“Collateral Damage” and Other Love Stories
There is nothing fair about addiction. Its dark, its consuming, its manipulative, its disruptive, and it has levels and degrees of deception that the addict themselves cannot even understand. There is nothing so frustratingly heartbreaking as putting a bottle to your lips and knowing in your mind that what you are doing is a choice… but feeling in your bones and in your gut that you have absolutely no choice. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1939, so we’ll say that’s about how long people have been trying to explain and defeat the faceless monster of addiction- though, we know it’s been under surveillance for much longer. Humans have been imbibing for centuries, some with moderation, and others going overboard on the basis that wine is “medicinal” or “communion.” Society is slowly (very slowly… glacial, really) starting to understand the root of addiction and how it is heavily catalyzed by mental illness. The stigma still remains, however.
Let’s go back to the issue of “choice-” because substance abuse is a choice, even when it doesn’t feel like one. The desperate struggle to explain ourselves and our decisions often snowballs into complaining, whining, and begging for benefit-of-the-doubt comprehension. As addicts, we have a lot of cliches, but we also have a kind of moratorium against complaining. “If you keep saying ‘poor me, poor me,’ you’ll end up saying, ‘pour me another drink.’” Its not untrue. Honestly, a lot of my drinking was done as a way to deal with the fact that no one understood the reasons for why I was drinking in the first place. That’s a fun and destructive little cyclone, isn’t it? Again, at the end of the day, it was a choice. I drank. It doesn’t matter why, its doesn’t matter how much, it doesn’t matter that I thought that I could control it. I drank. Me. I did it. She made the choice to put that needle between her toes. He made the choice to snort that line. They made the choice to smoke that pipe.
Drugs and drug users have been the enemy since Nancy Reagan told Americans to “just say ‘no.’” Excellent, viable advice… where was that bitch 3 years ago when I was using the first six shots of Jagermeister to justify the seventh? Regardless, we have the ability to say “no” just as much as we have the ability to say “yes.” Choices. The thing about people in active addiction is that they don’t really care at all about themselves. They don’t care if they live or die. Most of them have died- multiple times. Addicts are doping-up all over the country as a way to forget about how worthless they feel. In the process, they are making other people’s lives a living Hell.
First responders are exhausted. They work insane schedules, they sacrifice time with their own family, they get paid pocket lent, and for what? To put out house fires, deliver babies in the back seat of a car, and save kittens from overestimating themselves up into maple trees? No. They are repeatedly stabbing junkies with Narcan to save their lives (the lives the addicts don’t even care to keep) and then being hit, fought, and scolded for ruining the addict’s high. The same goes for ER doctors. They have enough to deal with on a daily/nightly basis, and now they have the addition of addict-carelessness. In regard to self-harm-- a suicide attempt requires attention, understanding, and a path to some kind of resolution. An accidental overdose? Just sheer waste. A cry for help, sure, but not in a feasible, productive, or intentional way. Odds are, you bring them back to life, just for them to rip the IV out of their arm and trot right back out to the street corner where their dealer hangs out. How do think those student loan bills hit an MD after spending his night shift on that task? Pharmacists are sick and tired of getting yelled at. They’re fed-up with saying “no.” They are exhausted from babysitting every physician that runs a “Pain Management Clinic.” And I bet they are really fucking tired of having to turn away people who can’t afford their insulin, but accepting cash from someone they’ve never seen before, picking up thirty 20mg tablets of Oxycodone for their “grandmother.” Medical professionals, hopefully, have found a method (and a qualified therapist) to help them cope and be able to leave their slice of the opioid crisis pie behind when they go home at the end of the day. The real casualties—the real collateral damage of addiction—are those who are unfortunate enough to love an addict.
