Answer Addiction

Tag: addiction memoir

  • One Hit Away: A Memoir of Recovery

    Even though I know a lot of junkies who walk these streets with no life left in them, this is the first dead body I’ve ever seen.

    Sprawled across the side entryway to Beth Israel Congregation, I roll onto my side and wipe a palmful of dew off my clammy face. Everything about this morning is brittle, cold and still. Suspended in limbo, I’m drained from squirming all night on the slick ground like a caterpillar in a cocoon. As first light swirls around me and creeps into the shadows, I’m in no rush to greet it—there’s no point jump-starting the engines until the street dealers kick off their rounds. Having suffered through too many of Portland’s sunrises in recent years, the art on the horizon has either lost its beauty or I’m too jaded to see in color anymore. 

    Peeling my head away from an uncomfortable makeshift pillow made of rolled-up sweatpants, I see that both Simon and the surrounding streets are sleeping in. We’re nestled in darkness, lit only by the headlights of an occasional car that turns down Flanders Street. My sleeping bag is bunched under my hip to help relieve the pressure from the cold stone beneath me, but it’s not the only reason I had a hard time sleeping last night. 

    A few hours ago, I woke up to the alarm of Simon snoring and rattling away in his sleep—it was an eerie and guttural sound like an empty spray-paint can being shaken. I was still fighting to fall back asleep, long after his sputtering faded and drifted away with the breeze. So, while he put another day behind him, I was reminded that long nights take a toll and this life never pays.

    We both went to sleep with full bellies and a shot, so we’re fortunate that neither one of us will be dope sick. It’s nice to catch a break now and then and wake up without wishing I would die already. But it’s never enough—I’m still skeptical about how hard Simon crashed out and wonder if he’s holding out on me. Though if I were in his shoes, there’s no doubt I’d do the same. Riding high comes naturally in a free-for-all where everyone looks out for themselves. We all have it—a grizzly survival instinct to take what we can, when we can and figure tomorrow out if it comes. 

    This isn’t our land, but we periodically come here to stake a claim in the covered alcove guarding the ornate entryway. If unoccupied, I prefer this location because it’s a reasonably safe place to hang my boots. Not only is there protection overhead from the frequent rain that tends to ruin a good night’s sleep, but it’s also set back from the street enough that being noticed, roused and moved by the police is a rarity. 

    The groundskeeper here is a man of quiet compassion. It isn’t in him to run us off outside of business hours, and he refuses to call the police on us. For the most part, we are often gone before he would have to step over our bodies to open the temple doors. Scattering like roaches, we are sent packing by an internal alarm that forces us to get up at first light and attend to our bad habits.

    Simon is still asleep. He’s had it easy after spending all day yesterday collecting free doses from every street dealer he could pin down. This is common for any junkie recently released from a stint in jail. Any time after I’ve been arrested, all I have to do is show one of my dealers my booking paperwork and they’ll set me right. A freebie from them is a cheap investment in their own job security, reigniting the habit that was broken by an unpleasant jailhouse detox. Our dealers also need us back up and running again, racking up goods and on our best game. It’s no secret that a dope sick junkie is unprofitable.

    I pull myself together and pack with purpose, grabbing the dope kit I stashed in a tree nearby and then my shredded shoes that I left out to dry. I often struggle to tell whether my insoles are wet or merely cold, but when water oozes out of my shoelaces as I double-knot them, I take note that at some point today I need to steal fresh socks. 

    “Time to go,” I call out. 

    Simon, in one of the few ways that he is needy, often depends on me rousing him. He’s never been a morning person and is still sound asleep, his face buried in his sleeping bag. 

    “Come on, get up.” I spin in place and scan the ground to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. Eager to start the day, I nudge him with my toe a bit harder than I intended to. 

    When that doesn’t wake him, I reach down to shake his shoulder and feel an unnatural resistance. Something, everything, is wrong. His whole body feels stiff, and as I pull harder, Simon keels over, his rigid limbs creaking out loud like a weathered deck. There is lividity in his face—his nose is dark purple and filled with puddled blood. A pair of lifeless, open eyes stare through me and into nothingness. Instinctively, my hand snaps back and Simon sinks away.

    I stumble back and try to make sense of my surroundings. Nobody is around yet, but soon, the world will rise.

    “No, no, no.” I lose control of the volume of my voice and squeeze my throat. “Don’t be dead, please, don’t do this to me,” I chant as I drop to my knees, pleading over his corpse. 

    My hands hover over him as if trying to draw warmth from a smothered fire. I desperately grasp for a way to fix this. My heart is racing as though I just sent a speedball its way, but the surge doesn’t stop. A decision needs to be made, and fast, but before I can make sense of anything, a wisp of breath rolls down my collar and an invisible hand clutches my cheeks, forcing me to stare down death. 

    I snap the clearest picture in my mind and my eyes sting. Even though I know a lot of junkies who walk these streets with no life left in them, this is the first dead body I’ve ever seen. Looking down at Simon, I finally understand how pathetic this existence is and how lonely this life will always be. I see nothing beyond this moment for Simon, other than being hauled away like trash on the curb. We are forever trapped here, alone and useless, likely remembered only for our crimes, selfishness and former selves. Heaven is out of the picture, and because of that, I am okay with what I have to do next. I know the act is irreversible and unforgivable, but then again, if God has abandoned us, he’s not around to judge me.

    Dropping my sleeping bag onto the ground, I slide my backpack off my shoulders and let it fall like a hammer. I kneel over Simon’s body, steal one last look around and wince as I rummage through the front pocket of his jeans. I know he always keeps a wake-up hit on him. His pocket is tight and fights my hand as I dip into them. My fingers scratch around but keep coming up empty-handed. Time is running out and traffic is increasing. 

