Answer Addiction

Tag: family

  • Their First Day of School Was My Last Day of Drinking

    Their First Day of School Was My Last Day of Drinking

    That day was the last time I bought into the lies that one drink will somehow not send me on that downward spiral to insanity and destruction of everything I love and care about.

    The kids were still sleeping when I woke up early just to start drinking. The wine was hidden in its usual spot, my closet, and I stood in there at 6 a.m. to choke down whatever I had left. Not because I wanted to, but at that point in my alcoholism my poor body depended on those swigs simply to function normally. I downed enough to stop the shakes, the sick feeling creeping all over my body, the ringing in my ears. Today was the first day of school and a big one at that. My youngest was starting kindergarten.

    Spenser

    He and I had quite a history. I was standing at a nurse’s station in a detox center when I found out I was pregnant with him. I had no idea. And now here we were, my baby with his little backpack, the youngest of four kids, heading to his first day of school. What the hell have I been doing all this time? The grip of addiction was still strangling me and all I could hope was that I’d get better sometime soon. I was so tired.

    The Secret

    I took a quick shower, skipping out on washing my hair. I didn’t have the time or the energy to fix it today. After I got dressed, my husband was already in the kitchen. Coffee was brewing, and silence filled the room. He knew about the closet, knew what I had done. I had looked into those broken eyes countless times, and this morning’s overwhelming feelings of self disgust were the same as all the times before. Graciously he hugged me without saying a word. And we stood there holding each other, like soldiers witnessing a gruesome battle, carrying on a conversation without uttering a single word until I finally let go to wake up the other kids.

    “I’ll start putting your bags in the car,” he said.

    “Okay.”

    And the sad secret being kept from the kids remained intact.

    Shelby

    It was her senior year of high school. My first-born baby girl had seen it all, from happy times in sobriety to life with a mom in rehab for the sixth time. Shelby was done with hearing apologies, but old enough by now to know I didn’t want to drink. She knew I tried, but she wanted her mother. I had one more year before she was gone and I felt every tick of the clock counting down as I wasted yet another day stuck in the fear and shame of it all. How many times had I failed her, and what if I did it again? She’d get her own ride to school, she’d hear the news, but would she forgive me one more time?

    Rebecca

    She had woken herself up for her first day of fifth grade, her last year in elementary school. I couldn’t help but think back to preschool days, her bright blonde hair and toothy grin. But like many memories, flashes of alcoholic moments clouded over the good times and I forced myself to think about something else. She was only four years old when she watched me get handcuffed out of the car and led away for my first DUI. I desperately needed to make new memories, not just for her but for me, too. All of my thoughts were killing me.

    Stella

    Since Spenser had snuck into our bed the night before, I only had one child left to wake up. Stella was still sleeping. She’d been waiting for this day — the beginning of third grade — for two weeks, excited to get back and see her friends again. I sat on the edge of her bottom bunk, reaching for her wavy brown hair. She rolled over and stretched, asking if it was morning. I realized this was it. I wouldn’t be back here for a while, wouldn’t be tucking her in tonight. Desperately wishing I could push rewind for the hundredth time, I just stood up and headed downstairs, feeling sad and scared and awful.

    Eventually the backpacks we ready and the lunches packed. I took one last look around my house, swallowing the waves of tears ready to spill out of my eyes and ruin the picture of normalcy I was trying to paint for my kids. We got in the car, my husband driving, and headed to the school a couple blocks away.

    A Long Good-bye

    “Focus on the kids,” is what I kept telling myself. “God, just get me through this without crying.”

    Hallway after hallway, at every turn was a flood of smiling parents with their best-dressed kids. The excitement was bubbling around me like Christmas morning. I, however, was in a private hell. Physically already feeling the effects of my maintenance wine consumption wearing off, I was dizzy, fluctuating between hot and cold. I thought I looked different than every other mom, so I kept my head down with a fake smile plastered on my face. I was an outsider, uncomfortable and out of place. We went room by room, starting at fifth grade, then third, and finally kindergarten. Each time I walked my precious child in and hugged and kissed them, holding back everything I wanted to say but couldn’t. I left parts of my heart, then grabbed my husband’s hand as we forced our way through crowds and out the door so I could breathe again.

    At 3 o’clock, school would get out, but I’d be gone. My kids wouldn’t see me again until weeks later during visitation day at my seventh treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction. My bed had been reserved since the previous Friday. I’d begged both my husband and the rehab facility to let me wait so that I could do what I just described: take my kids to school for their first day of school, walk Spenser to his first day of kindergarten.

    A Grateful Last Day

    That was August 22, 2016 and I haven’t picked up a drink since that morning. There was no hard bottom circumstance like other times I tried to quit, just sick and tired of being sick and tired. I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew what was left for me: death. I’d been carrying it around with me for months like a dark cloud, convinced the impending death wouldn’t be easy enough to be mine. More than likely it would be one of these precious kids because I always found a reason to drive after I drank.

    But that was the last time my body needed alcohol pumping through my bloodstream just to operate normally. It was the last time I needed to sneak away and find my liquid problem solver and stress reliever, my life-buffer that told me I needed a drink to cope. And it was the last time I bought into the lies that one drink will somehow not send me on that downward spiral to insanity and destruction of everything I love and care about.

    First day, last day, same day. Sometimes a thousand failures lead up to that one success, but that one is all you ever needed. True freedom is accepting it happened the way it was supposed to; taking what you have and making a purpose out of it. I was tired of being sick, and sick of being beaten down by this disease. Sick of always having shame take me out, sick of drinking to escape the self-hatred of not being able to stop drinking. 

    In sobriety, our last day is our first. Sometimes we show up in hallways of institutions and sometimes in closed rooms, feeling uncomfortable and out of place. But once we lift our heads and open our minds, hope comes sneaking in. It’s that moment where recovery is possible — for anyone, even a mother like me.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How Pregnant Women with Substance Use Disorder Are Criminalized

    How Pregnant Women with Substance Use Disorder Are Criminalized

    “The more we double down on the idea that pregnant women who struggle with addiction are terrible people and terrible mothers, the easier it becomes for… everyone else to treat them terribly.”

    Pregnant women in at least 45 states have faced criminal charges for abusing drugs while pregnant, stemming from the idea that they are doing harm to their unborn babies, according to a New York Times investigation.

    Many addiction and recovery professionals, including Dr. Sarah Wakeman, who directs the substance use program at Massachusetts General, say that criminal charges result from and contribute to the stigma around addiction and the idea that substance use disorder is a moral failing or choice rather than a complex medical issue.

    “The more we double down on the idea that pregnant women who struggle with addiction are terrible people and terrible mothers, the easier it becomes for doctors, social workers, judges and everyone else to treat them terribly,” Wakeman told the Times, which reported on the issue as part of a series about the rights of pregnant women. “When we criminalize women, we make them scapegoats for all of these large structural forces and societal failures that create poverty and give rise to addiction in the first place.”

    At Massachusetts General, the Hope Clinic provides treatment and parenting support for pregnant women and mothers with substance use disorder. By helping women rather than criminalizing them, both mother and child fair better, Wakeman said.

