Answer Addiction

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  • 5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Hit Rock Bottom

    5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Hit Rock Bottom

    When you’re at your lowest point, it’s easy to feel like there is no hope, like you are completely alone, like your life will never be full again.

    Rock bottom is such a common term in the world of recovery. And while everyone has a rock bottom, no one has the same one. When you’re at your lowest point, it’s easy to feel like there is no hope, like you are completely alone, like your life will never be full again. I certainly felt all those things and more a little over five years ago when I hit my bottom.

    But they say hindsight is 20/20, and in looking back, there are a few things I wish I had been able to reach out and grasp from my bottom. In hopes that they might help someone else, here they are:

    1. There Is Always a Light at the End of the Tunnel

    When I think back to the first few days and weeks following my rock bottom, I remember an all-encompassing feeling of utter hopelessness. I felt there was literally no way life would ever get better, that things would only get worse as time went on. I didn’t think there was any way out of the hole I had found myself in. I was really, truly incapable of envisioning a life in which I was happy without alcohol. I know I’m not alone in those feelings. Those emotions and struggles are true of many people when they hit their lowest of lows. It is called rock bottom for a reason — that reason being that you cannot go any lower. The only direction to go is up. But in the midst of it all, it’s so hard to see that. At rock bottom, I wish I had been able to reach out and grasp that little bit of hope that everything would be OK, rather than fixating on how my life was falling apart at the seams. Seeing that light at the end of the tunnel is something that would have been helpful. But what matters is that the light eventually made its way to me, and when it did, I kept walking toward it. Some days, I still am.

    2. Even in Your Loneliest Moments, You Are Not Alone

    In addition to feeling utterly hopeless early on, I also felt completely, wholly alone — more alone than I have ever felt in my life. I couldn’t imagine that anyone in the world was going through what I was going through. And maybe that’s true, to an extent. But it’s also true that there were people going through similar things; I just hadn’t crossed paths with them yet. I also felt alone in the sense that I was scared to talk to the people closest to me about what I was feeling and thinking. Instead, I kept it all bottled inside, isolating myself even more. It was only when I began to let my guard down that I realized I had had people beside me all along. I had never been alone, I had just convinced myself that was the case.

    3. The People Who Matter Will Remain by Your Side

    As my life was falling apart five and a half years ago, one of my main concerns was what would happen to my relationships. I was so scared of losing the people who I thought were important to me. And the truth is that not all of my relationships would survive the coming weeks and months. There were some friends who I came to find were really just drinking buddies. Those were the ones who slowly faded away. But at my lowest point, the people who really cared about me as a person came forward and made it known. So many of my relationships became stronger in the months following my rock bottom, to the point that I barely noticed the relationships that hadn’t pulled through. When everything is changing without your permission, it’s easy to feel as if it’s for the worst. But just remember that’s not always the case.

    4. People Won’t Judge You as Harshly as You Think They Will

    This was one of my biggest fears at my rock bottom and is what kept me from moving forward in my recovery for some time. I was so terrified that when people found out what had happened in my life, they would pass judgement and jump to conclusions. I was afraid that they would look at me differently or tell me I was overreacting. And sure, some people did. But the majority of people commended me for realizing that my life was spiraling out of control and for taking the steps to better it. Most people were and are beyond supportive of the decision I made five years ago, and I wish I’d known that would be the case when I made that decision. One thing I’ve learned is that people will always surprise you — you just have to give them the opportunity to do so.

    5. Rock Bottom Is an Opportunity to Recreate Your Life

    Before I hit my rock bottom, I thought the life I was living was pretty good. I didn’t realize that I was disappointed in my behavior, unhappy with my physical appearance, frustrated with the way I was becoming a person I didn’t respect. But rock bottom gave me the clarity to see all those things. And while that wasn’t fun at first, it eventually gave me the chance to start doing my life the right way. I got back on track, whether it was with my morals, my workout regimen, my diet, my relationships. Getting sober gave me the time to focus on what I really wanted my life to look like and figure out how to get to that point.

    As I said before, rock bottom is different for everyone. But the common factor is that it’s a point that is the lowest of lows and it can be difficult to image anything getting better. So if you remember one thing in the depths of your rock bottom, just hold onto the fact that it really can only get better — as long as that is what you truly want for yourself.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Setting Boundaries in Sobriety

    Setting Boundaries in Sobriety

    Sobriety doesn’t come with a handbook. If it did, you’d have to be sober first to read it.

    People with addiction issues are not used to setting boundaries, especially when those boundaries involve behaviors we have reinforced for years.

    I spent years violating boundaries as a drunk. Particularly when it came to relationships. Piss me off and I’d become belligerent. Let me drink all night and I’d throw up on your carpet. Invite me to a party and I’ll embarrass you in front of your friends. Weddings? Absolutely! Sign me up as the drunkest attendee. For drunks, the people who let us violate their boundaries are the ones we come back to over and over again.

    I chose to become sober and dry after drinking made my life unbearable. My fiancé Jill didn’t make that choice. She didn’t have to; she wasn’t experiencing the same struggle with alcohol abuse I was. Drinking was ruining my personal and professional relationships. I spent my days trying to make up for what I destroyed at night. She had a glass or two of wine when she felt like it and functioned fine the next day.

    ***

    Sobriety doesn’t come with a handbook. If it did, you’d have to be sober first to read it. Perhaps I would have learned about being a decent sober person if I had gone to an in-house treatment program. I did my sobering up in the wild, so to speak. My changes, positive and negative, took place in front of everyone around me.

    Jill and I were blindsided by boundary-setting issues early in my sobriety. Our relationship was one of the few things from my drinking days I wanted to save. At best, it was hanging by a thread. We agreed to stay together while I tried to get a firm grasp on sobriety. She gave me support and encouragement as I experienced little successes: one day sober, one week sober.

    I appreciated Jill’s support. We never discussed the specifics of what I’d need from her. I wouldn’t have known what to ask for anyway. I intended to go to AA every day for the first 90 days and I was seeing an individual counselor and going to a weekly all-male support group. I was bursting at the seams with support; I was exhausted from so much support.

    Jill drank wine. Not my drink of choice. I was the typical Philadelphia-living, bearded, tattoo-covered, craft beer drinker. The higher the ABV the better. The more ounces the better. Wine? No thanks. I hadn’t asked Jill to stop drinking or to keep alcohol out of the house but she had naturally done so, initially. I assumed we had an unspoken agreement.

    A couple weeks into my sobriety, we had plans to spend a relaxing afternoon and evening together. I was leaving work early to watch a Team USA World Cup soccer match, an event I would have typically used as an excuse to overconsume alcohol on a weekday. Just like football games, tennis matches, holidays, and days ending in a y.

    However, my newly-sober-person plan consisted of spending time watching soccer and eating takeout Thai food with Jill.

    Jill sent me a text asking if I would pick her up a bottle of wine on my way home from work. It was a reasonable request on the surface; she didn’t have a car, so it was easier for me to pick up the wine on my way home. Pennsylvania has interesting liquor laws: you can’t walk into any random gas station or grocery store and grab an alcoholic beverage; there are special stores for buying wine and spirits and separate bottle shops where you can purchase beer.

    Jill’s request didn’t offend me at first. She knew I didn’t drink wine and she was supportive of my sobriety and told me she was proud of me. I knew her request for a bottle of wine meant we were likely going to have sex that evening. I had no issue with that – of course I could bring her a bottle of wine.

    On the way home, I picked up the finest bottle of $10 red wine I could find. I guess we weren’t going to watch soccer after all.

    We had the kind of evening you can only have when you are in a relationship that’s starting to heal after a long period of damage. You know, sexual healing? Jill had a glass of wine or two over the course of the night. I found out later Team USA had won their game.

    Everything was perfect.

    Until it wasn’t.

    There were a couple things I hadn’t told Jill about my trip to the wine store. First, I had broken out into a panic while I was in the store. I’m no stranger to anxiety attacks, but this one hit me hard.

    Making matters worse, I chose to get her wine from a store directly across the street from the meetinghouse for the AA group I was attending. I felt like I was sneaking behind enemy lines as I came and went from the wine shop. I expected to see someone I knew from meetings standing outside smoking. I bent my head down and rushed back to my car.

    To hell with them, I thought at the time. If someone sees me, I’ll tell the truth. I flashed back to the time my middle school friend told his parents the open beer he was holding was for a friend. Not a believable story then, still not a believable story as an adult.

    No one from the group had seen me, but mentally the damage was done. I tend to ruminate on things until they drive me crazy and I spent the next few days stewing on what Jill had asked me to do. How rude. How disrespectful. Didn’t she understand my position? How absurd I should have to say that I don’t want to go into a wine shop as an alcoholic.

    I decided I needed to tell Jill about my boundary issue when I picked her up from work that Friday. Every Friday I’d pick her up from the University of Pennsylvania campus where she worked, we’d get Indian takeout and go home to Netflix.

    “You really screwed me over the other day,” I started the second she sat in the car.

    “What are you talking about?” She asked.

    “Why did you think it was OK to ask me to pick you up a bottle of wine?”

    “You didn’t have to say yes. I could have gotten it myself.”

    Our conversation spiraled into an argument.

    “I don’t want that poison around me right now. What would I have done if someone from AA saw me?”

    “I won’t ever ask you to pick me up wine again. That’s easy.”

    “Oh, I’m beyond that,” I told her.

    “Are you asking me not to keep alcohol at home? That’s easy too.”

    “That’s the least you can do.”

    “You can’t ask me never to drink. That’s too controlling for me. I’m a grownup.”

    “Fine. I’d appreciate you not doing it around me for a while.”

    We drove home without getting our food.

    ***

    I told the story of the bottle of wine and our argument at my next men’s group meeting.

    “I’d say I did a good job setting my boundaries,” I proudly told Counselor Gary and the group.

    “You did a piss poor job setting boundaries,” Gary replied. “You willingly crossed your own unstated boundary. And then you got mad about it.”

