A Comparison: The Fear of Being Without

Considering that when something is too good to be true, it normally is, compare this analogy of a girl's life before and after a witch's potion to an addict's life before and after substance abuse:

Nancy was always afraid of heights, grew excited when holdidays approached, jumped over loud bumps or thuds in the night, and could remember being nervous when first obtaining her drivers' license. She was a normal, patriotic, happy girl. Her life was full of smiles and laughter, family and fun-filled summers year after year.

One day, however, Nancy met a strange, old woman while hiking through the woods. The woman smiled and was kind to Nancy, and told her that she could make her life extremely happy. She told Nancy she could give her a happiness that would last all day, every day, and that she would never be afraid of anything, ever again. She said she could teach her to fly without fear.

At first, of course, Nancy was skeptical, but the more the old woman spoke, the more intrigued Nancy became. Her curiosity won, and the old woman gave Nancy a small bottle of sweet liquid. Nancy tasted it, and immediately was changed. She felt like a superhero. She drank the liquid, and soared high above the tree tops, across her home town, above the clouds, flying without fear, dipping and diving and laughing as she never had before.

This new happiness was something she never had known before, and had never even heard about. She never knew such happiness was possible before tasting the old woman's liquid.

For a while, Nancy visited the old woman on a regular basis, and the old woman told her the liquid would be available forever. Nancy created her whole life around it, becoming another person entirely.

Then one day, Nancy could not find the old woman. She searched everywhere for her, going days without even stopping to rest, looking and calling out to her. She realized the woman was gone, and with her, the magical, beautiful liquid. She dropped to her knees in the forest and felt as if she would die.

What would life be like, now? Where was the joy? How could she fly so high and so far, then just sit in an existence that held nothingness? The comparison of how happy she had been with the liquid to the reality of lifelessness without it was just too much for her to bear. She lay there in the woods and died, choosing death as a far better alternative to facing a reality of bitter depression.

And when facing a life without drugs, an addict feels and experiences the same fears, the same loss of hope for the future. Of course, with enough clean time (the period of time an addict experiences without substances), a natural joy for life will return, and hope for the future will come again.

Drugs? Not even once.

"I'm Without" - Withdrawals From Ice

So, my connections hit a temporary "drought" of sorts, due to a huge bust that had been making its way into Alabama from Texas. We'd be down for about a week and a half, probably, they had said.

There was no ice to be found anywhere, and the gnawing in the pit of my stomach spelled out a fear that, for me, was every bit as frightful as the fear some people experience when faced with losing everything they own or even when first hearing that our nation is going to war.

Withdrawals were coming. I could taste them, smell them, and dread them in a way one dreads entering a courtroom in order to be sentenced after a guilty verdict. I didn’t want to go through it. I didn’t want to stop using.

The routine had become second nature to me. I was definitely a meth junkie, and though shameful of the fact many times, escaping into that little glass bowl at the end of my pipe wiped away all the guilt and anxiety of neglected parenthood.

But this time it wouldn’t matter how hard I searched. Everyone was out. A strange and complete drought had come to Alabama, and I had never been one who was able to “put back for a rainy day.” Oh, I had tried to before, just for times like this, but I always ended up smoking it, wanting to be higher, wanting more and more until finally I ruined relationships further due to meth psychosis and having been up way too many days without sleep.

The meth I had just ran out of was very strong, and it carried me throughout the night and into the next morning while I picked through the carpet in the floor of the room I had smoked in, searching for just another crumb, another decently sized shard of crystallized peace. The cravings for more had set in hard. If I didn’t crash soon, I would find myself hysterically crying and cursing, throwing a fit that could not be justifiably termed "emotional breakdown."

I searched for a pill, anything to placate the gnawing fear of being without. It’s so incredibly unbearable. I wanted to be knocked out, but my body was not tired yet. And there was a faint hope that someone somewhere would find some more for me to buy or deal out in order to have some of my own. I remained in this state for about half a day. Then I dropped.

When crashing after a four or five day stretch with no sleep, it’s as if I am in a coma. Nothing really wakes me at all. If I am aroused, it is only to a slightly coherent state where nothing makes sense to me. “Mama, the house is on fire,” would be answered with “Okay, sweetie, but not for too long because you have homework to finish.” That deep crashing sleep lasts, for me, about 12 to 15 hours.

After that, there is a period of normal sleep, lasting about 2 to 5 days. I can wake normally, eat, understand things during that 2 to 4 day sleep time, but I am so drained and drowsy that I want to do nothing more than sleep. And of course, faced with the knowledge that I have no dope, sleep is preferred to being awake.

