HOW IT WAS

I am a drug addict. I am what is called dual, I am an addict and I am also mentally/emotionally ill. I don't know if I was born an addict or if I was created by the circumstances of my upbringing. It really doesn't matter, what matters is that I am what I am. If it is the history of my childhood that you want, it is on another page. This is about my using drugs.

The first time I remember getting high was when I was about 12 years old. I was playing with a can of Pam cooking spray in the sink and I was watching the cloud float in the basin and I put my head in it and took a breath. I felt myself leave for a second and thought that this was something that I must try again. From the first it was an escape. I was soon using all of the spray cans in the garage, going on these "trips". I would have tried anything to get away from myself, the way I felt, and the way I viewed the world. I would go into the backyard, a dirt yard behind the pool yard and do these spray cans for hours. I was caught by my family so I went to another place down the alley, between two garages, and would do it there. I'm not sure how long I was doing this alone, before I started other drugs.

I'm not really sure about what came first, pot or booze, but they came. I think that the first pot I tried was some that I found in my sister's room. I liked it, of course, it became my favorite drug. I could do this one and no one would know, at least as far as I knew, that I was high. Booze on the other hand, well everyone knew I was drunk. You see I am an addict. I don't just have a few, I have as many as I can. I know that some program literature says, "we didn't become addicted in one day..." but I did. I am and as far as I know always have been an addict. I was addicted to getting high from the first try. That would be the way it was for every drug I tried. So, booze and pot came from stealing from my family, but then so did the spray cans. Soon I would find ways to get it on my own.

I remember that I was always trying to grow pot in the dirt yard but I would pull the plants very early and smoke them because I could not wait. Once in a while my mother would find one and get it. When I was enrolling in jr high school, my mother and I were looking at the elective classes and one of them was horticulture. She said that I should take that one so I could learn to grow pot better. I think that was the first time that my pot use was brought out in the open and that was all that was said. Of course, I took the class. My sister was aware that I was stealing her pot, she would try to hide it and lock the door better but I would find my way in. Once she put the words, "Jack you are an ***hole" on the tray she kept her pot. She also once in a while had some coke in her room, and that was how I came to try that as well. Always very small amounts so I never knew if it was any good, but it was a drug so I knew that I wanted it.

In high school I found a couple of friends and we started getting high together. One was as big an addict as I was, but his drug of choice was beer. Another liked to have a couple of beers and smoked pot but always got to a point and was finished. I never understood how that works. The friend that loved his beer was a huge guy and was kinda dangerous once he got drunk, but usually only if he was around certain people. He knew where to get pot and other drugs and I could get money because of my stealing. I soon tried LSD, mushrooms, and hash. I did not get into pills, they weren't around I guess.

I started getting jobs and they were ways to keep the drugs flowing. One job was doing auto body work and there was an unending supply of paint thinner to use. I would bring home a jar of it everyday. Another was in fast food and I was stealing from the til, more than I was being paid. Stealing and drugs went together from the beginning. Soon I found my way into the prison system. I did about 22 months and was not using drugs after I got out, until I was told by one of my parole officers that he was not testing me for pot. So I started smoking again. I had a good job, making good money, but it was going towards drugs mostly.

At some point I got married and soon after my wife told me that I should quit drinking. I was in the habit of drinking after work until I went to bed and then getting up at 4:30am to go to work. I would smoke at work and then come home and drink. Seemed to be working for me. So I tried to quit and found that I couldn't. I started going to program meetings but wasn't putting anything into it-and I was still smoking pot. At some point I asked for help and was diagnosed with depression with suicidal idealations. In other words, I felt it was better to be dead than alive, I even knew how I would like to do it. I had felt this way all my known life, now they were saying it was an illness. They also noticed I was a social phobic, and that I suffered from anxiety. They put me on meds...lots of meds. I liked the meds, they were just another drug for me to play with. At some point I tried to kill myself with the meds, it almost worked. My wife has never forgiven me for it. She sees it as something I did to her.

One day I was at a program meeting and this guy was talking about crack, where to get it, how to make a pipe, and he said that it would make me forget pot and booze forever. It did not take me long to go to the street he said and buy some. He was right, I was now a crackhead, I did not drink or smoke pot. My wife kicked me out, I was in and out of hospitals because the cycle of using and then the suicidal feelings would completely run my life for the next two years. I switched meds, tried ECT, but none of that works if you keep doing the drug. I lived in sober livings, on a 30 day cycle of clean time and then the check would come and I was using for two days. I would get kicked out of the sober livings and go to the hospital and then find another sober living.

I went this way for a while. I ended up living in my car in the hospital parking lot but they found out about it and sent me away. I went to the place that I get my crack and sold my car for about $200 worth and started living in an alley there.

One day I was in this alley and the face of my father came to me. I could see him and I could see all the pain I was causing him by the way I was self-destructing. I don't know why it suddenly hit me the way that it did, but I stood up and decided that I was going to stop doing this to him. I walked out of that alley and into treatment. I went to a place that was the only place that would take me now and that I could afford, I did not have insurrance coverage for rehab. It was a good sounding place, set up for dual diagnosis. I went there and paid the money with my ssdi check. The place did not have any of the groups that was promised. They took my meds and handed them out when they wanted, sometimes forgetting to give them out or giving me the wrong dosage and even the wrong meds. I often had to tell them that this medication is not mine, or I only take one of these pills. I stayed there for 45 days and went to a sober living. I stayed in that sober living until I had a year sober and moved back in with my wife.

Living with my wife did not go well for either of us. I don't know what it was that made both of us so miserable but we were nice enough to each other. I went back to work and started paying off the debts I had with everyone. One day my father died and the weeks after this were hell for me. I was not able to go through the grief, feeling that my wife was belittling me for my sorrow. I had a breakdown and was hospitalized. While there I went to groups for depression, grief, and trauma. I was in for ten days and I knew that when I got out that I was not going back to live with my wife. I got a list of sober livings and when I got out of the hospital I checked out three of them. All three were the worst I had ever seen. The first two were so bad that there was no way that I would move in to them. The third was clean but had the guys packed in the likes of which I had not seen since prison. But I moved in. It was the most expensive sober living I had ever been in and it is run by a vile man who though he has four years of clean time seems to be completely without any recovery. Then I met the owner, and I saw why the manager had been picked for the job. Most of the men here were on parole, some were skinheads, some were just looking for their next fix, some were on meds like me.

MY GOD