    “At least she knows now what I won’t stand for,” I shot back

    “You don’t have a right to tell her what you won’t stand for. I’d say you have a lot of work to do on yourself before you get to that point. Especially with Jill.”

    “Why should she get to drink still if I can’t? How will we get along?” I asked.

    “You can remember she’s an adult and she can do what she wants. That includes choosing to stay with you. You should focus on that, and not nit-picking behaviors she has no idea rub you wrong.”

    “I have boundaries, damn it!” I said.

    “Right. That’s new for you. That’s new for the people around you. People can’t read your mind. You’re responsible for setting your boundaries. You’re responsible for maintaining them. Not Jill.” Gary shut me down.

    I sat, arms crossed and unreceptive the rest of the session. Gary’s words stung. I was responsible for setting my boundaries? How could I do that? I drove home wondering how I could verbalize the things I was feeling.

    ***

    I worked hard as my weeks of sobriety turned into months; hard at my work, hard at my relationships. Jill and I turned a corner. We found a way to work with each other and communicate our needs.

    We set some basic boundaries, ones that would have made sense to a sober outsider. I would never be asked to handle alcohol in any way. No purchasing, no opening a bottle, no carrying a drink to her across the room. The tradeoff, although Jill didn’t ask for it, was that wine could exist in our house without upsetting me. She could have a glass of wine at a dinner out and I wouldn’t feel affronted.

    Other boundaries were a little less perceptible. We had to negotiate the boundaries needed for a healthy relationship. I communicated my needs to Jill more often. She began to open up more to me about her needs. We found ourselves more in periods of harmony as we strengthened our bond.

    Gary was instrumental on my end. He provided an unbiased view of my unacceptable behavior. He gave me feedback on how I could approach situations without sabotaging them. He coached me on identifying situations I wasn’t comfortable with, and how to better communicate them to my friends and family before things got out of hand.

    Today, Jill and I are married with a three-year-old daughter. I recently passed the fourth anniversary of my sobriety. Parenting and being a husband are rewarding and challenging roles that require setting and respecting boundaries. It’s something I’ve gotten better at in my sobriety and something I’m thankful for the opportunity to continue improving.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Kicking Heroin Cold Turkey Changed My Life

    Kicking Heroin Cold Turkey Changed My Life

    Nobody ever tells you how it feels, especially for the first time.

    This was the most pain and anguish I had ever experienced in my life, and I had given it my best shot, but there was really no point in going on.

    There were three of us.

    Eric was dashing and handsome, with eyes that cut through you, even as a child. He’d walk into a room and own it, immediately, and he knew it. He had leading man features that greatly resemble Chris Pratt, after he got sexy.

    James was the athlete, gifted with a physique that a teenager shouldn’t have been allowed to have. He was also kind to a fault, and loved God in the way that a puppy loves anything. If being a charismatic, fun-loving priest didn’t work out, he would have settled for being the NFL’s hottest running back.

    And then me: two years younger, two heads shorter, with eyes twice as wide when I’d look at my cousins, whom I worshipped. I thought of myself as their sidekick, but to be honest, if they were both Superman then I was a bundle of kryptonite around their necks, weighing them down. They didn’t mind, though. It kept them human.

    Musketeers. That’s what our family called us, and we were inseparable. We came from a prototypical Irish-American Catholic family (which means lots of kids). If you’re at all familiar with that demographic, you know that such families are tightly knit. Since the three of us were so close in age, our parents made sure that we spent time together, every single day. “Protect each other!” They’d always say.

    Even though Eric and James were two years older than me, they always encouraged me to hang out with them and their friends after school, but only after all my work was done. Ironically, it was my cousins more than my parents who forced me to get my homework done, but that could have been because they needed me to help them with theirs. I could never have hoped to be as cool as my cousins, but book smarts came easily to me. Together, we were a perfect team.

    And then we lost Eric.

    Not immediately. Acute myeloid leukemia works quickly, but it still gives you plenty of time to wait for the inevitable. After chemo failed, the doctors gave him two months. Eric gave them four. He frequently joked that he was going to live forever, despite having leukemia, just out of spite. In fact, he probably put up the most convincing happy face during the whole ordeal. In a way, this helped a lot of us. If Eric wasn’t scared, then why should we be? But underneath, he had to be frightened to death.

    Eric died in his senior year of high school, a few weeks before Christmas. I can’t believe that we found enough tissues for his funeral. My family doesn’t pick favorites, but deep down, I think everybody knew that Eric was the most beloved of any of us. He was the all-American boy we loved to boast about. Despite the tears, though, something felt dignified about his funeral. I think my whole family was proud that he put up a fight, that he went down swinging. That’s the kind of people they are.

    James and I took it harder, though. Family mattered to us more than anything, but what we had with Eric was something else. It was like a family within a family. And Eric was always our fearless leader. I thought he was invincible. As for James, I think he felt like a knight with no prince to follow.

    “Always protect each other,” our family would say.

    How?

    ***

    A few months earlier, James hurt himself playing football; torn ACL, his senior season cut short. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised when he did. As I watched him play, I thought he seemed angry. This was during the waiting game with Eric. It was while treating this injury that James received his first prescription of painkillers.

    Even after Eric died, James and I were still inseparable. I think I was the first one to notice that he was particularly fond of his medication. Besides numbing the pain from his injury, I think it helped him feel numb to the situation, and made him seem stronger than he was. Despite this, he got even more active than he already was in the church. If his plan B of being an NFL superstar was out the window, he’d have to work extra hard to make sure that the priesthood worked out. We sang songs together at church. Even though I was angry that Eric had been taken from us, I loved God more than I ever had. I had to. Eric was somewhere better, and that’s all there was to it.

    Two years went by, and James was still taking his pills. He mainly avoided taking them around family, but we were together too much for him not to do it around me. I wasn’t stupid, I knew his prescription ran out a long time ago. Without a prescription, opioids can get expensive, and it was only a matter of time before James found a cheaper, stronger substitute.

    And that’s how we both started doing heroin.

    At this point, I was a fairly upstanding high school citizen. I attended school full-time and worked an after-school job. Schoolwork came easy to me, and grades and test scores followed. On top of that, I still sang in church with James and volunteered with the Catholic Services food bank. I was responsible to a T, and I hated it.

    There’s not a lot of glamor in being the responsible one in a family that tells stories of war and fights, and values adventure above all else. Sure, the whole family would throw a barbeque every time an acceptance letter came in the mail, and they never showed anything but pride and support. But I wanted experience. I was young and stupid and had a thirst for everything that I couldn’t have. So when James switched from the pills to the heroin, I took some and tried it on my own (you can learn anything on the internet).

    Nobody ever tells you how it feels, especially for the first time. To this day, I can promise you that the most euphoric moments in your life cannot compare to the rush that heroin will give you; not love, not sex, not pride, nothing! Literally, it’s chemically impossible. Heroin forces your receptors to overload, giving you an overwhelming feeling of pure pleasure.

    One time, and I was hooked.

    At first, James was furious with me, although I suspect he was more furious with himself. At that point, though, we both already knew what it felt like, and neither of us was going to stay away.

    For the next six months, we both used regularly whenever we could. James had a full-time job, and I had a part-time one with no expenses. On top of that, people always expected us to be around each other. There were no obstacles in the way of our continued drug-fueled lethargic shenanigans. During this time, I maintained my grades, my job, my church activities, and my relationship with my girlfriend, who was in the dark about my darkest habit. Somehow, I had convinced myself that I could maintain everything I had while still being a heroin addict. Anyone who couldn’t figure it out was just too foolish.

    There is a cost to such pleasure, though. Due to the amount of dopamine that is released in your brain when you do heroin, your brain starts to get complacent, and won’t produce any new dopamine without the stimulation of heroin. Over time, this meant that I couldn’t feel pleasure, or giddiness, or satisfaction, unless I had recently used heroin. Towards the end of school days, I would get irritable, getting restless for my next fix.

    James realized this before I did. He never excelled in school, but he always had much more emotional wisdom than me. It’s because of this that he told his parents about his addiction. I first found out from my parents that he had told them, and I selfishly was terrified that he had ratted me out. But James would never do that without my consent.

    “Always protect each other,” they’d say.

    James, with the help of family, started getting treatment. In the meantime, I continued to shoot up in his bedroom while he tried to convince me to do the same. Near the end, I was strongly considering it. Even at the point when heroin had the strongest hold over my life, I still loved and trusted James more than pretty much anything in this world. And truthfully, he was doing well. He hadn’t used for nearly a month.

    But then I made a mistake.

    One night, I took the bus home from James’ home and went to bed. Early in the morning, though, I shot awake with the realization that I had left my bag in his room, and in that bag was the thing that James most needed to stay away from. As I hurried to get back to his home, my stomach was already filling up with a sickness of certainty.

    James was already long dead when I walked into his room.

    I thought my heart was going to pound out of its chest. I’m ashamed to admit that my first thought was that I needed a fix, and then my second was how long it would take to bleed out if I cut my wrists. At that moment, I probably could have found the courage to cut my own throat. Somehow, I did neither of these things, and managed to call 911.

    And then there was one.

    If he had never have gotten help and stopped using, the dosage wouldn’t have killed him, but he didn’t lower it to compensate his reduced tolerance. This irony never escaped me, even when I first found him.

    This funeral was harder than Eric’s. It was harder to find the dignity, to justify the purpose of this loss. Eric’s death brought sadness to my family. James’ death ripped the rug out from under them.

    Everybody blamed themselves. His parents thought they didn’t try hard enough. His older siblings thought they weren’t good enough influences. My grandparents felt they didn’t talk to him enough after Eric died.

    But it was me. If there was a metaphorical trigger to pull, then I was the one who did it. Not only was it heroin that I bought that killed him, a fact my family was woefully ignorant of, but I was the one who continued to use in the environment that he needed to be a safe space. I was too proud to think that I needed help, and it cost the life of a far kinder person and gentler spirit than me.

