Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Tweakers
If I have not said this enough, or even once, I am a lucky, lucky girl. I am loved, I am safe, I am sober. It feels to me-- and reads to you-- that all I ever do on this platform is complain about the plight of addiction. There is a thin line between whining and demanding appropriate attention, and I tread that line like a Flying Wallenda on a wire. I tend to make things about me, because mine is the only experience that I know from top to bottom. However, my experience is not the majority experience for addicts. My experience is actually quite tame. That has nothing to do with the extent to which I was addicted (extremely) or my resulting behavior (ghastly); that is 100% the work of serendipity and one exasperated guardian angel. The fact that I’m back on my feet and thriving is the work of my incredible support system of beloved, and forgiving, family and friends.
It was sheer luck-of-the-draw that I was born white, middle class, and with a mild-to-moderate comprehension of the world around me. I’m privileged. I’m aware of it. I’m trying my best to be a voice for the ones on the street that society thinks have “chosen” to be there. Why? Because people suck. People are more inclined to pay attention to a semi-articulate white girl than a poorly educated man of color, despite both of us suffering from the same progress-stunting mental health issues. I have a voice because I had help and I had tools. Nobody helped him. That is the only difference between he and I.
While sitting in meetings, especially when meetings occurred in person, I frequently felt like a double agent. Not because I don’t belong there—I most certainly do. But because Twelve Step meetings are a place of understanding and anonymity, where people can share their secret struggles, their traumas, their ongoing stressors, and their gritty, unsavory life stories without judgement. The level of neglect… the depth of abuse… the abundance of violations (physical and emotional)… the sheer depravity of the actions committed against these souls is unimaginable. The fact that these people are alive and sane is a miracle, being sober on top of that is something divine.
The eye-rolling stops here, by the way.
I’m not going to tolerate it. Not in this context, not in any context. Yes, bad people do bad things. Good people do bad things too. Some people live in filth and are fine with it. Some people do crack without regard for consequences. Some people, though… some people were handed a life so full of turmoil and betrayal that it is absolutely no wonder that they reached for a drug to help them dissociate completely.
Again, no eye-rolling.
You can’t blame someone for making terrible choices when they are only given terrible options. I know its so much easier to separate “you” from “them” when it comes to qualifying people as “those who matter,” and “those who don’t.” Just for fun, put yourself in a pair of “them” shoes for a moment. Let’s say that you are a 15-year-old girl. You’ve never met your father, and your mother is a wholly unreliable drug addict—because of that, you hate drugs and you hate addicts. You don’t go to school because you don’t understand anything and it makes you feel stupid. All of your teachers say you won’t graduate anyway. You “live” in a terrible neighborhood because, on the rare occasions when your mom can pay rent, its all she can afford. Plus, it keeps her close to her dealer, her back-up dealer, and the other sketchy dealer that will take sex for dope when she has no cash. As I said, you hate drugs and you hate addicts, but the only people you ever see are drug addicts. You find a few that are nice to you that you can hang out with. Its not like you have cable tv or a library of novels to occupy your time. One day you meet a guy, and you are smitten. He sells, so he has a car and an apartment with TWO bedrooms (holy shit!). That’s as successful as it gets in your world. He buys you clothes, he keeps you fed, and for the second time in your life, you feel safe. You feel loved.
He gets you a cell phone and pays the bill. He calls you incessantly- he always demands to know where you are. You think its sweet. He tells you what to wear, but you don’t care. It makes you happy to make him happy. All you want to do is make him happy and earn your keep in this fabulous lifestyle. But he keeps insisting that you try some fentanyl. “It’ll help you relax,” he says. “Your mom does crack- this isn’t like that. You won’t get addicted. Just try it.” You keep saying “no.”
One day, one of his female customers comes by. He invites her to stay for a while. They shoot up together. He’s flirting with her. The higher they get, the more effortlessly they fall together. You see him slipping away.
So, you give in. You try it.
