Irony is a Dead Scene, especially when there's Heroin involved.

I don't really know the purpose behind this post. I suppose it's because I rediscovered the fact that I have a blog, haha. I guess I'm more of a space cadet than I realize sometimes... The truth is, I have so many thoughts going through my head all day every day. And in order for me to maintain my sanity, I need to express what's on my mind in all sorts of abstract ways and forms including keeping a journal. It's not because my psychologist recommended it for the purpose of collecting my thoughts every week to bring in to share. The entire purpose of this blog is to post what is on my mind without hesitation or fear of judgment. At the moment I'm not connected to anyone, mostly because I choose to have a profile a little more developed before sharing it with anyone else. I may decide that I don't want to share this at all. The contents and contexts of some of my thoughts may remain personal, for personal reasons : ). Life lately has been decent. Life seems to get ea sier as every day passes. I know that isn't always true, but for the moment - it is. And so I will take it as it comes. As of April 26th of this year, I celebrated 3 years since the last time I stuck a spike in my arm loaded with heroin. That's something I never thought I would live to say. I am proud, but at the same time, how proud can I be that I am no longer the bane of humanity, the stereotypical junkie with a severe hygiene-impairment. Sometimes I feel like - the day I got clean, I didn't gain anything. Rather, I feel like I broke even with life. Like when you blow 10 dollars on lotto tickets, and you lose on all 9 and then win 10 dollars on the last one. The excitement is undeniable, particularly after scratching 9 lotto tickets to no avail. But it is also short lived, because you then realize that you, in fact, won nothing. You just made back the money you blew (which in my opinion is a pathetic success in terms of playing the lottery, such an utter waste of money). You're back to where you were before you walked into that bodega and asked for a jelly donut and 10 Loose Change, as if nothing ever happened. Recovering from drug addiction is very similar. It seems like such an impossibility when you're using that you will ever live a life without the drug. You live your life not day by day, but moment by moment. All that you can think about it how to scrape together money to get your next fix so you aren't left sweating, puking, feverish, delirious and in intense pain. Finally, for some, you hit rock bottom and you are forced to get clean either because your health has deteriorated to the point where it's get clean or die, or you become involved with legal issues and it's either get clean, or go to jail for a year. (The latter being my particular scenario). Then the rehabs start, long stings of 28 day stints, a handful of detoxes, a bakers dozen of relapses and maybe a long term facility or two. All of which I am guilty of, all of them... You reach a point where you've been taken away from the drug, the streets, the lifestyle long enough to realize you didn't die without it and that maybe you really can survive and get your life back - maybe it's not too late afterall. Then comes the pink cloud, they call it that because your brain is beginning to repair it's serotonin receptors and, physiologically and neurologically, you begin to experience happiness like normal people do, without the aide of drugs. Everything is fine and dandy, the world takes on a healthy sheen and the sun is always shining, there are pretty flowers that sing pretty songs, the birds and the bees are flying around happily, sunsets are lush and vibrant and colors are more colorful than they have ever been - Pink Cloud. Pretty self explanatory. Basically you are like a kid in a candy shop before you realize you don't have any money to buy the candy. Your family is so darn proud of you, they tell you you're doing well, you feel healthy and girls are starting to give you double-takes. And maybe, just maybe, you start to feel good about yourself again. Once the initial intense experience of your new found sensitivity to the world starts to dull down a bit, you then take a step back and realize - you may have gotten clean, but you find that you are only at the starting line. You haven't even begun to run the race. All you did was pull yourself out of the ditch you fell into on your way to the race, dusted yourself off, tied your running shoes tighter and stood amid all the other rats waiting for the race to begin. You start to understand that what you have done is not as miraculous and inspiring as it seemed. You realize that the only reason you got clean was because you decided you cared more about your personal freedom then you do about continuing to get high only to be thrown in jail for a year where you most certainly won't be able to shoot dope. You realize it all came down to a choice, you decided to stop. That's what so many people don't seem to understand about recovering from drug addiction. The addict needs to make the decision themselves that they want to get clean. They need to make the decision that they no longer want to experience the pain attributed to addiction. The addict needs to come to the realization that the 30 second rush, followed by 4 hours of mild euphoria and mild consciousness, was no longer worth the 20 hours of chasing the high, coming down, then the anxiety of where you're going to find the drug, the fear of withdrawal and then finally the withdrawal kicking in and