Withdrawl has a minion!

Addiction the Muck Spirit

This story is about Drugs, Addiction, Arrests and mentions of Prostitution with Swearing.

Also I'm sorry your name is spelled wrong. I adopted you from the pound when I was young and naïve and unable to spell.

*****************

My father..... my brothers... my uncles they all told me the same thing.

I can't get help until I want it.

I never wanted it.

I. Was. Fine.

I drank when no one was home.

I shot up at school with the rest of my friends - In the boys bathroom, In the gyms change room, behind the portables.

Snorted to make mother's death a haze of dreams.

I was fine.

I didn't need help.

Not when I was puking on a filthy floor of some unknown bars bathroom. When I should have been in school.

Not when I was quivering, begging for more. To pay in ways that would make a prostitute blush.

Soiled in my own filth, clawing at the walls, wailing in haunting tones as the poison in my veins failed to get me to that plateau of bliss.

Drinking things I found in gutters, stealing from my own family to get that next fix.

I didn't want help. I never NEEDED help.I was fine.

I was fine.

I refused it when I found myself covered in vomit under bright lights of some clinic - brining me back from the dead.

When the cold metal bit my wrists as someone yammered long windily at me about Miranda and lights. To this day I still do not know who Miranda is.

Curled in a ball, soaked in sweat while shivering with goosebumps as bugs crawled under my skin.

Scratching at my own shaggy matted hair, trying to drag the lice that I was sure was in there out.

Screaming at the noises around me. The shadows that took familiar forums, taunting me.

Begging for a fix, for release from the horrors that withdrawal brought.

Soiling myself in all ways unable to even get up out of my mess.

Sobbing at the pain, the pressure, the burning in my head.

I know I lost track of time.

One day I was a teenager, watching my father beat my mother.
The next I was an adult in jail getting hosed down because I was too gross for the guards to dare touch me. I don't blame them. I was a disgusting mess of bodily fluids.
I was clean in Jail. For two years.

Two long years. And what did I do once I got paroled?
I smoked, I drank and as soon as I saw someone I knew....
I went right back to it like a long lost lover crawling back to a cheating ex.

My brother dragged my sorry ass out of drug dens. Sometimes higher than the moon.

Other times OD'ing and tossing me in a hospital... of sorts... maybe a clinic?

One time, he told me he put me in the trunk of his new car so I didn't smell up the backseat.
THIS is the love that my family had left for me.
One brother. Throwing me in the trunk of his car while I was OD'ing to get me help.

Most these days have one or two siblings.
In my family, there's my 3 brothers, two uncles, an aunt and 16 others between. Not all biological. Some like me, like the triplets, we are adopted.
Yet, only one was left dragging my sorry ass out of a gutter and into his fucking trunk.

I think that was about when I was starting to realized I was what I was.

It took seven years for me to get serious and ask for help.

Seven years from when I realized I was a fucking joke to ask for help.

I was on a very thin thread and kept well away when I reached out to my brother.

I never thought I would hear him ask 'Are you sure?' so many times that I almost yelled no just to make him stop.

But he didn't.

Kaden came for me.

He came, and he put me into some .... hospital?

I didn't go cold turkey. Not like I did in jail. They let me come down easy.
It was very much like jail. Little cell like rooms - but no room mates. Big windows on the doors.
No privacy from the staff. Other patients yes, but never staff. If they couldn't watch you from a window, they watched with cameras.
I was livid. I was pissed. I took their medicine and swallowed bitterly with contempt.
I relaxed... no... I learned to relax. To meditate, to find a happy place within my mind.

My brother visited me, not often but he sat on one side of the protective glass and talked to me. It was short at first, then longer.

I stayed in the institution for a long long long time. I remember mere months, but my brother says years.

The final months, I had started to cook, I was unable to sew with the tremors that now haunted my hands, but I could type.
The tremors couldn't let me be steady doing much more but they didn't distort from the keys, I took up copying from paper to computers before it became obsolete. Auto-spell check is amazing so helpful. All but that duck. It is NEVER DUCK!

The group and individual therapies let me open up, let me express myself. The cooking let me return the hospitality by serving other patients and even the staff.

I was moved from floor to floor before, but I never really remembered those, not until I moved into the 'on grounds housing.' It was like reaching the pinnacle of achievements. It was.... It was moving from elementary school to high school in a big leap. I was so proud of myself.

My brothers, not just Kaden, but brothers and cousins came to see me, to visit me in my little apartment. I cooked for them.

They invited me to a family gathering.

INVITED.

ME!

My family invited me to meet everyone I missed- and I learned I was this ghost of an uncle who was mentioned sparingly around the littles all their lives.

So much I had missed out on. When did I become an uncle even? Twin near adults were the most wary, and I don't blame them. They wouldn't have known the good stories of me until the last years of high school. And I mean really. 'Doing better' and 'in an institution' isn't exactly a shining example of 'best uncle of the year.' I accept that, I own that. It's fine. I have a lot of ground to cover and it won't be alright all at once.