    In Tennessee, a law was passed two years ago that could force pregnant women with substance use disorder into jail, essentially claiming they need protective custody. However, the law backfired, resulting in women giving birth in risky situations or leaving the state, said University of Tennessee College of Law professor Wendy Bach. Now, the law is not being renewed.

    “We started out saying we would curb drug use and promote treatment and care. We ended up deterring people from treatment while doing basically nothing to curb use,” she said.

    Even when substance use doesn’t result in criminal charges, it can cause children to be taken from their families. Kasey Dischman, of Pennsylvania, got sober when she was pregnant with her first child. She maintained her recovery for years, until her daughter was eight and Dischman reconnected with the girl’s father.

    Dischman said, “It was like we didn’t know how to be sober together.”

    Dischman relapsed. She became pregnant again and accidentally overdosed, resulting in an emergency cesarean delivery for her second daughter.

    She said that in the moment when she injected heroin, the pull of addiction was stronger than her concern for her daughters — something she believes shows the power of the illness.

    “It’s almost like I forgot about them. I know that’s awful, and that people think I don’t have a conscience,” she said. “But that’s exactly what addiction is. Once it enters your head to do that shot, you develop this tunnel vision that nothing can break.”

    Today, Dischman is sober but still facing a complex legal battle in hopes of regaining custody of her daughters, all while feeling like the system is set up against her.

    “They don’t want me to recover from this,” she said. “Because if I do, if I make it through and I do all right, then what does that say about them, and about how they trashed me?”

    Barry Lester, who specializes in opioid addiction as a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Brown University, said that the treatment of women like Dischman is short-sighted and hurtful.

    “We love to hate these women,” he said. “But our hatred is not accomplishing anything.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Winter Is Coming

    Winter Is Coming

    Then I heard it. I’ll never forget it. The worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life. My mom began to wail. No words, just tones of sadness and helplessness.

    I used to wonder why a lot of people seek treatment around the winter time. And it’s weird because for people in recovery, the winter is usually the time they go back out. The drop in temperature does something crazy to an addict like me. I used to love getting high in the winter. Today it reminds me of the first time I came out as an addict.

    November 2013. That’s when I told my family I was shooting up Dilaudid and smoking crack, and that I couldn’t stop. The walls had finally caved in. I couldn’t hold a job any longer, I was thieving just enough to keep my car legal and on the road with enough left over to support my habit. I had lost a lot of weight because the only food I was taking in was whatever I was stealing out of the 7-Eleven before or after getting right. My diet consisted of string cheese, blueberry Red Bull, and the cigarettes I scooped out of their ashtrays. I had a routine of hitting them either late at night or first thing in the morning. I needed the ash for the cans I was using to smoke crack. I had two cups filled with cigarette ash in my car at all times. It smelled like shit. I was too scared to keep a crack pipe on me or the chore boy to go along with it, so I kept soda cans and ash on deck, ready to go whenever I scored.

    If you knew me growing up, you’d remember me as a generally happy kid. Aside from the slight anger issues and ADHD, I was usually smiling and filled with joy. The criminal lifestyle I adopted while blooming into a career dope-fiend slowly took that away from me. My eyes were no longer clear, and my voice always sounded like I just woke up; there simply was no life to me. I was a shell of a man. My default look resembled a man who was just informed that he had three days to live. Hopeless, defeated, weak and suicidal.

    Over time, I forgot how to keep up with my hygiene. Drugs had a funny way of making me neglect my self-care. There’s no way in hell I’m paying for a $12 haircut, that’s damn near half a pill. I was starting to lose my mind. The crimes I was committing and situations I had been getting myself into were affecting me. Sleep was out of the question. Whether it was from the crack or the insomnia, I’m not sure. Probably a combination of both.

    I am a firm believer and supporter of men and women in recovery who now suffer from PTSD because I know firsthand the horrors that go along with being a really good junkie; the shit we do, the things we see, the things we endure or narrowly escape. It’s hard to come back from that after doing it for so long to survive. I totally understand how when we finally get sober it’s a struggle to let go of certain character defects. Those defects were critical survival skills. 

    I told my brother first. That November, right before winter, I remember losing my job because my boss caught me on camera taking out his MacBook Pro along with some power tools we kept in our warehouse. He told me he wasn’t going to press charges but I knew they were coming. You can smell the police sometimes. I had run out of ideas and was in so much pain emotionally. I was dopesick and needed a fix, with no one to call and nothing to steal. My bright idea was to confess to my brother that I had been using for however many years, explain to him what withdrawing is, and proceed to ask him to buy me drugs. How low can I go? Let me tell you.

    I called him and told him the deal and he was in my driveway in 20 minutes. I explained to him that I wanted to tell Mom but first I had to get right. He was devastated. He loved me. He knew something was up this whole time but couldn’t believe just how bad it was. There were tears rolling down both of our faces. He told me he’ll do whatever he can to help but then we go straight to Mom. At this point I didn’t care, I was minutes away from my next fix.

    The fucked-up thing about this whole situation is that my brother is the complete opposite of me. He is the purest man I know. He shits integrity and pisses excellence on a daily fucking basis. I remember watching him cry the first time he got drunk. It was his 21st birthday and he believed he was letting so many people down. Fast forward to a cold night in November. Now I got him hitting an ATM and taking him to one of the most notorious drug dealers on our side of town.

    I got my pills, I got right, and I lay down. I wasn’t man enough to tell my mom after we got home so I hid under the covers like the bitch I was. My brother came in and asked me when I was going to tell her. I didn’t care anymore because I had a pill waiting for me hidden in the closet, along with a 40 piece of crack I fronted from the dopeman when I was getting the pills. It’s weird, I got what I wanted and I instantly forgot about all the pain and turmoil I’ve been through, like I’m ready to continue this shit show of a drug binge.

    I conceded and told him to tell Mom himself. I threw the covers back over my head and curled into a fetal position. I could hear them whispering in the living room. I couldn’t make out any words but just the tones they were using sounded sad and concerned. Like sitting in the waiting room of a hospital and overhearing doctors talk about something serious, knowing the prognosis is death. This was serious.

    Then I heard it. I’ll never forget it. The worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life. My mom began to wail. No words, just tones of sadness and helplessness. The kind you hear at a funeral when a wife is mourning over her dead husband and finally breaks down as she reaches the casket to glance at the lifeless love of her life. My mom sounded like she just received news that her first born child was murdered. At least that’s how I felt. I instantly began to cry. What the fuck am I doing to my family right now?! I am such a piece of shit. I just want to die. I also want to take a huge hit of that rock right about now too.

    I heard footsteps coming to the door. I knew it was my mom and I didn’t know what to expect. I know how my mom walks. I know what it sounds like to hear her roam around her house. I know it well because usually it’s 3 or 4 in the morning and my ear is under the door listening for her night in and night out while I get high in my room. The fervency in her footsteps caught me off guard. I never heard her walk this way before. I began to tremble. She comes into the room and sits right on my bed, wraps her arms around me and pulls me close to her. With fear in her voice, she says, “I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care how we do it, but I will do whatever it takes, Eli. We will beat this! I will not lose you like I lost your father. We will do this together and figure this out. I love you.” Tears fall as I type this out for you right now, but the tears I shed that night hurt worse than any pain I have ever felt.

