Utterly powerless over addiction

 Update: After beginning work on this blog post I found out that my good friend from back east, T, killed himself earlier this month.  T was a very close friend who I have always considered my family and we have lived together and gone through alot of shit together.  I miss him terribly and wish I could have done something to prevent his suicide.  In light of his tragic death I would like to dedicate this post to T and to his family who is now grieving his loss.  I will always love you my brother, I pray that your pain is over now and that you are in a better place.  The people whose lives you touched will never forget you. <3 Rest in Peace.

T and myself in a squat in Portland, Maine 2011

Recently, it's interesting, I have started re-evaluating how I remember certain events.  My perception at the time of these events really shaped the way I had remembered them until recently, now it's like scales of bullshit have fallen from my eyes and I am starting to see things as they actually were.  I remember one of the last times I went to New York City before moving out west, I left from Portland Maine with two female friends, let's call them Nick and Jack.  Jack is a very close friend of mine.  She is one of those rare people who has the ability to drink or use drugs with moderation.  When she says she can quit something any time she wants to it is actually the truth and not one of those lies addicts tell themselves, this is because Jack is not an addict.  I have always envied and admired this quality in her, sadly I myself clearly do not possess this same strength of character, as history has shown me time and time again.  Nick does not use hard drugs.  I was experiencing a brief period of abstinence from heroin though I was still binge drinking, doing the occasional hallucinagen, and smoking weed like it was crack.   I promised my friends before we left Maine that I would not do any heroin when I got to New York.  In all reality, though I may not have fully realized it at the time, the only real reason I ever went to New York was to shoot dope.  Therefore promising not to was an impossible promise for me to make, to me, NYC is the Disneyland of heroin.  The very first night we got to New York after spending a day in Boston, we were invited back to a squat some friends of mine were staying in.  We all got really drunk, I noticed that one of the guys in the squat was shooting up in the bathroom.  Despite direct pleas from my friends not to use, I bought two bags of heroin and shot them up right in front of them.  Jack was very upset and disappointed with me, I had lied to her and betrayed her trust.  At the time I was angry at them for holding me to my promise, I thought they should understand that I was a dope fiend and I was just doing what dope fiends do, how could they get pissed off at me for doing my thing?  I rationalized the whole thing to myself, I didn't really care how they felt.  Over the next few days I continued to get high, picking up where I had left off with my habit, and stopped hanging out with Nick and Jack.  They found their own people to hang out with while I ran around with my junkie friends. After a week I had basically ditched them in New York City after promising I would not do that exact thing.  This was the THIRD time I had done this same fucking thing to Jack.  She ended up leaving New York and going home by herself, I spent a month or two there following around the boy I started doing dope with 8 years ago who I was sadly (as in pathetic) and desperately in love with for many years even though he would never feel the same way about me, running around shooting mass amounts of heroin, and sleeping in squats or on the street. Nick stayed in New York but would not talk to me, she was clearly disgusted by my lack of resolve.  I have never apologized to Jack for this incident or the two other times I ditched her in New York.  Jack has always been an amazing, immensely patient, and kind friend to me.  I am lucky to have her in my life even still.  I can't imagine how it must have felt for her being on the receiving end of my callous junkie bullshit over and over again.  This incident, for me, really illustrates the nature of my disease.  I am completely and utterly POWERLESS over my addiction.  No matter how much I want to abstain, my will and resolve completely collapses when the opportunity to get high presents itself.  Even if it doesn't, I will seek it out.  That is why seeking out a spiritual path to recovery is my only hope of ever conquering my addiction, I have shown myself time and time and time again that I cannot do it on my own no matter how much I want to.  That is the epitome of powerlessness, my life while using was the epitome of an unmanageable existence.

A lot of what I have been reading in AA with M or in groups from the Big Book lately has correlated to this concept of being powerless.  We have read several stories about people who, even though they wanted to quit drinking and made promises and resolutions to that affect, would suddenly find themselves in a bar close to blacking out or waking up from one days later and wondering what the fuck had just happened.  Bill Ws' story is full of such instances.  Every time we addicts and alcoholics have told ourselves "this time is the last time" without actually doing anything besides relying on our will power, our wills have failed us and we have gone right back to our addictive behaviors.   This has happened to me way more times than I can list, and it is really infuriating and demoralizing, I have learned that I really can't trust myself, and that I have no actual will power to speak of when it comes to drugs and alcohol.  To put it bluntly, that fucking sucks dicks, but unfortunately it is the reality of the situation.  What then can I do to put my life of active drug use behind me?  Like the 2nd step says, I need to "[come] to believe that a power greater than [myself] can restore [me] to sanity" and step 3 "Make a decision to turn [my] will and my life over to the care of God as I under[stand] him."  It's that simple, I cannot do it myself, no one can do it for me, therefor nothing short of DIVINE INTERVENTION can heal me from my insane and hopeless addiction.  I am not going to talk or debate about God right now.  No, I am not a religious person, but like I have said before I am willing to try anything right now that will help me change my life, and I am certainly not going to close the door on God and spirituality just because I harbor some negative opinions about organized religion.  There is a huge difference between religion and faith, or religion and spirituality.  I will not engage in a debate about this right now as it is besides the point.  I'm sure the discussion will be had at some point in the future.