It’s more than relaxing. Its total numbness. But its also euphoria. You’ve never been happy, but maybe… this is what “happy” feels like? When you’re high, you don’t think about the fact that your father never thinks about you. You don’t have to think about how your mother always chose to buy crack instead of buying milk. You don’t even care about the irony that you are now a drug addict just like she is. Nothing else in the world has made you so secure, so content, or so positive. The only time you ever got close to feeling this comfortable in your life was when you were 9 and the state sent you to live with your grandparents. Your grandma hugged you so tight… she cooked hearty, delicious meals for you. You were given new clothes for school, and you finally felt like you fit in. You had toys, a television, a computer. You had your own room! That’s what fentanyl felt like—it felt like the first time you slide in between clean sheets, under a downy comforter, on your very own bed… before your grandfather started sneaking into that bed with you in the middle of the night and touching you underneath your nightgown.
When you start thinking about that, you know its time to shoot-up again.
A decade slips away.
You’re 25 now, but you look 50. You’re homeless and you have a criminal record the length of a CVS receipt. You have two children. Somewhere. You never got to hold them even once because they were high when they were born. Fuck it, though. They’re better off anywhere else. Sometimes you live in a motel, sometimes you live on the street. Sometimes a truck driver lets you catch a few winks in the dorm of his cab after you’re done blowing him for $20.
You’ve been raped. You’ve been beaten. You’ve been dead at least 6 times. Worst of all, you’ve been treated by society as if you deserve all of these abuses. Nobody thinks that your life matters, but they blame you for not behaving like your think your own life matters…? That makes no sense. Society says you did this to yourself. The world neglected you, over and over and over and over, until you nestled into a lifestyle of neglecting yourself.
Now, let’s return to our cozy seat in the 3rd person perspective. What was this girl supposed to do differently? “Not do drugs!” Ok. Was she supposed to, at 15, divine that education would save her in the long run, despite having no one to set that example or encourage her in anyway? If not that, then was she supposed to (with no clean clothes, no shower, no car) supposed convince someone to hire her for a legitimate job? Should she have conjured, on her own, the idea of helpful therapy and sought it with zero insurance and money in the negative? Should she have walked away from that boyfriend- the one person who gave her an ounce of security? “She shouldn’t have done drugs.” Ok. Tell me, when was this dog supposed to start walking on its hind legs?
This story is not rare. My story is rare. This story is the status quo of addicts. It’s time that we, as a society, take responsibility for how poorly we treat people who have already been treated poorly. Drugs and alcohol are not their problem, those things are just coping mechanisms. Substance abuse is a symptom of a deeply haunted mind and a severely damaged heart. Instead of rallying around those people to help correct those injustices, we step on their face to get where we’re going. We justify it. We hold addicts to a much higher standard of capability than we would ever hold ourselves to. The sickest part is that we are so jaded by the stereotypes that we don’t even realize the impossibility of what we are expecting of them.
“They’re drowning!”
“They shouldn’t have been swimming.”
“They didn’t mean to, their boat sank.”
“They shouldn’t have let their boat sink.”
“The only boat they were given had a hole in it.”
“They should have plugged the hole.”
Plugged the hole with what?! Their thumb and a dream?!
Look, we all have to cross the same ocean. Some of us start on a yacht, some of us start on a raft. I don’t know about you, but when I hit land, I don’t want to be surrounded by people that never had to struggle to survive. Privileged people are boring, for starters. And they are entirely useless once they realize that they don’t have a steward to decant their wine and set out a lovely charcuterie board. I want to be on an island with people who can start a fire, build shelter, scavenge for food, and solve impossible problems. Those are all learned characteristics of someone who greatly struggled, but survived. Sounds like a recovered addict to me… just sayin. They are our greatest resource for meaningful survival. But if we don’t stop scoffing and start understanding, and subsequently helping, these people will go the way of the Dodo bird. That is not “survival of the fittest,” assholes. That is elitism and ignorance.
Maybe you are set in your thought process about addicts being a stain on society. Maybe you believe that God is rightfully punishing them, or that their plight is their own fault for having the audacity to be born. Maybe you need to develop a drinking problem so you, too, can be in the same American Legion hut with us “unsavories” on a Tuesday night. Or, if you want to save yourself the cost of rehab and a criminal defense attorney, you can just stop being an idiot. The next time that you have the option to think the worst of someone, you instead assume the best. Instead of rolling your eyes, you could open them.
