Nickles and Dimes

Grim days ahead in old London town for opiate lovers. The only thing to be currently had are oxycontin 40mgs and 80mgs or so says the word on the street. I know that I go against the grain on this but I have never been able to form any sort of attachment towards the oxys. I know that many would call me fool but be that as it may, I am a girl in love with Lady Di or those sweet five sided white pills called dilaudid. Now if I had my choice, I would first and foremost be doing the granddaddy of all smack, heroin, but alas this is a distant, fruitless hope as none can be found in my fair city.

You would think in a city of 500 000 that this would not be such a scarcity but it is. You need to travel two hours east to Toronto if you hope to score some of the fine white powder. Oh well. Those days are now gone so I have been more than happy to exist with a little help from Lady Di and on occassion one of her cousins. Hmmm don”t have a name for oxys yet as I do them fairly infrequently. I will need to think.

I guess that I have been spoilt with the heroin/dilaudid rush that I never seem to get when I boot the oxys. I am fairly sure that I am doing it correctly as I did quite a bit of research before I tried. I do feel something and they definitely keep the sickness at bay so they more than serve their purpose. I also find that 1mg dilaudid appears to equal 10mg oxycontin. I could be wrong but I have been fairly successful following my rather crude measurement tool. They definitely can be found for a semi-decent price in this city. We just picked up four of the oxy40s for $30 which works out to only $7.50 a pill. By my mode of translation, this equals approximately two 8mg dilaudids which will cost me $40 minimum today as my regular dealers are out. Now as I also have an outstanding tab with this other dealer, in order for us to get anything from her, before we purchase any pills we have to put $20 towards are bill. So in actuality it would cost us $60 for two pills from her today, double the cost of the oxys. Doesn”t take a rocket scientist to figure out where Jim and Serena will be spending their money today.

Now the weirdest thing that I find about the oxys, and please anyone jump in at anytime with advice, is that while they definitely keep sickness at bay, I find that once the oxy has worn off I am at whatever stage I would normally be at after having my last dilaudid. Let me try to be a little clearer. Let us suppose that I do my last dilaudid on Saturday evening around 8pm. Now I go to sleep and when I wake up Sunday morning I will definitely be starting to feel the onset of withdrawal. Now I am out of dilaudids but I have some oxys so I boot one. Sickness disappears instantly no doubt about it but without the familiar rush that I associate with my beloved ds. No problem as I don”t want to be sick so I am good to go.

Now let us suppose that I have enough oxys to get me through until Monday morning. Now Monday morning when I wake up I have absolutely nothing and again I feel sick but now I feel as if I am entering my second day of withdrawal. It is almost as if I am suspended in time throughout the duration of taking the oxys but once they are gone, I am deep in the middle of being sick. Does this make any sense? It does to me but am having a hard time putting my thoughts about this issue to paper.

Anyway, such is the life of a functioning addict. Speaking of which, I am now sitting at my desk after having a week off of work. I feel as if I have accomplished as little or less than JunkYardSaint did on his vaca!

Police and Thieves

I have had the week off of work so I haven”t really been around too much this week. I have been trying to keep up my reading of everyone’’s journals but haven”t really had the time to enter anything myself. I have two additional posts saved as drafts as they both are incomplete thoughts so far and need to be flushed out a little bit more. A post will be arriving shortly addressing methadone maintenance and my general feelings towards it as a treatment method. The other post has quite a bit of information about my early life up to the start of university and also addresses the type of environment that I was raised. Unfortunately I can not remember what point I was hoping to make with this entry as on second reading there is no indication as to where I am going to go with it. Guess I will have to ponder that one a little bit longer.

