I AM A DRUG ADDICT PT 2

I was always completely baffled by the idea that I could not return to using use drugs moderately like so many of my friends continued to do. Or like I had when I was younger, when it was still fun.  I always thought  that through sheer willpower I could learn to control heroin like I had the other drugs I had used. I always thought that was the problem . I never saw the need to stop using alcohol or  weed.  They were never a problem, I always used them in moderation and they never made my life unmanageable. The truth was even though I  thought I was  in control, I had always  needed drugs just to live a normal life. Heroin just made this more obvious and speeded up the progression.

What I have come to realise is that addiction is a disease with two components- a physical allergy and a mental compulsion. The physical allergy means that my reaction to drugs is different and more severe than that of other people. The mental compulsion means I have an obsession to use, so intense that it overrides any moral or  logical objections.  The combination means that I have no control when it comes to using. This is what separates a real addict from non-addicts—true addicts will carry on using even when we don’t want to—we literally do not have the ability to stop no matter how strong the desire to do so. We are sick. No amount of willpower, of pleading, begging , threatening  by loved ones will help.

 I had lived for years with a desperate desire to stop using , yet the first thought in my head on waking would be of the need to make some plan to score. The shame and guilt, the awareness of what I was doing to myself and my loved ones became so intense it incapacitated me. I would spend hours in internal debate trying to convince myself not to score, while knowing all along that I would be unable to stop myself.  .  After  years of trying to control my drug use I had finally got to the point where I could not go on. I did not know how to live without heroin and now I had got to point where I could not live with it. It no longer mattered whether I lived or died. I prayed to god to let me go to sleep and not wake up, and even though at this point I did not really believe that he had any interest in me, he was already making plans for me. It was only at this point, where I was willing to let go of everything , even life itself,  that I was able to accept help and find recovery.  I no longer cared whether I lived or died. I did not know it at the time but I had taken step 1 on my road to recovery – I had surrendered unconditionally and put my life in the hands of a power greater than myself.

I was brought to a recovery centre near Scottburgh through an extraordinary sequence of events that can only be described as miraculous. For weeks I had been lying in my room in a virtual catatonic state, not bothering to get out of  bed until I absolutely needed to. A few days before I sold a computer,  which had been loaned to me and bought 3 grams of heroin. I also bought a needle for the first time in my life, planning to inject it all and end my pathetic existence.

 I had always smoked my heroin, never mainlined. I believed because of this I was not a true junky. Real junkies stuck needles in their veins. There was something Oriental, mysterious even romantic about the process of smoking it. Even the name for it has a mystical ring—chasing the dragon.

I couldn’t pluck up the courage to put the needle into my vein, so I decided to smoke some first. After smoking some I felt so much better I no longer wanted to die and started making plans to get the computer back.. but first, as always,  another hit…. Before I knew it the heroin was all finished and I was still alive. The computer was the last thing of value I had to sell. The  study bursary I had been living on for the past few years  had dried up as I was no longer producing any work.  I was now been reduced to bumming and stealing money off my parents, again. This meant a daily trek up the hill to my parent’s house. My mother was so proud of me. She boasted to all her friends of how much I had achieved now I was clean (as she believed). It was so easy to lie to her.  She wanted so much to believe. I had completed my Master’s Degree two years before and was registered for my Doctorate. In reality I had produced no work the previous year and had relapsed into full-blown addiction. It was the shame and guilt of lying to and stealing  from my mother that brought me to my knees. I could no longer live with myself. I phoned a friend who I had known through Narcotics Anonymous a few years before. I had not seen him since I relapsed. Unknown to me he had also relapsed and was in treatment. I had tried a few times before to get hold of him, but he had not answered. This time I managed to get hold of him in the very short time –half an hour per week- that he was allowed to use his phone.  By chance, or gods will, there were two members of the centre in town—which is about 600kms from Scottburgh. My friend got hold of them and two days later I was here. God had done for me what I could not do for myself.