    I reach into his back pocket and soon realize the dope isn’t in his wallet either. The longer I search, the more determined I am, but I can’t bring myself to roll him over and disturb him further. By the time I give up, I sit back on my heels. I can’t believe what I’ve become. 

    “I’m so sorry, Simon.”

    Please stop looking at me. I can’t take it. Pulling my sweater cuff over my palm, I reach out with a shaky hand to close his eyes. My hand gets close, then backs off as I turn my head away to exhale. When my hand reaches forward once again, my palm lands on his face but fails to brush his frozen eyelids closed.Backing away, I grab my belongings and shrink into the distance.

    Excerpted from One Hit Away: A Memoir of Recovery by Jordan Barnes. Available at Amazon.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Strung Out: An Interview with Erin Khar

    Strung Out: An Interview with Erin Khar

    When I was in a 12-step program, I had so much shame… Some people seemed pissed off when you relapsed. I get that it’s upsetting, but have a little compassion.

    Erin Khar is an award-winning writer known for her deeply personal essays on addiction, recovery, mental health, parenting and self-care. “Ask Erin,” her weekly Ravishly column, attracts more than 500K unique readers per month. Her work is published in SELF, Marie Claire, Redbook, and anthologies including Lilly Dancyger’s Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger. Her first full-length memoir, Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me (Park Row Books, February 25), will be released this month.

    Khar battled heroin for 15 years. Her intro to opioids came in pill form at age eight. It was the year her parents split up. In Strung Out she writes, “My Dad had moved out and my mother drifted from room to room in our old Spanish house with a weightlessness that I could tell threatened to take her away.”

    Khar suffered from overwhelming feelings that she didn’t understand. “A panic spread across my chest, filling my body with heat, trapping me. I ran to the bathroom and locked the door. As I reminded myself to breathe, some instinct led me to the medicine cabinet.”

    With anxiety pounding, the third grader fumbled past Band-Aids and Tylenol and found her grandmother’s bottle of Darvocet, which warned: “May Cause Drowsiness and Dizziness.” She wanted so badly to stop hurting she popped two big red pills into her mouth, then gulped from the faucet to wash them down. The burning heat of anxiety soon gave way to a “lightness of little bubbles.” Erin felt like she might float out of her body; this was the escape she’d yearned for.

    Strung Out depicts one person’s journey against the backdrop of America’s opioid crisis. The book is written in gorgeous, accessible prose. Candor and vulnerability come through in a natural, believable voice, conveying what many trauma survivors know intimately: pain, anxiety, rage, depression.

    Khar snorted heroin for the first time at age 13. At first, she’d said no to the boyfriend urging her to try it; her stolen pills felt like enough. But her guy persisted, describing it as a much better high. It was also the quickest route to forgetting. When Khar was four, a teen boy began molesting her. The abuse continued for years. Like many survivors, Khar told no one and desperately tried to block it from her mind. 

    “I needed to be somewhere else, someone else,” Khar told The Fix. 

    Strung Out is a page-turner that follows the progression of addiction: Narcotics seem like a magical solution until the relief morphs into a monster roaring for more. Opioids are now responsible for 47,000 deaths per year—that’s nearly two-thirds of all drug-related deaths in the U.S. 

    Reading Khar’s book felt like listening to a confidante, a kindred spirit who “got me.” We sat down in a New York City garden to talk about the hell of addiction and colossal relief of long-term recovery.

    What idea sparked this book?

    I wrote Strung Out because it was the book I wish I’d had when I was younger. I want to open up the conversation. Why do people take drugs? And why can’t they stop? The more we talk about it the more we can get rid of the stigma and shame surrounding it. Many people still don’t seem to understand addiction. I want to encourage empathy and compassion and give people hope.

    I love that your then 12-year-old son asked if you ever did drugs. Can you tell me about that?

    At first, I pretended I didn’t hear him. [Laughs] I tried not to cringe at my deflection.

    I stalled by saying, “That’s a complicated question.” I didn’t know what to say. I did use drugs. A lot of them. Heroin was on and off from 13 to 28. That’s when I got pregnant with him. But how much should I tell him? I’d smoked crack, done acid, taken Ecstasy.

    You describe childhood guilt and shame vividly. Looking back, do you think that was rage turned inward?

    Oh yeah. It definitely had to do with early trauma. All I knew then was a nagging feeling. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I came to terms with everything. Before that, I minimized what happened to me, trying to shove [memories] aside. It took a long time for me to see that my therapist was right: my anger had sublimated into guilt.

    Do you look back now and understand your feelings of shame?

    Yes. I took responsibility for things because it gave me the feeling that I was in control. Can anyone process that kind of childhood trauma all in one go? I don’t know. Maybe it takes a lifetime to process? Maybe I’m still processing it.

    Do you get triggered due to PTSD?

    Yes. Even though I’ve done a lot of work on myself, I still have hypervigilance. My body reacts strongly to some situations, like if I’m startled by something, and especially if I’m asleep.

    Can you describe things that helped? Especially for anyone who is trying but can’t stop using.

    The first thing was accepting that I wasn’t going to be fixed overnight. Then it was forgiving myself for relapsing constantly. For me, whatever I’m dealing with, if I break it down into small, digestible increments, it’s a lot easier to handle. Focusing on the big picture is not helpful. That’s why they say a day at a time.

    How did you stop relapsing?

    By being honest about relapses. When I was in a 12-step program, I had so much shame. It was detrimental to worry about being judged at meetings. [Some] people in AA seemed pissed off when you relapsed. I get that it’s upsetting but have a little fucking compassion. [So] I hid relapses, which made it a lot easier to do it again. Finally, I was honest about [chronically] relapsing and that helped me stop. You do not have to relapse. It’s not a requirement of recovery but I don’t think that we unlearn things in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days or a year. I don’t think it happens that quickly. For anyone who struggles with addiction, we want immediate relief. 