Fairly uneventful week until last night. Jim ran a red light on his way home from work, mostly because there was someone tailgating him so badly and driving really quickly that he panicked and went right through the light. Turns out that it was a cop. Sometimes at night it is hard to see the type of vehicle behind you as we have a large pickup truck. Red, flashing lights and everything else that accompanies an officer pulling you over.Jim said that he was kept about forty minutes and that the officer kept walking back and forth to his cruiser. After his license and his profile came back as clear, the officer asked him if anyone else drove his truck and he answered yes. Remember that I sometimes give my dealer my vehicle when I am at work as a trade. The officer asks him what he knows about “Jane Doe” and Jim says that she used to be one of our tenants and was also a friend of his wife’’s. The officer asks him if he knows anything about her private life and Jim responds that he didn”t really so the cop tells him that she is a speed dealer. Jim feigns surprise stating that he thought that she may have dealt pot but had no idea. The officer quipped that she used to but had moved up in the world. He also advised Jim that if she is ever pulled over driving his truck with anything at all on her then he would keep the truck!

The officer eventually let him go with no ticket for the running of the red light. Strange I suppose but then again not so strange considering what happened to me a month ago so…Obviously we want to keep our vehicle. We stopped by her place to give her the warning so she may be closing up shop soon. Don”t blame her but with her out of the game and my primary dealer currently MIA, things are looking grim on the opiate front. My last resort is still around but at $20 a pill, money tends to disappear rather quickly. Guess I can do one of two things. I can either do some networking or throw in the towel and call it a day. Wonder what I will end up doing?

Methadone’s Urban Legends

I think that a lot of methadone’’s side effects are in reality urban legends. After spending two and a half years on it, I found many of the supposed possible side effects or reactions never materialized unless you literally “willed” them upon yourself. I found that those that bought into and blindly believed and accepted all the garbage that our doctors were feeding us actually developed exactly what they were told they would develop. Self-fulfilling prophecy really.

For many this became their license to not have to work or even look for work and justified their desire to eat any sweet thing that passed remotely within their line of vision and pound on those extra 70 pounds. Suddenly they felt completely justified in needing a previously unprescribed prescription for Ritalin to keep them going. While many of the people that I met while I was in treatment fell firmly into this category there were some that could just not settle into the program and found meth treatment to be an unfulfilling painful step of their recovery process. For these unfortunate few there were real and valid issues with methadone.

Upon rereading the above I sound cold and unfeeling and that is not at all how it is. To clarify, the meth program in my city at the time could be a very negative experience. The couple of doctors that were part of it stressed only the negative – the high recidivism rate if you were to actually complete the program or the likelihood that you would spend your entire life in treatment. There was little to no councilling, and apologies to Paint It Black because I know that he is enduring the complete opposite of this right now, but they pushed and pushed you until you were on an almost unmanageable high dose often prescribing amounts way above what was your true blocking dose. I refused to go any higher than 95mg once I felt that I had stabilized. My husband stopped increasing his at 145mg. Most of the others were at least double our amounts. No wonder they all felt like crap most of the time.

Yes, you definitely feel more exhausted and it is hard to focus at times. Suddenly you feel as if you have developed ADD. No doubt years of opiate abuse combined with meth’’s assault on our bodies throws our metabolism right out of whack and we all seem to pacify this with an increase in our daily sugar intake. Obviously a weight gain will soon follow. But is this weight gain solely from the meth or are we no longer running ourselves into the ground constantly searching for our next hit? Once the hunt is removed we immediately become more sedentry. Combined with the fact that each and every penny is no longer being spent on illegal substances we find that for the first time in a long time we actually have a well stocked fridge and a full cupboard. We can finally get rid of that jumbo jar of peanut butter and $.99 package of plain crackers.

With this kind of philosophy from the clinic it was no wonder that the majority of the patients felt as if they had traded one losing card for another. Had there been a little bit more positive feedback from the doctors I think that they would have seen entirely different results. I talked to so many that were also suffering from constant low level depression while in treatment. Because I felt that I was being prescribed my true stabilizing dose, once there, all cravings for opiates disappeared. Honestly

Reach For The Sky

I have been with my present employer almost two years now and of all of the places that I have worked in my life, I have to admit that this is one of the nicer places that I have worked at. They have pretty decent health benefits for us and they are nothing but accommodating and flexible regarding my schedule. The pay is slightly higher than the average for the type of work that I do and it is certainly enough of an income to survive on and then some. I know that I am over qualified for what I actually do but it is a trade-off. There have been months when my attendance has been kind of dicey and when many others may have lost patience and fired my ass, this company gives another chance with no questions asked. This fact alone has made me a pretty loyal employee and I suspect that I will be there as long as they will have me.