    Neither of us could have predicted what was to transpire over the next few years. Her words of “doing this together,” although noble and very motherly, amount to nothing if I do nothing for my recovery. This journey was mine to take and mine alone. My mom can’t get me sober. Her prayers can’t get me sober. Neither can my brother’s. Recovery is up to me.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I have been blessed. My family are not spectators in my recovery, they support me in their own way. At times they have had to give me the “hard no” and love me from a distance. But I have always felt their touch. I’m one of the lucky ones. It’s not like that for a lot of my junkie friends, especially the ones that have undergone a geographical change to seek treatment. I know firsthand the lengths my family members have gone to understand me and encourage me along the way and for that, I will forever love them.

    That was the beginning of my journey. I didn’t attempt to get sober until a few months later but I will never forget that night.

    The dialog was started. The truth came out. The jig was up. The smell of police was in the air and Christmas was right around the corner. Santa would bring a lot of heartbreak that year and for a few more years after that. But the truth came out. The yarn would finally begin to unravel and I would begin the most important fight of my life.

    The fight for my life.

    Today I’m sober. Today in this moment I am alive, I am happy, I am free… Life isn’t perfect, but I am in love with living and I have a purpose.

    My name is Eli and I am an addict. Until the day I spoke those words aloud, I was a dead man walking. One day at a time, I do the things necessary to stay alive one more day. 

    If nobody told you today that they love you, fuck it, there’s always tomorrow.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 7 Reasons Not to Bring Your 12-Step Program Home for the Holidays

    7 Reasons Not to Bring Your 12-Step Program Home for the Holidays

    Shouldn’t you help your sister address her character defects? Isn’t it time to take your father’s inventory? And wouldn’t it be perfect to make amends to your mom at a family dinner?

    Regardless of whether you are newly sober or have many years of sustainable sobriety under your belt in 12-step programs, what is true for practically everyone else in the world is true for you as well: Your family of origin holds the keys to your most primal emotional and behavioral triggers. Nothing compares to that cutting look from your sister or that sarcastic undertone in your father’s voice. Although they love us– or maybe because they love us–our families can get under our skin and into our bones like no one else.

    Since the prospect of being with family holds that much tension, many people in 12-step programs decide it makes sense to work the steps with their family members over the holidays. After all, only the first step is about drugs and alcohol. The other 11 are about changing behavioral patterns and rehabbing the disease of perception. If we apply them wisely and gently to the members of our family of origin, we think, we will be able to help them. Shouldn’t your sister be shown how character defects are defining her life? Isn’t it time to take your father’s inventory? And, given the importance of the holidays, wouldn’t it be perfect to make amends to your mom at a family gathering?

    Actually, it’s not such a good idea. Forcing stepwork on your family goes against the spiritual nature of the program by crossing boundaries at the wrong time and putting your own wants and needs ahead of everyone else’s. But instead of just looking at the big picture, let’s delve into seven specific reasons why it’s not the best plan to do your stepwork with your family over the holidays.

    1. Your Family Is Not Part of Your Program

    Yes, many people in 12-step programs have family members who are also in 12-step programs, but that’s beside the point. If you want to discuss step work with a family member who’s in the program, then either go to a meeting or do so privately. Your family as a unit is not in a program. More importantly, most family members know very little about 12-step programs. They don’t want to do “work”—emotional or otherwise– during the holidays, they simply want to enjoy the holiday season.

    Ultimately, this is a question of proper boundaries. If you are a newly sober person, maintaining boundaries might not be your strong suit. When I was newly sober, I took everything personally. I didn’t understand the difference between what was about me and what was not about me. In truth, I was inclined to think everything was about me and I had to prove how well I was working the steps to everyone; I often felt entitled and superior. I had to be reminded by my sponsor that working steps should be kept within the context of my 12-step program.

    2. A Program of Attraction and Not Promotion

    In many families over the holiday season, there is that one family member who drinks too much and doesn’t know when to stop. Often, we were that family member until we embraced the path of sobriety. When we return to our families of origin over the holidays, we do not have to point out that Uncle Jack is drinking too much. We don’t need to preach the program to family members because that is not our role.

    Tradition 11 of Alcoholics Anonymous reads: “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” The principle of attraction rather than promotion can be applied to the individual, as well. It is not my job to promote recovery and tell other people that they need to get sober. Instead, by being of service to my family over the holidays, I can attract others just by being a better person. It’s really not that hard. Take the family dog for a walk, pick up the milk from the corner grocery store, or play with your nieces and nephews so your sister and brother-in-law can have a break. See how they respond, you might be surprised.

    3. You Are Not Your Family’s New Guru

    When a newly-sober person finds a higher power that works for them and embraces a spiritual path, it can be a wonder to behold the light in their eyes. However, like any other powerful experience in this world, finding faith when you’re newly sober can be spiritually intoxicating. When combined with meditation and prayer, it can become a profound experience that you want to share with your family.

    It’s not your role over the holidays to become your family’s new guru and point out their lack of a higher power. When your father gets upset when carving the turkey, try not to tell him to let it go and turn his anger over to a higher power. Sometimes the best way to be spiritual is to be quiet and modest. Be spiritual by doing the dishes and carrying the grocery bags. Such an approach works much better than trying to be the head cheerleader for your totally amazing higher power.

    4. It’s Not Your Job to Take Your Family’s Inventory

    If you have successfully completed Steps 4 and 5 in a 12-step program, then you have first “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Next, you “Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Congratulations! It takes courage to work these steps and you’re making good progress. However, completing these steps does not mean that you now must help your family by taking their inventories. It’s not kind and loving to point out others’ resentments or “issues.”

    Even if your family member is in the program, you are not their sponsor. And even if you were their sponsor, you wouldn’t be pointing out their resentments, they would be doing the inventory work themselves. Family gatherings over the holidays should be about fun and relaxation. Don’t spoil the vacation by pointing out lingering resentments.

    5. Holidays Are Not About Highlighting Character Defects

    If you have completed Step 6 and 7 in a 12-step program, then first you “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” Next, you “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” Again, just because you faced this difficult process yourself does not mean you have the right to point out character defects in other people. This kind of criticism of family members, even under the guise of help, is a recipe for disaster. It’s not your job to shine a light on negative traits. Your family members may be far from grateful.

    6. Amends Are Not About What You Want

    The holidays are not all about you, and family gatherings during this season are not the right time for you to make dramatic amends to family members. First, the process of making amends should not be selfish; while you will get relief from making them and may be eager to finish this step, the actual amends are not about you, they’re about the other person. Often, by trying to make amends for past wrongs during the holiday season, you are doing more harm than good. Reminders of your previous misdeeds may be the last thing your family wants to hear from you at this time.

    Amends should be private and on the other person’s timeline. You can bring up the idea of making amends to family members, but let them know that you want to do it at a time that makes sense for them. Amends are not about what you want, but rather about learning how to clean up your side of the street.

    7. How About Having a Little Fun?

    On page 132 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson made it crystal clear when he wrote, “But we aren’t a glum lot.” The holidays are about having a little fun and enjoying yourself while being with loved ones. If you try to work your 12-step program with your family, you will not be adding to the good cheer.

