Sunday, January 20, 2013

My life after heroin

There was a commercial several years ago. You know the one. The star was an egg, or maybe the really angry girl who trashed the kitchen screaming about how bad heroin fucked up her life. Whatever, she was right about the fact that it messes you up really bad.

I'm writing this because earlier today I talked on the phone with an old friend who is going through a rapid detox from methadone. Sometimes they do that if you don't pay enough on your bill at the clinic. He wanted to get off methadone anyway, and this is his chance to be free from opiates.

This is also a really dangerous time, because the tolerance is low and if the addict uses, there is a much great chance of overdose. If you have ever lost a fiend or relative to heroin, this is usually how it happens. That's how completely twisted this drug is.

Detoxing from an opioid is the worst feeling in the world. It feels like every part of your body has a headache, fever and chills at the same time. You are so tired, but you can't sleep. Food is the most disgusting thing on the planet, except maybe watermelon. Liquid fire is shooting out your butt every five minutes. You feel sexually aroused and totally asexual at the same time. You might hurt so bad you cry, but crying feels fake and it bugs you that you are even doing that. Everything hurts. Everything is disgusting. Nobody understands. Nothing can fix you... On and on and on....

... For five days.

When the opiate fever breaks, there is the uneasy feeling of being born. Addiction's afterbirth is still covering your body, no that's actually sweat.
I remember feeling so nervous and alone that I actually though I might pull my face off because I felt like that much of a freak. "Might as well do something totally weird, I feel like Freddy Krueger anyway," I thought to myself as I made a hot-as-hell bath. Showers require standing up, and I was exhausted from not sleeping for a week.

July 5th thru 10th 2008 was one of the hardest weeks of my life. I say one of the hardest because that was by far not the only time I made it through the sweat-lodge hallucinating hell that is opiate withdrawal.
That was an important week for me, because after staying clean for almost 3 years, I was ready to stop opioid replacement therapy. This would be the last
I made myself a promise that I would do whatever it took to go through detox again.

It gets better from there. So much better. When I stopped using heroin in 2005, I had over $20,000 dollars in a tangled labyrinth of defaulted loan debt, court costs and medical bills. I had no formal education, no real job skills and no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew I wanted to do something else and be someone else.

I am extremely lucky to have the right people in my life. My support system has been amazing. My wife (who has never been an addict) has been there for me through all of it. I can't imagine if we had stayed broken up after the time she left me after she found out I'd been using (She saw me getting high in my car in front of her house, like she wouldn't know)!
I have made a lot of amazing friends in the years after treatment. Friends I don't see enough, but they are still great. I went back to college, and i might actually finish! I discovered my love of healthy lifestyles and launched a career as a trainer. Most of the best moments in my life have been after surviving addiction.

I can't change the fact that i am an addict, and no one knows why it happens to people. Some people think it is a disease, some think it is a symptom of something else, like being molested or your parents didn't love you enough. Whatever it is, I'm glad at least God made me smart enough to sauté half my brain and still have enough left over to not drool on myself. Not all the time
Life is not easy for anybody, and getting better has been (and continues to be) the hardest thing I have ever done. And the hardest thing for any addict, whether the drug or choice is food, sex, candy, gambling, or TV.

So if there is a chance for him to read this blog, this is what i would want him to see:
My brother from another mother,
I'm so proud of how far you've come, and I know you can make it the rest of the way. You can do anything for one day at a time. You don't have much further to go, and you are strong enough to do this!