I have also been given two promotions since starting there and both of them were initiated by management. I was told each time that I was being reassigned and given new responsibilities and a pay raise with each move. This is something else that has obviously pleased me as it is nice to be recognized and rewarded by management. This week an internal posting was advertised in a position that I would be better suited in plus it is also a position that I have lots of work experience already. Of course, I applied for it. Me and thirteen other people! Ouch! I don’t think that the company even has forty employees right now. So…Competition is going to be kind of tough. I had my first interview today out of I believe two and I think that it went extremely well. Of the other applicants, there are no other females which may bode well for me. In fact, there are only a handful of females in this company at all as it is part of the tech industry, an area which seems to attract mostly males. The two interviewers today were female, something my husband thinks will be to my advantage.

I really hope so cause I very much want this job. I would have my very own office and would work more regular hours plus it is a substantial increase in pay – about $450 per pay before deductions – which is a significant enough amount that it would be noticed. Fingers crossed that my second interview goes as well. I guess that they want to have the position filled by Monday or Tuesday next week at the latest so at least I won’t have to stress too long about it.

Black Dog On My Shoulder – a short story

OK, lying in bed watching the second hand slowly tick by. Come on, come on you think. Almost eight in the morning. Banks will be open soon and that cheque that has been on hold for the last week should now have cleared. About bloody time. You are not even sure how you have managed to make it through these past two days.

Throwing the covers back you put two unsteady feet onto the floor. Your muscles tighten then twitch. You are now dancing on your toes into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror you shudder. Last night’s makeup is now streaked across your face. It takes ever effort to run the water. You make a feeble attempt to make yourself more presentable but who are you really fooling? Do you honestly care? No, you just need to get to the bank. Look down to see what you are wearing. OK, your shirt has definitely seen better days but the slightly ripped cutoffs will do. A bra wouldn’t hurt but that just sounds like too much work and you have places to go. Now.

OK, where did you put the keys yesterday before you fell into that restless sleep willing the next day to arrive quickly? Think. Think. You were angry and sore and feeling tremendously sorry for yourself that you put them…?? Right, tossed them at the old man who now is sleeping deeply and not worth the trouble of waking up because he certainly won’t be of any help and this would not be the best time to argue. You can easily tell by glancing around the bedroom that it has been a couple of days without. The laundry that you frantically started the last time you were feeling normal has not been put away. Instead all of the hours spent sorting, folding, piling have been for naught. Soon to be dirty laundry again is strewn from the en suite bathroom door out into the hall. Stumbling across it, you shake pieces to see if your keys will suddenly free themselves. Hah! There they are. You scoop them up in your hand, tripping head first out your bedroom door.

You pull your aching body into your vehicle. Before you even have the keys in the ignition, you are throwing your car into forward and screaming down the now busy street. The morning rush hour is upon you and your frustration starts to build. Don’t even have a smoke to drag on. Broke, remember? Quickly, quickly, get to the bank before the lineup becomes unbearable. As you reach the top of the incline, you can see the green and white sign to the left indicating the bank’s parking lot. Flipping your turn signal so it flashes left you manoeuvre your car into the left hand turning lane and quickly scream into the parking lot narrowly avoiding the oncoming cars. Barely stopping to shove the car in park and remove the keys from the ignition, you are bounding up the steps two at a time.

Struggling to open the heavy bank door, you slide on through and immediately take your place at the end of the line. Tap, tap, tap your foot goes. You can barely contain your legs from shaking so you try to distract by withdrawing your wallet from your purse, aimless flipping through it looking for your bank card. Finally it is your turn and you thrust your card into the face of the smiling teller. You mumble the amount that you want to withdraw and silently keep counting to ten in your mind so that you don’t end up losing what precious little sanity you have left.