Turns out I was a father too. That stung. That stung more than I wanted to admit. And the worst part? It wasn't because I missed out on these two kids lives, it was I had no clue who the woman were or when I banged them. Not a memory what so ever. Ancestry blood sites are great, but sure makes you feel like a miserable shit when you see yourself, see the test results and have to ask the woman.. 'Who are you?'

The older of my kids was most understanding. Conceived and born sometime between dropping out of school and my first arrest for possession with intent, she gets it. She has questions but isn't expecting a magical father, or friend. That is good, I'm no way there yet to be any of that. Her mom is even good, was young enough to have her parents force her to clean her act up while she was expecting and kick the weak habits before it was ingrained too deep. She is a lot younger than me, I am assuming I was the reason she got pulled into the muck to start with. Selling to my schoolyard chums to score cheaper for me. There is no ill will between us and that makes it all so much better. I talk to them both once a month on the phone for about two hours or however long her questions drag on. Her mother too, we chat. It's nice. It is never stressful and visits are a few times a year at the girls request.

But the 10 year old? He was angry at me. He still is, blames me for not being there and all the stuff I should have been. So far, there hasn't been any getting through to him. I told his mom, maybe it was best I not try, but she still wants contact, so I call the last Friday of every month. She, the boy and me, we all meet up once a month for a stressful brunch outside where the boy lashes out and then demands hugs and play catch. I know he's suffering from something, I don't know what, but something. His mom isn't a perfect star, she suffers too. And from the yellow of her eyes, I wonder if she still is. I keep things short because really, I am not what they want. An instant bread winner. An instant father and husband. I ain't that. I ain't ready. Then oh then, she asks for money!

Who is going to hire an addict -recovering- but still an addict. There are days the drink calls me, stronger than the junk and funk and poison I swore my soul too. But it still calls. I am not disillusioned to think I have kicked the habits and am all better. No, it's a daily struggle and will be for all my life. It will just get easier, has gotten easier every day.

Back to the money, a job. I live on grounds of an institution, I can move out, but there is very few places who accept addicts - recovering and not, I still look like an addict. A convict. Two years was the longest, but it was still two year with probations and arrests before and after. My credit is shot, my family bless them, are not giving me handouts. Kaden even told me, to sink or swim, no one was going to give me anything but support and the occasional ride. I cursed them for a while until I sat down and thought about it. What would I do with money from someone else? How strong was the pull? Would I go back... you bet your fucking ass I would.

So I stay on grounds and work for my meals, my rent and my dog. I got a small dog to help me. She's a funny little small thing that follows me everywhere. Deaf as a post and smart enough to stay away from the moving parts of the lawn mowers. Each week I get thirty dollars for extras. Most of it goes to dog food and vet bills, those are not covered in my wages. Nor is any bus fair or luxury expenses like movies, take out, that sort of thing. I am suppose to get sixty, but between the two kids, I pay child support. Fifteen each. Yeah, fifteen dollars. If I didn't see or call they'd get more. I would be more willing to give more money and not see them.
No, don't get me wrong, I would like to be in their lives, but like I said, I am just not there yet. Not mentally capable to be there yet, maybe never according to my therapist. Drugs take a toll on the brain and change it in different ways. I never had an adult brain, I started drink and drugs in my early teens and didn't stop until I was 40. I am a train-wreck. It's a pity. I am pitiful. But I don't mind. I know what I am. In fact I have a part in a lecture to high school students coming up about drugs and the dangers. I am a shining example of success. Who'da-thought?

So here I am, 42, two kids I try hard not to see. A dog, living at a place for addicts and what not to get clean and sober and be helped when they want it. I have no real income, a job that is while rewarding, is charity to just have me doing something meaningful with my life. I have one tooth left in my mouth, I can't smell or taste anymore. My cheeks are sunken in, my eyes too. I have color in them, but the flesh will never fill out to look healthy. My hair - what hasn't fallen out is shaved with the salt and pepper stubble, heavy on the salt at that. I try to shave, but the scarred lines on my cheeks and around my nose make it hard not to cut myself. So I have a stubbly beard going on. Even though I'm clean and sober, my nails are stained yellow and I have yet to get the black out from under my nails. I have no idea what they are. My thin arms and legs don't gain much mass from working. Maybe they will if I keep it up by the time I'm fifty? Maybe then I won't look like a better smelling junkie.

Who know. I just have to make it to fifty and find out won't I?

There's that smell again.

Someone on the grounds is smoking things that aren't allowed.

Makes my mouth water and that need prickling at the back of my mind.

Time to take Princess for a walk off grounds. To get away from the sweet smell.

I grab the leash and my little deaf dog dances around my feet.
Bless her.

Profile by:Thundercracker based upon KiRAWRa's Design | Name Text by: KiRAWRa | Story by: Thundercracker | Background by: MichaelGaida