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under the dome.

December 14, 2009 in just random thoughts....., up(on) awakening | 1 comment

this is a lot shinier than my treatment facility was.Based on the recommendation of Vicarious Rising, I downloaded and am in the process of listening to Stephen King’s “Under the Dome.” I haven’t read Stephen King since I was in high school, and I’ve been missing out on a lot of fun, I think.

The treatment facility I went to had a separate residential component that was referred to, inexplicably, as “the Dome.” I say inexplicably because no one was ever able to give an explanation for the name—it just was. I decided at some point it was short for domicile—I was trying to make sense of the place, and the explanation “we don’t know why, it just is” didn’t really give me any confidence in the facility or the people running it.

But, I think King has given a more satisfactory explanation in this novel—the idea of a domed community as a sort of social pressure cooker, where fear, tension and conflict exacerbate emotions and actions—more aptly describes early recovery in inpatient treatment facilities. I think the best and worst of us (patients and caregivers) comes out in rehab.

The nonsense that people who work in treatment have to put up with is really astounding—which may help explain not only the turnover rate, but the startling number of care providers who appear to just be nuts. They’d have to be, to put up with fresh addicts every day for the amount of money they make, right? Some handle the pressure better than others, with grace and humanity and humor. Others, I think, lose their sense of purpose—they live under the dome, as well, their voices of authority echoing back at them, unchecked. But I’m grateful for all of them, and the life they helped give me back. The holidays are especially gruesome in treatment. My thoughts are with them all, patients and staff alike.

In any event, “Under the Dome” is a great, fun read. But the references to smoking meth are a little… unsettling. I’m coming up on two years off the stuff, and some of King’s writing, though it doesn’t glamorize the stuff, is still provocative. I would not recommend this book for anyone actively trying to get off meth.

But for people who need a reminder of what it feels like to be in very early recovery or active addiction? This is the book for you, if your addiction and early recovery were anything like mine….. or King’s?

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getting my marbles back

July 9, 2009 in as I retire | 3 comments

it really does keep getting better

Last night I marked nine months clean and sober. I’ve been off meth for eighteen months, but for me, drinking but not using didn’t really work out so well…..

It’s hard to believe it has only been nine months since I sat in my car, listening to Harry Potter and breathing in exhaust fumes, waiting to die. Life is so different now. It gets more difficult every day to remember the feeling of how much pain I was in then. I remember the insanity of the actions I was taking at that time—how reclusive I had become, how sad, my fits of rage, crying on the interstate—but it gets more difficult to recall the feelings.

I can remember my mom calling me one morning at 6:30am about a year ago, and I was hysterical, sobbing. I couldn’t find my keys, and my computer had crashed—just mundane everyday crap—and it sent me completely over the edge. She said We’ve got to get you some help.

I told her I would be fine. If I could just find my keys…. If things would just be like I wanted them to be. I didn’t listen. Why is it so difficult to listen to the people who love us the most? Who we know only want what is best for us?

Today I listen.

My sponsor from when I was going to AA meetings a couple of years ago (but was still drinking and sometimes using meth) gave me my nine month green marble last night (at a meeting where they give out marbles, not poker chips).

I am so fortunate to have so many people in my life who have stuck by me through so much insanity. A lot of people didn’t, and I don’t blame them. I was so sick. But I’m getting better everyday. Life is amazing.

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clarity

July 1, 2009 in up(on) awakening | 1 comment

i can flyA note on the Terminally Ridonculous Caregivers at my treatment center: They weren’t all ridonculous. My primary care provider, known as my case manager, was extraordinarily wise, insightful, human and humble. The incredible hubris displayed by many of the employees there has not infected her, and I don’t believe it will.

Where most of the treatment staff made pronouncements, she asked questions. Where other staff members sought to humiliate patients, she sought to make them understand themselves (even if that sometimes required humility). Where other staff members acted like God, she acted like someone who actually believes in God. She made all the difference for me.

There are plenty of things in this world much more loathsome than people who claim to be sober abusing their positions of power in treatment centers, but it still sucks.

My time in treatment was extraordinarily beneficial to me, but all of the treatment I received there was not. For me, staying in treatment really was one of the going to any lengths we hear about in the rooms. But without my case manager, I don’t know that it would have been possible. I’m so thankful for her today, and grateful that there are others like her who give so much of themselves (in and out of treatment centers), so that us addicts can find hope.

It is not uncommon to hear people who have been to treatment centers say that they do not know how they could have gotten sober without the treatment center. I don’t think that is true at all. For me it was either die or get sober—in or out of treatment.

But I don’t know that I would have made as much personal and spiritual progress as quickly as I have without my case manager as my guide, and without the confinement and immersion in an atmosphere of recovery.

Ultimately though, I’m on my own in the rooms. We all are. We choose our sponsors, we choose to listen and hear or not, to share honestly or not, to be a part of the fellowship or not. Ideally, treatment centers help us to make better choices, but the choices are still up to us, like they are for everyone else inside and outside the rooms.

I hope I make good choices today. I know I’m capable of making better ones than I did in the past. My choices may not be crystal clear, but they also aren’t crystal.