    Like pushing a button?

    Yes. I wanted to be numb. Stop thinking. In recovery, my biggest life lessons were learning to have patience, be honest, and work on accepting things I have no control over.

    Did you find things easier when you began opening up?

    First, I had to get through my fear that people were always judging me. It took work. I wouldn’t say it was easy but yes, I did get better. 

    How do you feel about your upbringing now?

    I definitely don’t blame my parents for any of the choices I made. Even the choices when I was really young. I hid the sexual abuse and my depression from them. I hid my suicidal feelings. If my parents had stayed together and everything had been perfect, I may still have hid things. It may be a function of my personality.

    Today I have a really good relationship with both of my parents and they have a really good friendship with each other. I will forever be grateful that no matter what happened, through everything I did, they never turned their backs on me. I have a very different idea about tough love than I used to. When I was first trying to get sober, the general idea of interventions and dealing with somebody who was addicted was this hard line of tough love. 

    I used to deal with people that way. But now, I really don’t think it works. That doesn’t mean that you should enable people. But, for me, I was lucky. Despite everything I had done to my parents—years of lying and stealing—our family connection remained. That door was still open when I finally asked for help.

    Erin Khar talks hope, shame, and recovery:

     

    Order Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Learning to Have Sex in Recovery

    Learning to Have Sex in Recovery

    I had forgotten that I was once again in control of my own life… I needed to take charge of my sexual experiences just like I had taken charge of my recovery.

    So you used to hang from the chandeliers and now you avoid seeing yourself naked in the mirror? I can relate, friends. When I made the decision to stop using drugs 21 years ago, I was told “the only thing I needed to change was everything.” While this was not entirely true, there was one area that needed a complete overhaul: my relationship to sex. I wondered how I would ever transition from substance-fueled sex to a physical interaction that requires a bit of delicacy, and, dare I suggest, intimacy? 

    It wasn’t easy. 

    Men Are Pigs

    For background, I was raised by two very conservative parents that stopped sleeping in the same room by the time I was 12. The only “talk” my mother had with me was to explain that “men are pigs.” Fairly vague, even for the 1980s. My exposure to “sex” was accidentally finding pornographic magazines in bushes, late night movies on cable tv, and being sexualized by drunk adults. Sex became hardwired in my brain as this thing that men required and to which women begrudgingly submitted. There was little to no information about having sex for fun. Sex was associated with a quiet sense of shame. 

    On top of this, I was fat, and that made me feel unfuckable in suburban Ohio. I was okay with this at some level – remember, “men are pigs” — but I still wanted to try it. 

    The summer of my 17th year, my world got turned upside down. I lost 30 pounds, and suddenly the neighbor boy wanted to show me his dick, which I found entirely confusing. He’d never even given me as much as a sideways glance. I frequently got teased for being a virgin until finally my first real boyfriend “took” what I never felt like I had in the first place. Was I supposed to be feeling something? Anything? I mostly felt indifferent. 

    Alcohol and drugs arrived on the scene at the same time I was trying to figure out the machinery of an adult woman. After a few drinks, I would feel this rush of male attention that suddenly made sense. I felt “sexy.” My sexuality was a lure to pull in a person I thought liked me. Sex became a way of gaining what I wanted, a way of garnering much needed attention. Sex suddenly became more interesting. 

    The first time I had sex with a woman, I woke up from a blackout with her underneath me. Oh hey. Sex was this jumble of things, many of which made no sense to me. I had no idea how to make this thing work. Where was the owner’s manual?

    A Sense of Urgency

    Imagine my surprise ten years later when, 24 hours into my last detox, my crotch suddenly sprung to life without notice. There was a sense of urgency to explore the areas I had so frequently ignored while steeped in a nod. Unfortunately, all this was taking place in a jail cell. My bunkmate complained to deputies I was keeping her up at night with my vigorous activities. For the first time in my adult life, my sexual experiences didn’t revolve around what I could convince someone to do to me or with me. I would have to figure things out for myself. 

    When the first 20 pounds of jail house grits and potatoes hit my thighs, I wasn’t particularly worried. I had become so thin after years of heavy use, I vaguely fit the stereotype of a woman. As I was flat chested with the collarbones sunken in, a bit of padding was a welcome addition on my bony ass…until it went from a folding chair to a whole loveseat. My reignited passion for life was matched by my love of food. 

    Slowly, incrementally, the increasing pounds began stripping away my self-esteem. The idea of fucking anyone seemed like an effort. I fell into a state of sadness. I would not consider letting anyone touch me, outside of a few random pats on ass from my “brothers” in the rehab. 

    This was in stark contrast to my life six months earlier. I had spent many years in a community of sex workers, thirsty bottoms, and quid pro quo relationships with the dopeman. There were no boundaries, and even less consent. In those days, my body was open for business, while my mind was frequently sedated and broken into tiny pieces. 

    What was the solution? My first sponsor insisted that I look at myself in the mirror every night while proclaiming “I love myself.” The intention was good but the reality felt forced. What was it I loved? My face– with a distinct scar across my forehead from a drunken car crash? My smile– which was marred by chipped teeth from grinding on meth benders? The insecure person inside? 

    My First Time…Sober

    Despite my fears, I had a growing interest to road-test the plumper machine. My first sober sexual encounter in recovery was clumsy. I was on a four-hour pass from rehab but I returned in less than 45 minutes. I don’t know why I had even bothered to take my pants off. I stuck my head against the wall in the shower, soaking in the regret. I was disappointed he didn’t even notice that my bra and panties matched. The nerve! 

    The second was much more extravagant. We went to a cheap hotel because he did not have the proper ID to visit my sober living. I barely knew him. I just knew he wanted me. He left me a gift: a ring of hickeys around my neck that made it look as if someone had choked me. This skin memento provided uncomfortable material for my next women’s support group. 