“Anything else that we can do for you today, Ms S?” the teller asks in a grating voice. You look at her and silently shake your head not trusting your own voice. You practically snatch the stack of $20 bills from her hand and shove it carelessly into your purse. Throwing it over your shoulder you rush out the glass doors jumping once again into your vehicle. Halfway there. Mission almost complete. Another twenty minutes of this annoying traffic and you will be in a much calmer, peaceful space.

You push down on your accelerator risking the chance of being stopped for speeding. Willing to take this chance today so tired and sore your body. Finally you are in front of your dealer’s house. You park your vehicle and bound up her front steps, knocking loudly on her door. Usually asleep at this time, she absolutely promised that she would make an exception and wake up for today’s visit. No answer. Frantic you knock a little louder and a little louder again until you finally hear her dog barking. You hear some shuffling behind the door and the sequential unlocking of enough locks to protect Fort Knox. She waves me in. I quickly close the door behind me, locking all the locks abruptly. I stagger up the stairs behind her tossing a pile of twenty dollar bills on her bed in front of her. She counts them, puts them in her wallet and then counts out the required amount, dropping each pill carefully into a small, clear baggy.

I pocket them and casually look around her room. I know that she hates anyone to do anything at her place but decide that I can’t wait so I mumble something about having to go to the bathroom before I head out promising that it is only the toilet that I need and nothing else. I race down the stairs and lock the bathroom door behind me, frantically searching through my purse for everything that I need. Quickly crush my pills in the spoon that I have laid on the back of her toilet, draw up sufficient amount of water through my syringe and fire it into the center of my spoon. I search through all of my pockets until my lighter is located and then quickly set fire to the underneath of the spoon. Just as the liquid comes to a boil, I remove the flame from the spoon. Stirring the now dissolved mixture, I then proceed to drop a filter into its center and quickly suck up all of the dope until the filter squeeks that there is no more left.

I sit down on the edge of the bathtub and lightly tab my forearm looking for that sweet spot. Located. With as steady a hand as I can muster, I line the syringe up with my arm and gently jab it into my skin. Drawing back on the plunger, I see the barrel fill with crimson colour. With measured speed, I depress the plunger until there is nothing left in the syringe and gently remove it from underneath my skin. A small drop of blood forms as I drop my head forward, sighing. My breathing slows to barely a whisper. Raising my head, I inhale deeply while at the same time thowing everything into the top of my purse. I run my arm under water, flush the toilet and quickly exit the bathroom happy now that the last three days are all but a faint memory.

Condemnation

Am about to jump in the shower – my first in over a week, ever since my “incident”. Haven’t felt like looking after myself. My own self-imposed sentence? Don’t know. Don’t care. Don’t really feel like analysing. Not going to change anything anyway. Really kind of hating myself right now I guess. Feel dirty so what’s the point of showering. Not going to be able to rid myself of how I feel. Wish I would or could. Just fooling myself. Don’t know if this is the bottom. If not then pretty darn close. Only one direction to go from here I suppose. Ball is now in my court. Better not fumble it. Too much at stake right now. Wish I could just spit this awful taste right out of my mouth. Be done with with it. Nothing is ever that easy. If only.

Time to shake off these cobwebs and pay the piper or something like that. Take a deep breath. You are your own worse enemy and if that cross gets too heavy to bare. Well don’t waste any time, looking at someone else to take the blame. Time to suck it up and accept your dues – will make everything go faster in the end. Your problem. Your ownership. Your responsibility. Only you wil be able to fix it so stop wasting any more any more of that precious time. Just deal.

And in the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara “Tomorrow is another day.”