People disappear all the time. Children, especially. You wonder how a mother and father can gather themselves enough to go searching through a field, swinging a walking stick, knowing that there is a chance they could stumble upon the corpse of their child. The answer is always the same—they say that “not knowing is worse.” Maybe it’s a natural desire for closure, but parents would rather find their child’s dead body than spend another moment wondering about the how/what/when/where of it all. The mental, emotional anguish of hope being slowly, severely shattered must be Hell. That is the kind of undefinable pain that addicts put their loved ones through every single day of their addiction. It may even be worse for them because they have the body—but they still don’t have the person it belongs to. You could be staring right at a living, breathing, drinking person on your couch, who looks a lot like the woman you married… but having to beg the question, “is my wife still in there somewhere?” No one should have to grieve a person who is still alive, but that’s exactly what addicts force their family to do. Or worse- they can’t even keep up the pretense that you are dead because you keep coming around to empty the medicine cabinet and to steal, and subsequently pawn, all the flat screen tvs.
While an addict may not ever intend the hurt they inflict, they are still the one causing it. It’s not premeditated, it’s not even carelessness. The level of self-loathing in an addict is so ingrained, that frankly, we think the people we love deserve to be punished for being stupid enough to ever care about us. The thought process isn’t always so fleshed out, but the general concept is this: “If I wreck my mother’s car… if I punch my father in the face… if I steal my sister’s credit card and max it out… then they’ll learn. They will know better than to ever care about a piece of shit like me again. In fact, they should be thanking me for pushing them away with both hands. Instead, those idiots keep coming back for more.”
Addiction is fraught with heartbreak and pain for everyone involved, but only one of you has the luxury of getting high about it. Can you see why the “choice” part is so pivotal here? Yes, addict, I know you are hurting. I know you are tired. I know that you are fighting so many uphill battles… but so are the people who love you. And none of you would have to suffer if you would… Just. Stop.
We can justify our behavior by saying that we are trying our best to save our loved ones from the fall out and run them off… but the reality is, we are dragging them into Hell right along with us. Nostalgia is powerful. How can you tell a mother to forget about her helpless addict child when her child is standing right in front of her? She may be slurring, stumbling, and riddled with track marks, but that’s her child! She was a sweet little girl once, how do you give up the hope that she’ll be a sweet little girl ever again? How do you give up on a brother? A sister? A nephew? A friend? You can’t. So, yes, in a way our loved ones kept signing up for the punishment, which is why we adopted that “fuck them for loving me,” attitude. We think that we are just asking them to leave us alone and let us kill ourselves-- which is a simple request. Actually, what we’re asking them to do is erase any and all memories of us from before we were addicts, and to give up hope that we’ll ever be ourselves again. That is a much taller order.
The good news is that some addicts do come back. We may not be the “sweet little girl” you remember, because, let’s be honest, we’ve seen some shit-- but it will still be us. In a way, we are better people after the fact. We pushed away the people we loved so we could feed our addiction, we eventually succeeded, we finally got to be alone with our addiction, and we longed for the people. So, we ditched the addiction. It doesn’t soothe the wounds at all. Believe me, I know. This sounds like a slap in the face. But do you have any idea how overwhelmingly wonderful and lovable you must be for an addict to walk away from their addiction? Pretty Goddamn lovable. Its not just about putting the booze down and thinking that’s enough- this is about true love. This is about wanting that trust back and being willing to earn it. This is about being present. This is about never giving anyone a reason to doubt you again. This is about not taking the path of least resistance. Ever. Mostly, its about making the decision that you’ve put the people you love through enough Hell. Its over. Its done. Let them finally have a chance to breathe while you do absolutely everything in your power to finally earn the love that they have been giving you for free for so long. As much as it is about effort, it is also about acceptance. Here’s the sad fact… you’ll never be able to do enough good to make up for the terrible things that you did in your addiction. You massacred these people- body and soul. You can’t undo it. So, tread these grounds with grace and gratitude. Never take your people for granted again. Never turn your nose up at a hug, never ignore a phone call, never eat the last Oreo. You can’t take away the pain of your bad choices, but you can choose to only apply joy from now on.
