This is gonna be a long one. Taylor asked a question earlier last week, and I had to simmer on it for a bit. Thinking back on my own journey, I realized some things. So here goes.
I’m right around 20 years of freedom from cocaine addiction. I think I was 24 when I quit, and I know I was clean before my 25th bday. I just don’t know the date, so it’s around this time.
20 years ago I was arrested for the last time. It was at our holiday party, and I tried to drive a drunk friend home. She was dating a cop, and he was worried she was cheating on him. So he waited to see if she left with a guy from the holiday party. I offered to drive her to an after party. And because she left with me, he and 7 other cars pulled me over in the parking lot. I was arrested for a second DUI. The cops testimony was thrown out, and the “evidence” didn’t support. The judge couldn’t throw out all 8 cops’ testimonies though, and I got sentenced to 180 days.
I don’t know if this was when I truly realized my life was falling apart.
It certainly wasn’t the summer before when I lost 5 friends to OD in 3 months.
It certainly wasn’t when I was raped by a woman because I was too intoxicated to grunt anything but “no.. stop.”
It certainly wasn’t when I realized no one would want me around, unless it was with the friends who I was using with.
It certainly was however a combination of when I realized I was headed back for another 180 at county. When I realized that my 3 years younger brother was about to graduate BEFORE me from The University of Texas at Austin, that we both worked so hard to get into, that only accepted the top 10% of applicants at the time. When I realized my closest party friends were both on their way to prison.
One sip of booze, and my nose would start scratching and feigning for cocaine. I hated cocaine, but I was addicted so that even the absolute slightest amount of booze would trigger me needing.
Did I realize my problem when those 5 friends died in a matter of a few months? Did I realize my problem when I was sentenced again?
I remember THE night, when we ran out of blow. We ran out all the time, but this night was different. Posey drove us to 7-11 and he got a roll of paper towels, tape, a filter, and a few other items. We drove to a part of town to a “new” dealer. When we pulled up to the side of the projects, Posey handed me a loaded shotgun, and told me to stay in the truck and stand guard. He jumped out with 2 handguns tucked into his belt. I had no idea he was deciding on whether to buy from, or rob the dealer. Posey disappeared into the night, then I saw him at a dimly lit doorway, before disappearing into the building.
I cradled that shotgun praying not to use it. I heard a knock at the window, and an emaciated woman with few teeth was banging for my attention. She was begging for $10 or some rock. The only thing I can remember her repeating is “I’ll suck your D for $10” on repeat.
I slunk down to the truck floor, I cradled the gun wishing I could pull the trigger on myself. I cried uncontrollably.
Posey came back, no shots fired. He didn’t have any blow, and later found out he wanted to introduce me to crack. It was cheaper, and we could do blow while out, and crack when the bars close.
By this point I was snorting an 8 ball a night, my last time buying I bought 2 of em.
I hated every single minute of the experience; I was so inebriated and mentally effed, I picked up the makeshift pipe, then called a woman I was seeing. She had just taken ketamine, and jumped in a cab to Posey’s. When she got there, we cradled each other and cried. She went down a K-hole, I rocked myself into a self hating, balling mess.
Eventually I realized I had 1 of 2 choices: quit or don’t. If I didn’t, I knew that I was already heading back to jail. Posey and H-Bomb were headed to prison shortly after. I could continue, admit I was an addict, and follow them to prison, rehab, or death. Most likely a combination of all 3. Or I could admit I was an addict, and quit.
I locked myself in my bedroom for 3 months, only leaving for work, and university (I went back). I refused to leave my room for anything, Chain smoking cigarettes, and drinking pots of coffee in a makeshift cell in my room.
I moved back in with my parents after the 3 months. It was the first time in years I could look at myself in the mirror, and my parents in their eyes.
I haven’t touched a man made drug in almost 20 years.
Posey is dead now. He OD’d. Like the 20 some others or so I’ve lost to addiction.
It took me another 6 years to quit drinking. Then a heartbreak brought me back to it, and I met a raging alcoholic who filled the void left from my previous relationship.
Within 2 years or returning to drink, I had fallen off a top bunk and sent a full pint of vodka through my foot in a hostel in Hungary. I was jumped twice drunk as a skunk. I fell off a ledge I didn’t see in Bulgaria. Broken multiple ribs because drunk I’d always find the biggest person in the bar, and ask them to kick me as hard as they could in the chest or ribs. I drove a motorcycle across Mongolia, only to not see my surroundings, lay the bike down, and smash my head into a wall (thankfully even drunk I knew to put on a helmet). I fell 2 floors down an elevator shaft at my Brooklyn apartment, and send my humerus through my scapula. I laid there for hours in rat doo doo and dust till a terrified couple heard my screams of pain and called 911. Hours later when my blood was drawn, I was still at a .2+ BAC. Most depressing of all, I had very very very few close friends. Because I would purposely push them away so they never got too close. I was an asshole.
My gf was starting to hallucinate when she drank, which was every day starting with a bottle of Pinot Grigio first thing in the morning. When we were at a bar and she started crying and screaming about Dr. Phil performing abortions in the basement of the bar while we all drank and had fun, when she started yelling at me saying the teddy bears were coming to get me, and kill me, that “ice bear was coming, and that he was gonna kill me” for revenge on the way I treated my kids (I had no children). I knew I had to go, I had to leave NYC, I had to leave her. Or I’d be in the same situation I was back then.
She’s gone now too, they found her on the floor of her apartment.
Feb 4th, I’ll be dry for 2 years, again.
So back to why I brought up Taylor’s question on the ego and higher power. I’m not a higher power person. I was raised in the stereotypical Mexican Catholic family, and add in my mother’s side was military and you could say my strict youth was full of beatings, Jesus watching me always, etc. I have an issue with religion, but I am still spiritual. Just not religious.
I have grown by telling myself “I’m not powerless, I am powerful.” Only I made the decisions I made, and only I can change that. That is my hope. And it made me realize that the HP is the hope for others. Some may say the HP is the same as the Christian God Almighty, but for others, it’s their hope, it’s their guiding star. It’s the most precious belief and hope, in a desolate and lonely place, and it may be the only hope that is keeping them together on this journey. I’m glad they have that hope, that place they can go to when everything else feels so empty.
Since Taylor asked the question on ego/HP, for the first time I wasn’t annoyed or rolling my eyes at the mention of an HP from others. Because when I look back on my addiction to blow, maybe if someone outside of the courts and mandated meetings, maybe if someone who saw their younger self in me, maybe that kid I was would have found a safe home, found safe hope, found a safe place in an HP. Because I had no power, I was powerless. I couldn’t even look myself in the eyes for years.
It’s not up to us to ask for explanations. I realize that now on my end. That kid may have needed it. My life is good, I own a restaurant, a lovely wife, I have a new son that I talk to about exploring Neptune on our rocket. I play him HUM and ask if he can see the space vibrations, and if he can feel how much I love him. I have a show for my artwork coming up in January in Portland. Life is pretty good for me. I get to see the Colorado Rocky Mountains from my front porch, the house I own, the house I’ve put blood sweat and tears into tearing down and rebuilding with my wife, her dad and her step mom. But I still get caught wondering if someone had actually recognized me, my screams for help, the addiction that really was just a cowards way of committing suicide without actually doing it a “common” way. Maybe if someone would have seen all that in me, they would have introduced me to an HP, and maybe that 20 some year old boy would have had something to grasp onto. Maybe that young kid needed an HP for that very desolate and lonely place I eventually pulled myself out of. Maybe an HP is hope for those that need it.