The News

So yeah. I’m still alive.

I’m not going to pretend that everything is fine; that would be a fairly-big lie. I can’t say I’ve been as successful as I’ve hoped in terms of staying away from a certain corner I remembered from years ago; that would also be a fairly-big lie. For the most part I can’t even say I was trying.

This is what I can say.

I don’t want to go back to the sort of life I had back when I was a full-time addict. I don’t want to feel like I felt last night, when I was shivering and sweating at the same time and wondering how I was going to hide this from….anyone. There’s nothing quite as bleak as that feeling; hearing the world going on outside your window and realizing that no matter how many people love you, you are completely alone in this moment; that no one’s love or good wishes or hopes for you can make this go away. That there is only you, alone with the consequences of your actions, and that even though those actions were themselves the consequences of something else, something you can’t do anything about because you would, if you knew how—-even though you did the best you could for as long as you could manage, the dam has finally broken, and this is the water rising around you.

So I took the last of my hoarded methadone, and it got me through the night, but just barely; when I woke up this morning I felt pretty awful. But there’s work to go to, and life to live; so I called the methadone clinic and asked if I could be reinstated. And so, one year to the day from the last time I went to the clinic, I found myself there again.

I don’t feel as bad about that as you might imagine. It worked, after all, for five out of my nearly-six clean years. Methadone has antidepressant properties, as well, and in hindsight I think that was maybe a big part of what helped me keep my pieces together for as long as I did.

There were two reasons I got off methadone in the first place: because it cost $50 a week, and because my mother wanted me to. That second one is a bit reductive, I’ll admit; I felt like I “should” get off, but a large part of that “should” was my mother’s voice. And this morning I realized that maaaaybe it’s not the best idea to make decisions about my physical and mental well-being based on the fact that my mommy doesn’t like the thing that works. I would RATHER not pay $50 a week, of course, and it galls me to no end that if methadone could legally be prescribed by a doctor, my 30 milligrams per day would probably cost about seven bucks a week at the nearest Walgreens; but that’s the system we’ve got, and maybe that’s something to agitate for. But until I’m ready to pick up my protest signs and start chanting slogans, fifty bucks a week is a small price to pay if it keeps me from getting high.

And it seems to. I don’t have any cravings, as such; if I think about getting high it’s more of an abstract concept, rather than a visceral impulse that demands to be obeyed. I can manage that. I can tell that abstract concept to screw off; that I’m too busy, that I’ve got too much else going on, too much to live for. I feel normal, is what I’m saying here. I don’t know why I need medication to feel normal; I don’t know a lot of things, really. But I am not willing to trade this normal feeling for a sense of parental approval, or for fifty bucks a week, or really for much of anything.

I am not going to make this a recovery blog, or an addiction blog, or anything other than what it’s been so far (whatever that is!) I know I have work to do—but I’ll be doing most of it in the background. The foreground will still be the antics of my cats, and the progress of the bakery, and the catastrophe that is my house, and whatever this thing is that I’ve got with LJ. (Whose mother, incidentally, told him to tell me “hi” yesterday—an unprecedented gesture of acceptance!)

What I am saying here: I’m going to be fine. I refuse to be otherwise.

We now return to our regularly scheduled blog.