Ex Junkie

Does anyone else feel drawn to wallowing in despair?

I do.

In fact, it’s more difficult for me to choose happiness a lot of times, which is ridiculous when I look at it on paper. I would rather sit in the muck, and I don’t know why. I mean, let’s be logical for a little bit: I prefer the feeling of being happy/content so I should do things that make me happy/content. And I mean really, deeply happy, not temporal fixes like drugs, alcohol abuse, et cetera. So why don’t I do those things that contribute to lasting joy? Why does it sometimes feel like I’m drawn to pain in the same way I was drawn to heroin – with what seems to be no choice in the matter?

Sometimes I just want to be done, to go home. I look at kids and I understand what all the adults used to say to me when I was a kid – You’re gonna miss it! Enjoy your youth now! – because I don’t want responsibility most of the time.

But now is where it really matters. Now the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Three jobs, a leadership position at my church, rent, a cell phone bill I’m paying myself for the first time (man I’m a spoiled brat), saving money for a car. And on top of that weight, there were certain things I thought I’d have or get back at this point that I don’t have and haven’t gotten back.

Welcome to life, huh?

I’m getting there.

Here’s what I think is going on: When I was first getting sober, everything hurt. I couldn’t cope with anything, because my coping mechanism was drugs. Period. But things gradually got more bearable, felt less like my whole being was an open and bleeding wound. And just so – slowly but surely and by God’s grace alone – I made it through the program at Wayside. Now, I have a new set of issues – that list from before about rent, etc. – and if I’m smart, I’ll look back on how I got through eight weeks at Teen Challenge Chicago and then six months at Wayside, and I’ll trust my Jesus whose strength is made perfect in my weakness, and I’ll keep limping after him.

It’s just that the first few weeks getting into the swing of things is so hard. That’s always been my problem. Take school for instance: Before the semester started, I’d be all pumped, and then a few weeks later, reality would set in, and I’d freeze up and fail all my classes.

I’m at that freezing point right now, and, knowing me, it’ll last for the next few weeks at least. Then, the wounds will begin to heal and the lies I kinda believe right now about how I can’t really do this will no longer have ground to stand on, and, always looking to Christ, I’ll start to feel okay about life.

I’m done.

If I drink more than one normal-sized cup of coffee – or if I drink that normal-sized cup too quickly – my heart beats fast and my lungs decide they haven’t had enough oxygen, which revives a long-held suspicion that, should I err in the slightest, my world will spiral irrevocably into chaos.

The program I’m in right now is a part of Wayside Cross Ministries in Aurora, Illinois, named Master’s Touch. It’s a men’s residential program which has been around for eighty-two years, I think. It’s twenty-four weeks in duration, after which there are options for staying on for an extended amount of time. It’s a really great program.

No place is perfect, though. The buildings we live and work in have to be fifty years old or more. There are two dorms, the third and fourth floors. The third floor packs fifty-seven men together, the fourth, thirty-eight. There are few modern amenities – air conditioning, for instance, is available for those who’d like to sleep on the floor in the chapel downstairs – but we have the necessities (three squares a day, a mattress and pillow with the accompanying linen, indoor plumbing) and that’s more than most the world can say.

It gets pretty hot on the fourth floor, which is where I sleep. It also gets… malodorous… what with thirty-eight sweating men, some of whom haven’t learned the finer points of hygiene. Like showering. (I wish I wasn’t serious, but I’ve witnessed some of them using a sink and a rag for their daily routine. Lord, have mercy.)

The staff isn’t perfect, but this does not phase me as it once might have. Why it is that so many come in the doors expecting everyone but themselves to be perfect – especially those in authority over them – baffles me. Or perhaps they are blind and believe they are, indeed, perfect. Not so baffling, when put in those terms, because I’ve been guilty of the same over and over again. Daily, in fact. I’m always getting angry at someone for doing something wrong or not being who I want them to be, and then God – sometimes gently, sometimes not – shows me the hundred ways I’ve not hit the mark that day.

