kept getting louder and louder. I remember starting to get worried, since usually after a little bit, the noise subsides and the physical feelings grow less intense, but this just kept getting stronger. I started getting tunnel vision and my mouth was completely dry. I couldn't look anywhere else but at the tile floor of my bathroom, since I was growing scared and to look anywhere else would just be too intense. I felt like I would puke if I looked anywhere else, and that kind of physical exertion seemed out of the question, since I was gripping the toilet seat I was sitting on just to be able to handle this kind of unbearable force and intensity. My body started shaking, gradually at first, but then wildly, as my legs kicked uncontrollably and my hands flayed out against the wall and the toilet. I knew that I was having a seizure and a cocaine overdose, and I knew that if I went unconscious it would be a very bad sign. I was scared I'd fall unconscious and hit my head on the floor. I was scared I would bite my tongue, so I tried putting a towel in my mouth. My legs and arms were kicking everywhere, completely out of my control and contorting into unnatural positions, and I could only look on with horror, realizing that I no longer had any control over my own body and that something terrible had happened. My heart was beating in excess of 200BPM. I knew Bethany was watching in shock from my bedroom, and I vaguely got the idea that she came over a few times, but I kept pushing her away since I was afraid she would call 911. I was also dimly aware that my cat was on the floor near me, but none of this seemed real whatsoever. Even to this day, the entire event seems like something out of a dream--blurry, formless, like milk instead of the clarity of water. I knew that as long as I stayed conscious, I would make it out alive. I knew Bethany had an intense fear of death and also an intense fear that I would overdose one day, so I knew that she would be paralyzed. But I also knew that there was nothing else I could do but ride this out. It seemed to be taking literally a half hour to get out of this seizure. I was shaking uncontrollably, and my body hurt from the incredible strain I put my heart under. I just kept whispering to myself, totally helpless, "Fuck, fuck, fuck." I am a very fearless person when it comes to drugs. I won't say I was completely scared shitless, but this was the first time I had had a real, genuine drug overdose, and it was from an IV stimulant, which is definitely one of the worst things to overdose on. Only because of my extensive knowledge of IV cocaine and overdoses through research did I know that I would make it out of it alive. Had I been more ignorant, I probably would have been scared that I would die. But luckily, the intense surges of seizure passed by after a few minutes (according to Bethany, since to me it seemed like at least half an hour of my body being out of my control), and I climbed into bed. My body kept shaking for the better part of three hours, gradually less intensely. I had only once before come this close to dying from doing drugs, and that was the night I was arrested after a 7-drug binge that ended with me running my car into a guardrail, almost hitting someone else, and getting pulled over outside of the Clendenin's house. But this time, because I wasn't blacked out like I was that night, I felt the full conscious effect of just how close I had come to the razor-thin line of mortality. I wouldn't say I was "scared straight," since even if I hadn't had this OD, I still would be exactly where I am today, but it was nevertheless a good kick in the ass on my way out the door of intoxication. I took it as a sign that that was all the rush I ever needed.
So these are some more of my experiences in beautiful, raw sobriety. I hope to write more about it in the future.
Cheers,
--Edward
