Sixteen Days Awake

In the winter of 1992 I completed a 28 day methadone detox. For the first time in six months, I was free of the grip that heroin had held so tightly around my throat. I no longer needed to demean myself and pander to the God of opiates. The God of Opiates is similar to Shivah the destroyer. One is lead to the height of ecstasy, only to be tricked by their own greed and sloth down the path to utter desperation.

Amazingly, the boyfriend that I had loved so much agreed that we probably loved the drugs more than each other. We were no longer bound by our shame to huddle together for some semblance of a normal life. We quickly went our separate ways as if our previous commitment was nothing but a fuzzy memory. 

One thing did remain from my dark period. It was an antique! My seventy year old sugar daddy of sorts was in Alcoholics Anonymous. He funded much of my treatment after I had confessed to him in a fit of clarity that I was strung out on drugs. Not only was he in recovery, he also had no boundaries and was more than willing to help me. I am sure he was hoping to cash in after my detox with some more lively activities of a sexual nature. I can not imagine having sex with me was anything more than nailing a corpse. He had one foot in the grave and I was dead on the inside. Necrophilia defined by the exchange of twenty dollar bills. 

My sugar daddy liked a place to visit me so he was happy to relocate me to another dingy hotel. At the time, I did not realize the Ambassador was part AIDS hospice, part shooting gallery. It was there were I swapped one drug for another.  Crystal Meth, speed, water, whatever you would like to call it. Within the first month of moving to the hotel, I went on a "run" of epic proportions. 

How does one stay up for sixteen days? First of all, some sleeping is involved. A few hours here and there. When I would try to sleep, I might spend hours or even half a day staring at the ceiling "tweaking". My mind would race with hallucinations. With speed, your body is awake but your mind is desperately trying to shut functions down so you can sleep. Most people who do speed enjoy a good day or two of unprotected scabby  sex or  furiously masterbating with toys and pornography. I was not that person. I would think myself into scenarios and torture myself with my own thoughts. I would pick at my eyes thinking my contacts were still in there or tear my things apart. At least opiates provide a respite at some point. Speed was a big fuck you because obsession became the norm. 

To be continued...

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 17, 2014 at 1:46 PM

    You look really pretty and healthy here!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Tar Heroin 10 questions answered

Image
I want to get this in one place. Here you go When was the film made? The film was made from Dec 1995 to Dec 1997. Originally the film was supposed to be for one year but I believe when HBO picked up the film they wanted two years. How were you picked for the film? Steven met a bunch of different people at the youth needle exchange. He wanted subjects that were slightly younger than me. He filmed a few other people  that never made it into the final film Were you paid for the film? No. I was not paid for the film. he bought me a hotel to stay in for a week and bought me lunch a few times. I think they left some money for me when I was in jail too. Documentary film makers, in general, don't pay their subjects. Was I friends with the other people from the film ? Sort of. I never knew Alice. I met Oreo when he was 15 or 16. He was VERY young when the film was made. His mom used to work the desk in one of the hotels I lived in. Jake and I used to hang out. At one point h...
Read more

Ben (revised)

Image
Ben was heroin addled fantasy from a time when I would rather be with someone that barely loved me than be alone. I had just been released from jail after six long months. I had been using in the jail up until the last 45 days. This is did not give me much time to construct any type of recovery. I had spent most my time of planning for things that would never happen. My first week in jail was spent recovering from surgery. When I was arrested, I had four large abcesses. An abcess is a place where bacteria gets under the skin and the flesh starts to rot. I had to have surgery on my arm. When I took of the bandage, I cried. Not because I was in the hospital, not because I was in jail. I cried because they had sliced open my tattoo! The horror of it all. I used to take a sterile needle and cut them open myself. Needless to say, my nickname was the abcess queen. When I was back on the streets, I felt hopeless. I gave up my homeless encampment living for a hotel with some financial ...
Read more

Jamie

   Being able to fall apart is a luxury many people don’t have. They carry their burdens until it breaks them.  Miss Jamie was one of the most aesthetically pleasing  women I had ever seen in my life. She simply glowed. When she entered a room, everyone had to stop to pay attention. She took that space over. Her smile was radiant. Her energy was infectious. She was a fireball of a human. Her petite frame was always draped with carefully selected skirts, dresses, and form fitting sweaters. She paired this with her signature plum lipstick and acrylics.  She always came late in the day, usually when I had the lowest energy. Yet, I never refused her entrance. I was happy to see her. Happy to listen to her while she held court in my desk area.      On this day, Jamie was wheeled into the clinic by a person I had never seen before. Instead of scrubs, he looked as if he had woken up on the streets. He looked left like a caretaker, more like a pe...
Read more