Anyway, every once in a while, I kind of snap to, and I observe my surroundings. This happened yesterday. I was thinking about all the less-than-pleasing parts of being at Wayside, and it occurred to me that, despite all of them, I’m sober, and have been for almost five months (woohoo!). Then, it occurred to me that the exorbitantly expensive Hazelden didn’t keep me sober. Nor did Calvary Center in Phoenix. Okay, don’t hear me saying they’re bad places. They aren’t. Also, don’t hear me saying Wayside is keeping me sober. It isn’t. But Hazelden and Calvary lack the foundation I’ve found here at Wayside, namely, a solid theology. A “god of my understanding” doesn’t do it for me. In fact, it was detrimental.

Jesus means everything to my sobriety, and, for that matter, my sanity. If I’m just going to create a god out of a tree or a rock, as a counselor at Hazelden and some in AA told me to do, I’m going to struggle – did struggle – with applying any sort of logic. How did that rock reach into my life and bring me out of my addiction to heroin? How is that tree going to fill the void in my soul? Addicts and alcoholics are really comfortable talking about that void, but they get mad when I tell them an inanimate object probably won’t fill it. As my grandpa would say, Cada loco con su tema!

My God makes sense. Indeed, the Christian religion, as founded on the Bible, is the only belief system that makes sense of all this terrible stuff that keeps happening in and around me. I was told the higher-ups in AA added that line “of my own understanding” so they wouldn’t offend people, because God knows addicts and alcoholics are in a vulnerable spot. Please. Everyone’s in a vulnerable spot. Maybe we need to have our ideas about God and the universe and everything challenged. Maybe the logic we’ve employed – especially as addicts and alcoholics – isn’t the best logic in the world, it having gotten us into rehab at best, or sleeping in some gutter, at worst.

I’m glad I’m at Wayside, with its many failings. Coming up against these (relatively) difficult situations has made me a better person. And that makes me happy.

I have great news! I haven’t smoked a cigarette since Sunday evening. That’s a solid 96 hours.

I feel good about it. When I quit before, at Teen Challenge, it was forced. Now, at Wayside, it isn’t. I’d been smoking for ten weeks – that is, from the very second I left TC. Ten sounded like a nice, round number to me. More accurately, I’d been smoking for six years – that is, from the day I turned eighteen. (That’s right, I just had a burfday.) Six sounded like a nice, round number to me.

My parents came for my birthday weekend, and the plan was to smoke my last cigarette the day before my birthday – last Friday. Well… that didn’t work out. I didn’t smoke through my whole pack by Friday night, and I hadn’t the strength to simply toss the rest. Yes. I’m ridiculous. So I smoked the rest on Saturday. Sunday, when my parents and I were coming back from our short trip to Wisconsin, I fell further into compulsion and bought another pack at a gas station. I’d recently become a huge fan of Newports, and am even now lamenting how late in the game I discovered them. Anyway, I wasn’t doing well.

We got back to the west suburbs around one in the afternoon, just in time for the Argentina vs. Mexico game. Viva Argentina! At halftime, I stepped onto the porch to smoke because I was feeling anxious, and it didn’t help. Actually, I felt more anxious. This had been occurring a lot over the last few weeks. Cigarettes used to calm me down, but they weren’t doing the trick any more. They weren’t really good for anything except for that wonderful Newport taste – and, of course, the poetic aura to which I’ve become so attached over the years. What vanity!

My parents took me to see a movie after the game, and I had a post-movie cigarette, just like all the other times I’ve watched movies in the past six years. There it was again: anxiety. And this time, there hadn’t been any anxiety preceding the cigarette, so I knew I was in trouble. Or at least my habit was.