    Why not be of service to the holiday season by adding smiles, laughter, and gratitude to your family gatherings? Doesn’t such a positive approach ultimately make a lot more sense? Make it your goal to enjoy this holiday season, and you will feel rejuvenated and ready to continue on your positive path of sobriety in the new year. Your family and your recovery will thank you.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Empty Chair Campaign Highlights Loss and Sorrow Caused by the Drug War

    The Empty Chair Campaign Highlights Loss and Sorrow Caused by the Drug War

    The families of people incarcerated, distanced, or deceased because of the drug war live year-round with the unique suffering of loving someone whose pain you do not have the power to heal. During the holidays, that loss rises to the surface.

    Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, or something else this winter, the one element that probably shapes your holiday celebrations most is family. For most of us, that’s joyous, stressful, lovely, and anxiety-inducing all rolled into one. For those of us whose extended family will be present, we might even dread the holidays a little bit, fearing the awkward antics of Uncle Joey or the grotesque way our cousin brags about her perfect life. But for families affected by the war on drugs, winter holiday festivities don’t get to be about celebrating your family or nitpicking your sister’s new boyfriend. Instead, they are shaped by grief and loss.

    If you read the news at all, or even just scroll Twitter every once in a while, you probably know that drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Approximately 175 people die by drug overdose every day. That’s 72,000 each year, and the majority of those deaths — almost 50,000 — involve some type of opioid. Alcohol deaths, which are counted separately, account for approximately 88,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. So the impact of death due to substance use is huge, all on its own. But losing a loved one to a drug-related death is not the only way families are affected by drug use and the stigma that surrounds it.

    The Impact of the War on Drugs at the Holidays

    There are currently 200,000 people locked up in state prisons for drug crimes, and 82,000 convicted of drug crimes in federal detention facilities. These people are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles, cousins, sons, daughters, and friends. Their loss is felt year-round by those who love them, but families affected by the drug war have an especially difficult time during the holidays. The pain of the season is why, each year since 2012, Moms United to End the War on Drugs runs their Empty Chair Campaign. It starts around Thanksgiving and extends through the December holidays. While families gather to celebrate love, unity, and forgiveness, the empty chair symbolizes those who cannot be present — either through death, incarceration, or the stigma that latches onto people who use drugs or struggle with addiction.

    “Part of the goal of the Empty Chair Campaign is to also destigmatize the loss of a loved one through overdose,” says Diane Goldstein, a retired police officer who now chairs the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a group of criminal justice officials working toward system reform. Goldstein says she was inspired to work on criminal justice reform after watching her own brother struggle with substance use and mental health issues. Eventually, he died of a poly-substance overdose.

    “My mother was horribly embarrassed by my brother’s death and couldn’t talk about it,” Goldstein recalls. “I think you see a lot of families who that occurs with, so we are inclusive, not just of the victims of the drug war — which isn’t really a war on drugs, it’s a war on people — but to family members as well. It’s intended to reduce the stigma of the criminalization of drug use, support drug users, and help change the criminal justice system from criminalization to a public health approach.”

    The Empty Chair Honors an Absent Loved One

    The Empty Chair Campaign uses the symbol of the empty chair at the family table to stand in for the missing family member and highlight their absence. To participate, you can change your Facebook avatar to the empty chair logo, or you can post a photo of an empty chair at your table with a photo of your loved one and a label explaining why they’re missing: incarceration, accidental overdose, stigma, drug war violence.

    Gretchen Bergman, the executive director of Moms United to End the War on Drugs as well as its parent organization A New PATH, spent decades living with the overwhelming fear and anxiety unique to parents of children with drug addictions. That anxiety grew as she watched two sons sink into the world of destructive shame, stigma, and involvement with the criminal justice system which is now inextricably linked with addiction, thanks to the drug war.

    “My sons both tended to be leaders,” Bergman recalls, “My younger son was always a risk taker. He was the guy who jumped off the roof and dove into the swimming pool…My older son was very thoughtful, more cerebral.”

    Perhaps it was that cerebral nature which helped Bergman’s elder son, Elon, survive the prison system as he cycled through during his active addiction. He spent a combined eight years in prison, and three years on parole — and it all began when he was just 20, with a marijuana charge. Elon first acquired a taste for IV heroin behind bars, says Bergman, an addiction which would rule his 20s.

    “Today, because of our change of laws, he wouldn’t even be arrested at all,” Bergman notes of her son’s initial marijuana arrest — touching on a bitter truth that the lack of drug law uniformity has created across the United States. Whether or not a person becomes caught in the destructive and self-perpetuating criminal justice system depends largely on when and where they were arrested. Marijuana arrests are also disproportionately weighted against people of color, with the American Civil Liberties Union reporting that black people have historically been 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than their white counterparts despite equal rates of use.

    Family Celebrations Marred by Grief

    For the Bergman family, the war on drugs became a constant, uninvited guest at their holiday celebrations. Year after year, Gretchen Bergman found herself faced with the decision: should she spend the holidays with her son in prison or with the rest of her family? Even when she decided to attend the big family dinner — knowing she’d spend the night nursing her broken heart as she thought of her son cold and alone in his prison cell — she didn’t always have her youngest son Aaron with her, either. Though Aaron never got caught up in the cycle of release and re-incarceration that seems to follow people with felony convictions, he used IV drugs for decades. The shame that often accompanies this type of drug use, which is so heavily stigmatized that even other drug users feel superior to people who use needles, led Aaron to stay on the streets and miss family functions.

    “We really thought we were going to lose him because his health was compromised, and he seemed so lost, and he became a multi-drug user,” Bergman recalls. “But I always believed he was still there.”

    Today, both of Bergman’s sons are in recovery. Aaron, the younger son, managers a sober living home owned by his older brother Elon.

    Julia Negron, who runs the Suncoast Harm Reduction Project in Florida, grew up around drugs. She ended up in the foster care because of her mother’s drug use, and eventually battled her own heroin addiction. She has never known a life not touched by drug and alcohol misuse. And, not surprisingly, she has lost a number of friends and family members to drug-related complications, including overdose. But the experience that haunts her most was the total helplessness she felt as the mother of a drug-addicted child being forced through the criminal justice system instead of guided toward drug treatment that could have truly helped him.

    “It’s just terrible,” she says about the holiday celebrations when her son was absent. “It’s not just that they’re not there, you feel they’re unjustly being held somewhere. You feel like it’s a hostage situation.” She recalls packing her family, including young grandchildren, into the car one Thanksgiving and driving them four hours across the California desert to get to the facility where her son was being held. “By the time we went through security and they had to strip search him and do all their stuff on that end,” she says, “they managed to use the entire time allotted to visiting…We never did see him.”

    Parents and families of people incarcerated, distanced, or deceased because of the drug war live year-round with the unique suffering of loving someone whose pain you do not have the power to heal. During the holidays, that loss rises to the surface, almost as tangible as the missing person. The Empty Chair Campaign does not seek to cure this sorrow, which won’t abate until the drug war is finally given the ceasefire we all need. Instead, it hopes to bring it to the surface, in order to raise awareness and honor those very real people who deserve their seat at the family table.

