I highlighted the parts that really spoke to me. I read this to my sister this morning and afterwards, we both felt sad at the truth of it, but once again more understanding toward Keven and Anthony. Speaking of Anthony...I have something to say about him at the end of this:
Heroin is evil. It does no good to anyone to abuses it. Take heroin and you lose. Every time. Not everybody loses the same way or to the same degree. But I have never known a case
where a person is truly better off for being on heroin. If you do know a person you believe has made heroin addiction somehow "work" I would urge you to look closer and to bear in mind that you don't know somebody's life until you've walked a good mile in their shoes. A mile is a good deal longer than any junkie would ever walk without a pressing reason. Example: a lack of heroin. Because no amount of heroin is ever enough for long enough. Heroin addicts just want to keep the world at bay. To float in that primordial amniotic wonderland that is called the Opiate High. Junkies aren't afraid of dying: they're afraid of living. The longer you indulge in heroin, the more worthless life seems, and the more frightening, until ~ if you're like me ~ you just can't cope. I know I am an extreme case. Not everybody has the psychopathology I have. But everybody who plays with heroin suffers for it. Heroin is a painkiller. If you make it your life's ambition to escape pain, the laws of nature decree you'll suffer for your folly. My one word of advice to anybody considering experimentation with any kind of strong opiates is just don't. You have survived an entire lifetime up to this point without heroin or oxy or Dilaudid or whatever else is gnawing at your soul before you even took it. Because I know you have mixed feelings and I know you feel confused. The reason is very simple:
you know that taking opiates is playing with fire. Somehow you reason you'll get high like every other junkie, yet you won't get burned like every other junkie. It doesn't matter whether or not you use a needle. Opiates get under the skin like you wouldn't believe. Eventually they become your skin, like a luxury coccoon. And life without them becomes not merely unbearable, but unthinkable. You may reason that you'll only use once a week, once a month, once a year, once in a lifetime. Every addict I've met, with the exception of those lost souls who deliberately got addicted, only ever intended to try heroin once. But heroin doesn't work like that. You do not get the full effects until your body is already well on the way to becoming habituated. Then it's already too late. If you want to be happy, want to be free, you must piece together your opiate-free time into one continuous stream of drug-free existence. That's the only way to do it. Take it from someone who didn't do it, who nearly died doing it all wrong, who lost all semblance of a life. So much so that at my lowest points, even the other junkies didn't want to know me. Heroin only kills the lucky few. Chances are you won't die. Chances are you'll live in pain. There is nothing more painful than learning to live without the strongest painkiller in the world.
Heroin? TAKE MY ADVICE AND GIVE IT A MISS.
And if you do have a problem, my advice is contact Narcotics Anonymous. They're not the only way out of addiction, but their programme most definitely does work "if you work it". I advise it because it's run by addicts for addicts, and it's free. Be very very cautious about shelling out money you can't afford to cure an addiction that might only be in it's earliest stages. It took me ten years to go from intending to stop heroin tomorrow to being able to survive on methadone day in day out without constantly using heroin on top. I'm still addicted to methadone. I don't know when I will ever get off the stuff. I'm "dual diagnosis" because I have mood swings of psychotic proportions on top of my drug problem. I can't advise anyone anything except to stay away from hard drugs, from mind-bending drugs... from all drugs. No drug has ever benefited me. I hope someone somewhere reads this someday and hears me. As the old saying goes: if one person stays clean due to what I say, it's all worthwhile... Maybe that would make my mess seem somehow worthwhile. Because I can tell you, it certainly doesn't feel worthwhile from where I'm stuck. Still addicted. Stuck on methadone and hating it.
STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! STAY FREE!
2009 & 2011
Heroin? TAKE MY ADVICE AND GIVE IT A MISS.
And if you do have a problem, my advice is contact Narcotics Anonymous. They're not the only way out of addiction, but their programme most definitely does work "if you work it". I advise it because it's run by addicts for addicts, and it's free. Be very very cautious about shelling out money you can't afford to cure an addiction that might only be in it's earliest stages. It took me ten years to go from intending to stop heroin tomorrow to being able to survive on methadone day in day out without constantly using heroin on top. I'm still addicted to methadone. I don't know when I will ever get off the stuff. I'm "dual diagnosis" because I have mood swings of psychotic proportions on top of my drug problem. I can't advise anyone anything except to stay away from hard drugs, from mind-bending drugs... from all drugs. No drug has ever benefited me. I hope someone somewhere reads this someday and hears me. As the old saying goes: if one person stays clean due to what I say, it's all worthwhile... Maybe that would make my mess seem somehow worthwhile. Because I can tell you, it certainly doesn't feel worthwhile from where I'm stuck. Still addicted. Stuck on methadone and hating it.
STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! STAY FREE!
✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
2009 & 2011
I felt like I should share this, even though many of you will roll your eyes and think that I'm a fool. I have said many times I was done with Anthony. I even meant it a few times. But I'm not, nor will I every be. I can't say I love him as much as I love Keven, but I love him as if he were my son. I've tried to escape from this feeling, to justify all the reasons why I shouldn't feel this way or have no obligation to love him. But that's not how love works.
When h e came into my life in 2008 a door to my heart opened. That door was labeled "Mom" even though I am not his mother. You just can't shut that door once its opened.
If the tables were turned and Keven was the one without a mother, I would hope that someone like me would come into his life. Its as simple as and as complicated as that. I agree 100% that K and A should NEVER associate with each other again, but what is the harm to me? The pain, the agony, the worry, the anger....all the same stuff I feel toward Keven, but I am not going to stop being a part of Keven's life, so why Anthony's? Keven has actually done far worse things to me than Ant (stuff I never shared here).
Plus, I have grown to care very much for his grandmother and I can tell that it means a lot to her that he has me. She lost a daughter to meth, is losing a grandson to heroin and may be losing her other grandson to it as well (Ants brother is in jail now, he was arrested with H on him). She and her husband are in their 70's and not healthy and she
So when Ant called me from jail yesterday, I took the call. When he cried to me saying "I can't stop using, I will never be able to stop using, I'm a dead man!" I comforted him. The sad thing is, I believe him. I believe there are some people who just can't stop for whatever reason.
These two photos say a lot to me. He's always thought of himself as a tough guy, but inside he's a little boy hiding in a tree house, protecting his little brother from their abusive dad. He's the little boy who saw his mother after she'd been burned over 80% of her body from a meth lab explosion. He's the little boy that never experienced the feeling of safety and continuity and unconditional love.
He's changed a lot in the last two years. He spent 2010 in prison and when he came out he was even bigger than he was in '09. But quickly started to age, lose his muscles and fall apart. For however long he has to live, I am going to love him unconditionally. Its really not an option not to.
When h e came into my life in 2008 a door to my heart opened. That door was labeled "Mom" even though I am not his mother. You just can't shut that door once its opened.
If the tables were turned and Keven was the one without a mother, I would hope that someone like me would come into his life. Its as simple as and as complicated as that. I agree 100% that K and A should NEVER associate with each other again, but what is the harm to me? The pain, the agony, the worry, the anger....all the same stuff I feel toward Keven, but I am not going to stop being a part of Keven's life, so why Anthony's? Keven has actually done far worse things to me than Ant (stuff I never shared here).
Plus, I have grown to care very much for his grandmother and I can tell that it means a lot to her that he has me. She lost a daughter to meth, is losing a grandson to heroin and may be losing her other grandson to it as well (Ants brother is in jail now, he was arrested with H on him). She and her husband are in their 70's and not healthy and she
So when Ant called me from jail yesterday, I took the call. When he cried to me saying "I can't stop using, I will never be able to stop using, I'm a dead man!" I comforted him. The sad thing is, I believe him. I believe there are some people who just can't stop for whatever reason.
These two photos say a lot to me. He's always thought of himself as a tough guy, but inside he's a little boy hiding in a tree house, protecting his little brother from their abusive dad. He's the little boy who saw his mother after she'd been burned over 80% of her body from a meth lab explosion. He's the little boy that never experienced the feeling of safety and continuity and unconditional love.
He's changed a lot in the last two years. He spent 2010 in prison and when he came out he was even bigger than he was in '09. But quickly started to age, lose his muscles and fall apart. For however long he has to live, I am going to love him unconditionally. Its really not an option not to.
8 comments:
This really touched my heart. I understand the relationship you have with Ant. Bless you for being a caring person. Love is not something that you can turn off and on like a water spout. Just take care of yourself, use the tools that you have and don't be taken advantage of.
Big Hug,
Terri
Barbara, I would rather know someone with your compassion, as opposed to those that "reason."
I will add this. Ant can stop..he is not willing yet. His terrible childhood and most likely psych issues play into this. But what you can do is keep telling him he can stop. Tell him you believe he can every chance you get.
Lou, thanks. And you're so right about "psych issues" playing into this. He has never been evaluated for any type of depression, etc. and we all know most addicts suffer from some underlying issue.
PLUS - he USES his past as an excuse, he plays the "poor me" card often. I didn't mention the other horrific event in his life...his best friend died of an OD and Ant was the one that injected it for him. So he named his son after that friend but obviously has not been much of a dad (yet) his son is 3.
I keep telling him he can do it, its like talking to a brick wall, but eventually brick walls start to crumble right? Maybe he will start to believe it someday.