    As I looked at his open casket, all I could think was that I was the worst fucking scum on the planet, and that I should follow him into the ground.

    But as everyone I love wept around me, I could practically hear their hearts cracking. And then I had a realization would define every molecule of my existence for the coming days: I would not be the next one to hurt my family. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that I was also an addict, so I decided there was really only one option, something I had never done before, but had heard about from TV shows and online articles. I had to go cold turkey.

    Because of how close James and I were, it was easy to get a few days to myself that I would need to completely detox. My family would simply think I was grieving. They were right, but only half so. That thought at the funeral put me into a mode of complete obsession, and I was determined to follow through with my plot.

    ***

    I bought a couple cases of water, a few bags of salted jerky, and a rotisserie chicken, and then locked myself in a spare room at my grandparents’ home. There was a lot of family in town, so they would be busy for the next couple days. I felt ready for anything.

    But, just like nothing could prepare me for the pleasurable feeling that heroin washed over me, neither could reading about the cold turkey process ready me for how horrific it really was. Below is my attempt to be as straightforward about the process as I can be, and to tell it as factually as I can…

    Once I was 14 hours in from my last fix, I consider the withdrawals to have truly begun. First, it starts with intense cravings. You want heroin more than you’ve wanted anything in your entire life, or at least you think you do. I constantly reminded myself that this was a trick, but I’m not sure I believed it at the time. Remember, after you’ve become dependent on heroin, your brain is practically incapable of producing positive thoughts. I tried to remember happy memories of James, but they were fuzzy in my mind. Beyond this, my concept of time began to blur for the next several days.

    After I had neglected my strong desire to use, I began to get uncontrollably irritated. Every time I clattered my teeth or made a sound, I would frustrate myself to the point that I wanted to punch a wall. I started to scream into pillows to let off steam. However, this got harder once the nausea set in. I was prepared for this. I had read all about the physical effects that would happen to me. However, reading did little to mitigate the sickness and dizziness. Pretty soon, standing became a difficult task.

    I stayed in bed and attempted to control my breathing. For a little while, I was even almost able to relax. This was short lived, though. Again, I knew that the skin crawling sensations were coming, but I didn’t realize how sporadic it would be. Everywhere on my body felt like it was on fire. I tried to hold my breath and keep still, but pretty soon I was scratching everywhere I could reach. After a matter of minutes, my arms were bleeding. I wrapped my fingers in duct tape to prevent myself from doing further harm.

    I knew that I would eventually start vomiting and purging everything in my body. I had readied myself for all of the physical effects. However, the true hell of heroin withdrawals isn’t in the physical aspects, it’s the mental side effects that really get you. At this point, my irritability had climbed to a full-scale anger. I kept clenching my jaw so bad that my gums started to bleed. All I could do to let out the energy was to continue screaming into a pillow, but I was starting to get tired. Then, out of nowhere, the vomiting started.

    I vomited and dry gagged in a throbbing cycle that lasted about an hour, but would continuously rear up throughout the whole process. While the initial vomiting was quite painful, it actually provided me some relief from the thoughts in my head. Afterwards, I was so overcome with exhaustion, that I was actually able to sleep for several hours. To my memory, this was the only continuous sleep I would have for about two days.

    Although I very much needed these few hours of sleep, it almost wasn’t worth it because of the nightmares that started at the end and woke me up. Up to this point in my life, I wasn’t very prone to nightmares at all, and could probably have counted the number of nightmares I had had (or at least remembered) on one hand. However, the dopamine from my last hit was finally hitting the dregs, and my brain couldn’t produce anything to balance itself out, chemically.

    I woke up in a cold sweat and felt paralyzed with fear. For the next several days, every time I would start to fall asleep, nightmares and partial hallucinations (waking nightmares) would jolt me awake in terror. After a few times of trying to doze off, I began to question my own sanity. We tend to hear a lot about the physical aspects of heroin withdrawals, but one of the most dangerous threats to people going cold turkey is suicide.

    Somewhere at this point, although time was a bit of a blur, my mind hit rock bottom. My dopamine receptors were doing nothing at this point, and my brain began to fall apart, unable to produce a single happy thought. The world was a bleak pit, and I was just washing around at the bottom of it. I had felt small bouts of depression before, but this was soul-crushingly different. Out of instinct, I began to pray. I begged God to make the pain end. I begged for a light at the end of the tunnel. I begged for some sort of sign or to be saved from my own thoughts.

    Then, it occurred to me how easy it would be to simply end it all right there. It wasn’t hard to reason myself into it. I could be with Eric and James. We could be the three musketeers again! This was the most pain and anguish I had ever experienced in my life, and I had given it my best shot, but there was really no point in going on. I’m sure that God would understand. I knew that he would have mercy.

    It was then that I remembered the thought that saved my life. I didn’t need a happy memory. I needed the memory of feeling the worst I had ever felt. I needed to remember the self-loathing that washed over me at James’ funeral, as I heard the people I cared most about bawling uncontrollably in pain, because of me.

    And then it hit me as if the sky fell down: God wasn’t there.

    I don’t expect everyone to have this same revelation. It was an incredibly personal moment to me. Addiction recovery programs frequently talk about needing to surrender to a higher power, and this was my own special ‘higher power’ moment.

    It wasn’t that God didn’t care, or that he was cruel, or that I couldn’t understand his grand plan. He wasn’t there. There was nothing above me or below me that wasn’t a meaningless abyss. A void of space that stretched beyond what my brain could conceive for absolutely no reason. There was no cavalry coming to save me, and there was nothing waiting for me if I were to die now; just more pain for my family.

    I had gotten myself in this situation, and only I could get myself out. I was going to have to do this Eric’s way: survive, out of spite. I abandoned every notion of meaning I had ever put on the world, and replaced it with this one simple purpose. For the rest of this battle, that would be my single function. I may have wanted to die, but I had too much hate to give in. If you can’t find happiness, hate can be a powerful motivator.

    The only thing I knew was that I would not be the next reason my family grieved and hurt. I would survive. No cancer, or heroin, not even God himself would stop me. If I died and woke up in heaven, I would have killed every last angel to get back to Earth; to get back to my family.

    Dramatic? Yes. But the mind of an addict suffering from heroin withdrawals is hardly a place for subtlety.

    From this point on, I sat against the wall, and remained there for about a day, just staring and drinking water. I wouldn’t let myself fall asleep and be the victim of yet another night terror. Every craving and thought of suicide filled me with more and more spite, and I sat there, stewing in it, until finally, I could feel the physical effects wearing off.

    I had survived.

    The cravings continued to last for months. Even years later, I sometimes have a sharp, discernable memory of how good the pleasure of heroin felt. But I can say with certainty that I don’t have the temptation to use. If I sat in an empty room with an ounce of heroin, I wouldn’t even have the slightest desire.

    In that room, I burned down who I was as a person, and built something else with the pieces that I had. Truth be told, going cold turkey is a horrible idea, and isn’t safe to try under even the best of circumstances. Please, if you or a loved one find yourself struggling with heroin dependency, get professional help and stick with it. This is by no means a road map to fighting addiction. It doesn’t really feel like a feel-good story, either. Hell, I’m not even sure if this is a happy ending.

    But it’s my story.

    *Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Joan Jett's Bad Reputation

    Joan Jett's Bad Reputation

    “I’ve been hurt,” says Jett. “I’ve had my head split open by a beer bottle, a rib cracked by getting a battery thrown at me—this big metal rig thing….just because I was a girl, I’d get spit on.”

    Bad Reputation is a loving tribute to legendary musician and feminist icon Joan Jett. The trailblazer turned 60 on September 22 and keeps on rocking. At 13, Jett’s parents granted a wish by buying her an electric guitar and amp for Christmas. She had no idea how to play it. At her first lesson, the male teacher said, “Girls don’t play rock and roll.”

    Then the film explodes. Jett screams into a mic:

    I don’t give a damn about my reputation!
    You’re living in the past, it’s a new generation.
    A girl can do what she wants to do and that’s
    What I’m gonna do.

    Go Joan Jett!

    In an exclusive interview for The Fix, director Kevin Kerslake (As I AM: The Life and Times of DJ AM, Nirvana’s Come As You Are, Bob Marley Legend Remixed) told me, “This film is Joan laid bare. Viewers get to process it on that level. I don’t feel there was anything verboten, you know, forbidden to ask, so the dynamics of her life play out as you see them in the film.”

    Clearly, Kerslake is a fan. He sings her praises, particularly when it comes to Jett’s habit of championing others.

    “Joan’s soul is all about rock and roll,” he told me. “She’s an activist too—for animals and for people. She has produced a lot of albums for musicians she believes in. And, if she gets credit, she immediately ropes in other people to share it with. She’ll never take it solo.”

    Right before receiving that first guitar, Jett had read about a club in Hollywood called the Rodney Bingenheimer English Disco. They were the first to play music by Blondie, Iggy Pop, Bowie, and the Sex Pistols. Archival footage shows boys and girls in heavy makeup, fishnets, leather and sporting nutty hairdos, short skirts and platform shoes.

    “It was a disco for teens,” says Jett in the film. “If you were like 21, you were already too old….It was a club full of weirdos in a city that’s known to be full of weirdos.”

    She says the club played “raunchy music” and some of it she describes as “clean dirty,” meaning it used suggestive double-entendres. But some of it, she says, was just plain dirty.

    “That music hit you in a spot that you couldn’t really describe,” says Jett, “and it made you want to do it. There was [a feeling] down there,” she says, alluding to her vagina. “But as a kid, you can’t quite put your finger on it, yet.”

    Realizing the unintended pun, she grins.

    At 15, Jett was determined to prove that girls could play as well as boys. She formed the all-girl punk band, The Runaways. They became a tight group of friends with the electric energy of adolescents. It’s exciting to watch the ballsy young chicks owning the stage, with Cherie Currie singing their biggest song, “Cherry Bomb.”