    “What kind of kills you is you know the person inside, you know who he is,” says Bergman, describing the experience of having a child who is incarcerated for having a substance use disorder. “Right at the time he needs treatment and healing, which would have involved introspection, he’s behind bars, where in order to survive you have to harden your heart. You watch him disappear into that shell that he needed to in order to survive in that cold, concrete, violent atmosphere. It’s terrible to watch.”

    Have you lost someone due to the drug war? Let us know in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • A Christmas Gift from the Dopeman

    A Christmas Gift from the Dopeman

    You know what sucks about being an addict? A ten mile walk in the freezing cold to get pills on Christmas morning because you have no other options.

    You know what sucks about telling your family you’re an addict right before the holidays? Everything.

    I come from a very large Puerto Rican family. So usually for the holidays, we pick a house and see how many people we can cram into it while we stuff our faces with some of the best cuisine known to man. There’s music of course, and lots of love and laughter.

    A few weeks before our annual Christmas party, I told my family I had been using drugs for a few years. My mom’s house was the lucky one picked to host the festivities that year and I was going to do my best to be a good little junkie and try not to ruin it like I had just ruined the last 10 years of my godforsaken life.

    In the days leading up to the party, I had successfully weaned off the crack and was only shooting up opioids. I didn’t want to be too fucked up once family started to arrive.

    You know what doesn’t suck about Christmas parties? All the purses, wallets, and car keys all over the house. I had only confessed to my mom and my brother about my substance abuse and I don’t think my mom had told anyone. I hadn’t yet graduated to fucking over every family member so the forecast to get over on a few aunts and cousins was looking really bright.

    But I had to be on my best behavior, so I put that thought out of my mind. Just for tonight, I will not steal from my family. I shot up the rest of my pills earlier that day and decided I would just drink all the holiday beverages my family would take part in. I can do that, right? A little controlled drinking? Sure I can.

    Keeping Up Appearances

    You know what’s worse than drinking with family members who know you’re a junkie? Not being able to drink the way you want to, like a drunk. It’s a special kind of hell. Even before they knew, get-togethers and dinners sucked. They could all have a sip here and there, maybe get a little buzzed. But me, I just want to finish everyone’s glasses. Can’t they see the alcohol stuck on that ice cube?

    Amateurs.

    I just want to feel good. I want to feel normal. Everyone is smiling and having a good time. I’m over here nursing this Bud Light about to freak the hell out. It’s amazing the torture we put ourselves through while trying to keep up with appearances. I’m talking way before we hit the fuck-it button and stop giving a damn about what they think. I was still trying to save face but oh god, the pain. The withdrawals from the opioids are sneaking up and my thought is: if I’m not going to get right the way I want, I can at least get shit-faced off of this free liquor being sipped on by my family.

    Fuck. There are too many people here and my brother is watching every move I make. I know he’s concerned. I can see my mom texting my brother to check up on me and it’s pissing me off. I go out front to have a smoke and bring two beers with me. I can kill these quickly and ditch the bottles before anyone comes to join me. That way they don’t ask me if I’ve had too many.

    This party sucks. I want to get high.

    I text the closest dealer to me, a guy who lives about four miles away. I ask him if he’s got any pills on him. It’s about 9:30 p.m. when I get a text back. He tells me he’s good and that this pill is on the house because it’s Christmas Eve. 

    How nice, my dealer is giving me a free pill for Christmas. What a guy! The only problem is, he’s not delivering. It’s Christmas Eve and he’s spending it with his family. What a devoted baby daddy.

    Now I gotta figure out a way to get to him. My car was repossessed when I was in jail back in November and I’m sure as hell not asking a family member to go on a drug run with me.

    It’s 9:45 and 50 degrees out, that’s not too bad. What a beautiful night to take a stroll. I mean, the temperature is dropping quickly but fuck it, let’s just walk out of this party with everybody you know and go for a quick little four-mile stroll. Who’s gonna notice?

    Scoring Dope on Christmas Eve

    I grab my hoodie and hit the block.

    I scroll to a playlist filled with the most gangster, hood, female-degrading, drug-referencing music I can find. It’s funny how music can move an individual. It’s interesting to track the music we listen to when we get sober and how it changes when we morally begin to transform. Music is powerful. I’m a firm believer of the saying “garbage in, garbage out” and sometimes when someone shares their music with me in recovery, it reminds me of using or brings me to a mindset of just wanting to do hoodrat shit. It’s not healthy.

    And what the fuck is up with everyone in early sobriety listening to Kevin Gates and these other mumble rappers?! But I digress.

    I find the playlist I want to walk to and get to steppin’. I make it about two miles down the road before I start trying to flag down cars. The clock is ticking and I’m afraid my dealer is going to be asleep by the time I get there.

    Have you ever tried to wake up a drug dealer in the middle of the night to score? It’s not a pleasant experience.

    It’s getting really cold out. I should’ve worn pants. Dumbass.

    Hey! I see a car slowing down. A half hour of waving my thumb out is finally paying off. I’m going to get a ride to my dealer’s house!

    As the car gets closer, I realize it’s my brother. Fuck. He pulls up next to me and very wearily and with a tone of disappointment asks: “What are you doing, man?” I tell him I needed some fresh air and I was just going for a quick stroll. I know he doesn’t buy my response but he tells me to get in. We drive back home.

    Damn. Two more miles, that was it. Just two more miles and I would’ve had my drugs.

    I am pissed.

    We get back to the house and the party has died down. Most of the family has left, the food has been put away, and the music has been turned down. I call my dealer to see if he’s still up. He tells me he’s about to go to bed but that he’ll leave the pill underneath the only green coffee cup in his cupboard. He tells me to call his baby momma when I get there and she’ll let me in. I tell him that I’ll probably be on foot so it’ll be an hour or two. It’s not a problem.

    Okay, so all I have to do is wait for my brother to leave, which shouldn’t be long. My mom is already in the shower, that means she’ll be in bed in fifteen minutes. Alright, I got this.

    Tomorrow we have to be up early to drive to my aunt’s house for breakfast and exchanging gifts with the rest of the family. It’s tradition. No worries. As long as I have my dope, I’m good.

    A half hour goes by and it’s time to hit the block again. My mom is sleeping and my brother is gone.

    I’m walking again and it’s cold. My dumbass didn’t think to throw pants on because I was too concerned about leaving as soon as I could.

    The whole time I’m walking to his house, I’m thinking about how utterly powerless I am. It’s Christmas fucking Eve and I’m walking a total of now six miles to acquire one fucking Dilaudid. One. I am a hopeless piece of shit that cannot go a few hours without a fix.

    It’s two in the morning when I get to his house and she’s not answering. I call her ten more times, still no answer. I start to blow his phone up, nothing.

    I’ll be damned. I am not leaving this house until I get my drugs. It’s Christmas, damn it.

    I start knocking on the front door which is a big no-no with this guy but I really need this pill. No answer. I walk to the end of his driveway and light a cigarette. I’ll smoke the whole thing, and try calling again. If no one picks up, I’ll try knocking one more time and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just call my mom and make up some sob story for her to come pick me up. No big deal, right?

    I take two long drags from the cigarette, throw it out, turn around, and begin banging on the door.

