Before anything each day I made sure I had pills. I even would say I’m not going anywhere ’til I have my medication. I was open about it like this because I really didn’t know that it was wrong, dangerous, or a drug. Eventually my desperation for them lead me to realize maybe I was attached a bit much. The sickness I did get but it took a long time before I knew what it was actually from. I always thought it was a combination of a bunch of health problems and tended to be a bit of a hypochondriac, so I had a thousand ideas of what else the actual dope sickness could be.
Now, when you run around looking for pills you also meet pill heads and everyone is eager to teach you what they know about the drug and other similar drugs, other ways of using like from popping them to cutting them in half so they hit you faster or taking them on an empty stomach, crushing them to parachuting them (putting the powder in a small piece of toilet paper and swallowing that) to crushing them and snorting them, taking a cheese grater and filing them down. Putting something with aspirin included in it like Vicodin into an ice cube tray with water and freezing them so that the medication separated from the aspirin or smoking them on tin foil (chasing the dragon) or, of course, injecting them.
I started realizing I had an addiction but I cared more about being okay in my skin then what society may think. I guess I never really felt I belonged to the normal world anyhow. All that learning I had an addiction did was make me realize I needed to be quiet about my addiction, sneakier and a better liar. I also learned that a pill is synthetic heroin and heroin was cheaper. Eventually as pills became a more publicly aware problem and harder to get, heroin became more accessible.
(to be continured.)
Samantha Mayo
The Recovery Through Wholeness Chalkboard 