Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 3:20 pm Post subject: Six days off it all.
I had a really tough time out there.
It wasn't just the dope. Or the delusions (i'm still not sure what was real and what wasn't - was I being chased? Was I seeing some of the bleep I saw? Some of it was clearly impossible, especially the stuff with a supernatural component).
The hard part for me was the "scene". Withering away, trying to fit into a scene that I wasn't supposed to EVER be a part of. Getting close to people, watching them wither away also, watching us all dying for puddles, sketching out, sketching other people out, feeling like I was grasping for something, anything - like philosophy, great art, music, something GREAT that could be a standin for the drug and get my head straight again, but really looking for something that would make people look at me and say "hey, he's not really one of us, he is, but he isn't - he's got outside INTERESTS" - just trying to justify my bullshit..
I don't know where I'll go from here. I'm in the hospital right now, and that's a first. I don't know whether I'll go into a treatment programme (I don't want to), or whether I'll walk, assume that no-one's after me, and get out there again, panhandling, making enough for a couple points, and getting back to the grinding again, I don't know.. I just don't know..
Today is the first day in six days I haven't slept all day and night..
And you want to know what it's like?
It sucks.
I want some dope.
I want ANYTHING. Any dope. Something to knock me out, something to bring me up, it doesn't matter.
I need a reason to stay clean.
Just... one... reason....
besides MY life.
Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 8:41 am Post subject: the scene
I know exactly what you mean about the scene. I did a lot of drugs for years, smoked a lot of crack, but it was just me and a few friends getting together to party. Meth was different. Right from the beginning I started getting involved in a big way. I knew some people and soon found myself involved full time. I had to to support my habit, which grew to over two grams a day in less than a year. My boyfriend and I were runners, picking up and dropping off, driving people around, commiting minor crimes of opportunity, doing whatever needed to be done to keep it going. All my time was spent in shady tekker crack houses, all my friends were addicts, and all my efforts were devoted to various missions for one of the bigger dealers in town, which is how my bf and I supported our habit. I too thought I was different - I never farmed s h i t or ripped people off, which as you know is very rare in the scene; so I was trusted with more and more responsibility as I moved up the chain. After several years of this I couldn't help becoming involved in ever sketchier situations involving very dangerous people. I clung to the fact that 'I don't do those things', but the fact was I knew all about them and simply looked the other way. At some point I realized that my own values had begun to sink lower than I swore they ever would, and I entered treatment. I was in rehab for two months, and you know what the hardest thing was? It was giving up the scene. In the scene I was respected and important - to everyone else I was just some junkie. I didn't know what to do with myself and my time, and soon was right back in the thick of it. Finally one of my best friends died from a combination of shard and B and K, which was not an unusual combination for any of us, and I went back into treatment. This time I knew that it was the scene that was my biggest danger, even more so than the drugs themselves. I have never been a violent or aggressive person, but on more than one occasion I found myself either sitting in a car or hiding out near some place, armed and expected to prevent the competition or some heavy with a grudge from f u c k i n g up the business, jacking all the s h i t, and taking out someone above me. I had the same problem you did trying to figure out what was sketch and what was a real threat, because there often WAS a real threat. I couldn't stop using, but I dropped out of the worst of the scene, and ran my own small scale little business buying and selling to select people, using the contacts I had made to take care of myself without becoming a target. I kept that up for several more years before the stress of even my low level involvment became too much, and my mental health started slipping badly. I had to quit dealing and isolate myself completely except for my one contact that I picked up from. After a while I noticed that my use was slowly dropping. I failed at every program based on abstinence, so I started taking harm reduction seriously. I was still using, but I started taking better care of myself - I learned how to eat and sleep regularly, and started doing other things with other people outside the scene. Over about three years my use had dropped from over two grams a day to less than two points a day. Finally I felt like I had a real chance of quitting. Since then I have been mostly clean, but still seem to need to use every month or so - but when I do it is on my own and I never get more than a quarter. I do my own thing alone until it's gone, and then carry on with my life - now that I actually have one! I don't really have to go through withdrawal anymore when I stop, but after a month or so the depression and frustration of not being able to concentrate or get anything done makes me pick up that small amount which seems to fix me up for another month or so. I know that it will take a lot of time before my chemistry is good without drugs, and I try to wait it out, but I have been using for almost ten years now and most of that was daily; so I wonder if I'll ever be okay without any at all. But the important point is that I have a good life now, I don't have anything to do with the scene, and I never binge or use socially at all. If I could only get rid of that final bit of private indulgence I would be completely free for the first time in my life! I guess that's MY reason to keep trying. My life was a living hell and now it isn't... All I can say is even if you can't stay clean, stay out of the scene no matter what! If you can do that maybe the rest will come in time - and your life will improve a LOT, and quickly too. Best of luck to you... _________________ What could possibly go wrong?
How bad could it be?
Trust me, I know what I'm doing!
It was like that when I got here (only not broken).
No matter if you stay clean today or not, tomorrow will come. Your willingness to stay clean is totally continguent on what you do. Of course, if you think dope hasn't whupped your butt and that, this time, things will be different, by all means feel free to resume that life. Keep in mind, your best thinking got you into the mess you are in right now.
Much of recovery is about attitude. One day, your current nightmares and confusion will become a gift. This is a fact for milliions of people. You may be "unique" one, but I doubt it.
For now, be grateful that you were accepted into the hospital - not everyone is. Thank the nurses for tolerating your craziness. Accept their help knowing their help is like breath to the suffocated soul. "Keep it one day at a time - and live in this second. Bring the body, the mind will follow."
Find someone who can help you learn how to cope with the anxiety you feel - the anxiety that comes from realizing you are living within your own skin. That edgy feeling will pass.
Hah! Failed miserably as soon as I got out of the hospital.
Sister Crystal, I think I agree with you re. "harm reduction", although as it stands now, i've been off the s h i t for two weeks now.
I know the minute I get out of this hospital (yep, back again) I'll go right for the shard if I don't have a plan. Twelve step models not only have never worked for me, but won't this time around either; unfortunately there's a real vacuum in Victoria as far as other approaches go.
I dream about jib. It infects my music and my concentration is shot. I began composing an orchestral work, an allegorical ballet based on the shard mythos, but quickly abandoned it: Wittgenstein says "Those things of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophico, Proposition 7).
Right now the hardest thing is determining what was threat and what was sketch. I turn over events in my mind again, again, again and again. And I hang onto what I know are the absolute facts: I didn't belong there in the circle in the first place. I shouldn't have associated with the people I came to care about. There's a good likelihood I'm not done with gak yet (I won't say 'it's not done with me' because i'm sick to high death of hearing/reading various commentators in the press anthropomorphize this drug, ascribing to it the characteristics of some malevolent being - it's a chemical compound. End of story).
I wish I'd known such gifted, articulate voices in the scene. But then I may never have *wanted* to leave.
Fourteen days today.
regards,
Tooreclusive.
p.s. A gak addict I know out there - an 18-year old guy, but been around the block - gave the most plaintive cry I have ever heard about gak one night, as a bunch of us sat around smoking bowls. "I mean, Toorec (obviously he used my real name, heh heh), here's what I want to say to the health professionals, the bureaucrats, the ones drafting enforcement policy. Listen to people like me! I also know meth. Think of me as a worker, even out here using: I work with jib every day of my life. But they won't even *consider* my voice.")
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