About the fourth or fifth day without crystal meth, I abruptly awake in the middle of the night, my kidneys burning, perhaps because I am dehydrated, perhaps because I have laid on them for five days without getting up and moving around much. My spine is tingling with an uncomfortable twisting sensation and every hair on my body is standing on end. I just want to go back to sleep, but cannot. I’m awake. And nothing helps.
I need a sleep aid. I search the house for something, anything, and come up with a nighttime allergy medication that helps induce sleep. I take as many as I can find, about 6 or 7, and wait for the blissful waves of sleep to engulf me and save me from the twisting grip something has on my spine.

Cold sweats grip down into my bones, it seems, and I try not to think about anything because the anxiety and outright fear creates monsters of problems within my worrying mind out of anything I dwell upon for very long. Faces of people who love me and want me to love them again flood my mind and before I drift off to sleep to be free from this wave of withdrawals, I cry hard and long for my children.

I think about how they must feel. I think about the time I have wasted, the looks on their faces when they want me to spend time with them but I am too busy looking for my next high. After the long cry, I am off to dream about the same things, though now they are horribly twisted into unreal pictures in my dream world, pictures of my daughters drowning and me not being able to save them.
I have always believed in God. I have known Him from the very earliest memories I have in life. I have known Him in a personal, friendly, Fatherly way for as long as I can remember. And His enemy knows this. His enemy loves to plague me with things, and I suppose I make it easy for him to, considering the ways I choose to live my life.

So, interspersed with the “my kids are dying and I sit helpless” dreams, come the occasional “there’s something evil in the room it must be Satan he is here growling and holding you down” dreams.
About five hours into the allergy medication induced sleep, the dreams have made me wake up fully, and I cannot get back to sleep. Kidneys burning, no position comfortable, spine screaming and twisting, mind racing. Just a few more days, I pray. Just a few more.
What then - the depression? Will the cravings end? How long will this go on? I know enough about withdrawals to know that some doctors mark the length of post acute methamphetamine withdrawal for up to two years. Did I dream that? No, it is so, as crazy as it sounds.
My God, why did I ever start this horrible, frightfully terrible relationship with crystal meth? I would smoke more right now, even in the middle of this epiphany! But what on earth could I have been thinking with that first taste of hell?
I start to blame everyone from the President on down to the mayor of our little town for allowing such a horrible epidemic to find its way to our country. Still, I know I am the one to blame for having tried it. I know it is my fault that I am in the uncomfortable, strange, frightening, sad, hopeless, sick position I am in.

And I know it is going to get worse. I know that very soon, I will feel displaced, out of my own skin, and fully awake to enjoy every hideous moment.
And if the person who had originally handed me the straw to snort a try of it years and years ago could have instead shown me this day, I would have ran away screaming “No!" And I would have never searched for an escape from the beautifully welcoming small problems I once believed I could not handle sober.

Drug Dealers Can Have Ethics, Too

I was closing the glass sliding door in our den and making sure it was locked before my husband and I retreated to the bedroom to smoke a bowl when he said the most interesting thing to me. He said, “I don’t know why you lock everything so tight, Jeanne. We are the bad ones. We are the dangerous ones everybody locks up for.”

Until that very moment, I had never truly considered myself a criminal. Even through years and years of dealing, trafficking, buying, and using drugs, I had not realized how civil, law-abiding Americans view us.

That was years ago, of course. I’ve come a long way since then, too. But there are still drug dealers, traffickers, buyers and users still out there, by the millions. And I think one reason I never really saw us as “bad” is because we maintained ethics and morality through it all. Concerning children, mainly.

If a girl became pregnant, she was cut off from purchasing drugs, and the word was spread that if anyone sold or gave to her, they would be too. I know it didn’t solve everything for that child or even make the mother go straight, but it helped, I witnessed that.

If someone’s utilities were being cut off and they had kids in the home, we cut them down to enough to keep from withdrawing and would not sell them anything until they brought us a receipt from the power company.

If someone hurt their family physically, they were cut off and never were dealt with again. And usually, they got a visit from someone in our circle.

I’m writing this post because there are so very many dealers who are so very corrupt, so very bad. Are they reachable? I don’t know, I doubt it. But just maybe…. they will keep ethics about them until the light shines through and they recover. Until the light of understanding comes to you, brother, sister, be good to the children. Any way you can, do good for the kids.