    The band showed more promise and gained a bigger following, but the “boys club” of rock ’n roll hated it; apparently their egos were threatened. The Runaways were called “cute” and “sweet,” but as their popularity grew the words changed to “slut, whore, cunt.” Jett says Jimi Hendrix had predicted that women playing rock and roll would be perceived as aliens. That proved true for The Runaways.

    “I’ve been hurt,” says Jett. “I’ve had my head split open by a beer bottle, a rib cracked by getting a battery thrown at me—this big metal rig thing….just because I was a girl, I’d get spit on.”

    In 1977, Joan Jett and her band The Runaways played at CBGBs punk club where I spent many nights of debauchery. I was into concoctions of crystal meth, cocaine, and Bacardi rum, which led to delusions. My skewed thinking told me if I memorized a musician’s lyrics, we had a relationship. Joan Jett knew me as much as I knew her. She seemed invincible.

    When the band fell apart, so did Jett.

    Director Kerslake told me: “She was [self] medicating over losing her band. It was a very dramatic experience in her life—both spiritually and physically. And it almost killed her.”

    “How did I personally deal with the crumbling of The Runaways?” Joan asks in the film. “I drank a lot, starting at eight in the morning.”

    Convinced that LA was laughing at her, Jett imagined everyone thinking: “We told you it wouldn’t work. We said you couldn’t do it.” That’s when she could no longer tolerate living in Tinseltown and split. She moved into a home in the ’burbs that became a party house. Old photos show a crowd of drunk and stoned pals draped around her living room. Jett had sunk to a dark place. Finally, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders pulled her aside and said, “Honey, you gotta pull it together.”

    Jett says, “I was angry. I didn’t know how to make sense of a world that gives girls shit for playing guitars. I thought, ‘Don’t you guys have more important things to be upset about?’”

    One night she became very sick, sweating profusely, and was rushed to the hospital. Kerslake said it was luck that Jett survived. The rocker was told she had a serious heart infection.

    “I considered that a perfect metaphor,” said Kerslake.

    After her diagnosis, Jett knew that her body could not take much more abuse.

    “I thought, I’m going to fucking kill myself.” She quickly clarifies for the viewers that she means accidentally, not by suicide.

    Throughout the film I felt tremendous compassion for Jett. I mean, I could see her strength; she comes across as someone who knows who she is. Despite all that she has accomplished, she also shows sincere humility and gratitude. (Side note: she looks fantastic and still exudes sex appeal.) But I wondered what happens internally to a pioneering performer like her who works for decades in what’s known as a tough industry—especially for women. She’d been just a kid when misogyny was unleashed on her simply because she was a girl who loved playing guitar.

    Then, something beautiful happened. Kenny Laguna came into the picture. He had been a successful hitmaker for bubblegum bands when he first met Jett. She was still drinking then and he describes the beginning of their collaboration:

    “She was hanging out with a bunch of people who all ended up dead.”

    It was true, she’d gotten herself in with a tough crowd that included Sex Pistols’ bass player, Sid Vicious, his girlfriend Nancy, and Stiv Bators, the lead singer of the Dead Boys. Jett refers to herself as “a mess” when she met Laguna. But the musicmaker and his wife Meryl believed in Jett’s talent and recognized her potential so they were willing to take a chance on her despite how beat-up she looked. With Laguna’s help, Jett became a successful solo artist and released the albums Bad Reputation and I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll. Together they started Blackheart Records in the early 80s.

    I was curious how she stopped drinking. That wasn’t disclosed in the film. My guess is that she flat-out wouldn’t talk about that publicly. The movie implies that she just said that’s it and quit. Her hardheaded black and white approach to life would support that method for sure. Still, I would’ve liked to have seen that in the movie. But for me, the most pressing question was about Jett’s love life. Did she have any long-term, significant, romantic relationships? That wasn’t discussed either and I was surprised about that missing chunk of her life. But then Jett herself answers that question at the end of this very engaging flick. (I watched it five times!)

    “Depending on what you think is a normal, regular life,” she says, “being in a band, you’re pretty much all-consumed with it. Is that healthy? I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. Probably not super, but, you know, it’s what I enjoy. I think it makes it difficult to have relationships. That would probably be, if you want to call it that, a sacrifice. To say music is my mate would be a pretty fair statement and I get a lot from it. But it’s not a person. And I think I know the difference.”

    Jett and the Lagunas have been together since 1979 and their affection for each other is evident in the film. They consider each other family. “Joan also has a very close group of friends who all participated in this movie,” Kerslake added.

    This woman smashed the glass ceiling she faced. During her expansive career she’s been racking up multiple platinum and gold records, Top 40 singles, and the blockbuster anthem, “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll.” She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 and Bad Reputation includes a moving clip of her receiving a standing ovation from rock legends—her peers.

    Bad Reputation is now available on iTunes and Amazon Prime.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Experience in a 12-Step Cult

    My Experience in a 12-Step Cult

    As part of my therapy I had to cut contact with my family and tell my professors I was recovering from sexual abuse. It was excruciating, but I wanted to do the “hard work” of recovery.

    “If you leave here, you will be on the street.”

    From her red upholstered chair, my psychotherapist Marlene launched one of her famous surprise attacks at the beginning of group therapy. This was another week-long intensive I was doing because I was in crisis. My ex-husband Terry* and I attended couples’ group and we were also in separate individual groups which were primarily inpatient treatment for addiction or codependency. We both attended various week-long “intensives” and all of our friends were also members of this group.

    Both Terry and I were many years sober. We were long-time members in this therapy community, started at the beginning of the codependency and ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) movement in the late 80’s when we were newly married. Marlene’s daughter, also a counselor there, her husband, and many other clients were our close friends. We all went to the same AA meetings and clubhouses.

    This counseling center started with a new kind of experiential therapy that took many of its practices from EST. They did psychodrama, beating pillows with bataka bats, breath work, confrontation and guided imagery, among other things. Breaking someone down— like “breaking a horse” —was the guiding therapy modality. Marlene, also in long-term recovery from alcohol, recruited people from AA meetings. At the time, this therapy was considered pioneering and so transgressions like this were considered necessary for “real recovery.” Or that’s what she told us.

    In the early 90’s, we moved abroad for several years to pursue Terry’s hopes for a career in his sport. When his prospects did not turn out, we returned to the states and the community, which was where all our friends and sponsors were. Upon our return to the States, Marlene suggested we live apart for a few months. It had become common practice for her to have couples in marriage counseling spend some time living apart. Terry moved in with Marlene’s son, our good friend, and I moved in with another woman from the community. We were told that after a few months we would move back in together. I got a job right away and Terry continued pursuing his sport, still hoping for the big break. Many people, including friends, sponsored him financially. Four months stretched into four years.

    During this time, the counseling center also grew to include treatment for food addiction, gambling, sex, as well as codependency and all the other relational disorders that are so common for so many of us in recovery. The recovery treatment movement at large was going through a similar change. I had sexual abuse issues from when I was younger and would have to say embarrassing things like: “I enjoyed the power.” To be a good client, of course I would comply. One woman was told: “If I were your husband, I would have an affair with your best friend, too.” And this was considered the most progressive therapy available.

    Many wealthy families sent their teenagers or young adults who had drug or alcohol misuse problems to the center, located in a tony suburb in Florida. It was similar to other addiction treatment centers that were booming at this time; clients would come for a week-long “intensive” and then move in with someone from the community for aftercare. Month-long aftercare would frequently turn into years. The more affluent the family, the longer they stayed.

    Eventually, Marlene and some of her wealthy clients purchased homes and turned these into group homes for aftercare. Every recovering person in the community was required to attend a daily 6:30 a.m. AA meeting with Sundays off for good behavior. Many members were asked to eat on a food plan and attend Overeaters Anonymous which is a tremendous program for food addicts. If you had sexual issues, you attended SLAA. If you had money issues, DA. If you were a gambler, GA. If your spouse was a gambler Gam-Anon, Al-Anon, S-Anon. In other circumstances, all of these organizations can be very helpful. Being an addict, I easily fit in with all of these groups regardless of whether or not I would have come to each of them individually on my own. My weekly calendar was full of these meetings, therapy groups, work, and then times set aside to supervise new members and take them to all these meetings.

    The group had a strong hierarchical structure. Marlene was the lead therapist and her daughter was also at the top. Then came the other therapists, then the group of “strong” people, and then everyone else was at the bottom somewhere. Terry was handsome and charming and one of Marlene’s favorites so he was in the strong group, very close to her. The strong people supervised the new members as well as each other. Once someone was in crisis, they fell out of whichever group they were in. Most of the time, a person in crisis would not go home but would go spend the night with someone else after group and have to follow certain rules. You would leave your car there and ask people for rides or whatever was needed. One time, I went to my friend’s house and had to wear all her clothes to work the next day, too-big high heels and all. One of my treatments was to ask for rides everywhere for two weeks: to work and home, to group, to 12-step meetings. And that meant that I often did the same thing: sponsoring or supervising new members, meeting them for lunch or dinner, driving them around.

    As the years passed (I was associated with this center for more than ten years) and Terry and I dealt with our relationship issues, as well as ancillary addictions, I was told to detach completely from my family. Even though my father was in AA and my mother in Al-Anon, I had to write letters to them explaining why I couldn’t interact with them any longer. I was not permitted to contact my siblings who had always been supportive of me. It was an excruciating exercise, but I wanted to do the “hard work” of recovery so I complied. Marlene would say that people with unresolved codependency were at risk for cancer or other diseases. Someone with codependency certainly couldn’t have a successful relationship with another without intensive, long-term therapy. But any other kind of therapy besides this therapy was “bullshit” and regular AA meetings were not “real recovery.” This, too had a purpose: if we weren’t spending holidays with our families, we spent them with the therapist, her staff, and her family. This was always unsettling to me, but I complied. The other members of the community spent holidays together at someone’s home, or typically one of the group homes. Terry would stay with Marlene at her vacation home with her family. In fact, Terry and I celebrated every holiday at Marlene’s home.