She Blinded Me With Science

It was a truly, spectacularly uneventful weekend. The only reason that I am up now is that I slept through the majority of Sunday. Spent the afternoon lounging in bed watching crappy science fiction – just downloaded the seventh season of Stargate SG-1. We are watching that series this year cause two regulars from Farscape, one of the best television series ever, are now in it. As we have never been regular viewers, we now have eight seasons of episodes to kind of catch up on. Pretty basic fodder though so it certainly is posing no real challenge. Am enjoying the second season of Battlestar Gallactica I have to admit. That show sure surprised me. If you are looking for something different to watch, you should give this one a shot. Toss out any prejudices that you might have remaining if you are old enough to remember the absolutely rotten original series. Oranges and apples, cats and dogs, no two shows could be so different.

Also a friend of ours called around 11pm to see if we could give him a lift to pick up an aquarium from another friend. The only reason that we bothered was the promise of payment. Kuching! He said that he had a couple of dilaudids that we could grab for doing this favour. As we are still nickle and diming our money, this came at the perfect time so for about 20 minutes of our time we are now sitting here quite calm and soothed after a kind of restless evening. Also got an extra for the late morning or just before I have to go into work. This too was fortunate as I had no idea what I was going to do for tomorrow. Can’t get any more credit from one of my dealers – the one that charges $20 a pill to boot. Turns out though that the guy I prefer to go to is back again holding and I am good for credit with him plus he is half her price. Kuching again!

We also learned tonight that the guy that stole all of Richey’s tools from our truck was found murdered on Thursday afternoon. I had read about our city’s ninth murder of the year the other day in the newspaper but they had not released the victim’s name at this point. Apparently he tried to rip some young fellow off in a drug deal gone bad. Colour me shocked. Not that I would wish this on anyone, he obviously had something like this coming to him. He was always trying to rip someone off in one way or another so it was really just a matter of time before he pushed the wrong person too far.

Methadone Pretty

This week is one that I wish I could escape. Knowing in advance that I don’t have enough money to feed this monkey on my back is beyond depressing. The earliest I can see us getting any money is Thursday, maybe Wednesday night if very lucky. I did my last hit a few minutes ago and am fully expecting not to be able to do another until Thursday morning which seems an eternity away right now. This will also be the longest I have gone without in over a year. I also am not in a position to call in sick so I will also have to drag my sorry ass into work each day. The horrors.My nerves are already shot just with this anticipation. Self fulfilling prophecy perhaps. Emotionally this can take its toll. Anything warm and fuzzy about my usage disappears instantly when I find myself in similar situations. Oh the love-hate, ying-yang that is heroin addiction. I am already depressed because of what happened on Friday so this is not what I need right now. But what to do? I wish someone could send me something but that too is not about to happen either. Boo hoo…Going to have a shower now while I still feel like it because I know in the morning I will be feeling far too sorry for myself that I will end up not taking one.

Johnny 99

On Friday I ended up losing what was a fairly important post to me – for a number of reasons. This on top of what turned out to be a stupendously awful day was the proverbial straw. I stayed away from my computer all weekend. I was angry and feeling spiteful. Hated that stupid inanimate object. I am now back at work and am now typing this post in notepad and will save it periodically so if I do end up losing some of it, it will hopefully be not much of a loss. God bless cut and paste.

What prompted me to get my own journal is quite beyond me but I am so glad that I did. Then for someone who has kept uncountable secrets over the last twenty years to suddenly write about them so publicly is again another mystery but one which I have found refreshingly liberating. In many ways I still feel that this journal is part of my private persona anyway but it is actually reaching the point where I don’t think that it would bother me to be “found out”. I mean I am certainly not going to go to any extremes to be “caught” but I don’t think that I would be as shattered as I used to think I would be if someone were to discover my “dirty little secret”. More than anything I think that I am tired of bowing to society’s whims.. Why is this such a “dirty little secret” anyway? I think that society as a whole would be quite surprised to discover that there are junkies out there that by no means are even close to the perceived stereotype. This place more than anything has convinced me of this. So many educated, well spoken, erudite individuals that for whatever reason are caught up in this lifestyle. I feel part of a charmed, if not somewhat battered and bruised, group of people.