It took me some time to realize this but it's absolutely true: my dual diagnosis issues are what scuppered for years my attempts to come off heroin. I had unbearable anxiety when I detoxed cold turkey from heroin 10 yrs ago ~ anxiety that went on for days afterwards so intense I just used heroin to get rid of it. I desperately tried to get Valium but wasn't as well connected as people would assume: IF ONLY my GP would have given me diazepam which I had genuine clinical need for (it is after all FOR anxiety!) then I might have been able to stay heroin free and I do not agree with the philosophy that you come off all drugs straight away of course a Valium habit is a bad thing but in the short term Valium would definitely have been a good thing.
Incidentally when I did this detox I matched the clinical criteria for mixed bipolar mania for the first time. Many years later I told a psych nurse this who was pretty alarmed. I had assumed the "not iitiated or maintained by an underlying organic factor" (ie not caused by drugs or drug withdrawal) proviso in the DSM mania criteria got me off the bipolar peg with that one but apparently not. I got mania or hypomania from antidepressants, from speed, as well as from withdrawal many years before I ever got full-on psychotic mania (this was after years of depresion so I wasn't surprised to be called manic-depressive, which is how I think of myself schizoaffective disorder is just a severe type of bipolar, from what I understand).
You know it took me SEVEN YEARS on my last methadone to get to a point where I could give in a heroin-free urine sample! The system here is a LOT more liberal by all accounts than America. (If you give up crime and use heroin just a few times a week they're usually happy to continue prescribing methadone as long as you're happy too.) During the worst times I felt OK on heroin (OK but miserable) but days on methadone were simply unbearably miserable. Suicidal depression at best; total incapacity at worst ~ I mean literally spending all day staring into space doing nothing. That was a while ago and it wasn't until the criminals who control the heroin trade in this country deliberately droughted the market in order to increase prices that I (and many others) finally engaged the willingness that had been building for years and just stopped. I had my methadone at the ready and dropped heroin with no regrets. I only managed to do this because the street heroin had gone so weak my methadone suddenly held me very effectively and felt WAY stronger than heroin. for years the reverse had been the case; I could feel tiny doses of heroin on top of my methadone and felt better all day with heroin rather than plain methadone in my system.
Before this heroin drought last November I could take supposedly huge methadone doses and they just did not work for me the way they were meant to I was miserable, unable to function and disabled. I am SO GLAD to be able to function on methadone now even though I have obvious bipolar now.
RAN OUT OF SPACE!
Your son REALLY NEEDS to get his dual diagnosis issues properly sorted before he goes ahead any further. I was an absolutely hopeless case I really couldn't cope without heroin at all it was the only thing that made life bearable and methadone was like being thrown out of a mansion and told to live in a leaky hovel and not to complain!
It could well be that your son needs something like diazepam maybe to take "as required", a few pills a month... or is he one of these people who will take 10 valium at once? The one redeeming feature about anxiety versus depression is that deep breathing, relaxation and even long hot baths can help a LOT with it, I'm speaking from experience. I had "generalized anxiety" (on top of depression) for years and only got rid of it when I gave up my habit of nervously drinking 5 or more cups of strong tea a day. The caffeine was scuppering everything, I now know.
Thanks for quoting me I am very flattered. These are just a few thoughts I hope they make some sense.
Terri, thanks for your comment yesterday, it meant a lot to me.
Gledwood, Thank you so much for sharing all this. I agree that its so important to get the dual diagnosis properly taken care of. Keven was once diagnosed as bi-polar II, then schizoaffective disorder (very similar to you). But the meds for that turned him into a zombie. They changed his diagnosis to generalized panic, anxiety disorder and depression.
But my OTHER SON, Anthony, has no insurance and has never been evaluated and there is definitely something wrong with him. I would say he could easily be Bipolar.
Keven would benefit so much from taking some kind of med like Xanax, Valium, Ativan, but the court program he is in doesn't allow anything that could possibly be addicting.
Things are SO different in the UK than the US. I know that a lot of people actually do function normally on heroin if they can afford their habit and keep it under control. But that's rare. Usually heroin use ends you up in trouble with the law and/or alienates your family/friends cause you steal from them, etc.
Ugh. its all such a mess. I am glad you are taking care of yourself and sharing the message :)
I was lucky, when I was a kid, I ran into some older kids at camp who had done all sorts of drugs and told me some horror stories that made me avoid drugs, aside from the weed I smoked a few times when I was in my teens.
Barbara, you are so right: we cannot choose who we love. Amidst the pain they've caused us and the well-wishing people who tell us to walk away - it's not in our hearts to do so.
You have such compassion for this kid and I'm rooting for you. I only hope the damage he causes you can be minimized by Al-anon or your program of choice.
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