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anyway we could, we were gonna find something

June 28, 2009 in as I retire | No comments

i want chickens SO badly. this too shall pass. i do not need chickens even if you can pet them.

So this weekend I visited the college town where I went to undergrad, to visit a friend I had not seen in 19 years. He has been sober for 4 years, 11 months and counting. His thing was valium and those other downers that never made much sense to me, except as a way to come down off meth when I needed to sleep for some reason. Our using was different, but our programs of recovery have had the same practical effect—saving our lives.

That always sounds so dramatic, but for me it really is true.  For him, I think, as well. He lives in my last neighborhood there, an early-to-midcentury working class neighborhood taken over by the crunchier students and faculty—lots of patchouli and Proust, PBR cans and Obama stickers.

Another old friend who I also have not seen in that same time, and who is also in recovery (from meth, clean & sober 18 months) was there. He has a 19th century farmhouse in the country, with lots of animals and ancient flowers, falling down outbuildings and sunshine.

The three of us went to a couple of meetings, hung out chatting, brunch this morning. We laughed, remembered people we hadn’t realized we’d forgotten, told embarrassing anecdotes. It felt like home, and family. It was a great weekend.

I was reminded, probably inevitably, of so many firsts. The first time I had self-confidence. The first time I succeeded in things that mattered to me. The first time I went to a cash machine to get cash for my first quarter gram of anything—I felt so grown up, in with the cool kids (we really were the cool kids). The first time I felt truly and honestly loved by another person who was not a family member, who valued my eccentricities rather than diminish me for them, who taught me I might have some worth in this world.

We were never lovers, or anything close. He was in love with someone else. He loved me as a friend, a brother, a mentor, a guide to life as an experience to be savored. He died four years after we met. We were all so young, and there was so much death and so much sadness, but he was hardly ever sad. Rarely scared, in the face of physical and emotional terror. He taught me so much.

One lesson that did not get through: Stop doing drugs. I was only a pale and flimsy glimmer of the addict I would become. But he could see the change in me on drugs. He could see how I changed—and probably what I would change into. He would get so angry, and so sad, looking at me. He tried so hard before he died to make me appreciate the beauty of the world just as it is, even with its imperfections and injustices.

I did not listen. Today, I’m listening. I was so bitter for so long that he was taken away. I was poor and living a thousand miles away when he died, and never really had a chance to say goodbye. Soon.

I am grateful to the program for bringing his spirit back into my life.

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a life of luxury

June 27, 2009 in up(on) awakening | 1 comment

I was talking to a good friend in the program yesterday about my concerns about my spiritual progress—namely that I’m not where I think I should be.  He pointed out something very useful to me:  This is a luxury problem.

When he 12-stepped me (in his indirect kind of way) one Sunday back in September 2007, it was a Sunday afternoon.  I had been up since Thursday morning. The next 13 months, on and off meth, in (briefly, for less than 30 days) and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, my life was hell.  The six or so years of using before that were no real picnic, either.

When I was actively using drugs and alcohol, my life was an experiment in terror. I was scared of using, I was scared of not using, I was scared of being alone, of being with someone, of leaving, of staying, of living of dying of breathing of sleeping of waking, of being.

When I worked in my garden yesterday, I didn’t look out into the woods behind my house even once to see if there was anyone there. In fact, it never even occurred to me. It has been over a year since I peaked out of my blinds. I have seventeen months off meth now. I’ve been clean and sober since October. Today, I am free.

Should I spend time—my hard-fought freedom—thinking about things like Should I be more sad that someone who hated me is dead?  For me, I think that kind of searching is what is going to help keep me sober. Finding a life of meaning, and purpose, and being the best person I can be. I’m not beating myself up. I am working a program of rigorous, spiritual honesty. I am having real feelings, but because of how disconnected I was from the real world for so long, I need to ask people Is this feeling appropriate? Am I overreacting? Am I reacting enough? Am I ok?

My own best thinking found me in a car breathing exhaust fumes less than a year ago. I don’t want to go back there. Thanks to all the people I know who show up, and the people I don’t know who show up, and to me for showing up, I have the luxury of feeling, and being, and loving the feeling of being. Life really is awesome.

But it isn’t for everyone, and it certainly has not always been for me. So I keep showing up, and I keep asking.

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like a fish

June 26, 2009 in just random thoughts..... | 1 comment

Shortly before I “graduated” from rehab, one of my Terminally Ridonculous Caregivers mentioned in passing during a therapy session that one of the men who had previously been living in my domicile (but not a direct roommate of mine), and who had already graduated, had “wanted to gut [me] like a fish.”

The sort of seething, simmering homophobia I encountered when I moved into that place was rank with hatred. It stank up the place. I raised holy hell to get out of there. For the most part the hatred was not overt, but I have not lived to be this age (40) as a gay man in the rural southeast without having a finely-tuned radar for hatred.

My doctor convinced me early on to stay despite my misgivings, as my feelings about such people was probably a part of my addiction and self-identity, and that if I was going to stay sober I needed to work these feelings out. He was right, but that provided me little comfort when he later told me someone that he and the other Terminally Ridonculous Caregivers had placed me in an unsupervised living situation with had wanted to gut me like a fish. It’s a little too vivid, right?

