Dave

Dave was a nice guy. He really was. He was 19 and I was 17, and I don't remember how we met. I think through mutual friends. He was a punk rocker and had dyed black hair (he was a natural toe-head) and piercings back before that was cool. He wore Doc Martens and chains on his wallet. You know, he was leaning more towards the Goth end of punk, cause he liked make-up, too, but he was still punk. He introduced me to NoFx and other good punk music. See, at the time, I was still a big hippie. I was a Deadhead to the core, wearing my ripped jeans and Dead shirts. I smelled like Patchouli and sandalwood and wore a hemp necklace. It was the 90s.

But Dave was sweet. He liked me, a lot, and I thought it was pretty cool that he liked me. He also had drugs. He had a never-ending supply of pot, and we tried ecstasy together for the first time. Then we did it as much as we could. I was already doing a lot of LSD, and he didn't discourage me. So we just had sex and did drugs, and he could drive, which at the time I could not, so we hung out all over the place and went to the underage clubs in the city.

Because we never thought about protection, I got pregnant. I was stunned. I guess I just didn't think it could happen. I only found out because I couldn't stop throwing up, and I NEVER throw up. I went to the school clinic and she knew before I even took the test. My dad came and got me for the first time that school year, and I was in all sorts of trouble. It was November.

I didn't know what to do. I'm Catholic, and he was Atheist, but both of our parents just assumed we would get married and raise the baby. He proposed and I said yes. About a month in I shook out of my stunned silence and thought: really? A baby? I don't even have a high school diploma and both of us live with our parents! And the really messed up thing, that I have never admitted, is I didn't want to marry him (for a lot of reasons) because he was poor and he could never give me the life I thought I deserved. Only child syndrome, maybe, or just little rich girl, whatever it was, I realized a few things. I realized he wasn't the man for me, and that it was too early to have a baby.

Again, I didn't drive, so I asked him to take me to have an abortion. He didn't want to (he wanted the baby and to get married) but somehow I convinced him it was a bad idea. I remember every moment about that day, but for some reason I don't remember what happened after. I just know that by January I was back in school and he and I had broken up.

We're Facebook friends, now. He's got a good life and a beautiful wife, and I'm happy for him. Like I said, Dave is a good guy.

Digging in the boxes

I just spent the last hour and a half going through old photos and posting them on Facebook. Random stuff from high school and old family photos. My grandmother was a dame! There are some great ones of her, and I think (hope) I look a little like her. I never met her (well, I did, but she died 2 months after I was born). She's a legend in my family, and I always feel like I missed out on a really important relationship.

There are some fun ones, too, of a professor of mine in high school who died senior year. He was a great, great man, and really funny. I couldn't even bring myself to go to his funeral. I got high instead. I wish I would have gone to at least say something to his wife, but I never did. Ah, youth and drug abuse.

Speaking of which, all the pics of me I'm so stoned. My senior photo I'm obviously blitzed, and everything I wrote on my page was horribly inappropriate or just weird. I remember thinking: what the hell do I even have to say? Our senior pages were just shout outs to your friends, so I riled my roommate a bit (my favorite pastime) and said hi to my fiance at the time. Oh yeah, I was engaged senior year. Only for a little bit, and only cause I was pregnant at the time. Jesus. It's a miracle I made it out alive.

Coke is not my friend

I was thinking about relapse today in the car with Jane after the meeting. We were talking about drugs, and she asked my drug of choice. When I was young it was LSD, which I don't think is a lot of people's first choice. But in the past few years it's been coke. I love coke. I love snorting it, rubbing it on my gums, just doing it. It makes me happy.

I don't have a craving for alcohol, and I hang out around it all the time. But I think if I were presented with the opportunity to do coke, well, it would be really hard to resist. I just love everything about it. Would I relapse? There's a good possibility. Will I see coke anytime soon? Probably not. I don't know anyone who does coke anymore, and hadn't even seen it in a while.

So will I relapse? Hopefully not anytime soon.

Don't mess with the frontal lobe

"It could be that intense drinking during adolescence leads to delays or incomplete development of frontal brain regions, which in turn leads to problems with attention and executive functioning."