At the conclusion of my two lists about how my life had become unmanageable I wrote the following...
Most of all my day to day life had become exhausting, repetitive, and completely devoid of any joy or hope.  I lived in horrible environments surrounded by (in San Francisco at least) fucked up people and I was turning into a bad person myself.  The brief respites of cheap happiness my drug use allowed me paled in comparison to the overall horror of my life.  Over the years I had lowered every one of my standards and morals and I had given up everything I loved to further my addiction.  I was seriously considering suicide as I felt it was the only escape from the pain of my existence.  I was too exhausted even to continue the daily cycle of my addiction.  I was powerless over drugs and alcohol and my life had become completely unmanageable.

I posted before in 'Scars on my Soul - Past Sex Work and Recovery' about my shame concerning my past actions and how I degraded myself sexually through prostitution, among other things.  (I have to qualify this at this point with the fact that I absolutely DO NOT consider sex work in general to be a shameful occupation.  I just feel that my motivations and the way it manifested through my addictions were harmful to me.  I thoroughly support sex worker rights and its' further legalization to support sex workers and make to it safer for those who practice it.)  I felt as if no one would be able to relate to me and like I had crossed a line and done things I could never take back or make amends for.  I spoke to another mentor I have met recently, let's call her S for the purposes of this blog.  She went through very similar shit as me when she was still using, she was a junkie as well and also sold her body to support her habit, though you would never guess any of that shit from seeing her now.  She is a very strong and respectable woman who is  very successful in life, she radiates confidence and self acceptance, S is an inspiration to me.  Talking to her really helped me gain some perspective and allowed me to hope a little bit for my future.  If someone like S can move on from that kind of depravity and hopelessness there is no reason why I can't as well.  I can only hope that in the future I can provide other women (or men) with the same kind of hope by telling my story.

My dad sent me an awesome package in the mail which I received the other day.  Along with a nice card and some much needed spending money, he went to an art store and bought me a huge oil painting kit, four packs of fancy brushes, another set of oil paints, and an art pad.  I was ecstatic, I really need a creative outlet, and it was such a thoughtful gift.  I love my dad.  He is very sick with cancer and I am trying to spend as much time with him as possible.  I will be going to visit him in the beginning of October, and though being around that side of my family will present a lot of challenges to my newfound sobriety, I am really looking forward to hanging out with my dad.  My father is also a recovered heroin addict, he has over 20 years clean off dope and is another source of hope and inspiration for me.  He does however smoke a shit ton of weed, and I have always enjoyed smoking with him and my siblings in the past.  Now that I am in AA I have quit smoking pot, and it is a point of contention for me because I honestly love marijuana and do not consider it to be a harmful or addictive drug.  It is going to be difficult for me to abstain from it while visiting my dad since I see it as an important bonding experience between us, and since he is dying, I do not want to miss out on any bonding opportunities that may be our last.  More on that subject later.

I am going to Ms house in a little while to finish my step one work, which i have been procrastinating on like a total douchebag.  Once I have finished it I will post it here.  Thank you for reading.  As always please comment or contact me if you need any help or support with anything, and I wish you all the best of luck and strength in your individual journeys. <3

PS - Today is my 30 day sobriety birthday!

This will serve as an introduction

 This is a picture of me though I change my hair a lot so I may not look like this anymore, you get the general idea.  That is my friends kitty. :)

Disclaimer: It is safe to click on links in the text of this blog because they are links I put there, not those annoying advertising links you see in blogs these days.  I put them there because I feel that they are relevant or that they further explain important topics I don't feel like elaborating on myself at the moment.  Go ahead, click without fear. :)

I've been waiting for the right time to write my first post and I guess today makes sense because today I'm fucking up.  I am about to relapse, I know this yet I cannot seem to stop myself.  I've been trying to get a hold of my dealer since last night. He is notoriously difficult to get on the phone which is probably to my benefit right now, but i know that if he had been available I would have gotten high last night, so my current sobriety is not for lack of effort to the contrary.  It's been about a month since I shot any dope, I've been on a methadone clinic for two months now, and up until a few days ago I was really trying hard.