    After four long years of separation — thousands of groups and meetings — Terry finally went back to college to finish his degree. We were both considered “strong” members of the community, sponsoring many people, holding Big Book studies and step-groups. So separated had our lives become over these four years that our interactions with each other were constantly monitored and evaluated as part of our therapy process, to a degree where casual time spent together was not casual and what might have otherwise been a normal desire for a husband and wife to share each other’s company had ramifications for how we were counseled in our therapy sessions. Consequently, by this point we had advanced to starting to “date” and were making plans, all therapist-sanctioned, to finally move back in together. Like most of the married or unmarried couples in the group, we lived separately, completely celibate. Dating meant attending dinner or movies, always accompanied by other members of the group. Moving back in together was the ultimate carrot in the couples’ group, and ours was not an unusual situation as bizarre as it now sounds. A few new couples to the community lived together but the majority lived apart.

    On the surface, this system appears to be consistent with much of what we know is successful in legitimate addiction treatment centers. Young people or newly recovering addicts or alcoholics could and sometimes would stay clean and sober in this arrangement, because it was a variety of situations, all with 24-hour supervision. Outside the week-long intensives which were held at a hotel, all the supervision would come from other members in the community like myself. Several people in long-term recovery would schedule an hour or so to spend time with the new person and frequently give them rides or provide meals. Several members of the community had businesses where they could employ new people on an hourly basis. People traded services like home cleaning or rides to the airport for treatment. A new person would leave the group home in the morning and pack lunch and dinner (often prescribed by a food plan) and end the evening in a 12-step meeting or group or a planned group activity. My weekly schedule was packed with meetings, work, group, going to graduate school, and helping newcomers. This too is superficially consistent with best practices: the weakest part of addiction treatment today is the lack of solid aftercare programs. This group handled that part well, but at great cost, and not at all ethically.

    In addition to supporting the newcomers, to be a good member of a group meant participating in the confrontational functions of that group. Because it was a psychodrama-focused group, you would stand up in the middle of the room and act out any problem you were having. The other members played the roles of your family or friends. If you weren’t getting quite honest enough, others would get up and act you out for yourself—the more brutally honest, the better. I now regret many of the things I said to my fellow group members in that situation. If a member did everything properly and complied with all the demands, they might get rewards, like dates with their spouse.

    After dating steadily for many months, Terry and I purchased a small home and a group of the new guys painted the interior, getting ready for us to move in. After attending a movie, one of my good friends who had chaperoned us said that she felt “sex addiction coming off” of me in the movie. She and her dashing husband had come to therapy many years before, both looking as if they stepped off the set of Dallas. But when Marlene recommended they separate, he stormed out of couples group, never to return. He was not the first. When Marlene and my friend confronted me in group that week, I listened but I also knew what was coming. I had seen this happen to so many other couples. It was always a terrifying waiting game to see who was going to be the group’s victim-of-the-week.

    Being the designated person in crisis could actually persist for a year or more. Once, another therapist and her daughter were kept apart from each other for years, neither person in active addiction. And special treatment was not just reserved for the weakest in the group; the strong members would also frequently get special treatment. One of my friends started dating a man from her group who happened to be married at the time. His wife was just starting to get sober and struggling with recovery. I was vocal that I didn’t think it was right for this couple to get together even if his marriage was ending. But my reservations were not welcome.

    I also expressed concerned about my husband’s best friend from his primary group, a woman he would eventually marry.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Eternal Holiday of the Alcoholic

    The Eternal Holiday of the Alcoholic

    When you drink constantly, you become numb, slipping down into a sub-life, a waking coma. You become a chaotic ghost that exists almost at one step removed from everything else.

    The following is an excerpt from Jolly Lad – The Expanded North American Edition, published this month by MIT Press and available here.

    After I stopped drinking in August 2008 I went to Alcoholics Anonymous a lot at first – most days in fact for about half a year. I don’t go that often anymore and I haven’t done any of the twelve steps but I’d still say the programme was a crucial aid to me quitting.

    I guess even before I joined the fellowship I already had an inkling of what AA would be like. I’d seen enough soap operas, so I was prepared. Generally speaking, it was as I’d imagined it – a neon strip-lit, magnolia painted room with trestle tables and stackable chairs – usually in churches, village halls or community centres. Careworn people in comfortable clothes, chatting, sipping tea, rolling cigarettes. The 12 commandments and the 12 traditions would be unrolled and hung on the back wall. The yellow card (“Who you see here / What you hear here / When you leave here / LET IT STAY HERE!”) would be placed prominently at the front, resting against a small tub for the collection of voluntary subs at the end of the meeting. There would be a literature table full of pamphlets, information sheets and books and a box containing chips, or commemorative engraved metal tokens, for those who had hit a notable anniversary in sobriety – including the most important one: 24 hours. There would always be one or more copies of The Big Book there – the text written in 1939 by Bill W, to help alcoholics.

    Chapter Three of The Big Book says: “Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is mentally different from his fellows. Therefore it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterised by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.”

    I had been prepared to pursue the chimera of controlled drinking right through the gates of death myself. When I gave up I was close to dying and had nearly checked out accidentally once earlier the same year. But I’d made my peace with death. I had come to believe that alcohol was the only thing that made life bearable. And in a lot of ways it was.

    Image via Krent Able

    There was dirt, horror and disfigurement everywhere I looked. But after one stiff drink I could leave the house; after two drinks the fear started lifting and after the third drink I’d feel like an artist. Or to be more precise, I would see the world through the eyes of an artist. And after five drinks, well, I could take my pick of them. On a good day I felt like Picasso. But there were all kinds of days. Imagine being Gustav Klimt in Hull, the golden light of the low winter sun at 3pm in the afternoon radiating along The Avenues. Imagine being Walter Sickert in Manchester, the violent brown and black smudges radiating from your feet and along canal towpaths. Imagine being Vincent van Gogh in St Helens, the sky ablaze with stars. That is something close to victory, something close to beating death.

    They laughed at me and called me a piss artist. And how right they were. I was an aesthete with a broken nose in a stained shirt and inside-out boxer shorts, drinking the world beautiful.

    When you drink constantly, you become numb, slipping down into a sub-life, a waking coma. You become a chaotic ghost that exists almost at one step removed from everything else. You float through the film of your own life. You see the sublime in the augury of fried chicken bones and tomato sauce cast upon the upper deck floor of a bus. You can divine a narrative among the finger-drawn doodles on the misted windows. You can feel your destiny in hundreds of individual condensation droplets on the glass turning red, then amber, then green.

    Everything that you’d worried about a few hours previously… Where will I get the money from? What if he beats me up? Am I seriously ill? Am I dying? Have I got cancer? What will she say when I finally get home a week late? Will she cry when we eventually go to bed together? Will she pack her things and leave the next day? How near is death? What will it be like? Will I scream and cry? What is it like to die? And now, after some drinks, there is just the sweet sensation of your life passing you by with no struggle and no fuss. The rope slides through your fingers with no friction, just warmth as a balloon rises higher and higher out of sight. I have bottles and bottles and bottles and my phone is out of credit. A Mark Rothko night. A Jackson Pollock night…

    This is the eternal holiday of the alcoholic. Once you create as much distance from your everyday life as you naturally have from orange tinted Polaroids of childhood caravan trips or stays in seaside hotels and Super 8 film reels of school sports days, then you start to experience your quotidian life like it’s the sun-bleached memory of a happy event. You feel nostalgia and warmth for boring events that are unfolding right in front of you. You feel wistful about experiences that most people would find barbaric or gauche or unremarkable. You experience the epic, the heart- warming and the hilarious in post office and supermarket queues. You develop permanently rose-tinted glasses.

    But there’s no getting away from it, after a while the strategy starts failing. You start seeing everything through the eyes of Francis Bacon, through the eyes of Edvard Munch, through the eyes of HR Giger…Your vision becomes stained and cracked.

    It is pretty tough stopping drinking but it’s not like I want a pat on the back for it.

    Image via Krent Able

    I see alcoholism as a self-inflicted leisure injury to some extent, disease or not. But going on the wagon is nothing compared to coming to terms with what you are like sober. The trouble with stopping drinking is that the only thing it solves in your life is you being drunk or hungover and ill all the time. When you stop drinking, everything you drank to avoid dealing with is still there, as bad as ever. Mental illness, debt, depression, the impulse to self-harm, the impulse to commit suicide, anxiety, social dysfunction, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, stress, anger, violent rage… I started drinking when I was 13 and was drinking every day by the time I was 15. I stayed pretty much constantly drunk until I was 37. When I stopped I had no real idea what I would be like.

    Alcoholism is debt consolidation for your life. Submit to alcoholism and your life becomes incredibly simple. Drink becomes the only thing you care about – and you will end up just fine with letting all the other stuff slide to the extent that it doesn’t even matter if you die or not. The only real problem with this arrangement is what happens if you decide to stop.

    Picture a reservoir surrounded by mountains. You have been tasked with draining the massive body of water away to repopulate the area. But once the water has gone you are faced with the former town that was initially flooded and the now wrecked buildings which need to be pulled down. Call several construction firms. People have been fly tipping here for years. There is tons of rubbish here. You will need help to clean the area up. There are corpses wrapped in carpet and chains. It was the ideal place to dump bodies. You’ll need to call the police and the coroner’s office. The press are on their way. There are rotten and half eaten animal carcasses that need to be cleared up and disposed of. Environmental health need to be involved. You have never seen so many mangled shopping trollies, broken children’s bikes and unwanted cars. The clearance job will be massive. There are burst canisters of toxic waste that have long since leached into the ground. It will be years before you can do anything with this land. The water was merely the stuff that was making this area look picturesque. What you have left in its place is an area of outstanding natural horror. It probably feels like you should have left well enough alone.