So drinking and drugging in high school does make you dumber, or at least effects your "executive functioning." Well, what the hell is that?

"The concept is used by psychologists and neuroscientists to describe a loosely defined collection of brain processes that are responsible for planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, rule acquisition, initiating appropriate actions and inhibiting inappropriate actions, and selecting relevant sensory information."

Ahh, I love that: inhibiting inappropriate actions. All of us drunks and druggies have inappropriate actions in our lists of amends we need to make. We all act strangely based on information we often misinterpret. It's all caused by our early non-development. We didn't develop our frontal lobes because we were pouring substances in there. Good news: it can come back.

Who are you?

Something I love about AA is that you often don't know what you're thinking until you open your mouth to share.

I hated myself as a kid. That's why I started doing drugs. I wanted to fill that hole inside of me. I don't know where it came from, but it was always there. It was just that something I lived with. Deep down inside of me there was an emptiness. Did drugs fill that hole? Kinda. I felt even worse. I seriously hated myself. All the time. I thought I was fat, ugly, stupid, you name it. Everything. And drugs didn't make it any better. But they made me forget for a minute. They made me outgoing, and outgoing made people like me.

So I developed an outgoing personality. I became an anthropologist. I studied the culture of the people around me and tried to be just like them, but I never really succeeded. I was always a little weird, a little on the outside. But people liked me. I have tons of friends! People were always drawn to me. Inside, I was miserable and couldn't stand to have people around, and sometimes I would hide from them, but people liked when I was there. So I kept doing drugs, and kept trying to be someone people would like.

Once I overdosed, I turned to alcohol to fill that need, that hole. I became bell of the bar. I danced, I sang, I flirted. I hung out with everyone and made my house the center of the party. I became the cool girl, the drunken good time girl. I was again someone people would like. I fit in. And I was miserable. This time, instead of overdosing, I tried to slit my wrists.

I was on the up trajectory with my friends across the country. I was the cool girl, the one who threw the big parties, the one who got everyone home safe at night, the one who bought the good booze or made sure everyone's glass was full. I was fun to hang out with and everyone's friend. Until I started to drink alone and go to the bar after drinking with my friends at their houses. They weren't the kind of girls to go all night; they were the have a few bottles of wine at someone's house kind of group. Which I loved, but I never had enough alcohol. So I drank at home.

And I hated myself. Here's that cursor blinking again. I hated myself.

And now, I'm in AA, I'm talking, I have a sponsor, I'm reading step books and calling people. And I'm acting like everyone thinks I should be. I'm doing the right thing so people will like me and I'll appear like one of the crowd. I'm pretending again. I'm pretending to be someone I'm not.

So who the fuck am I besides miserable?

Heroin is not your friend

Is it weird that I feel most comfortable in a room full of old heroin addicts and cons?

I always wanted to be a heroin addict. It was my goal. I would watch MTV as a kid and think about how cool it would be to be the girl in the Cherry Pie video who was chained up to the fence writhing around like she was on dope. I wanted to be her. I wanted big teased hair and to wear all leather. I wanted to get high. I didn't know anything about it, but I wanted to be high.

I first found marijuana. Gateway drug, whatever, but it was for me. I would smoke pot every day and I loved to smoke it with anything laced on top: crack, heroin, PCP, anything. I loved it laced the most. Pot alone was kinda boring. If I had to smoke just pot, I would light my bowl with my cigarette so at least I was getting something else, too. Even if it was just nicotine.

Tonight a man spoke about his heroin addiction. He had all sorts of horrible times, and now is finally clean and a dad. He's loving his life now. I can't wait till I don't want to be a heroin addict any more. I mean, I don't want to be a... well, I do think about drugs all the time. I love drugs. They make me feel so much better. I think I like drugs more than I like alcohol, but I was never that great about getting them for myself. I always had to have a boyfriend who could get me something, and I was nice enough to share with all my friends.

So yeah, there's still something in me that wants to be a heroin addict. I'm watching the cursor blink at me, and I'm thinking how crazy that statement sounds.

Drinking in school

I was thinking, when Niki was talking about boarding school, that I haven't told a lot of my boarding school stories here. I got in to trouble, but they always seemed to let me get away with it. I was expelled twice, once because I was pregnant, and once because I overdosed on LSD and lithium. Hey, at least I was taking my meds.

