This guy, Lenny…

 

You’d never believe the kind of people you meet in Alcoholics Anonymous…

          This guy, Lenny, I met him at my St. John’s Saturday night meeting.  He had a grim view of the future.  He gave me a ride home once, and it took him a few minutes to clean out the passenger seat, which happened to be full of some pretty good metal CDs.  Instead of buying a 1000-watt system with subs, he bought a $90 set of soundproof headphones and just blocked out reality efficiently.

          He’d get this crazy look in his eye, with at all times holding a cigarette in the middle of his clenched lips, plugged into a constant cloud of nicotine-enriched smoke, and he drove like a bat out of hell. 

          A couple times after that, while walking I would see him coming up fast and swerving through traffic, blowing by at 70 or 80mph.  The look in his eye said pure madness.

The Spaces Between Us

I’m in black dress pants, a white, button-down Oxford-cloth shirt and a tie, black socks, black shoes.  Walking along the river bank, fumbling in my pocket for a pharmacy vial, then spilling it all over the sidewalk, little white sticks flying everywhere.  But when I look down to pick up the spilled contents, I see little green monsters everywhere.  ‘OC’ on one side, flip it over and it says ’80.’  I’m picking up all I can until my hands are full and spilling over; I fill my mouth and taste that plastic coating.

My eyes open wide, and I realize it’s all been just a dream.  Another drug dream, three dreams in three nights.  I’ve been clean for nearly two months, but still the cravings come in my sleep every night.  Usually my pillow and sheets are soaked in sweat.

No more pain, no more hurt

Just one more shot, and then I’ll be OK, please, just one more shot and I’ll go away.  Voices in my head screaming out for one last fix, but I know better than to play that game again.  My hands tremor and shake, my mind saturated in this feeling of –

no pain

– nostalgic euphoria that I keep returning to despite the cries from my frontal lobe, saying, NO NO NO!  Don’t go there, please, stay as far away as you can!

And the next instant I’m so deep in my own depression that I just want to end this

[pain]

sensory feedback machine in my mind.  Take the pain away.

Liminal Time

So I walk in one of my old haunts the other day, and I see one of my old neighbors from the East End.  She thought I’d died.  When? I ask. When your gas stove blew up last month, she says.  I can’t resist asking, When was that?

So she explains to me what happened on those four days I blacked out, the big overdose.  She said I turned the gas on high, blew out the pilot light, and started chain smoking anything I could get my hands on.  Then I started knocking on people’s doors all down the block telling them about the imminent explosion.  Before long, fire trucks and patrol cars had the street blocked off.  She said I was walking like a parapalegic (sp?), too jammed to walk properly, chainsmoking Camels the entire time…

So do I have a hidden deathwish?  Am I really trying to discreetly kill myself?  I have no idea, but that’s what they thought at the hospital, putting a nurse or security guard in my room 24/7, all the while feeding me methadone wafers and Xanax tabs.  My heart rate in the emergency room was 268bpm; I have no idea why I lived through that.

Ranting

I remember it was a Wednesday night, and I’d spent the day retrieving my final check from the job I’d given up on.  After I’d cashed it, I began making phone calls to locate some fun for the evening.

I spent the entire two hundred dollars right there in my front yard, one car after another pulling up and rolling down their windows.  It wasn’t until almost a month later that I found out what I’d bought (and overdosed on.)

My next recollection was waking up in a white room, with an I.V. drip going into the back of my right hand.  Someone told me it was Saturday night, and then I fell unconcious again.  The next morning, I was adamantly requesting methadone and Xanax, which were given to me in the smallest quantity possible (40mg methadone, and 1mg alprazolam).

Then I fall back into oblivion, waking the next time to see my parents and two other people I didn’t recognize.  That’s when I realized I was getting a mental hygiene warrant, again.  A short time later, a deputy arrived and cuffed me before escorting me downstairs to his vehicle.  I slept the whole was to the psych hospital.

Upon admission, I was strip searched and issued a paper gown.  This is where the fun really started, being my first time and all.  The guy doing my admission, he warns me, don’t lean your head back against anything, he’d had head lice four times in the past six years.

He escorts me to the ward, and leaves me standing in front of a nurse’s station with a garbage bag of clothes.  I’m handed a cup full of pills, and all of a sudden I just want to sleep the pain away.

Sleeping, sleeping, dark flashes of remembered horror and chemical bliss.  No needles in dreams, so heroin stamps go up the nose…  picking green monsters out of the shit can, only to puke them back up… Only in dreams…

I sit up bolt upright as if I’ve been shocked, a cold sweat sticking me to the sheets.  This is the beginning of the end of the beginning, all over again.  Or something

Sero Overdrive

Finally I’m breaking free again.  I’ve gained 35lbs. in the past six weeks, finally leveled off at 160.  Despite one disastrous relapse last week, I’ve been essentially “clean and sober” for the past six weeks.  Besides that little three day ordeal with the Xanax bars and the Norco 10s.  Oops.

Feeling pretty much worthless these days since I haven’t had a job since mid-August.  I read a lot of books, tap out a lot of nonsense on the keyboard, and go to movies (Oh my God the new Resident Evil: Extinction is so fucking good, I loved it!

I never drink alcohol, though some kid was kind enough to slip me a few baby-blue Valiums this morning while we both waited in the doctors office.  Just enough to give me a slight sense of well being, on top of the mild euphoric feelings I’ve been living with thanks to my increased level of SSRIs.

I need to go find a job, but I’m trying to wait for the discolored, mashed pulp of my face to heal before I go for any interviews, which should just be a few more days.  I really need to get back on my feet, get on the all as they say.

On the Edge of the World

I walk these empty streets singing the same old song.  Excessive-selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibition washes over my brain.  A half gram of herb and ninety minutes later, I seek refuge at the library.  I seek the warmth of trance-induced hypnosis.

This time last week, I was in bad shape.  Downtown early, calling Florida and New Jersey.  The package is already at the hub?   Great, I’ll be there to pick it up in twenty minutes.  Fire up the engine, stop at 7-11 for a money order and a coffee, and prepare to destroy my life.  At the hub, the package is waiting, and after a brief moment, I’m tearing open the cardboard and digging for the pharmacy vials.  I pop two Xanax bars and three Norco 10s down the hatch, chase it with the coffee.

The next instant I remember is running through an alleyway, being chased by a pack of crack-fiends.  Then I’m talking to a police officer and he’s asking me why I’m selling my pills on the street.  Again, I fall into oblivion, and when I awake next time, it’s to the rhythmic beeping of an emergency room corridor.

Oh Jesus, what now?

Unintended Tragedies Associated With

“This is the greatest moment of your life, and you’re off missing it somewhere!” he shouts angrily into the Void of Me.

Me, I’m the hypnotic-induced center of the universe, my mind constantly playing back each moment and reliving endless details in psychedelic fashion. I’m reeling from the doses earlier, but not too bad thanks to the contermeasures I was sure to include in the package.

My stupid inner-voice of conscience, always scrutinizing details that should just be left alone, leaves no peace in the end. I’m watching Memoirs of a Geisha for the first time, a movie with excellent screenplay.

I’m getting so sick of this same old routine: yellow-oblong Watson 853s, bigger, chunkier blue Watson 540s, white M363s.  Every afternoon I wake up and eat this multicolored  bag of skittles from Hell.  This is just to make it throught the next six hours, nothing more.  The phone rings all night while I’m trying to sleep; people are calling to tell me about their bad backs and their headaches they can’t deal with alone.

Here I am and this is what I’m good for.