Now all of the above being said and cutting right to the chase, I found my private persona staring my public persona right in the eyes on Friday evening. For a brief moment they became one and now, because of circumstance, will probably find it difficult existing separate from one another ever again. I got arrested for possession of a controlled substance and had the pleasure of spending two and a half hours sitting in a jail cell. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this could ever occur to me. Why? I am not really sure. Arrogance, I suppose but no other real rational reason. As the officer said to me “Just think of the number of times that you were never caught’” No truer words have ever been spoken. Me believing that my public persona overshadowed my private never considered the possibility of an arrest. How wrong was I?

I feel somewhat humbled and shamed by all of this to be honest but what better place than here to try to come to terms with everything that happened a few days ago. It was a normal Friday evening or so I thought. I had a quick errand to run around 10pm so I dashed out of the house and jumped in the truck. Richey had to strip the carpet out of one of our rental units because one of our elderly tenants had had a heart attack early this week. After he had finished stripping all of the carpet he threw it into the back of the bed of the truck. There was barely enough to even reach up to the sides of the bed of the truck but on Friday evening when I was pulled over that is the reason the officer used for stopping me. Hmmm? I figured that I was in trouble the moment I was stopped because my license is currently under suspension but I had no idea what turn this event was about to take. First of all, there was absolutely no question as to the safety of my load nor was there a remote suggestion of me speeding, driving improperly or anything actually. I think that I got pulled over because I loan my truck to one of my dealers and she has been pulled over a few times in it and this cop just happened to recognize my truck so…No doubt in my mind this young fellow was itching for a promotion too. I could practically taste it.

So anyway, he says why he is stopping me, asks for my ownership and insurance and returns to his vehicle. A few minutes later he asks me to step out of the truck and to empty all of my pockets. OK…kind of confused at this point but I will play along. Nothing in my pockets so he starts sifting through stuff on my front seat. I ask him if he is allowed to do this and he says that he is if I am arrested. I ask him if I was arrested cause he never mentioned anything to me. He then asks me what I know about guns in this city and I reply absolutely nothing. This is the truth. He asks if I do drugs and I responded that I had done drugs before. He asked if I had anything on me right now and I said no cause I didn’t think that I did but as further searching of my truck would discover there was a glasses case with a syringe and a baggie with what looked like speed in the glove box. Not mine but that does not matter apparently. Now he had me with possession. I wanted to scream that this wasn’t really me, that my public persona would never get arrested…no, not the PTA Mom character…I couldn’t do it cause I did deserve to get nailed. I do use drugs and have used continually for the last 20 years and by shear luck have managed to escape the long arm of the law so to speak.

Anyway this cop continued to search but didn’t find anything else but what he found was enough to earn me a visit downtown. Now he was awfully nice and said that I wouldn’t have to stay the night, just the length of time that it took to process my paperwork. OK, fine I suppose. On our drive to the station, he pulls over into a parking lot and turns to me and says that there could be a way that these charges could just disappear if I knew what he meant. I said that I did but as I was in enough trouble tonight, I didn’t feel like getting anyone else in any additional trouble. He kept asking me about my dealer that borrows my truck like how much product would she normally keep in the house, etc. He asked me about a few other people whose names I recognized but really couldn’t be of any help and why? Because I worked so hard at separating my private and public persona!!!

Anyway after what seemed liked an eternity I was released. I think in total the whole experience took about three hours. I was pretty shattered after all was said and done and I now have an appointment with the judge at the end of September plus I am not to be in possession of any drugs or paraphernalia. Surprisingly enough I didn’t get charged with driving under suspension which is such a big relief actually but I am no longer tempting my fate and have not driven all weekend and in fact until I go and get my license back and not going to drive. You have no idea how tough this is actually – almost worse than kicking dope I think. Obviously I can no longer be so carefree with the contents of my purse. The nice officers were effective in scaring me believe you me. I think that the whole thing still seems really kind of fishy but maybe that is just paranoia. I don’t know.

OK so here I be. Feeling very embarrassed and somewhat ashamed but also confident that I am among (new) friends who will not judge but who will be there with an encouraging word or thought. Thanks to all who took the time to read this.