Day 51/33 - "And then there were change..."

Saturday, 13 January 2006 - Day 51/33 - "And then there were change..."

Day 51 has arrived and it is time for a slight change to the format. From now on I'll be posting the entries on my recovery from Monday to Friday. Even now there are so much more to tell and as time goes by I hope to reveal all with the same honesty I have up to now. Saturdays, however I'll be posting an entry from related heroin stories, which I hope will inspire you as much as they do me! And every second Sunday there will be a new poll. I hope you'll participate to learn more about the drug habits of the blogging world.

I'll post a few options for a new avatar tomorrow. Hope you'll help me chose a new one for the next 50 days!

Day 50/32 - "Give me a... FIFTY!"

Friday, 12 January 2007 - Day 50/32 - "Give me a... FIFTY!"

Has anything changed? In 50 days of Heroin Recovery... how much of that old life is still being lived?

I walk through the house sometimes and when everybody is busy somewhere I get these flashbacks of how it used to be: How I used to wait for everybody to get away from the kitchen so that I could sneak out of the back door and get my drugs. I imagine sometimes when I walk out of my room they time me to see how long I take to get back. How much time do I spend in the kitchen? Do I go out the back door and if so, where do I go?

Do they wonder where I go on Saturdays? I have this routine where I go to watch a movie at the cinema every Saturday. As I've always done I go alone. Do they wonder if I actually go? How long do I stay there? Who do I meet? What do I buy?

Or what do I buy when they give me money? I don't get to handle money that much anymore. I don't have control over any of my accounts, credit cards, loans - nothing! But then again, they are all maxed out, over limit, overdue - so I can't do much with them anyway. When I go out I have to ask for money, a sort of allowance. The amount usually differs depending on where I go but sometimes it is the equivalent of what heroin would have costed before. When I take the money I wonder if they think I'm going to buy heroin with it!

When I'm out with friends and I drive back home alone, my friends call to check up on me. They phone to make sure I got home safe and didn't do something stupid along the way - like buy heroin, of course. When I go home I try and drive as fast as possible. I always anticipate that call from my mother or from my friends asking why I'm taking so long? Did I stop somewhere? It only takes mere minutes to get drugs - any delay could make anybody suspicious!

When I get home it always seems asif my parents are looking at my arms. Trying to catch a track mark without grabbing my arms and checking. I feel so self-conscious moving my arms in any position. If I fold it, do they think I am hiding something? When I walk into the door and the light falls on my eyes - how big are my pupils? If I'm tired - how sleepy do I look? Do they think I just took Heroin?

50 days have passed and still I find myself paranoid at my own actions and the thoughts of others. The lifestyle I lived before is still with me everyday. I am still reminded of what I did sitting here, moving anywhere in the house or going out.

I celebrate today because I have reached a point where I never thought I could be. 50 days ago this day was unthinkable. My mind could not grasp a time where heroin would not be ruling my life. I only hoped I had the strength to get here and now I am here! But on this day I realize that the fight is only beginning. Every day brings a new phase, a new challenge, a new obstacle to overcome. Some as a direct result of my heroin use, others subsequent affects of it.

To my friends and my family who stood by me for these 50 days. The good days, the bad days, the depressing and the sore days. To the people who looked after me, protected me, locking me away sometimes. To the bloggers who read and don't comment, to the comforting words of those that do or to those that e-mail or instant message. To all those that has been with me these past 50 days or to those that stumbled upon the blog a few days back - I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there supporting me!

I imagine the next 50 days will be spend much more in the real world. Returning more and more to the life of a normal person but so being faced with more and more obstacles that will try and hurt my recovery. I find comfort in the fact that I write this blog today and I am willing to fight off anything thrown my way. I am willing to go to any lengths to be writing this blog and thanking you again in another 50 days!

Day 49/31 - "A hundred and one (part 2)"

Thursday, 11 January 2007 - Day 49/31 - "A hundred and one (part 2)"

Continues from Part 1...

After reading Part 1, I doesn't really seem like I give my parents as much time to heal as I want for myself. That was not my intention with the first part. I decided to include it as a background for part 2...