Yep. Overdosed. Did I tell you this already? I think I did. So I won't until later when I forget that I told it already.

I was a drinker in high school, too. I was definitely an addict. I couldn't get enough drugs to fill my system, but I was beginning my foray into drinking. We (the ladies and I) used to sit around at night and smoke and drink. We would hide in the forest after lights out and play around with drugs and alcohol. My roommate and I hid a bottle of Jack in my desk and would put a little into our diet Coke's during study hall.

There was always drugs and alcohol in school. You would think being underage, 4 miles from the nearest town (where everyone knew us - it was a really small town), and far from anything else (50 miles to the city) that it would be hard to get those things. But it wasn't. Someone always had something, and it was usually me who brought in the drugs. I'm so lucky no one else ever overdosed.

So when you think you're saving your kids by sending them to boarding school, just remember that they have all the same opportunities to fuck up there as they do at home - they're just watched more closely.

What the hell is brown sugar?

“There are various types of addictions observed these days such as consuming drugs, brown sugar, anti-depression and sleeping pills and cough syrups. However, alcohol still tops the list as 80 per cent of total addicts are alcoholics.”

This is from India, but I'm sure it speaks over the many populations of addicts. Alcohol is legal and condoned, as well is tobacco. It's easy to get your hands on both, and people think nothing of it. Except of course in America, where they've banned smoking most places like restaurants, bars, and in California, pretty much anywhere. They're trying to ban smoking in apartment buildings. Next it'll be in traffic jams. I know smoking is bad for you, and so is second hand smoke, but come on. If people want to ruin their lungs, that's their personal choice. You can't keep making up rules just to get people to quit smoking.

But what the hell is brown sugar? Perhaps that's the Indian slang for heroin?

Drugs hurt your arteries

All sorts of fun death can be associated with amphetamine use. And amphetamines aren't just the commonly abused ones like meth, but also Adderall and Ritalin.

They've found "a link between aortic dissection and amphetamine abuse," and "a relationship between a diagnosis of amphetamine abuse and heart attack," and that "Increasing rates of amphetamine and cocaine usage by young adults significantly boost their risk of stroke, with amphetamine abuse associated with the greatest risk."

Basically, heavy use of amphetamines can kill you. Duh. I know they can be a lot of fun, but that pounding in your heart can cause tears in your arteries and the possibility of heart attack and stroke, even in young people. I always worried I was going to have a heart attack after taking 7 pills of Adderall. That was the most I ever took at one time, and it was for a bachelorette party.

I arrived on Friday night, late, and slept on the couch. We got up in the morning and headed out for a long day of spa and food, and then off to a club where we had a private room. I was popping Adderall all day long just to stay awake, and plus it makes you feel less drunk no matter how much you drink. I was in school at the time for a certificate, and I had to be back Sunday morning at 9 to take an exam. I popped more pills all through the night, and stayed up till I got on the plane. I made it back, took the test (and barely passed), and then went home and crashed for 13 hours.

I love Adderall. Giving my supply away was harder than giving up my wine, and that was tough. I really wanted to keep it. Sober is different from clean, and I was only promising AA that I'd be sober, right? I didn't have a problem with drugs, so I could still take them. Only I bought them in Mexico and smuggled them over the border. They weren't my prescription, and I wasn't supposed to be taking them with my drugs. And I was taking them so I could get drunker. I was abusing drugs. Oops. So I gave them up, too. Now, I've been sober and clean for 95 days. Let's hope for more.

Opposites attract

"The lifetime prevalence of alcohol dependence is 22% for individuals with any mental disorder compared to 14% for the general population, and the odds of having alcohol dependence if a person also has any mental disorder is 2.3 times higher than if there is no mental disorder."

I don't know how reliable this article is, but it's got footnotes, so I'm going with it. It's amazing the correlation between mental illness and addiction to any substances. Apparently, duh, abused substances can create psychiatric-like symptoms, which many people with mental illness seem to crave. Who doesn't like to be manic? Well, take some coke! And when you're depressed, somehow alcohol (a depressant) makes it better.