    “What are you getting out of this?” one of the group members asked me. 

    Was I supposed to be getting something? I had forgotten that I was once again in control of my own life. It had been so long since anyone had taken my feelings and my pleasure into consideration. I needed to take charge of my sexual experiences just like I had taken charge of my recovery.

    After bumping my head one more time in the early days– literally and figuratively as the person was quite acrobatic– I made a conscious decision to give my body the rest it deserved. Until I could unravel sex from the need for validation, I would be just fine exploring my own body without the bitter aftertaste. I had confused attention with affection. I presumed that desire meant connection. For me, none of these turned out to be the case. It wasn’t bad sex, per se. It was the fact that my expectations were far exceeding the actual experiences. I had done none of the work to heal my wounded soul and had greedily assumed my equally recovering body would be able to catch up. 

    My Body Is a Gift

    My story has a happy ending. It took many years of unraveling my emotional and physical baggage and eventually creating a filter, a boundary, and a screening process. I began to realize that it was 100% necessary to communicate my needs. I had to discover what I liked, create my list of dos and don’ts. 

    For the first time, I began to enjoy my sexual self with no shame. My body is a gift. Not everyone gets to unwrap it. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • On Moderation and Other Fantasies

    On Moderation and Other Fantasies

    Even though I’ve quit drinking, I don’t pretend to understand moderation. I will never be someone who stops when they’re full. Not really.

    I remember when I first became suspicious of moderation. 

    I was reading Prevention magazine long before it made any sense to me: I had no wrinkles, I had no libido, I was not in menopause. I was 11.

    Prevention informed me that, in moderation, chocolate was actually good for me! I was advised that dark chocolate (at least 70% cacao, whatever that was) is the best. Just a square or two, the article warned.

    Wait… why on earth would I eat a “square or two” of chocolate? What is the point?  It struck me as nonsense. A square or two equates to a maximum of 60 seconds of pleasure. Why waste the guilt?

    At 11, I already knew that if I was going to feel guilty about food, it had better be in exchange for at least 20 minutes of pleasure. Maybe even a whole evening of it.

    Moderation did not come naturally to me. I can still remember the first time I made myself sick with eating. My small-town church held a dessert auction to raise money, and my table bought the turtle cake. I ate so much I thought I would puke. When I got home, I stuck a finger down my throat. I vaguely understood that forced puking was something bad, but I also felt really bad.

    I wasn’t bulimic; I just needed relief. I just wanted the nasty feeling to go away. Do other people eat like this, too? How much cake did my sister eat? Even at that early age, I was desperate to see the same behavior mirrored in others. Especially in my naturally thin, naturally moderate older sister.

    Three years later, flipping through Prevention, I again wondered if I was alone in this. Perhaps the world is chock-full of women who feel satisfied after two squares of chocolate. Maybe they’re really just in it for the antioxidants.

    Eight years later, “antioxidants” once again provided the green light. A daily glass of wine is actually good for you; just make sure it isn’t two or three! (Wink.) By this time, I was learning to use alcohol as a social lubricant, and that playful admonishment – anything in moderation – was just as mystifying as it had been at age 11; just as unattainable as it was at 8. 

    Because: A single rum and coke, mixed in cheap plasticware on my dorm room floor, would ease my nerves just enough to get me out the door. It certainly wouldn’t see me through a night of small talk with strangers, trying to be cool and relaxed, trying to be just the type of girl who floats between parties with a gaggle of friends. The type of girl who forgets about her exposed midriff, and whispers to her friends that she shaved down there “just in case.”

    By age 22, the jig was up. When it came to alcohol, I gave up the quest for moderation pretty early. Now, at three and a half years sober, I stare in wonder as my friends nurse a single drink over the course of an hour or two. I marvel when they order a coke instead of a beer – not because they can’t or shouldn’t drink, but because they just don’t want to. My friends often opt to join me in sober activities rather than hitting the bars. But isn’t that boring? Aren’t I boring? Wouldn’t you rather be drinking?

    After all: If I wasn’t an alcoholic, I’d drink every day.

    Even though I’ve quit drinking, I don’t pretend to understand moderation. I will never be someone who stops when they’re full. Not really. I might stop in public, dutifully cutting my burger in half on a first date — but I will not be falling asleep on an empty stomach. I want that sense of fullness, sedation. And sometimes it feels like food can get me there.

    This chronic need for fullness isn’t just expressed through food or alcohol, but also through work, relationships, appearance. It’s never quite enough. 

    Although I have worked a strong program of recovery, I still look with total bewilderment at people who embrace moderation. People who drink beer for the taste; dine at interesting restaurants just for the experience; go for months without sex because they haven’t found the “right person” to share it with (and can’t be bothered to settle for less). People whose daily exercise involves mindfully listening to their bodies. People whose nighttime routine involves mindfully acknowledging their thoughts.

    At the dessert auction, in the wake of the turtle cake, I needed to know that others struggled too. No, I wasn’t a sadist; I didn’t wish pain on others. I was just afraid of being alone. Even at eight years old, I needed to know that others sometimes eat, drink, sleep, scroll, and swipe themselves into oblivion. I needed to know I wasn’t alone.

    I wasn’t. And if you can relate to me, you aren’t either. We just feel empty sometimes.

    Take a second to conjure up a shiny moment. It’s important that in this moment you were not chemically altered. A moment when you thought, Wow. Maybe sober life isn’t so bad. Maybe sometimes, it’s even great. A moment in which you felt closer than ever to serenity, bliss, and pure, shameless embodiment.

    Have you got it yet? This is important.

    Last week, I stood at the top of Table Rock in Boise, Idaho, next to a Scottish stranger I’d met three days before. He and I had a brief, perfect, crystalline connection. We understood each other deeply. For a moment, my belly was fully of gratitude. For a moment, the sun was on my back, there was laughter in my eyes, and I did not feel empty.