    Before claiming a seat by putting my coat on the back of it, and even before queuing up for a coffee, I went into the gents to try and freshen up. I scrubbed my hands hard and splashed freezing cold water onto my face – prodding the dark purple streaks of flesh under each eye with a fingertip. I stood for some time looking into the mirror as the water dripped off my face.

    What did I look like? A middle-aged man with long hair in a heavy metal T-shirt. The beard of someone who slept behind a hedge on an A-road roundabout. Face permanently blotched red down one side with hundreds of burst capillaries after spending three days awake doing amphetamines in 1996. A Monday night which culminated in nurses shouting: “Shave his chest, shave his chest!” A nose broken 17 times and eventually surgically rebuilt. Forehead like the cover of Unknown Pleasures. Right eyelid drooping down over a partially sighted eye, scarred and damaged beyond repair.

    George Orwell said we all get the kind of face we deserve by the time we turn 40. I had mine hammered irreversibly into place by my 25th birthday. Ostensibly I looked like the same person, but somehow as if reflected in the back of a rusty soup spoon instead of a mirror.

    Image via Krent Able

    I was comfortable with going to AA now that I’d been going for nearly two years but still, the back of the room suited me just fine – it’s not a Kate Bush concert, you’re not missing anything if you don’t sit in the front row.

    Comfort was not on the agenda the first time I went to AA however. My first visit to the rooms might as well have been my first day at senior school, or my first day in prison, for all the stress it caused me. I went while visiting friends up north and it was terrifying. A bare concrete room with old school chairs, bare lightbulbs and spiders in the corners. A retirement age man with a nose like a red, purple and blue blood sac mumbled brutal things as other broken people looked at their feet. When I stepped outside into the freezing cold night after the 60 minutes were up I had to sit on a garden wall for ten minutes, staring at the ground under an orange sodium light. I was unable to stand properly because of anxiety and I was still dizzy with fear walking away afterwards. It struck me quite clearly that there might not even be any point to giving up drinking, that it could even make things worse in some ways.

    It’s bad form to talk about the meetings or AA at all. Tradition 11 says: “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.” I’d like to apologise for speaking about AA here, even if it is just in very general terms. I would never repeat what anyone else said there; I never talk there myself, I just sit and listen. I wait for the reassurance of identification and nothing else.

    “I was like that once. I was that bad. I never want to go back to that again.”

    Buy Jolly Lad here.

     

    This excerpt has been lightly edited for context. All identifying details of AA meetings have been changed.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • God Hates Pikachu and He Also Killed My Daddy

    God Hates Pikachu and He Also Killed My Daddy

    My higher power doesn’t want me sticking a needle in my arm. For me today, it’s as simple as that.

    I didn’t want to unpack this story so soon. My aim was to share my experience with getting and staying sober in a dry and witty way, do that for a while with you, maybe unpack the heavy stuff after we got to know each other a little more, and then go for the gusto. I didn’t want to bring up a subject that might rub you the wrong way but I recently finished a writing exercise that really got me thinking about my dad. He’s dead.

    My father died when I was two years old. He was a heroin user who shared needles. Nobody was talking about harm reduction in the late 80’s nor were they concerned about the consequences of IV drug use. After he got sober, he found out that he had contracted HIV. It wasn’t long after that diagnosis that he lost his battle to AIDS.

    I believe growing up without a father had an effect on the man I am today; but this isn’t a story about my dad. This isn’t a story about harm reduction or AIDS awareness. This is a story about God.

    Wait! Stay with me, please. Don’t go.

    I promise you this isn’t that kind of story. I’ve done right by you with the last two articles. I plan on doing the same with this one. I know the God word bothers some people. It bothers me sometimes. It’s okay, just keep scrolling. We’ll do this one together. Besides, you have to at least get to the part about Pikachu. I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck he’s got to do with all this. Stick around, I’ll tell you.

    I grew up in an extremely charismatic religious household; the crazy dogmatic type. Let me tell you how crazy: Did you know that if you listen to any music that isn’t religious, demons will literally fly out of your headphones like a vapor of smoke and possess you? It’s true. My aunt told me that when I was only eight years old. Also, if you watch any movie that isn’t rated G or about the crucifixion of Christ, you run the chance of committing your soul into the fiery pits of hell. Here’s a good one: My younger brother and I were not allowed to watch Pokemon because our grandmother told us that those cute little Japanese cartoons were actually demons and it was Satan’s master plan to trick unassuming kids into falling in love with his minions.

    Here’s a few more examples:

    1. Don’t drink beer. You’re ingesting the semen of the devil.
    2. True love waits. So if you have sex before marriage, you’re going to burn in hell.
    3. Never smoke cigarettes, you’ll accidentally inhale a demon.
    4. Don’t use profanity unless you want God to give your tongue cancer.
    5. Hey boys, do you like your hands? Well, don’t play with your penis, that’s how you lose them.

    Here’s my absolute favorite. When I was kid, my mom brought my younger brother and me to this old-time-holy-ghost Pentecostal church in the hood. The younger children had to go to Sunday school with some 16-year-old babysitter while the adults went to “big church” in the main auditorium. While we were waiting for our mom to pick us up, our babysitter kindly told me that God killed my dad because he was a junkie.

    Yup, that’s right. This ignorant girl basically told me that God “gave” my dad AIDS because he was in love with heroin. And it was God’s perfect judgment to execute my powerless addict of a father. Cool, right? I’m going to grow up to be a perfectly normal man, unscathed by any of this tomfoolery.

    When you grow up in an overbearing legalistic household and finally start doing some of the things that they told you not to and nothing bad happens, you end up slamming your foot on the gas, speeding straight into the freedom to do everything you’re not supposed to. The things you didn’t do growing up because you believed they would kill you turn into myths created to control you.

    This isn’t going to end well for an addict like me. Once I started thinking for myself and realized that my dick wouldn’t fall off if I watch porn, I started watching all the porn. When I realized that I wasn’t possessed after smoking a cigarette, I started smoking all the cigarettes. Add sex to the mix, sprinkle a little drugs on top, and my newfound freedom as a junkie sinner is complete.

    Let’s fast-forward a few years because I don’t want to get into other stories that deserve their own headline. Let’s land where I’m walking down the steps of the courthouse with a piece of paper that mandates that I start attending 12-step meetings. Meetings that I must go to or I’m going back to jail and possibly prison.

    Imagine my delight, sitting in my first meeting while they’re doing the readings. I hear the 3rd step read aloud for the first time and everything within my gut cringes. I die on the inside. I’m powerless over drugs and alcohol. I can’t stop. I need to stop. And now I’m being told that the only way to do this is with God. I’m in big trouble. 

    I have a confession to make. Remember when I told you that this story was about God? It isn’t. I mean it is and it can be for you, too, but it really isn’t. It’s about a higher power; something greater than you. It’s crucial that you hear what I’m about to say.

    If you’re a 12-stepper who’s all gung-ho about the 3rd step, that’s cool. If you’re not a 12-stepper who’s grasped the God concept, that’s cool too.

    What I want to be explicitly clear about is just one thing. It’s my experience, being an addict in recovery— whether it’s the 12-step route or not—that at some point I have to accept the fact that I need saving. And it’s not going to be me that’s going to do the saving. It’s got to be something greater than me. What I’m good at is getting high. Getting sober is easy. Staying sober isn’t. That’s where the saving comes in for me.

    In the beginning. G-O-D meant a lot of things.

    • Group of Druggies
    • Group of Drunks
    • Grow or Die
    • Guaranteed Overnight Delivery (kidding)
    • Good Orderly Direction

    A wise man once told me, “I don’t know what God’s will is for my life… but I know what it isn’t.” I know that my higher power doesn’t want me stealing in sobriety. I know I shouldn’t be smoking crack. I know that now that I’m attempting to live a new way, maybe I should concern myself with my physical health since I neglected it for so long. My higher power doesn’t want me sticking a needle in my arm. For me today, it’s as simple as that.

    For people who don’t subscribe to an acronym but actually believe in a God, it can be slippery if it’s not kept simple. It’s common for people to get sober and say, “Okay, what do I do know? What is my life’s purpose and what is God’s will for me?” If they do that, they end up stressing themselves out and thinking themselves out of the game, thinking that they have to understand the meaning of life at 12 months sober; or that they should have a roadmap for their life drawn out, down to every little specific detail.

    It’s not that serious. Instead of concerning yourself with some huge existential question mark, keep it simple. Get off the bench, get back on the field and play. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself sober years later with a beautiful life filled with purpose and meaning. I can promise you that only because I’ve seen it happen for many of my junkie friends around me.

    My higher power doesn’t hate Pikachu. That’s just silly. If you believe in God, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too. Just find something greater than you when the days get dark in your life. Hey! Maybe it’s this story. Who knows.

    If nobody told you that they love you today: I do. I love you.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • An Open Letter to Addiction Treatment Providers

    An Open Letter to Addiction Treatment Providers

    There’s something wrong with addiction patients feeling the need to ask for medical advice from their communities because they don’t trust their providers.

    Maybe you’re a psychiatrist. Maybe you’re a dosing nurse at a methadone clinic. Maybe you’re an inpatient counselor. Maybe you work in an emergency department, or you’re an OBGYN; maybe you don’t specialize in addiction at all, but you regularly come into contact with people who are struggling with the condition. If you’re a medical professional, and all or some of your clients have a substance use disorder (SUD) diagnosis, this letter is for you.

    I am a person in remission from a substance use disorder. I’m here to tell you that addiction patients need you to understand our condition. That sounds basic, I know. It is basic. But here’s the thing: too many of you don’t understand. I’m not trying to attack you. I’m not saying you’re all misinformed. There are unquestionably many caring and well-informed providers doing excellent work in this arena. But it’s also true that enough of you are misinformed to be causing major problems for SUD patients. And that needs to change. Like yesterday.