I got into the car with Mom and Dad, and told them what was going on, except I wasn’t super clear about it. “I think I’ve become really susceptible to caffeine. Even the smallest amounts make me crazy.”
“It could be that,” said Dad. “The nicotine probably isn’t helping, either.” Saw right through me.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Well, nicotine is an upper, don’t you know.”
“Whaaat?”
“Well, yes!” With feeling now. “The reason most people feel they are calmed is that they’re satisfying their addiction, which has made them nervous. Meth to a meth addict is calming. To anyone else, it’s crazy-making.”
We pulled into the bar-and-grill at which we’d decided to eat. An undertrained young man sat us, sped through his welcome, and darted away. I’d planned on pushing my almost-new pack of cigarettes off on him, but he was too quick for me. My parents and I continued our conversation.
Ahah! There he is again. “Excuse me, sir?” Didn’t hear me. “Sir!” He turned. “Do you smoke cigarettes?”
“Cigarettes? No.” That’s code in the world of pot-smokers for “I smoke pot.”
“Well, does anyone you work with in there” – I pointed into the restaurant because we were sitting on the patio – “smoke?”
“You just wanna give me this pack of cigarettes?”
“Yes.”
“O..kay?”
Pack of Newport cigarettes – and Bic lighter – gone.
“Why didn’t you just trash them?” asked Dad.
“It… didn’t feel right.”

My writings are postmodern. Therein lies my frustration with them.

Thanks for the pointer, Dad.

I was rereading Rehab Sucks just now, making grammatical corrections, and I realized I didn’t nail what I wanted to nail with the second point. I said I know what it’s like to want the pain. I suppose that’s true to some extent. But, more accurately, I know what it’s like to not know what the pain is or where it’s coming from, to become frustrated with this and euphorically recall what it was like to be numb. It takes a lot of uncomfortable digging – a lot – to find the source of the pain. And once it is found, amidst overwhelming feelings to continue avoiding it, it must be felt. I have to sit down, bow my head and close my eyes, quiet myself – all the voices screaming at me Please! Not this! – and Go There. I’m not very good at it.
While I’m sitting there, in the middle of it, I try to remember to ask God about it. This is not easy. The temptation to just sit there and enjoy the sickness of it – I am fallen – is strong, because it provides a weird sort of rush, of the same sort I get when I do something I know is wrong. This is what I meant by wanting the pain. It’s macabre. I know.
But if I ask God about it, I can start hacking through the undergrowth because I can see now which is the direction of the light. This is tiring, but it is good.

Also, I figured out something about The Tape. (The Tape is what plays in an addict’s head over and over again, scenes from using that do not include the horrible results of using. It can include the excitement of going to get the drug, the friends one was with and the camaraderie felt there, the moments right before using the drug, the effects, and much more. But never does it include the almost-immediate remorse, or the looks on the faces of one’s family.) I figured out it’s no good to play the actual using part. Makes things worse. So, I apply Scripture – sharper, I tell you, than any two-edged sword – and I take this thought captive. I blink, mentally, and avert my gaze, ideally to things like what I referenced in Father of lights.

Well would you look at that. That’s starting to sound sane.

I just realized something: being hard on myself is mostly a result of believing my actions save me. I think very often of the mistakes I’ve made, and until recently, I had the idea that God was Up There shaking his head at my most recent intemperance. Within the last year, helped by Phillip Yancey, God has revealed that “grace” means there’s nothing I can do to make God love me more or less. And I’ve spent the last year attempting to work this into my awareness.
Of course, I must remember the slavery from which I’ve been brought out, but the effect this retrospection has is not immediately apparent. That is, it doesn’t make me depressed, but, compounded by the fact that I didn’t escape slavery but was rescued, gives me great joy as I consider an almighty, universe-sustaining God who loves me so.
Also, I’m not saying my many offenses against various individuals are paltry or inconsequential. They aren’t. But if on thinking of these offenses I despair of a saving righteousness, I’ve forgotten that my righteousness is not, in fact, my righteousness. It is Christ’s, imputed to me, despite what I’ve done.