    That’s my moment. And I didn’t have to scour my memory for it. That was just last week.

    Within 24 hours of flying home, the moment had evaporated. The connection was lost. I will never see the Scot again, and maybe I will never again look out over the City of Trees from Table Rock. The bliss was fleeting, but no more so than the emptiness that sometimes stands between me and sleep. For better or worse, nothing lasts.

    In moments when you feel the most empty, you may find it necessary to submerge yourself. So do that, if you must — but forgive yourself for it. Forgive yourself and never lose hope. Never forget your deep, sober, and startling capacity to feel full.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Life After “Blackout”: An Interview with Sarah Hepola

    Life After “Blackout”: An Interview with Sarah Hepola

    I was far more scared to fail — to have written a lousy book that people ignored — than I was embarrassed about people knowing that, say, I had sex with some random guy in Paris.

    Sarah Hepola’s book, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget was released four years ago, in the summer of 2015. It quickly became one of the best-known and most well-received memoirs about addiction. 

    In Blackout, Hepola recounts her long-term love affair with drinking and the lifestyle that comes with it, and then describes how her relationship with booze transformed into something complicated and dark. Literally dark, as in frequent blackouts where she didn’t remember what she did the night before, or sometimes who the person in bed next to her was. This behavior had disastrous results: “I drank myself to a place where I didn’t care,” she writes, “but I woke up a person who cared enormously.”

    The Fix recently caught up with Sarah to discuss life, recovery, and what it’s like to share your most intimate moments with the world. 

    While I am sure that you were thrilled to have a book deal for Blackout, did you have any trepidation before the book was released about having all of your dark secrets out in the open? Was there ever a feeling of ”Oh my God, what have I done?”

    I crashed my car twice in the months before the book came out. Once I was pulling out of a tricky underground garage, and the second time I was in a middle lane I mistook for a turning lane, and I just smashed into an SUV. I really shouldn’t have been driving. 

    The anxiety is weird. On one hand, maybe no one will read the book. Great! But wait, then nobody reads your book. Your surest route to comfort is your surest route to failure. I was far more scared to fail — to have written a lousy book, that people ignored — than I was embarrassed about people knowing that, say, I had sex with some random guy in Paris. My dark secrets were an exposure I could control, in the sense that I got to say what was included in that book. But to expose your secrets and discover no one cares? That is sad, like someone yawning in the middle of your striptease. 

    I was also deeply worried the book would have a negative effect on family and friends. That my parents would be judged harshly, or one of my friends would feel mistreated. I volunteered for that kind of scrutiny, I cashed the check, but those people never asked for a spotlight. They only made the mistake of loving me. I think in nearly every case, those relationships were made stronger for the experience, but I worried myself sick over it, which probably tells you something about me, or my deficiencies as a writer, or my overdeveloped sense of responsibility for other people’s happiness. But the short answer to your question is that I didn’t sleep well for months.

    What was it like for you when your book first hit and became hugely successful and your whole scene was out there for all to see? 

    I think it was about 4 p.m. on a Wednesday when my editor called and told me the book was on the New York Times bestseller list. Some part of me had been waiting for that call since I was a little girl, and afterward I walked around in a daze, like: I’m going to be a New York Times bestseller for the rest of my life. No matter what crap I put out after this, no matter how I fail, they can’t take that away from me. The next day, I was like: But why is it in LAST place on the list? Can we nudge that up a bit? So I’d say I felt astonished, and still hungry.

    As for how it felt to have my “whole scene” out there, I don’t know. I’d been writing candid first-person essays for a while, so disclosure was a comfortable position for me, but the book took it to another level. On one hand, I was deeply gratified to hear people connect with the material. On the other hand, it can be a cold and drafty feeling when strangers behave as though they already know you, or you know them. It’s made dating weird. I use the dating apps, and I try not to let potential romantic interests know my last name before we meet, but it doesn’t always work out. To this day, I’m never sure what the person across the table knows about me when I sit down. Usually it’s nothing, though, because it turns out most people don’t read books, or care much about them. 

    Your book has been inspirational to a lot of folks. Do you have a lot of people who are in recovery or considering recovery contact you and talk about how you’ve inspired them?

    Yes, and it’s one of the coolest parts. The emails are often quite personal about their drinking problems, or blackouts, or the struggles they’re having, and you’d think I’d get tired of those emails, but I devour each one. I read them in line at airports and in grocery lines and sitting in my driveway at home, because I’m so riveted by the story I can’t be bothered to turn off the engine and walk inside. I just sit in my parked car with my seat belt fastened, scrolling and scrolling like wow, huh, you don’t say, that’s wild. 

    I’ve always loved people’s stories, especially their darkest ones, and I think the emails have been an antidote to the lonely disconnect I felt when someone knew about me, but I didn’t know them. Every once in a while someone asks if I can call, or help them get sober, and I decided before the book came out I wouldn’t do that. In fact, I knew I wouldn’t respond to most emails. I didn’t have time. But most people just want to just say their piece, and move along. I do occasionally get late-night emails that will say things like, “I’ve never told anyone this, and please don’t write me back.” A couple have said, “I need to tell someone this before I die.” It’s a very strange perch to sit on, to be the recipient of these little confessionals. Mostly secret drinking problems, some affairs, risky sex, that kind of thing. I do have to wonder how many people are drunk when they write me. But many — the majority, by far — are sober people who want to say, “hey this was cool” or “hey, this meant something to me.” I never get tired of it. I’ve heard from a fair number of people who stopped drinking after they read the book, and a few send me updates on their birthday. “I have one year.” “I have two years.” That’s incredibly special. 

    Where are you at with your recovery now? 