    A Gun to the Head

    His half-asleep girlfriend opens the door and points a gun to my head. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

    Without flinching I tell her my name, tell her about the arrangement with her man and walk right past her and the pistol and straight into the kitchen. I open up the cupboard and look for the green coffee cup. Found it! I lift it up and can’t believe my eyes.

    Either my dealer is super generous or he royally fucked up. There’s a bag with nine pills in it. I grab the bag and walk out the door. I turn around and tell his girlfriend that I’ll be by in the morning with the money.

    I’m sure he’s gonna freak the hell out when she wakes him up and tells him I was in his house at two in the morning and took the whole bag. He knows where I live and he has a bad temper. I used to ride around with him to help “collect” his debts and needless to say, you don’t want to be in debt to this guy.

    I begin to run as fast as I can. If I can at least get off his street, I know I’m good. It’s too late for him to do anything this early in the morning.

    Six miles, 40 degree weather, two in the morning on Christmas Day, and now I have to walk four more miles to get back to the house and get right.

    You know what sucks about being an addict? A ten mile walk in the freezing cold to get pills on Christmas morning because you have no other options.

    When I finally got home, I couldn’t feel my face and my legs literally felt like Jello. My mom was awake and freaking out because she didn’t know where I was. I told her I was just walking around the neighborhood smoking and that it wasn’t a big deal.

    I couldn’t even enjoy shooting up the pill because my body was so sore. I just fell asleep.

    But at least I had more dope when I woke up to take part in all the Christmas festivities the next day. I felt like such a loser being with my family that Christmas. I spent the whole day in and out of the bathroom, getting right every 45 minutes.

    A New Tradition

    I love being able to look back on that Christmas and know that I don’t have to live like that anymore. The best gift I can give my family today is to show up this year to their party completely present and sober. It’s what I did last year, it’s what I plan on doing this year. No one is hiding their purse or wondering where I am going when I step out to smoke. I’m just a son and a brother enjoying his family. I look forward to Christmas parties now. Dread and anxiety has turned into excitement and joy and gratitude.

    If nobody told you today that they love you, fuck it, there’s always tomorrow.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • An Addict’s Love Song to Her Son

    An Addict’s Love Song to Her Son

    He has seen me, his addicted mother, disappear into the night on wobbly ankles, drunken feet; he has seen me being calmed down by the police; he has seen me fall. “I love you” is my answer, my promise that I will not die.

    Our love for each other is overwhelming, addicting and addictive. The love starts as early as 5 a.m., when I sometimes wake up in pain from my body getting twisted into accommodating his— his long, impossibly thick, long hair and strong knees, and feet that keep on growing. He likes to sleep in my bed and I don’t mind—I know we’ve only a couple more years left before he stops coming to nest himself into that small space, with his dinosaur-printed pillow, and his dinosaur feet wrapping around my legs.

    Some mornings he’s holding me so tightly, I don’t move and lie there with my bladder full, smelling his head—I can still get a whiff of the baby that he was only a short time ago. Hello: We will now open our eyes—he always opens his eyes right after I open mine; we’re like a wound-up toy.

    The first thing we say when we wake up is “I love you.”

    We repeat it a dozen times before we get to school: at breakfast, walking to the bus, on the bus, getting off the bus.

    When I drop him off at school, he shouts it—“I love you”—so unabashedly, again, above the heads of boys his age—the cruel age that’s right on the brink of childhood and snarkiness.

    He repeats his declarations whenever we are together and he texts me like a stalker boyfriend when I drop him off at his dad’s: I love you. Why don’t you text back. Where are you. I love you mummy. What are you doing. I love you.

    In person, he is angry and superior if I don’t reply right away or just volley it back too blatantly absentminded, with my fingers dipped into my iPhone and its drama.

    “Mummy. I said I love you.”

    “I love you too. I love you so much,” I will often add if I realize that I need to make up for the iPhone.

    Does this strike you as excessive and crazy? It is not. It is necessary, it is life-saving, life-affirming. Our words to each other are a spell we cast. So often, when we confirm that we love each other, it feels as if we’ve staved off darkness for another few hours. It seems we are safe: not from having our love unconfirmed and spent, but from losing each other.

    We need this assurance.

    “I love you” is a question.

    “I love you” is my answer, my promise. I promise him me when I say I love him. I promise him a mom. I promise him that I will pick him up from school; that I will feed him; that I will not die.

    He has seen me stumbling arm-in-arm with death too many times and I have let him go as if I didn’t love him at all, and I’ve left him for a terrible thing—a monster that closes my heart and opens my mouth, and drinks.

    What he has seen was not actual death—I have never overdosed in front of him—but its possibilities: death proxies. He has seen me disappear into the night on wobbly ankles, drunken feet; he has seen me being calmed down by the police; he has seen me fall into the street. An ambulance has been called.

    And lately, every time he looks at my right shoulder, he sees the pink burn scar from the road rash. I wish I could just bite off that shoulder—instead, I say “I love you” when I catch him staring at it.

    “I will tattoo roses over it once it heals,” I say. Those are the only type of apology flowers I can offer my boy.

    Big Feelings and Addiction

    I look at my son for signs of addiction: his neediness and his possessiveness—I don’t know if those are signs but I recognize them from my childhood. I think of my old dog that I used to dress in doll clothing and squeeze and kiss and kiss (and kiss) while she’d try to squirm out, her golden-blonde body like too much sunshine trapped and exploding out of my girl arms. She hated being confined. She wanted to run. She was a dog, not a doll. She didn’t feel the same way about me. (They design dogs for people like me now—seemingly catatonic creatures that resemble small purposeless and curious furniture—that you can carry in your purse, dogs that have anxiety bred out of them when it comes to their owners’ affections but that react with fury to small things—small leaves.)

    I know that addiction is not about the substance—it is about feelings. It is about the inability to regulate emotions properly. My love song with my son is loud and intense; we are consumed by the bond between us and although it’s a beautiful bond, I know that maybe we should dial it down. But we can’t. What am I supposed to do? Tell him to feel less strongly, less urgently? When I myself cannot model that, when I cannot repress the beauty of that?

    My son has always had Big Feelings the way I did as a child. He has always been intense with his friends; he can play in groups but he is possessive of his closest friends, he is a little desperate. He creates deep bonds with his buddies the way I did, and as it was with me, his friendship is a gift of complete loyalty and an invitation to a mind that is creative and capable of creating universes that go beyond any video game. His friends follow him, his games and his rules and he dominates them, and he has a hard time letting them go—he is heartbroken when the play dates are over. I worry that once my son gets to the age when hormones take over, he too, will find the maladaptive kind of coping mechanism that almost destroyed me.

    As a first-generation immigrant who had to leave her country behind, unasked, I’m unfortunately familiar with having to let go when I don’t want to.

    I’m familiar with the internal destruction of an unexpected event, a strike my feelings go on, demanding explanation.

    But what is the point of explanation? There should only be adaptation. But I did not adapt easily. I drank easily.

    Any major change in my feelings still always sends a seismic shock through my sobriety—I might not react right away but by the time the shock registers, I’d better be ready to stabilize. In the past I have relapsed instead so I know how precarious the addict’s sanity is. Is my son as sane or as insane as me? Will my son be able to withstand the shocks?