Perhaps, like some psychiatric drugs, the addictive drug has the opposite effect on mentally ill people than it does in the general population. Like Adderall, or Ritalin. They are uppers (prescription coke, basically) and docs give them to people who are manic or hyper-active and it calms them down. So something that would make most normal people manic, has the opposite effect on mentally ill folks.

I wonder if other substances work the same way?

Addict?

Although it's Alcoholics Anonymous, and not Narcotics Anonymous, a lot of people introduce themselves as an alcoholic and an addict. I was thinking about it the other day, should I introduce myself that way? Can it be true that I'm an addict as well?

I think when I was 18 NA would have been the way to go. I was definitely an addict then. I would smoke or snort anything I could get my hands on. Thank God I never turned to shooting up, but I've done every drug that was available up until 1998. If it was there, I probably did it. And like booze, I always overdid it. I couldn't stop with one joint, or one line. I had to have as many as I could before it was time to go, wherever I was going.

My mom always told me that if I smoked pot she would know. So I came home one time super stoned and looked her right in the face to say good night. She said good night back, and I went upstairs to my room, giggling to myself. "She has no clue," I thought, and she didn't. Of course, she was so far into her own brain at the time that I think if I came home with a third eye she wouldn't have noticed.

During my drinking career I stopped smoking pot. I just didn't like it anymore. But man did I love coke and other people's prescription drugs. Emily would give me her Adderall, which is like legal coke, and I would stay up for days. When Michael went to Mexico for a bachelor party he got me some of my own, and I think took it whenever I felt like I just needed a boost. Plus, you can't really get drunk while taking it.

So am I an addict? I think I'm addicted to any substance I can get my hands on, including drugs, booze, food, cigarettes, diet Coke, running, etc. But I feel like I can barely call myself an alcoholic. I never had the experiences some have had. See next post....

It's story time, kids

I apparently have a lot on my mind today, so I'm just going to keep writing till I can't think anymore. Oblivion by blog.

One summer my best friend Emily and I went to Atlantic City with her mom and aunt, and we spent the night gambling away in a casino. We ended up in a dive bar and were approached by two Mafia looking guys. They bought us some drinks, and then introduced the fact that they had a pound of coke they were looking to share. Awesome! So we hoped into their town car (complete with driver) and headed off the their yacht in the Trump marina. Yeah, I know, Mafia.

Emily went down below deck with one guy and (she says) talked all night. Me, being the addict I am, stayed above deck drinking with the other dude, and doing all the coke I could possibly snort. Like, really. I "woke up" sitting in the chair talking about God knows what, and looked to see that 2/3 of the coke was gone. I had apparently blacked out till sunrise.

Wait, why am I lying on my blog? Oh yeah, Adam, don't look. I woke up with the dude going down on me. I don't know how he got there, but thank God I didn't have sex with him.

I went below and got Emily, and she grabbed the rest of the coke on our way out. Then I fell off the boat onto the dock. My knee was bleeding, and I was laughing my ass off, but she didn't care. "We have to get back!" She was all worried that her mom would be mad, but I figured there was no use hurrying. Either they knew we didn't come home last night, or they'd know soon enough.

Anyway, we did the rest of the coke the next week. It's amazing I didn't have a heart attack that night, or overdose again. This was in college, and I wasn't on any medication then, so no drug interactions, but still. That would have been awful. I bet those guys would have just thrown my ass overboard and left. Another night I should have been dead or raped. Another night I was incredibly lucky. Or blessed, as it might be.

God smiles on fools and drunks

There's an old adage that God smiles on fools and drunks. God protects those who can't seem to protect themselves very well.

I have been really lucky in my life. I had a solid base until I was a tween. I had a loving family and a nice middle class existence. I had good schooling and opportunities galore. Despite my best attempts at complete oblivion and stupidity, I was never raped, beaten, in a car accident, killed anyone, injured anyone, or really done more than give myself some interesting scars and burns. I have the love of family and friends. I have someone for whom I am eternally grateful to have in my life. I have a job, and a roof over my head that I can afford to keep there. I've been very lucky.

We drunks and druggies seem to be able to slip through life unaltered until that big event where everything catches up to us. Sure, we all have those early moments that should have told us something was wrong (like my little overdose), but we never listened.