OK, that’s not what I sat down to write. I sat down to write about one of my favorite verses and its cross-references. To wit:
Ephesians 5:14 – Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
I chose the KJV translation because I love how it puts that last phrase, this imagery of Christ the light-giver. One of my favorite names for God is Father of lights.
Luke 1:78-79 – …the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
The light this Sunrise is giving us is peace. I need peace, and my God knows it.
Isaiah 60:1 – Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
Malachi 4:2 – …but for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.
Read that last one over and over, Christian, and see if your soul isn’t transported. How badly do you want to be healed? To find refuge from devastating pain? To step out of the night and into the sun? Our God knows and is powerful to do it.

Rehab is not an easy place. I see people come in and go back out and it. is. exhausting. I mean, I remember how I was in my addiction, how no one could tell me anything I didn’t already know, how the problem was always someone or something else, never – perish the thought! – never me. And I remember all the reasons I had for continuing to use. So I feel for them, the guys who go back out, but it hurts, for two reasons:

1. I remember my own past: the people I hurt who were trying to help because they loved me, the way I didn’t love anyone but me, didn’t know how to or couldn’t or whatever, and the way some of those people left my life altogether because I’d really, seriously injured them. Everyone close to me ended up a victim.

2. I know too well the pain to which they will return. And I know what it’s like to want the pain, if only as an excuse to use. And then there’s the awful truth that quitting is like leaving an old friend, one who is always there, from whom you can always know exactly what to expect. When I stopped smoking pot, I mourned. I still do, as often as I remember it. When I stopped shooting heroin, I mourned. I mourned the needle, too. It was really hard. It felt, in some really twisted way, like betrayal.

So I get it. But it sucks. Not to mention it’s a constant reminder that so few actually make it out of addiction, and I am terrified by this. (Not a plea for assurance. Just a statement.)

Every now and then, I confront the question: Why do I write? This is different from the question: Why write? There are a lot of really great and romantic reasons to give for the second. For the first, not so much. I’m pretty sure I write because of a compulsion to do whatever I can to make people like me. So, following the logic, I must think I’m a good writer. And so I do, sometimes. But when I return to this blog and read over some of my blatherings, I cringe as the many critics in my head and the voices I’ve given to the people who probably don’t even read this accuse me of fraudulence, denounce my writing as self-important and trivial. Worse, I imagine someone happening across my page and thinking to themselves, “Well… he’s really trying… and that’s worth something, isn’t it?” This makes my face flush. I really hate caring about what you think of me.

And so I arrive at an even more interesting question: Why, knowing all this, do I continue to write? Answer: I’m insane, and I (apparently) wish to remain that way. Here is an instance which backs my theory:

A couple of weeks ago, I felt like I needed to write a letter. (At least, this is what I was telling myself. I didn’t.) I stared at the computer screen for a while, and then I typed a couple sentences. My heart was racing, my adrenaline pumping, because I knew full well I was doing what I should not. And then, succumbing even further to impulse, I added a line at the end of my two-sentence letter that I really should not have written, but I was extra weak that day. And then I sent it.

I sat back in my chair and immediately started to go crazy. Will this person respond? I wondered. What would this person say in response? What if this person doesn’t respond? If this person doesn’t respond, is it because of anger, or because not to respond is the better thing to do? Why the hell did I even write that? That wasn’t a good thing I did just now. It was manipulative. I’ve probably just further disqualified myself from something I might have had if I’d just held on, exercised some fucking self-control.

So you see, in sending the letter, I damned myself to insanity. That is, there was no possible outcome – response or no – which provided for anything other than insanity. This is why I think I’m addicted to it.

It’s embarrassing. But I’m writing about it because I really do want to be free of it and because I suspect I’m not alone in it, and I have this conviction that freedom can’t be reached alone, not in my experience, anyway, because we weren’t made like that. We need more than our selves. We need each other. And we need to delete our facebooks.