    I was five years sober when Blackout came out, and my recovery felt so strong. I mean, jeez, why wouldn’t it? I gave up drinking, and I got the life I always wanted — I’d written a book, the book did well, I was traveling the country, people were cheering, cash and prizes, what’s not to love? I wondered how my recovery would hold up after the excitement went away and life threw me challenges, and — well, recovery got harder. I’ve had some tough years.

    I don’t struggle with a craving for alcohol, because whatever was wired in me got disconnected. I’m better without booze, and I know it. But I struggle with a craving … for what, exactly? For more. For a love relationship that I have never managed to maintain, for a family I never put together in all the years of slipping off bar stools, for a connection I found in alcohol — temporarily and ultimately at a cost that was too steep — but that can be hard to make when you are a quiet writer who works from home and lives with a rotating cast of over-loved tabbies. Twelve-steppers would tell you I need a stronger connection to my higher power, and who knows? Twelve-steppers have often been right, in my experience.

    The book I’m working on now, which has taken a long, long time, is an attempt to make sense of the frustration I’ve felt over the last few years as I edged into my forties as a single woman. Those can be confusing years for a woman who hasn’t had kids yet, if she wanted them—which I always did—because the window is closing on your fertility, and it’s like: Should I give up, or never give up? I also think that’s a challenging stretch in your sobriety. I’ve heard years six to ten referred to as “the desert years.” I just got nine years last May, so maybe I’m almost out of my little Sahara. 

    I’ve never regretted my decision to quit drinking. What I regret is not quitting sooner. But you know what they say: It takes what it takes. For me it took until the age of thirty-five. 

    Since you started your recovery in 2010, what changes have you noticed in the drinking scene, and in the social scene in general?

    Well, I’m pretty checked out on “the drinking scene,” though everyone seemed jazzed about the Aperol spritz for a while. What took me by surprise was the growth of the non-drinking scene. Sober bars and sober parties and the “sober curious.” I’m curious to see where the recovery movement goes in the 21st century, because it’s becoming less tied to the spiritual solution of 12-step programs and more tied with health and wellness and lifestyle brands. Is that good? Bad? I have my suspicions, but we’ll see. 

    I’m certainly glad to see sobriety losing its stigma. I’m thrilled to be living in the golden age of seltzers. My refrigerator is filled with La Croix and Bubbly and Waterloo and my current favorite, Spindrift. I like that bartenders who used to be dicks about making a virgin cocktail treat it more like a challenge now. Do you like ginger? Do you like pineapple? That’s nice. Not long ago I went to this amazing restaurant in Oklahoma City called Nonesuch that had non-alcoholic pairings with their dinner that were arguably more interesting than the alcoholic ones. Incredible. I commend the creativity that went into that, but I’m also glad business owners are realizing the money they’ve been leaving on the table. Suckers like me will pay a LOT for pretty drinks with no booze in them. 

    A big change is that young people are drinking less. Fashions change. I suspect we’ll reach a place where the kind of drinking that defined my era — drink-till-you-puke binge drinking — will seem old-fashioned. We’re in an era of pot and pills and whatever behavioral addiction we are all currently acquiring through our phones. I did an event with Chelsea Handler not long ago, the famously vodka-swilling Chelsea Handler, and she’s a pot evangelist. She’s starting her own line, and she’s working on a strain that doesn’t give you the munchies. I’m not into marijuana, but whoa. That sounds like a growth industry. I’m watching mom friends put away the Chardonnay and pick up the one-hitters. 

    What projects are you working on now?

    The new book is another memoir. It pivots around questions I started asking as I edged into my forties, which also happens to be the years since Blackout came out: Why did I never get married? Why did I never have kids? Is singlehood something that happened to me, or did I choose it? Is my solitude a curse, or a gift? Something I should change, or accept? In a way it’s me working through what was underneath my drinking all along, which was loneliness.

    The book dips back into my past choices, and examines deep relationships — with men, with my family, with my writing, with my own body — to try to understand how my story has unfolded, at the same time it’s tracking a larger cultural story about women’s rising place in the world, along with shifting attitudes toward marriage, love and sex, parenthood, etc. I sold the book last summer to Whitney Frick at the Dial Press, which is part of Random House, and she’s been so insightful and patient with me because it’s shifted a bit as I’ve been working on it, as books often do. My hope is that we can push it into world in 2020, but that depends on me making my fast-approaching deadline (yikes), and whatever the fates have in store for the news cycle and the general mood with regard to the presidential election. Let me say this: I was stuck for a long time. But I’m writing as fast as I can.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mother Interrupted

    Mother Interrupted

    We would go to Disneyland, attend little league games, and participate in the school bake sales. What set us apart from other parents? We were smoking copious amounts of methamphetamine.

    The following is excerpted with permission from Mother Load: A Memoir of Addiction, Gun Violence and Finding a Life of Purpose, from Rothco Press. Copyright 2019 by Wendy Adamson. All rights reserved.

    A mother’s body against a child’s body makes a place. It says you are here…. Without this body against you, there is no place. The absence of a body against my body created a gap, a hole, a hunger. That hunger determined my life. -Eve Ensler

    When I looked out the peephole of my front door, Kim, a twenty-four-year-old tweaker, was standing in a cropped t-shirt and skintight jeans, her blond hair covering one eye, peek-a-boo style. She had scored earlier that day and was back for more. It was obvious that she was doing a shit load of meth. But who was I to judge? It was the early nineties and my husband Max and I were living the so-called American Dream. We had two boys and managed apartment complexes with a swimming pool in a quiet suburb outside of Los Angeles. We would go to Disneyland, attend little league games, participate in the school bake sales and enjoy an occasional Sunday Bar-B-Q. What set us apart from other parents? We were smoking copious amounts of methamphetamine.

