G.I. Aspirin Part 3
Back to black.
***This is the next in a series about my long history with opiate addiction. A battle that has lasted for decades and will never truly be over. But I am happy to report that it’s a war I’ve been winning for the last 9 years.***
Sometime after my wife and I separated, I began dating again and it didn’t take long to settle into something good. I met and eventually fell in love with a wonderful woman - a single mother of two boys. I can’t for the life of me tell you why I regularly go all-in for women with pre-existing loin fruit. It’s not a fetish or anything of that nature. There are just a lot of quality women out there that happen to have children. It’s just not something that’s ever scared me off.
It was about this same time that I was offered heroin for the first time one night while hanging out with some friends and drinking beers. I initially scoffed and was actually kind of offended since the offerer was well aware of my past. I emphatically declined. But about 30 minutes later and after 10 years clean, I tracked them down and was soon huddled in a bathroom corner smoking black tar heroin off a sheet of tin foil.
It’s important to state that for the record I do not blame this friend for what would happen next or harbor any ill will towards them for it. It all falls pretty squarely on these shoulders.
As love was blooming the frequency of my usage was flourishing as well. Living on love and delightfully smitten, I was simultaneously becoming a nonchalant ne’er-do-well who was unknowingly engrossed in a gradual but steady two-year downward spiral. My girlfriend caught me or found questionable paraphernalia in my possession a few times over the course of our relationship, and was needless to say, unimpressed. I would tell her that I only did it occasionally, but if it made her uncomfortable I would stop. Which it did, and which I did not. Then she caught me smoking H in the bathroom of her 2-bedroom apartment one morning while the kids were eating breakfast. That did it for her and she quite justifiably had to let me go. Yet she remained a supportive friend up to and through my stint in detox.
While all relationships are a two-way street, I’ve only recently been able to see with more clarity the amount of failures that I need to own. And it doesn’t tickle. Especially when you consider yourself a “good person” in general. Coming to grips with the fact that your association with goodness has been tenuous to non-existent at times. So it goes with substance abuse and addiction, which we often use as scapegoats for our actions, justifiable or not. And it can be easy to assign the blame of addiction to pain or trauma. But I don’t think I get to do that. Because both times I went down that primrose path, I was pretty happy and content before taking those first steps.
“Do you think it was trauma from your childhood that caused you to turn to drugs?”
Not really.
“You must have been in some significant pain from your divorce to turn to heroin, yeah?”
Some pain, I guess.
“Well, substance abuse and addiction run in your family.”
Yeah, it does. But I know that.
“I can’t believe the military didn’t recognize addiction as real and put you through all of that!”
Sure, but I knew that too.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a glimmer of truth in all of those statements. Accordingly, I wouldn’t rule out closet skeletons as a potential part of the problem. But I don’t think any of those reasons are why I got into trouble with opiates. You see I am what some might label a bit of a hedonist. I love to love. I very much enjoy people, places, and pleasures. Entertaining and being entertained. I like to seek out new things and new experiences. I also really enjoy feeling good - a category in which opiates excel at producing bankable returns. At first, anyway.
Sure, at a certain point, they become the means of masking the physical and emotional pain that they inevitably induce. But when I got that train rolling, it was all for fun and to a degree, a desire to experience some of what my artistic heroes had. My ego and hubris were the greenlights that allowed me to ride it all the way to that dark place. Sometimes, simply put, what fucks you up is you. Now I was off to rehab to try and unfuck myself again.
Coming soon, Part 4.