The Courage to Surrender. John Hayes W.
away from my family life to party with him. We were moving in the direction of their marriage which was a loose arrangement – not far from divorce. The hole in my gut told me it was time to change how I lived, but I was hooked.
A doctor in the area prescribed Valium for a variety of problems. Larry’s wife and I made appointments for nervous conditions, while he went for his back problem. With each appointment we got a monthly supply, so we scheduled visits to keep an inventory. Valium was the drug we took if there wasn’t any other chemical around.
My friend introduced me to methamphetamine or “crank” as it was called. I loved its high and the duration of its effect as it took getting high to a new level of euphoria that was overpowering. There were times after “tweaking” for hours that I knew I should sleep – or at least rest. I knew I should be tired, even though I wasn’t.
When the speed wore off, I would be mentally and physically drained. So, in order to avoid the inevitable crash, I would do more. I was high in no time, and didn’t feel tired at all.
My new friends became my sole source for drugs. If there were drugs we wanted, we would drive four hours to Connecticut to score from their contacts.
I “turned on” with tenants at parties, only to find people in adjoining townhouses had their own drugs of choice. They got stoned and drank like everyone else in my tiny circle of friends, and soon everyone who lived around me was cool about smoking and getting high. Even straight people joined in at parties.
After a couple of years, I started worrying about my mental well-being, and thinking about just how long I would live drinking and drugging in this fast-lane lifestyle. When I wasn’t high, I felt nervous, anxious and more insecure than I had ever experienced. I couldn’t participate in the real world because my priorities were jumbled, and my self-respect disappeared. I stopped looking in the mirror.
My “type A” personality kept me revved up for action, but my gut feelings controlled the hole in my soul and my distress accumulated every time I went against my will. The hole never felt better, only worse.
I didn’t know if I was going crazy. Daily, I soaked my brain with alcohol to curb my out-of-control thinking, and used drugs to lift me from insanity to feelings that I could accept.
I knew my brain and body well enough to let drugs dictate how I would function. To get the desired effect I knew how much alcohol and drugs to ingest and when to do it. This must have been the “better life through chemistry” show I missed on the Discovery Channel.
I lived so close to the edge of reality I became angry at everything and everybody who agitated me, or somehow interrupted my addictions.
With increasing frequency my behavior was out-of-control and I feared I would drink and drug my way through life.
I stopped socializing. I quit going to see my folks because I was usually wasted and couldn’t hide it. I lived with unpredictable fear and knew that, just below the surface of being high, there was a cauldron of trouble waiting for me to slip. At times I’d break down, and Rachael would talk me back from the edge.
Though I didn’t know where I was in life and didn’t have a plan for moving forward, I started job hunting, looking for a higher salary and a better career position. Now that my son was added to our family, we were strapped for things we needed, and a few things we wanted. I seemed to always have enough cash to drink and to use, though. After all, that was my life’s blood!
I landed a job with a small company in Rochester, New York, about a seven-hour drive from where we lived. At the courtesy of my new employer, Rachael and I went to Rochester to find a place to live. To help us make the best use of our short time, we drank beer and took speed for the three-day weekend.
My plan was to cover as many subdivisions as possible, thinking we could do more looking with less sleep. So the speed kept us awake, while the beer kept us sane enough to record locations, costs, features and its proximity to schools.
When it was time to decide, we were burned out and confused about which subdivisions were where. Clearly, my approach to house hunting failed, so we began a new search on the Sunday we were scheduled to leave.
We easily found a townhouse that suited our needs. Since our selection had not been on my short list, we scurried around to familiarize ourselves with the area before leaving for home.
My addiction to drugs left me wondering how I could score in our new environment and, for the next couple of weeks, I agonized about finding a dealer. I bought all the drugs I could get, hoping I had enough until I found a new source. In the meantime, I felt somewhat secure knowing that I could always drink.
* Chicago Reader, May 16, 1997
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