    Right now my husband is white-knuckling his way through methadone withdrawal while his clinic works on getting him safely back on his therapeutic dose after one of you, a behavioral health doctor, rapidly dropped him 100 milligrams without consent, for no medical reason, while he was in the hospital for mental health reasons. And in 2014, my newborn daughter went through over a month of neonatal withdrawal from my prescribed methadone, which could have been prevented or lessened if my pre- and postnatal providers had made a few small changes to their protocols; sadly, this kind of medical treatment is still provided to mothers and infants across the country.

    Every damn day SUD patients crowdsource medical information from social media communities and online forums, often due to mistrust in the medical community when it comes to addiction care.

    Sara E. Gefvert, a certified recovery specialist who runs the Methadone Information Patient and Support Advocacy (MIPSA) Facebook group, says that she created MIPSA because she saw members of other communities receiving unreliable responses to medical questions. “Many MAT sites and groups I saw were not monitored frequently for correct and accurate content or were only adding to the misinformation and stigma that persons in recovery face, especially being on medication-assisted treatment.”

    In just one day, questions asked in five separate addiction treatment-focused Facebook groups included: 

    What kind of pain relief options are available during labor while I’m on buprenorphine?
    Should I raise my methadone dose if I have psychological but not physical cravings?
    Is it normal to lose my sex drive while on methadone?
    Am I still in recovery if I drink alcohol occasionally?
    Can cold-turkey opioid withdrawal kill you?
    Is it safe to detox while pregnant?
    Can you combine buprenorphine and methadone?
    Should my methadone be making me nod out?

    And others along those lines.

    These are all medical questions with real world consequences—some dire. The answers to these questions should be coming from trusted providers with medical expertise. Sure, people crowdsource medical information from the internet all the time, but it’s usually about pretty mild concerns, or trying to squirrel out whether they should go to a doctor. On the other hand, these addiction specific questions are often accompanied by complaints that the patient couldn’t get a straight answer from her treatment provider, or that the information she received was the opposite of what she read in a research study or an online article. There’s nothing wrong with people seeking community input on issues they’re facing, especially when the answers are reviewed by knowledgeable and professionally trained administrators like in the MIPSA group.

    There is, however, something wrong with addiction patients feeling the need to ask for medical advice from their communities because they don’t trust their providers.

    This seems to be an especially prevalent issue for medication-assisted treatment (MAT) patients. I was on methadone for about a year in 2013 and 2014, and on buprenorphine from 2014 to June of 2018 (with a short break of about five months in 2016). Before starting methadone, I was actively addicted to heroin for close to five years. In all of that time, I heard a lot of different things from a lot of different doctors, nurses, counselors and detox staff in virtually every region of the country. For example:

    Buprenorphine is only good as a detox aid.
    Buprenorphine works best as a long-term treatment.

    Methadone is more addictive than heroin.
    Methadone creates a dependency but effectively treats addiction.

    Breastfeeding while on methadone is unsafe.
    Breastfeeding while on methadone can help ease neonatal withdrawal.

    I can’t count myself sober if I take medication
    I’m at an increased risk of relapsing and overdosing if I detox.

    Addiction is a disease.
    Addiction is a spiritual malady.

    How was I supposed to tease out the truth from all that?

    With all the confusing and contradictory information that patients receive about addiction, it would be easy for someone to assume that the medical science is still out. In reality, there’s quite a lot of straightforward, peer-reviewed data about substance use disorders. Frankly, there is no excuse for a medical provider to ignore these facts. For example, decades of research have shown that methadone (a long-acting opioid agonist) and buprenorphine (a partial opioid agonist), help deter opioid misuse, decrease the risk of fatal overdose, and may help to correct neurochemical changes that took place during active addiction.

    To quickly address some of the other misinformation I’ve encountered:

    • Both methadone and buprenorphine treatment are appropriate, and in fact designed, for long-term use. Patients who choose to taper from these medicines can do so safely, but there is no generalized medical reason why someone with an opioid use disorder should be forced off either medication.
    • Breastfeeding while on methadone or buprenorphine is considered safe as long as the mother is not using other substances.
    • If a patient is using these medicines as prescribed and is not using other substances in a compulsive manner, they are in remission from their substance use disorder. In other words, they’re sober (though defining oneself with the term “sober” is a personal choice).
    • Addiction is medically defined as a disease. Which means that the onus is on our medical providers to stay informed about the science of this disease.

    Ultimately, you can’t be held responsible for everything your patient does. But you do have a responsibility as a treatment provider to give your patients accurate and informed medical advice.

    According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), about 20 million adults in the United States have a substance use disorder. So we’re not talking about some rare condition that only a handful of specialists can be reasonably expected to understand. This is a common, treatable disorder with a robust body of solid research behind it. You need to read that research. You need to stay informed. If you don’t have an answer to a patient’s question, you need to refer them to an accessible colleague who will. You took an oath to do no harm. Staying informed about addiction medicine is part of keeping that oath.

    Sincerely,

    Elizabeth Brico

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • When the Obsession Isn’t Lifted

    When the Obsession Isn’t Lifted

    Before, when someone with 20 years would say “it’s still a day at a time,” I couldn’t really hear them. I do now.

    I was a typical low-bottom case. I was drunk most days, and a car wreck, an arrest, and a liver enzyme problem couldn’t pry me from my favorite thing to do. What would be the point of a life without alcohol? Now over five years sober, though, one thing astounds me even more than my abstinence. I don’t miss drinking. I hardly think about it. How can this be? Drinking was at the center of my existence. Surely sobriety would be a lifetime of longing for what I couldn’t have anymore, of feeling terribly excluded from the magical things I associated with its effects: wildness, fun, escape, adventure. Now it’s like, drinking? Oh right, that…

    In AA-speak, I had an “obsession” with alcohol, and that obsession has been “lifted.” The totality of this transformation was enough to make me, an atheist before this, feel a bit mystical indeed.

    Over the years I have come to realize that unfortunately this freedom from obsession does not characterize everyone’s recovery experience. I first noticed this when I was out to dinner with a friend from the program. Both of us had over a year sober. Our server began listing drink specials, as servers do, and my friend cut him off and demanded that he remove the cocktail menu from our table immediately. I felt embarrassed and confused. These were not the vibes of someone “placed in a position of neutrality.” Instead she was coming across as anxious and aggressive and she seemed to be feeling unsafe. We talked, and she said, “Yeah, for me, the obsession has not been lifted.” I was stunned. I thought, really?

    Keeping her anonymous, I brought this interaction up to other friends who had been sober for decades. They knew. They reminded me that Dr. Bob’s obsession lasted well into his third year. Bob wrote in the Big Book, “Unlike most of our crowd, I did not get over my craving for liquor much during the first two and one-half years of abstinence. It was almost always with me.” He notes in this passage that it used to make him “terribly upset” to see his friends drink when he “could not.”

    I have become attuned to this. While there are as many experiences of recovery as there are people in recovery–it’s a deeply personal path after all–perhaps two broad types emerge, one in which the obsession all but disappears, and another in which it remains even while abstinence is achieved and maintained. How can these not be vastly different?

    This seems like a big deal, yet the issue gets scant air time in shares. I suspect we don’t hear about this more in meetings owing to our strong unity, per the triangle of recovery, unity, and service. We are at our best when we are united, identifying with each other rather than comparing. On this matter of the obsession, perhaps we are divided. (Of course there may be many people in the middle, whose obsession has weakened but has not “been lifted” or “removed,” or whose obsession comes and goes. I don’t know.) Out of the thousands of meetings I’ve attended, this issue has emerged just a few times as a share theme. In those shares, people whose obsessions have remained have expressed gratitude for others’ honesty who shared this ahead of them, and relief at the permission they felt it granted them to share similarly. They shared not wanting to drag anyone down, not wanting to be an unattractive example to newcomers, and not wanting to be seen as a “bad AA.” They wondered if they were doing the program wrong.

    I imagine that, on the contrary, it must take an especially strong program to maintain sobriety in the circumstance of an obsession that endures. When I share about its being lifted, including writing this now, I feel a sense of survivor’s guilt. I worked the same 12 steps as everyone else, and my active disease was plenty strong. Just for me, abstinence was a prerequisite for the freedom from obsession that followed, but after that, the freedom from obsession made ongoing abstinence feel easy. Life can be hard. Last spring, my sibling got a life-threatening illness, and that was very hard. But I don’t find not drinking to be hard anymore. When I use the slogan “getting sober is a lot harder than staying sober,” that is what I mean.

    Olivia Pennelle’s recent article in The Fix, “Is there Life after AA?” caught my attention. She wrote about wanting to leave AA and being tired of the “fear-based conditioning” that if she left, she wouldn’t stay sober. I identified with her experience, not because I wanted to leave AA (I didn’t), but because I too faced dire predictions when I wanted to reduce my time commitment to the fellowship. In my first four years sober I had been attending meetings almost every other day; making daily calls to sponsors (something like 1,500 total to my two consecutive sponsors); hundreds more calls to friends, acquaintances, and newcomers; taking around half a dozen sponsees through some stepwork (not all at the same time!); and fulfilling service commitments ranging from greeter to meeting chair to speaking in prisons and psych wards and what seemed like half the groups in my large metro area. My recovery felt solid, and I’d learned the difference between the program, which I could apply in my daily life, and the fellowship.

    I’d returned to grad school to become a psychotherapist. (Incidentally, while there I discovered that mental health professionals have studies and theories about why the obsession leaves some people more easily than others, having to do with particular co-occurring mental health issues. In the future, I hope to write about this too.) With more focus and energy, I felt ready to pursue the new career and other life goals including getting non-alcoholic friends and dating outside the fellowship. I found myself needing more time. Trust me, I did ask myself and a higher power within: Am I “drifting?” Am I “resting on my laurels?” Then as now, I relied heavily on meditation. In my depths, I knew this was not the case.