    Opening the door a crack, I looked over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. “Come on in,” I said, quickly shutting the door behind her. Our nine-year-old son Rikki had fallen asleep in his room, while my sixteen-year-old, Jerry, was staying at his friend’s house a few blocks away. I hadn’t gotten any real sleep in days and I was exhausted. I was just about to call it a night when she knocked.

    A fringed leather purse bounced off her hip as she sashayed to the couch.
    “I like your purse,” I said. “Very sixties.”
    Kim sat down and fondled it like it was a puppy, “Oh this thing? I got it for ten bucks.” “Ten bucks?” I was struck with envy.
    “Yes ma’am.”

    Why does this bimbo refer to me as a ma’am? Is she trying to imply I’m old? How about I smack you upside the head with your puppy purse, you blond dimwit? I flashed her a phony smile.

    Just then, Max walked in, shirtless, rubbing his jet-black curly hair with a towel. “Yo, what’s happening Kim?”

    “Hi Max,” she giggled. “I came by to see if it’s too late to score a gram?”
    The dealer, wanting to cut down on foot traffic, had assigned Max as the middle man and for his efforts he’d get a cut of whatever he bought.

    “Giiirrrrlll, you know speed freaks don’t sleep,” he wagged his finger. “It’s never too late to score from a meth connection.”

    Kim laughed, while I blankly stared off in space. I had heard the recycled-speed-freak jokes before, just like I had heard all of Max’s jokes. I figured that’s just what happens when you’re married to someone for twenty years. Everything ends up being old recycled news.

    Within minutes Max and Kim headed out the front door to the connections across town. When I was sure the coast was clear, I rushed to the master bedroom and pulled out a stash I had tucked away earlier that day. Due to my increasing paranoia, I had convinced myself Max was doing speed behind my back. So, why not beat him at his own game?

    I poured a generous line of the white, glassy powder onto the crease of six-inch-squared- off tinfoil. With a straw gripped in my teeth, I held a flame a few inches underneath. The powder began to smolder and a metallic smoke spiraled upward. I sucked it in like a human vacuum cleaner, determined not to let any of it get away. I held the smoke in my lungs until they felt they might explode.

    As I set the foil down my heart was pounding like a drum. I gripped the edge of the mattress, riding the rush of adrenaline like a racecar driver hugging the wall of a sharp turn. The ceiling fan spun overhead. A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood. The neurons fired in my brain like it was the Fourth of July.

    I was as jumpy as a lab rat and wanted to direct the frenetic energy in a constructive manner so, I went to the kitchen, sat on the sticky linoleum floor and started emptying the cabinets of all its pots and pans around me. I was trying to scale back because I had way too much ‘stuff’. I mean who needs three cheese graters when I barely use one?

    I looked down at the soles of my feet. They were filthy! Deep cracks ran along the edges of my heels. I made a mental note to take a shower but quickly dismissed the idea. The meth always made the water feel like tiny needles shooting all over my body. I shoved a nostril in my arm pit. It smelled like old meat. Maybe I’d take a bath later on?

    It was hard for me to stay focused on meth. One minute I would want to attend to house- wifey chores and the next I would feel a creative impulse come on. When inspiration hit me there was just no stopping it. I pushed myself up and rushed to the hallway cabinet where I kept my craft supplies. I had everything from dried flowers, beads and embroidery thread to ceramics, paintbrushes, and crayons. When I opened the cabinet a roll of gold ribbon fell to the floor and spun down the hall.

    As I stood my brain released an enormous cascade of creative ideas. I felt like such a visionary who could craft anything with my nimble hands. Eventually, I decided to make a colorful Easter bonnet, even though I had an aversion to anything churchy since being kicked out of Catholic school in the ninth grade. I grabbed my trusty glue gun, a batch of yellow silk flowers and a wide brimmed straw hat. With my arms full of supplies I went to the living room to set up a work station.

    I spread everything out on the floor when it occurred to me that the Johnny Carson Show was on. Geez. Was it that late already? Looking at the clock I saw it was now past midnight. Holy shit, Max had been gone for over two hours. Drug dealers may not have the best customer service skills, but normally it wouldn’t take so long. Worried, I began flipping through worst- case scenarios in my head. What if he had gotten in a car wreck and he’s in the emergency room somewhere? Or what if they got busted, and he was sitting in the back of a police car? What then? I didn’t have the money to bail him out.

    Then it hit me. Call it a hunch, women’s intuition or instinct, but I knew down to the marrow of my tweaking bones that Max was cheating on me. In a flash everything slotted into place and made perfect sense. The way Kim giggled at his stupid jokes, the countless trips to the dealer they made, and the way she looked at him when he walked into the room. Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? How could I have been so fucking stupid!

    A tightness gripped my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to throw something, hit something with my fist. I wanted to scream at him, “You can’t do this to me you fucking asshole!” Instead, I went to the bedroom and smoked more speed. My hands shook as I sucked the spiraling metallic smoke into my lungs. My jaw clenched so hard it was a wonder my molars didn’t turn to dust. How could he do this me? Hadn’t I given him children as well as the best years of my life? In this moment it never occurred to me that I could leave him or kick him out of the house. Instead, I thought, maybe if I scared the shit out of him he’d think twice about ever cheating on me again. So, I had a plan as I slipped into the closet and stood on my tippy-toes, reaching around until I found the gun at the back of the shelf. My fingers gripped the hard steel of the .38 Smith & Wesson as I pulled it out. Max and I bought the gun a while back from a tweaker who was in need of cash. We somehow convinced ourselves it was a good idea to have around for protection in case anyone tried to break into our home.

    I went to the living room and placed the .38 on top of the armoire. Waiting, I paced back and forth like a feral cat. Images of Max and Kim fucking in the back of her El Camino played inside my brain like bad porno. Mother fucker! my head screamed, you can’t do this to me. I cooked your food. I washed your dirty drawers. For what? To be discarded like some old coat you don’t want anymore? No fucking way. I won’t have it!