When my mother and I both calmed down and spoke rationally about it, I began to understand a bit of where she was coming from. She didn't just worry about me taking again, even though that was the first thing she said to me. I have been overly depresed, sore and tired the last few days. Going to Joburg meant more than a three hour drive there, meeting the whole day and then the drive back - all my myself. So, the concern wasn't just a relapse but more if I could physically handle such a long day alone.

So, it might seem that I am very selfish in my reaction but I hope that you see my side aswell. I beg of you not to take this as a 'cry for help' or 'attention'. I am not faking my own death (as that is becoming popular these days)... this is my life... this is my heroin recovery!

I love my parents. I love them more than I love anybody else on this earth. They are the reason I am alive today. I might have been the one that decided to stop taking heroin - but THEY kept me alive to get to the day where I could make that decision. I know for a fact I would have been in jail or dead if it weren't for them helping me through this time. And while they were helping me, giving me everything they had, I was using, abusing and hurting them. Day by day I continued to crush them without showing any remorse. I can never, not for one day, by any action make up or repay them for that - EVER!

But I do one thing even if it is for us all to sleep better at night - I stay clean! Seeing my mother like I did this morning - breaks my heart. Seeing their faces when I go out or when I come back at night, those questioning, hoping eyes, praying that I didn't take again - breaks my heart. It is when I see them like that again, that the thoughts of 'why am I doing this?' runs in my mind. I am finished. I am totally exausted. The fighting I have in me each day barely gets me to bed at night. Tomorrow I go through it all again - because I know I will never be here again. I will never feel like this ever again. But more importantly, and this is the reason for the blog entry, I will never hurt my parents like this again!

If that day counter resets to one - you will not see me make an entry for day two. People often critizie suicide because you leave people behind that care about you, that have to hurt and wonder while you are gone. My parents will not hurt or wonder when I am gone. They will know! They will know that they will rather have a dead son than a heroin addict again!

Day 48/30 - "A hundred and one (part 1)"

Wednesday, 10 January 2007 - Day 48/30 - "A hundred and one (part 1)"

Why am I even doing this? Why am I putting myself though this? Why can't I just get into my car right now and go get high and forget about the world?

This is how I felt this morning. I can't even recall all the thoughts or feelings surrounding it. I can just remember one thing. My mother crying. Crying like she caught me with a needle in my arm. Hurting like she found me stealing money from her handbag. Day 48 and I stood next to her while she cried, speechless. It felt like nothing changed!

I need to go to Johannesburg tomorrow for business. This is very last minute. I am the only person that can represent the company on this issue - so there is really no one else to send. When I was told this, I immediately thought to myself that my parents might not like the idea. They might have their concerns but, worst case scenario is I'll get the usual warnings and all is good. After all, I have been showing nothing but progress leading up to this point.

When I told my mother I had to go she went balistic - I mean hysterical. I didn't know what to say. She stood there crying, carying on, on how I could even consider going! What if I took again? And how can I blame her for feeling this way?

I sat there thinking how I've been waking up depressed and sore and tired every morning. How I go out with friends and my parents still sit up worrying if I'm going to take again. How I still have to explain every move I make, every sent I spend! A trip like this comes along and the first thing she says to me is 'what if I take again?', 'how can they trust me?', 'how can I go alone?' If this is what I do to myself and more importantly my parents WITHOUT taking heroin - then why did I stop? I am still going to hurt tomorrow, anyway! They are still going to worry tomorrow, anyway! Their tears, distrust, warnings - it will all be there tomorrow, anyway!

Then why am I doing this?

Part 2 continues...

Day 47/29 - "Taking again"

Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - Day 47/29 - "Taking again"

There are still good and bad days when it comes to the pain of the withdrawal. It is a topic for another day, but I'm still withdrawing. I used to wonder if it wouldn't be better if I just took again to see if the pain would go away. You know how it goes, just once, just one time and then never again. Just once to have that feeling again, just once to let all the physical and emotional pain go away.

I don't recall thinking about any of this on the Monday I last took. Maybe it was a part of the motivation. I was struggling with the pain for quite a while and it wasn't looking like it was lighting up. Heroin would take it all away!

It did - take the pain away. For a while at least. It was an infomercial promising to relieve you of all your pain, all your worries, all of it gone - or your money back! But the side affects were still there. It still hurt the people around me, more now than it did before. It still dragged me down to an intellect-, a hygiene-, a zombie lebel of a person I was never supposed to be. I would come down off heroin eventually and the hurt would just have increased. It solved nothing!