So, I found out yesterday that the fisherman of hate is dead. He died recently of liver failure.

Talk about mixed feelings. I feel for his family. I feel for him. At the same time, am I especially sorry there is less violent rage in the world directed at me? I wish I was sober enough to say that I wish he was still alive to grow into the loving person he was capable of becoming, but he was not growing in that direction. And I am not that sober yet, apparently.

He said some pretty hateful things to me on the day he left (I accidentally walked into a room where he was waiting before his graduation ceremony, and we were alone, so there was no point in bringing it up to anyone immediately), but when I asked one of my therapists later why they would let someone leave who was so clearly full of rage (his sarcasm and bilious, bellicose humor were his primary means of communication), I was told rehab is the starting point, not the ending point.

I was told he would take the skills he learned in rehab and build on them. And etc. Hate is not a skill. And now he’s dead.

He successfully completed a 14 week course of treatment by not drinking, following the rules, and saying what they wanted to hear. If he was a danger to me, he was a danger to himself, and they knew that.

Are my Terminally Ridonculous Caregivers responsible for his death? Are caregivers anywhere accountable for anyone’s recovery? No. Are they responsible for treating hatred? Can you treat hatred in 14 weeks?

He is the second person to die from the group of 20 or so that were a part of my residence during my twelve week stay. I graduated six months ago.

I am alive, and I am thankful. I am conflicted, but I am grateful for the conflict. When I was still using, I would have been glad he was dead. I was as filled with hate as he was. Today, I’m not. Today I am sad for him and his family, but also sad for me that I don’t feel as much sadness for him as I should. Progress, not perfection, right?

Is tolerating hate a part of love and tolerance? Is that part of our code? I dunno. More gardening, less typing, I think.

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friends of mine

June 11, 2009 in as I retire | No comments

 

Last night I saw a friend I had not seen in over five years.  The last time we saw each other, him and his partner and me and my partner were up for four days smoking and slamming meth.  Since that time, his partner died, and I left my partner in my struggle to get meth-free.  He has moved back to his (relatively small) hometown from the big city to get away from temptation.  It has found him.

 

I knew him and we were good friends for several years before we did meth together, and it was the first and only controlled substance we ever used together.  Unlike everyone else that I used with, I can honestly say he is a friend.  (My ex fits into some special category.  That’s a different post.) 

 

My visit to my friend was precipitated by my visit to a doctor in the town where he lives (and, as it happens, his doctor).  I was in an exam room, getting off the phone with him, making plans to see him later, when the doctor walked in, and as I said goodbye, he told me to tell her hello, and we hung up.  She said “Tell him to give me a call.  I’ve been trying to get in touch with him and he hasn’t returned my calls.”

 

Long story short, as I found out later:  He was shooting up meth two days before he went in to get some bloodwork done recently, so his liver function came back crazy, etc.  He’s covered in tweakerpox (scabs).  His un-air conditioned (and sweltering) house is fetid, most of the smell originating from his bedroom, where there are clothes stacked in piles four or five feet tall, and the general, random debris of a meth addict in the final stages of active addiction.  Wrappers.  Tissue.  Straws.  Porn.

 

If I had to describe the smell in a single phrase, it would be dirty sweatsock in a bowl of crusty buttermilk, piss and used condoms sitting in the desert sun for three days, with a hint of battery acid and stale cigarettes.  If I had to describe the smell in a single word, it would be decay.  I would say death, but that makes it sound like the smell has ended, that its possibilities are over.  This smell has a sense of growth and purpose to it, like it isn’t going away.  It is not just a marker of loneliness and depravity, of fear and shame, it is also an incubator of them.  It stops hope dead in its tracks.  I know that smell because I used to live in it.

 

It made me so sad to see him alone and in those conditions.

 

When we first met in 1998, we had lunch every Tuesday.  Bacon cheeseburgers and fries with secret seasoning—it was Mrs. Dash.  We never dated or anything.  Even though I had a big crush on him for a while, I think just because we got each other’s morbid (juvenile) sense of humor and appreciated each other’s approach to the world.  He was (and is) so smart, and so funny, and so talented.  And I am so scared that he is going to die the death I came so close to.

 

The thing that kills me the most about this (and it really does), is that if this is making me feel this way, what must my mother have felt like seeing me in the same condition—or worse, showing up on her doorstep barely able to speak after an accidental (and enormous) meth overdose?  We have always been really, very close.  I thought she wanted me to stop using drugs because she was tired of dealing with me, or embarrassed of me, or didn’t want me to go to jail, or lose my job, or die.  I didn’t realize she could just walk into my house and look at me, and see and smell and know my misery.

 

And to know her powerlessness over me, over my condition, my addiction. 

 

I have so much to be grateful for today.  But mostly, I’m happy I can be here for my friend.  He said in an email earlier today that I was “proof there is life after that bitch.”  I am, but I am not alone, and I didn’t get here alone.  Thanks, mom.  Thanks, rooms.

 

 

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