    Maybe I shouldn’t be so negative. Exercise helps. Exercise is good way to release your anxiety and he loves soccer. He is obsessive about it. He plays it all the time and he knows all the stats. He has found an outlet for now.

    God, let him have his soccer, let him remain passionate about it, about the stats, the games, the intricacies of transfers of Neymar Jr or Ronaldo between different soccer clubs.

    Don’t let a girl or a boy break his heart in the way that he will have to reach for a drink or a drug. Don’t let the memory of the horror divorce, my horror drinking, or moving away make him want to numb his sadness in a way that’s not soccer, that’s not innocent.

    Don’t let him become like me.

    For now we deal the best we can. There is still so much sadness but we have come up with a new strategy: When our “I-love-yous’” are not enough and he feels a bad feeling coming on, he squeezes my hand tight. He reaches for my hand and he clasps it till it hurts both of us. Most of the squeezing has to do with flashbacks of my drinking. Some of it has to do with the divorce.

    I hold his hand and feel his grip, feel him not letting go. I squeeze back, unable to let go either.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Can Medical Marijuana Help Alzheimer’s Patients?

    Can Medical Marijuana Help Alzheimer’s Patients?

    After nothing but marijuana edibles seemed to offer his Holocaust survivor father reprieve from Alzheimer’s, Greg Spier began funding medical marijuana research through the Spier Family Foundation.

    When Greg Spier’s father Alex was dealing with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, he was prone to experiencing delusions and irritability, behavioral problems that are common in dementia patients.

    For Alex, who had survived three years in concentration camps during the Holocaust, this involved reliving some of his worst memories.

    “It was the most difficult time of my life, having to see him deteriorate. My father spoke five languages, and he was speaking Dutch and German, reliving the three concentration camps he survived,” Greg Spier told ABC News, recalling how his father often pleaded, “Where is my mother?” in German.

    Antipsychotic drugs, which are often used to control distress in dementia patients, did little to alleviate Alex’s symptoms, so Spier decided to try something more unconventional.

    “The only thing that seemed to give him any reprieve was the marijuana,” Spier said. When he began feeding his father edibles up to four times a day, his dad was less distressed and better able to sleep.

    Now Spier is helping to fund research into marijuana as a treatment for dementia symptoms through the Spier Family Foundation, the philanthropic arm of a successful realty and development corporation Alex founded after he emigrated to America after World War II.

    Dr. Brent Forester, chief of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Harvard’s McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, said private funding is important for marijuana research, which receives very little federal funding because cannabis is a Schedule I controlled substance.

    Forester said that research suggests cannabis might be beneficial for dementia patients and that it has different effects on older brains than it does for younger users.

    “We really need to open up opportunities to study medical marijuana for this particular indication. I think there’s enough evidence from the synthetic THC as well as anecdotal reports that it’s certainly worth studying,” he said.

    One study Forester ran found that treatment with a medical form of THC provided relief for dementia patients who were experiencing distress or psychotic symptoms. Another study found that low doses of THC can improve cognitive function in older mice, the opposite effect that it had on younger mice. In addition, animal research has shown that THC may increase the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the same way that the FDA-approved dementia drug Aricept does, and that the compound can slow the accumulation of amyloid beta plaques, which are a telltale characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

    Forester theorizes these protections might help reduce the distressing behaviors people with Alzheimer’s often exhibit. The Spier family hopes that by funding this research, they can help other Alzheimer’s patients and their families find more peace during the final stages of the disease.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Journey from Heroin to Prison

    My Journey from Heroin to Prison

    As soon as I was out of prison, it took one argument with a girlfriend for me to go running right back into the arms of the one that always made me feel better: heroin.

    I have been a man of many realities. I’ve been a son, a student, a friend, a lover, a brother and finally a drug dealer. Well, at least, I thought that was my final phase. But then I shot heroin for the first time and I entered a new world. I felt warmth comparable to a mother’s embrace. It was something in my life I no longer received. It was a feeling I craved desperately, setting me on a course of destruction and pain that I tried to blot out with even more heroin. And every time I came to, the pain seemed to get worse.

    I didn’t start off as a heroin user. I found my niche in high school selling weed. But when I was forced out on my own, I knew I needed a better source of income. So, I started selling the Adderal and Atavan that I was prescribed. In that life, it really was only a matter of time before I started abusing the drugs I was selling. To support my growing habit, I started selling cocaine. It was fast and easy money from an older crowd. I didn’t plan on using it myself; my biological mother was addicted to crack cocaine and I was afraid of following in her footsteps.

    But there came a day when I gave in to temptation. Coke took me to another level. After cocaine it was Percocet and then, eventually, at the prompting of the girl I loved, I tried heroin. As I pushed the plunger, I felt all of the pain in my life fade away as the warmth of the dope enveloped me. It was a night of warmth and sex. When I woke up in the morning, all I felt was sadness that the feeling was over. Reality came crashing over me and all of the feelings that I had so desperately tried to bury came rushing back to me. It was a toxic mix of guilt and anger and disappointment. Pain.

    I never liked dealing with my feelings, and heroin helped me to avoid them. But I tried to avoid them too much. Two nights before Christmas 2009, I overdosed for the first time. The life I had been living took its toll on me, mentally and physically. I was alone and the pain of losing my family and my friends to my addiction became too much for me to handle. All I wanted was to keep running from it. I ended up using too much heroin to blur out the pain.

    I didn’t want to die but I just didn’t know how to live.

    When I opened my eyes, it was like a dream. Ambulance lights flashing, people overhead asking questions. All of the voices seemed as if they were under water. Christmas morning, when I came to in the hospital, my family was there at my bedside. I hadn’t seen my brothers and sisters in a long time because my mom wanted me to stay away. She wasn’t my biological mom, of course. The woman that gave birth to me was too in love with crack to be a mother to me. She abandoned me when I was five. But my mom, she took me in and looked after me until I was 14. Then she kicked me out too. 

    When I woke up in the hospital bed and saw her face and the looks on my siblings’ faces, I broke down. At that point in my life, I thought I had forgotten how to cry. But I cried because they cried. I cried because I realized my siblings were seeing their hero at his worst. I cried because I felt bad for all the things I did to my mom. I always wanted to make my adopted parents proud. I felt like I owed them my successes because they gave me a second chance at a decent life. I had to show them it wasn’t for nothing. But looking into my mom’s eyes that morning, all I saw was the pain and disappointment I had caused her.

    When I was released from the hospital, I was too ashamed and embarrassed to show my face to my brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to deal with the pain of what I had done. Instead, I crawled backed into bed with my new love, heroin, who kept my emotions nonexistent as long as I stayed with her. I turned away from my family and searched for a new one – a family that would accept me without me having to change my destructive behavior. I found that sense of belonging with the Latin Kings.

    My “Original Gangster” – the Latin King member who took me under his wing – showed me a side of gang life that I hadn’t ever expected. He told me the Nation was dedicated to uplifting the Latin community from poverty, oppression, and abuse. He showed me broken families, homeless people and how my life would be if I continued on the path I was on. He was a man who didn’t owe me a thing but tried to show me a better way. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. And I wanted what he had: respect, power, and the ability to make a difference in the lives of the people who looked up to him. I had no direction and nothing going for me so I agreed to be a part of his world, with no consideration of what that really meant.