God smiled on us.

And then God laughed and put that one last obstacle in our path. Jail, loss of family, car accidents, or just a realization that enough is enough. And either we made a decision to stop the madness, or we sunk lower and lower, all the while with God watching to be there when we finally came to that decision.

Thank God I listened early. Thank God I will never have to feel the pain of jail or car accidents because I'm drunk or high. I won't have a coke induced heart attack (more on that later), I won't overdose in the yard ever again (unless it's my prescriptions), and I won't throw up in the bushes because I'm wasted (maybe one day if I'm ever pregnant I'll have that opportunity again).

I have been really lucky. God has smiled on me in my foolishness. Thanks big man.

It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to

I tell my stories without any emotion, says my therapist. I just tell them like they are: facts, and nothing but the facts. But for the first time, today, I told a story and really felt my resentments creeping in. I suppose maybe it has to do with being sober enough to recognize them as feelings. So let me tell you a story.

I was kicked out of high school. Yep, I'm the proud owner of a GED. Yeah me.

One night, I had some acid left over from a concert I'd been to. If you keep acid in a peanut butter jar in your dorm fridge a) no one thinks it's acid and b) it keeps fresh for a really long time. I gave my roommate one, and took the other. What I had forgotten was I had taken my lithium that morning, too. I usually didn't take it when I knew I was going to take drugs. Those things interact, you know! I was a smart drug abuser.

We went off to an art program where we were painting these gigantic art murals for use in a program the next day. It was two weeks till school ended. I had taken all finals except one, and passed with flying colors. Suddenly in the middle of coloring, I felt a little sick. I started to get the spins, and told my roomie we needed to get out of there and off to our outdoor sleepover for astronomy club (I'm a dork, too).

After leaving, I made her go solo into the dorm to get our stuff; I didn't think I could face the people in there; I was freaking out. I saw a friend, and quickly jumped into the backseat of her car. "Just tell me when Gena comes out," I said. As soon as she reported Gena's approach, I turned my head. I remember turning it ALL the way around like the kid in Poltergeist. And that's all I remember until I woke up on the ground with Heather sitting on me shaking my shoulders and crying.

I was barefoot in the lawn of my advisor, the Dean of Students. Uh oh.

"We thought you were dead!" Said the girls surrounding me. "You've spent the last half hour shaking, foaming at the mouth, and your eyes were rolling back in your head!" Wow, that must have been scary for them! A bunch of 18 year-olds watching their friend have an overdose. No wonder they looked for an adult. I don't blame them one bit in this: I would have gone for help, too. Just watching overdoses on TV make me think just how frightening that must have been.

At the hospital, I felt fine. Minus the not being able to go inside because of the bright lights. I sat on the cool pavement in hospital slippers awaiting my fate. In the middle of the night the Head of School had to come out and give me the bad news. "I have to kick you out, you know." she started. "I'm not going to call the police, but you have to stop trying to destroy yourself, Anne. You've got everything going for you." If I had had any feelings, I would have cried. In fact, just recounting it this time, I do feel like crying. It's sad, you know? She loved me. She really thought I could succeed and what did I do? I almost killed myself looking for a high.

Oh, and then my father showed up. He's the nicest man in history. His idea of a curse is golly. I'd never seen him mad in his life. Till that night. He kicked the construction wall at the hospital and didn't speak to me the two hours home, nor for the next few days.

All of these people reacted in perfectly acceptable ways. So why am I bitter? Someone who got kicked out for booze two weeks before me got her diploma later in the year. Why? Cause she had money. At least, that's what my resentment says. Scholarship kids don't get forgiven. I still talk to the Head of School and the Dean of Students, and they still love me, but I'm still mad, deep down. I want to petition them for a real diploma. I want to be a real graduate of my school. Not that a GED is bad, but I worked really hard for that degree, and I threw it all away.

And now, I can finally feel this pain. It hurts. Look how stupid I've been? Look at what danger I put myself in, and the situations I exposed young girls to. They never should have to see that kind of stuff. No one should have. I am so thankful I didn't end up in jail, and I should be thankful I'm alive. I am thankful. I think what I need is to acknowledge my pain over this, and cry it out. I need to feel it and let it go.