    I pushed the screen door, stepped onto the front porch but there was still no sign of them. My thoughts were coming at me like the rapid fire of an AK-47. He said he would always be there for me. He said he would never leave me. We made a promise to each other twenty years before that we’d grow old together. He can’t do this to me.

    My heart hammered against my chest. Sweat dripped down my back. I had managed to work myself up into an eyeball-boiling rage when I looked out the door again, I saw them. Max was driving Kim’s white El Camino, looking for a parking space. I grabbed the .38, barreled through the screen door and ran into the middle of the street. Taking a military stance, behind them, I extended both my arms, with the gun in a two-fisted grip, I aimed above the car and pulled the trigger.

    POW!

    The sound felt like it reverberated through my chest. The noise was so piercing it’s a wonder I didn’t give myself permanent hearing damage. The car didn’t stop so I ran after it with both my knees and arms pumping away. I distinctly remember seeing my neighbor, Mrs. Brown, peering out her large bay window with her head bobbing back and forth.

    Mind your own business you nosy bitch. This is a domestic affair.

    When they turned the corner I darted in between two parked vehicles and caught my foot on the curb. I fell onto the wet grass but popped back up like one of those blow up dolls that won’t stay down. When I turned the corner I was shocked to find the El Camino sitting in the middle of the street. I rushed over like a deranged special ops commando and hurled my torso across the still warm hood. My chest heaved. I was panting like a dog in heat. Kim was sitting shot gun with her jaw unhinged. I pointed the gun directly at Max’s face. His big brown eyes were filled with terror. It was a look I’d never seen before. Those were the same soulful eyes I’d fallen in love with at sixteen years old. He was the love of my life. My best friend. The father of my children.

    In an instant it felt like I slipped out of my body and was staring down at myself sprawled out across the hood of the car. I heard a voice reason inside my head say, “You know, Wendy, if someone were to see you right now they might think you were crazy.” And they would have been absolutely right. I was in the middle of a drug-induced psychotic break. Sleep deprived and smoking way too much methamphetamine for any human being to consume, I had snapped. I had lost my mind just like my mother had years before.

    Then Max must have come to his senses because he stepped on the gas. As the car moved forward I slid off the hood and landed solidly on my feet. Pointing the gun downward so I wouldn’t hit anybody, I fired another round. As I did Kim’s face contorted before they drove off. Oh shit! Did I hit her? No way! The gun was pointed down.

    I stood there out of breath and watched as the taillights disappeared with the weapon dangling by my side. That was not the result I had in mind when I picked up the gun. In some strange way I thought he wouldn’t leave me if I showed him I meant business. My next thought was to change my clothes so no one could identify me in a lineup if the cops happened to show up.

    I ran back to the house but before I went inside, I shoved the gun under a pile of dead leaves by the back porch.

    Once inside I checked on Rikki, who was still asleep. As I stood watching him breath one would think his pure innocence might penetrate my drug-induced state but that was not the case. It was as if the meth, a diuretic, had not only leached my sanity, but drained my maternal instincts as well.

    I headed for the bedroom where I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. My breath nearly jackknifed. My brown hair was disheveled, the bones in my face were all sharp edges and I was hunched over. My eyes were like two dead, vacant pools and my skin was a sallow gray. It was jarring how much I looked like my mother had when she had gone insane.

    A familiar darkness grabbed me like fingers around my throat. I wanted to stop the madness but had no idea how.

    I flinched when I heard something outside the window. I opened the front door and when I stepped onto the porch I was blinded by a dozen spotlights, pointing at me like fingers of accusation. “Hands in the air!” a disembodied voice yelled from beyond the glare.

    The Catholic girl still inside me did exactly what she was told as a stampede of Lomita sheriffs surrounded me. It all happened fast after that. One of them cuffed my hands while another patted me down and others rushed inside the apartment.

    My legs shook like a high-strung Chihuahua. A scruffy-looking cop slipped plastic baggies over my hands and manila envelopes over that.

    “What’s going on? What, what what are you doing?” I asked, feigning innocence.

    A young cop, who looked barely out of high school wrapped duct tape around the envelopes secured the envelopes at my wrists.

    “My son is asleep in there…”
    A cop yelled inches from my face. “SHUT UP!”
    I flinched. I felt like I might pass out.
    When they were done, it looked like I had two flippers where my hands were supposed to be.

    A young sheriff led me by my arm, shoved me into the back seat of his squad car and slammed the door. I leaned my forehead against the window and watched as cops scurried in and out of my apartment. Where was Max? Why hadn’t he come back to see what was going on? What was going to happen to me? I needed a cigarette so fucking bad.

    I looked down at the strange appendages resting on my lap. I realized the cops were trying to keep the gunpowder intact on my hands as evidence. I gripped the corner of the envelope with my teeth and began ripping, tearing, spitting the scraps of paper on the floor. Ripping, tearing, biting, and spitting like a trapped animal determined to get free. Finally, I broke through the plastic baggies and started licking my hand and fingers. I was no dummy. I knew how to outsmart those cops. I was in a frenzy when the front door of the squad car flew open. A good-looking cop peered through the thick mesh screen.

    “Look, Wendy.” He paused. “Why don’t you just tell me where you put the gun? It will be easier for you if you cooperate with us.”

    “Under the leaves by the back porch.” The words just rolled right off my tongue. You clearly wouldn’t want to drop me behind enemy lines. He ran off like a school kid picked for the winning team. When I thought about Jerry and Rikki my heart sank to my feet.

    Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God oh shit shit shit. My poor, poor boys. What the fuck have I done? What have I done?


    Want to read more? Buy Mother Load on Amazon.

    View the original article at thefix.com