I'm going to quickly tell you some basic facts about me.  My name's Erica, I'm 25, I am originally from New England (Portland, Maine mostly) but I consider New York City to be my home.  I moved to SF in November.  I was a homeless heroin addict for seven years, I just got clean two months ago and I still struggle with my addiction on a daily basis.  I used to ride freight trains and hitchhike around the US and consequently have been to almost every state and major city in the country.  I am currently unemployed, though I am trying my best to find work, the economy has basically been shit my entire adult life but I really cannot use that as an excuse any longer. I am an artist and an activist.  I am queer with a very asexual leaning but that could possibly be attributed to my sexual abuse related PTSD.  As you can see, I am painfully (often excessively) honest. I feel like if I put everything out there people cannot use my faults against me.
Here are some things I do tend to lie about because I am ashamed.  I am on a methadone clinic.  My mother pays my rent at the shitty SRO hotel where I live because I have no source of income. I dropped out of college and gave up on a full ride because I wanted to be a junkie and hang out with 'crusties' in Tompkins Square Park. I am very, very shy and sensitive, my feelings get hurt very easily. I have no friends besides my dog Kali.

That's all for now in the way of introductions, if you decide to read this blog you will learn a lot more about me as I am desperately nostalgic and overly analytical.  Years of therapy have made me adept at introspection and expressing my feelings and intentions.  I do not  mince words and I have promised myself that I will be honest in this blog, so if you are offended by, um, potentially offensive content, this is not the blog for you.  You have been warned.

A couple of things happened to get me to the point of fiending for a hit.  First, I was participating in a judicial program called the Community Justice Center, AKA Poverty Court. This program required me to go to court once a week, go to groups, do community service, document my dosage at the clinic, and speak with a case manager.  This gave my life some semblance of structure and gave me motivation to accomplish goals and get my shit together.  Last week I went in to court and the judge dismissed my case on a technicality.  I should have been happy about this, so says my lawyer, but I was crushed.  There goes my sense of accountability, there goes feeling like someone gives a shit about my life, there goes people trying to help me.  Now I'm on my own.

My mother, who I have historically had a very tumultuous yet close relationship with, has not been speaking to me for the past three or four months.  I fucked up and made a very junkie-esque move on her that I will explain some other time.  Anyways, I feel very alone since I also have distanced myself from my only friends in San Francisco, other junkies.  I have no one to talk to besides my therapist and my hippie neighbor, who are both great people, but I still feel extremely isolated.  Most of the time I just sit around with my dog watching shit on my step-dads' netflix account.  Before I got on the clinic my days were spent (hypothetically) 'boosting', shoplifting from various bay area stores and selling the stolen goods to mexican 'fences' for the local flea markets.  This is how I earned money to support my habit and also how I acquired necessities like clothes and hygiene products.  Now that I am trying to get clean I have no income and nothing to do.

Because of CJC I started doing community service at a local arts organization that shall remain nameless.  Initially volunteering there made me very happy because I got to paint and felt like I was gaining work experience and blah blah blah etc.  Unfortunately the lady who oversees volunteers doesn't like me.  I have to mention that I am very insecure and easily hurt when I am not high.  The main draw of heroin for me is that it makes me not give a fuck, after spending my entire childhood and teenage years feeling pathetic and like an exposed nerve, not caring about anything was a welcome respite.  Maybe I was being over sensitive but I really think this woman resents me.  This is really fucking embarrassing but I'm just gonna throw it out there, my wisdom teeth came in about two years ago and crumbled as they did, now I have two jagged half-teeth jutting out of my mouth cutting the fuck out of my gums and the inside of my cheeks.  That shit is clearly infected.  Heroin dulled the pain of the infection and gum-shredding but now I don't have that.  I don't have insurance.  Apparently the cesspool in my mouth makes my breath smell bad, other junkies don't care about that kind of shit but normal folk do.  Anyways, volunteer lady made a comment about it and now I'm too embarrassed to go back and volunteer, don't have community service to do anymore anyways so I don't need to, but now all of the structure is completely gone from my life.  Back to sleeping all day and watching 'Damages' all night.  I already watched the entire 8 seasons of 'Charmed' and 'Supernatural' plus everything Joss Whedon has ever created, BTVS rawks!   I'm a loser.

Yesterday I got a text from my mom.  My grandfather died. We were relatively close when I was younger.  I did not even know he was dying. She texts me this.  She says not to call because she doesn't want to talk to me yet.  I know this is my fault, it's just hard to deal with shit like this alone and without heroin to numb everything.

Anyways that's why, in a nutshell, I am now desperately trying to buy some decent dope.  Pretty much everything on the street in SF is total garbage these days so I have to buy high grade expensive shit just to feel anything and not feel like I flushed my money down the toilet. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something by the fact that I can't get either of my old dealers on the phone.  I should probably just go get on the bus to the clinic and forget about it, but it tends to stick in my mind once I start the process of fiending for it.  Maybe I should hit a meeting or something, haven't been to one in years.

Have to go, more later.

Update: It's 4pm and I haven't gotten high yet.  Hopefully I can make it through the day without relapsing.