the pain begins. Then you have about 8 more hours of withdrawal before you scrape the money together to get your fix, then you do it all over again. When your life takes that kind of form, not to mention the fact that you're sticking used needles over and over again into your veins, all over your body, risking contraction of blood born diseases and other horrible infectious diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV. When you have betrayed the trust of your closest friends and family by lying and stealing and abusing yourself and therefor - them. When everyone who loved you decided it hurt less if they just left you alone to self destruct at your own devices than to sit by and watch you slowly kill yourself. That's when it's time to get clean. But even then, you have to want to get away from that. The nasty thing about addiction is that while you're active, you lose a sense of how bad your life has spiraled out of control. It happens so slowly and yet within the blink of an eye, you lose all sense of perception. You actually view yourself to be the person you were when you first began using, not who you have become. You don't recognize how horribly it is effecting and tearing apart every single aspect of your life until you hit that proverbial "bottom". And the "bottom" is if you're lucky. Others don't just hit rock bottom, they hit bottom and break through the floor into the abyss of blackness that resides beneath the bottom and they lose their lives. I have lost many friends this way. One moment they're there, you're having a good time with them, getting high and getting into deep intellectual conversations and writing your history, the next moment you find them face down on the floor of their bathroom with their pants at their ankles, they stopped breathing 10 minutes before you found them and they have turned a shade of blue you never thought possible... and they're dead. They're gone, never to be seen or heard again. It's tragic. And the twisted thing about my addiction, was I glorified that kind of death. That was the entire purpose of my addiction to heroin. After being responsible for destroying the only real relationship I ever had with the only girl I ever truly loved, something went off in my head. A light switch that you turn off instead of turning on. It's that red button that you're not supposed to hit unless it's an absolute emergency. This red button was the Self Destruct button. Something just clicked in my mind whispering "Okay then, so this is when you pick your poison to take your own life with...So what'll it be?" Mine was Heroin. The cowardly way out. Suicide is already a cowardice move, a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But I had to take it a step further... I didn't have the heart to blow my brain out - mainly for fear of my mom having to find me. I didn't have the balls to jump off a building. And the thought of hanging myself just seemed horrible. I mean, what do you do when you're falling off that building, or you're hanging from that rope, and then, and only then... do you realize you don't want to die after all. But by then it's too late. No, for me, I wanted to load up a full 100cc syringe with as much heroin as I could fit into it, shoot it up, experience the most overwhelmingly warm, intensely euphoric and heavenly rush that I could every know, then to drift off to sleep and while I'm sleeping, my breathing slows down slowly, ever so slowly, until my chest no longer rises and my heart stops. I wouldn't have the consciousness to nag me if I decided I didn't want to die after all. Essentially, I'd get the best rush of my life, pass out and die in my sleep. I mean, who wouldn't want that? There were so many times that I intended on doing it. I would save up as much money as I could, so I could get as much heroin as I could possibly fit in that syringe, all for the sole purpose of ODing myself and dying. Over and over again I would be determined to do this. I would pull the money together, then I would find the best dope in town and buy 3 bundles of it. I'd bring it back home, lay it all out in front of me to prepare to load up the last shot I'll ever do. But then, and only then, would it cross my mind. I would look at all the heroin I had in front of me and it would hit me... Why would I want to kill myself? I have everything I need... right here infront of me. Needless to say, I never did load up that 100cc syringe with as much heroin as I could fit into it. Because each time I tried, irony would get the best of me. The exact poison that was meant to end my life, became the only thing keeping me alive. That right there was probably the most tragic aspect of my particular addiction. Everytime I think about that, it nearly brings tears to my eyes. If I didn't have heroin to get me through that deep deep dark depression, I don't know where I would be. Probably either in a mental institution, or my ashes would be sitting in an urn. So after all, I can't honestly say that heroin had no redeeming qualities outside of it's medicinal and painkilling purposes, because for me, it saved my life at those exact moments that it needed saving. Regardless of what happened during those many years as a junkie, I am so incredibly happy to be alive, and so very very grateful for the fact that I have my entire life ahead of me and that I can't do whatever I want with it and be whoever I want. I made that choice to get clean, and it was the hardest decision I ever made. It will be the hardest decision I will ever have had to make in my entire life...