Or perhaps not nothing. Statistically I would have taken sooner or later. Taking that day made it clear to me how dangerous heroin was to me now. It wasn't the slow acting poison like it used to be, it was rapid now. It would have no mercy when it came to dragging me down to those levels again. I don't deny that there was a part of me that still wanted to take one day, someday in the future. But on that Monday that part of me died!

Day 46/28 - "The Wall at the Mall"

Monday, 8 January 2007 - Day 46/28 - "The Wall at the Mall"

I never knew how fast it was. It took between 2 - 4 seconds before you felt the rush throughout your whole body. When I was withdrawing and I injected it took away the pain immediately, the pain disappearing all over your body as the heroin spreads through it. It was a like a snake bit me and the poison was numbing my body until I felt nothing.

One of the places I usually felt nothing was the local mall. The parking lot at the mall was one of the places I used to spike heroin. I was there again, last week. I sat on the sidewalk and looked at the parking places. It was usually the destination of every outing. My first call when I left the house, or sometimes when I was still in the house, was to the dealer. My first stop was at the pickup point, usually just around the corner and then I stopped at the mall. Sometimes I didn’t even make it to the mall. The heroin haunted me and I impatiently stopped next to a road somewhere and injected there.

I felt strangely proud of myself sitting there in the parking lot last week. I was on the other side of a wall I never thought I would get over. Every time I visited the mall it kept getting higher and higher. Last week I was there alone. I could have so easily picked up the phone, made that call and landed up on the wrong side of that wall again – but I didn’t want to!

I still think about it everyday. The thoughts have changed a lot, but not a day goes by that it doesn’t come into play. Sometimes the thoughts are stronger than others, sometimes the craving is too. But I have come to point where “No”, is the default to the questions I ask in my head. “Never” is the response to the cravings in my body. Rejection is what I show to the other side of that wall!

Day 45/27 - "He knew"

Sunday, 7 January 2007 - Day 45/27 - "He knew"

He knew he was going to die. He knew that heroin was what he was looking for his whole life and he would never be able to separate from it. He knew each time he pushed the needle into his collapsing veins that sooner or later his organs, his body, his life would all fail him. One by one they would leave him until the only thing that remained was the last bit of breath he blew from his body, that and the damage of heroin.

I can remember him like I saw him yesterday. It was a sight that most people should never get to see, especially not his parents. He was lying there, wild eyes, yellowish face, sunken eyes. I had never seen anybody like this before. He was delusional, most of the times he didn’t know where he was – but he kept saying “Sorry!” Sorry for the things he has done, sorry for letting it all go this far, sorry for dying.

He knew he was going to die. He wrote in his diary prior to his death that he knew he wasn’t going to live a long life. He told me on several occasions how he couldn’t stand the withdrawal and would rather keep on taking the drugs than face it. I think he knew his body wouldn’t be able to take much more.

I visited him in hospital that day. I looked at him lying there. We weren’t the best of friends but he was always good to me. He stood up for me, protected me – we spend a lot of time together. And there I was hours after taking heroin myself helplessly staring at him, unable to protect him.

In the midst of my emotionless staring I thought to myself I don’t want to end up like this. I don’t want to put my parents through this, this stress, this pain, this uncertainty. I don’t want to die, but I don’t know how to stop. I thought to myself if there was a switch I could flip to make it all go away I would have done it a long time ago. But even with him lying there, staring death in the face neither of us could switch it off. The first chance either of us got we would have gone to find heroin.

But he never made it that far. His funeral was a week after that day. I entered the church with not much recollection of how much heroin I took just moments before. My eyes were dim and my pupils were hardly visible. I sat down and nodded off occasionally as the heroin spread through my body, listening to the story of his life.

A story of a boy that lost his life at such a young age. Heroin only had him in its clutches for 10 months, 7 of those he was on heroin, but during that time he used 10 times as much as me. Thinking back at the times we took heroin together I realize that each time we took it was minutes closer to his death – to mine... He knew that heroin was what he was looking for his whole life and he knew most of all he would never be able to separate from it. He knew he was going to die!

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