    Pennelle quoted someone who wrote to her, “I know lots of people who have left 12-step recovery. They are all drunk or dead.” When I reduced my involvement, some people made it clear how extremely dangerous they thought this was, and how worried they were. When I told a friend I was down to 1 to 2 meetings per week, she looked at me like I was out of my mind. My sponsor was distraught to be working with me in my new approach, and she couldn’t seem to talk about anything other than how my disease must be “tricking” me. I had affectionate feelings and a lot of gratitude towards her, but we couldn’t seem to see eye to eye on this. Eventually I referenced my obsession’s being lifted as part of my rationale for feeling safe cutting down on the time commitment. She then used almost the same words my friend used years before and said that for her “the obsession has not been lifted.” She added, “for some people, it never does.”

    Many considerations likely play into people’s decisions regarding how much or how little time they spend in the fellowship, but it stands to reason that the persistence or disappearance of the obsession factors into it. I have no wish to take chances. Sobriety is the most precious, important thing in my life. It is my life. This disease has killed at least five members of my extended family, and it’s got one immediate family member in prison. I have never once questioned that if I take so much as a sip, I take my life into my own hands, and I don’t want to die. I try never to take my recovery for granted. AA is still a part of my life, but it is “a bridge back to life,” and life was pulling me in another direction. I couldn’t be true to myself and continue at the same level of time commitment I had in my first few years. I didn’t want to let anything get between me and my recovery, including my program.

    “A day at a time” has become a spiritual way of life for me, a reminder to live in the present. In early sobriety it was “a day-at-a-time” quite literally. I struggled hard not to drink through the first 90 days and then some, thinking about drinking almost nonstop. As I remember it, the obsession only began to falter for brief spans in months four and five, when I would have these amazing moments of realizing, hey wait! It’s been a whole afternoon and I haven’t been missing it. What freedom! Though I was desperate, exhausted from sleeplessness, grieving the loss of the only coping mechanism I’d ever known and coming to see the wreckage and trauma for the devastation that it was, these gaps in the obsession spurred me on. Even beyond my first anniversary I was still a little shaky (figuratively that is, my actual shakes were long gone). Now there are just moments when a liquor ad will catch my eye, or I’ll have a twinge of nostalgia for my old life. I’m still an alcoholic, but these come very rarely and never amount to a craving. Not even close.

    Before, when someone with 20 years would say “it’s still a day at a time,” I couldn’t really hear them. I do now. Taking sobriety “a day at a time” can remain literal, for life. For some cutting back on involvement in the AA fellowship may indeed be a death wish. We share a common problem and a common solution, but we are different people with different lives and recoveries. However well-intentioned, using fear or guilt to coerce people into a level of time commitment that for them is no longer authentic or wanted may only alienate them and take them away from a level of commitment that is working well, or inhibit them from re-engaging should a need arise in the future. Accepting this doesn’t require being dismissive or doubtful of other people’s need for continuous, intensive involvement. Compassion, as always, is best. We must do what is right for our own selves, and, unto our own selves, be true.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Bringing Harm Reduction to Haywood County

    Bringing Harm Reduction to Haywood County

    The man in the camouflage shirt who emerges from the cabin is drawn and thin with circles under his eyes. He tenses at my presence, especially once Jeremy tells him I am there to write an article.

    It is a cloudy evening and mosquitoes patrol in full force as Nancy Bauman and I pick our way gingerly over trash-strewn ground, searching for syringes. Under a creekside bridge splashed with graffiti, a pair of neatly folded jeans, a plastic bag of food items, and a pair of shoes offer evidence of a homeless encampment.

    As we search, Nancy opens up about her life as a former injection drug user. She recounts how her only brother died of a heroin overdose shortly after returning from Vietnam. Her own struggle with addiction began through recreational drug use with homecoming soldiers, and years ago she lost her husband to hepatitis C infection. Drugs ruled much of her youth, but Nancy has spunk. She entertains me with tales of how she used to run an illegal syringe exchange program with two Catholic nuns in Los Angeles. 

    As I listen to Nancy, I am not putting much effort into the search for syringes. Truth be told, I feel guilty about picking through someone’s home and also for the assumption that a homeless person must also be an injection drug user. Under the bridge, Nancy and I find nothing but an overturned shopping cart, bits of trash, and a spoon. When the time comes to return to the health department, I feel relieved.

    Nancy and I drive back to the health department to rejoin the rest of the newly formed Substance Use Task Force of Haywood County, North Carolina. The community syringe pick-up event is the inaugural event for this group, which is comprised of public health employees, harm reduction advocates, law enforcement personnel and impacted citizens who hope to address the growing incidence of drug use in Haywood County. The dozen or so members are an eager bunch, well-intentioned but so far lacking clear direction on how to tackle such a complex problem. The group finds only two discarded syringes that evening; still, enthusiasm reigns.

    We are debriefed by members of the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC), which in spring 2018 hired three staff members for the area under a grant funded by the Aetna Foundation. Haywood County, and western North Carolina in general, is relatively new territory for NCHRC, which has more established programs in eastern and central parts of the state. In one sense, this is an advantage since advocates can draw on the experience of harm reduction programs in other counties. In another sense, it is a disadvantage. Few people in Haywood County have even heard of the term “harm reduction.” Appalachian residents, often tough and resistant to change, are not easily convinced and stigma against drug users runs deep. For the three new staff members, Gariann Yochym, Virgil Hayes, and Jeremy Sharp, the task of introducing harm reduction to Haywood County is both challenge and an opportunity.

    After the task force disbands, I join Jeremy Sharp to deliver supplies to participants of the mobile syringe exchange program he has helped establish. The clouds have rolled away and the sun is just beginning to set behind the backdrop of the Blue Ridge mountains. We drive past picturesque fields of hay bales and grain silos. The town is so pretty it almost looks painted. We pull up to a log cabin with a single tire swing swaying in the breeze under a tree.

    But the beauty ends here. The man in the camouflage shirt who emerges from the cabin is drawn and thin with circles under his eyes. He tenses at my presence, especially once Jeremy tells him I am there to write an article. As a peace offering, I put away my notebook.

    Jeremy delivers syringes and naloxone to the man and his wife, who emerges from the house. The wife gives a sobering account of her recent arrest for drug possession and the agony of opioid withdrawal she endured while in jail. She asks Jeremy for help getting Suboxone treatment for opioid use and he offers to connect her to his co-worker, Gariann, who can arrange an appointment. Jeremy is quirky but likeable, and the couple’s affection for him is clear.

    When we are back in the car and I have use of my notebook again, Jeremy admits that the stories of death and despair that he encounters on a daily basis can get to him. “I walk into people’s lives for 20 minutes to do an exchange and it can be overwhelming to hear even just a description of all the things they are going through,” he says. 

    “But,” he adds, brightening. “There is nothing like that first naloxone reversal.”

    The struggle to find hope in a grim situation is one that plagues other advocates as well. NCHRC’s Gariann Yochym, who connects Haywood County program participants to social services, lives this fight every day.

    At first glance, Gariann gives off strong hippie vibes. She hails from Asheville, North Carolina’s most notoriously liberal city, but was born and raised in the hills of West Virginia. She glides easily between country twang and the Queen’s English, comfortable in both worlds but fully belonging to neither. In that way, she is well-suited to the work in Haywood County, which necessitates a level of mastery in both progressive public health policy and rural resistance to change.

    Since arriving in Haywood County, Yochym has been laying foundational work to connect drug users to services that can help them improve their health. Introducing harm reduction to an often hostile political environment is not easy. When I first ask Yochym what she thinks of her job, she offers a sunny response: She loves to help people and make a difference. But with prodding, she admits that the work can be difficult.

    “Trying to build relationships and respect, sometimes I don’t know when I should bite my tongue or hold my ground,” she says. “It can be challenging to build new partnerships, but I think we all recognize the importance of working together to address these complex problems.”

    Haywood County is a microcosm of the challenges that harm reduction faces in general. Though the harm reduction movement has existed for decades, in many ways it is still the new kid in town, pushing back against centuries of punitive and abstinence-only approaches to drug use. Long a stronghold in northern states, harm reduction has more recently begun laying foundation in southern states, where politics can be antagonistic. For advocates, the constant dilemma of when to compromise and when to hold firm is exhausting. Bringing opposite sides together often means that neither gets what it wants, and advocates are criticized both for pushing too hard and not pushing hard enough.

    Virgil Hayes, who supervises the Haywood County staff and programs, also lives under this constant pressure. “Not everyone is where you would like them to be in terms of support for harm reduction,” he says as we talk over lunch at a small diner. “We need to understand that change is inevitable, but people need time to part ways with what they have always known.”

    Hayes seems to embrace the opportunity that Haywood County presents. “It’s been an adventure,” he says, smiling and shaking his head. I sense this is an understatement.

    Hayes sees his most important task as working to create a seat at the decision-making table for active drug users. Even in other parts of the state where harm reduction is more accepted, there is still a tendency for non-impacted professionals to speak on behalf of people who use drugs. However, while in other counties stakeholders may have already marked their territory and become resistant to new voices, Haywood County has the opportunity to invite those voices from the beginning. Hayes and his co-workers are actively working to do just that.

    Ultimately, the small team is game for the challenge of bringing harm reduction to Haywood County.

    “I am inspired by the way this community has come together and opened themselves up to our program,” says Yochym. “We have been welcomed with an incredible amount of hospitality and support from unlikely partners.”

    Hayes thinks that education will be key to getting people on board with harm reduction. “People’s hearts change when they realize everything is not what it seems,” he says. He hopes to draw attention and resources to rural counties, where the effects of drug use are often swept under the rug.

    “I want to show how this problem impacts all areas across race, gender, class and geography,” he says. “I want to pull the covers back and show the issue is just as bad here [as in cities] and to present solutions for what we are going to do to change it.”

    It is not easy being dropped into a geographically isolated area and launching a harm reduction program without much precedent or guidance, relying on intuition and experience to know when to compromise and when to stand your ground. It’s an even bigger challenge to fight centuries of stigma to bring active drug users to the decision-making table. But if anyone can do it, I think Haywood County can.

    View the original article at thefix.com