    I began living a lie. I pretended to be clean, but anyone who stayed around me long enough could see that I was on drugs. My OG would ask me occasionally if I was using and I would always make up a story. He never pushed me any further on it. But the other Kings knew. They didn’t care, though, as long as I did what they asked of me. Some of them even supplied me with drugs to make sure I was ready for a “mission.” In our world, a mission involved shooting at the opposition or robbing someone.

    In my heart, though, I was never a gangster. I never wanted to hurt people. The things I did on my missions made me feel like I was a losing a part of myself. My life became an endless cycle: wake up, get high, complete my mission, get high, be with my girlfriend, get high, black out, wake up, repeat. Then one day I was given a mission that no amount of drugs could ever convince me to do.

    I had sworn loyalty to my gang but when they told me to kill my OG for being a suspected police informant, I couldn’t do it. Three members of my gang beat me unconscious for violating their order. When I came to, I was in the hospital with a concussion and my phone was ringing. My OG’s wife was crying on the other end. He was dead. My heart sank and hardened at once. I detached myself from the machines and left against medical advice. I needed to get back to heroin. It was my love, and at that point, it also became my life.

    Supporting my habit got harder. I was using too much to be able to sell and still have enough left for myself. So, I found a new profession as a male escort. It was during that time that I was raped by one of my drug dealers. I was unable to live with myself after that happened. For the first time, I intentionally overdosed and ended up on a friend’s front porch. He brought me back to life. Throughout the night, he talked to me about life. He told me “life is good, good is life.” I eventually had those words tattooed on my forearms to serve as a reminder. He not only gave me a second chance at life but also a new outlook. From that day forward, I tried to fight my addiction.

    It wasn’t easy and I didn’t manage it very well. I tried my first stint at rehab at 17. That lasted two weeks. Soon after rehab, I caught my first case for armed robbery. Strangely, when they put me in the cop car, I was relieved. My first night in jail put me in a bad place mentally. All the pain I was running from was suffocating me. I had the phrase “life is good, good is life” in my mind but, at that moment, I had no idea what was actually good in my life. All I knew is that I wanted to live.

    I served three years and change on my first sentence. I was in the best shape of my life, both physically and mentally, and I thought I had everything figured out. But nothing had really changed for me. As soon as I was out, it took one argument with a girlfriend for me to go running right back into the arms of the one that always made me feel better: heroin. I wasn’t out of prison four hours before I had a needle in my arm.

    Seven months later, I caught my second case and that’s what I’m serving now. Since going back to prison this time, I’ve worked hard to better myself, gain an education and become someone. But I still carry around the fear that I might not be strong enough to stay clean and make something of myself when I get out. In the past, that fear would have stopped me from even trying. But during this sentence, I’ve learned that the only way for me to succeed is to have the courage to fail and pick myself back up without having to turn to my old love for support. I used to believe I was nothing and that meant my life would amount to nothing. But I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that I have the tools I need to succeed. And that gives me hope that, maybe this time, everything will be different.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

    One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

    My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

    It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I am sitting at the desk in my office. I’m not at work officially yet, won’t be for another hour or so. Then the race will start. Kara had asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting this morning, to pick up my 15 year coin. I didn’t.

    She said, “The day can look however you want. I have a babysitter, so if you want to go out after work and celebrate, then we can do that…or nothing.”

    I said that I thought that this year I just wanted it to be a day, just to be a day like any other day. Sometimes I really want the celebration, but this year, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to come in here and sit and think and spend some time alone. So, I woke up early, my daughter’s warm, tiny body next to me through the night sleeping heavily after a late evening of trick-or-treating excitement, costumes, candy, and other children running wildly through the streets. Kara, still exhausted, is next to her, a new puppy sleeping soundly at her shoulder. There is a cat at her feet curled up contentedly as all cats sleep. Last night we went to bed laughing about this — the animals, our child, about the busy place that our bed has become. I pointed out that nine years ago this would have been an absolute dream come true.

    Kara said, “Nine years ago this couldn’t have even been imagined!” and we laughed together at our own amazement.

    Today is the 15th anniversary of my sobriety. It is a date that is perpetually entwined with gratitude and sorrow. This is a date that I will always celebrate and mourn. My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

    Sobriety always comes at a cost. I’ve been around enough 12-step rooms and other sober support communities to know this.

    It is veritably impossible to hear a person’s recovery story without being very often stunned and amazed by the levels of grief and despair that their recovery has cost. The cost of my own sobriety was lives. I still shake my head 15 years later even as I write those words. It just doesn’t seem possible still. I can just never make it better. Not ever.

    I am Sysiphus, eternally condemned to pushing a boulder to the top of this mountain.

    But it is also great, which is an odd dissonance. It’s a perpetual mourning, but also an absolute celebration, and discovery, and adventure.

    I work with people daily in very early recovery. They sit in my office and cry and are angry and are desperate and scared. They sit across from me and I see myself. It would be impossible not to. The words they use, the language they use, is a close memory hermetically sealed forever in my mind. I listen to them and I hear myself. I feel sad for them, and grateful that for me that the chaos has ended. It has finally ended. I remember how it felt to have the heavy fog of eternal delusion lift and what it felt like to start to see for what felt like the first time ever. And I am so grateful for the utter simplicity of today’s problems.

    But again, I question the cost.

    One simple decision.

    One very simple, very wrong, decision.

    And some poor soul never gets to see their child again, their parent again, someone they love ever again, and there is no way to ever make that better. That can never be made better again.

    After taking Story trick-or-treating last night, she climbs excitedly into her car seat and asks for her bounty, her new treasures, her bucket of goods scored on a lively Hallows Eve. Kara tells her that she doesn’t want Story to eat all of that candy and make herself sick. Story insists that she won’t. We relent and let her have her reserve. On the way home we are absolutely charged. What a great night! We tell Story what a good kid she was and how much we appreciated her saying “thank-you” to all of the people that gave her candy. And because I never want her to forget it, I remind her of all of the great things we did leading up to this night. I ask her to join in with me, and we laugh about corn mazes and hot apple cider. We talk about apple picking and candy corn. We revel in her having been read the entire first Harry Potter book not once, but twice! We remember carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds.

    Occasionally, Story asks if she can turn the light on in the van so that she can carefully pick her next treat. Kara says she can do it as long as she does it quickly, and I can hear the crinkling of tiny brown wrappers behind me and I am filled to the brim with love and joy and just Life!

    And then I wonder…

    Was this what it was like for them?

    Fifteen years later this is what I have to offer not just my own victims, but the world. This is what I owe:

    My boundless gratitude.

    My eternal apologies.

    My diligence and determination.

    My thankfulness.

    My joy.

    My promise.

    My sobriety.

    Thank you to everyone, friends, and families, my victims, just everyone, who has made this incredibly magical, and far too meaningful journey possible. Thank you all. And please don’t drink and drive. Please. Just don’t.

    Peace.

    View the original article at thefix.com