Thursday, 22 February 2007 – Day 91/14 – “The Postbox (Part 3)”
After weeks of preparation and days of pre-moving we are now busy with the big office move. Will tell more about this tomorrow. Also, yesterday was 90 days in the recovery and today is 2 weeks clean AGAIN. Now, here is the conclusion to ‘The Postbox’…
I phoned my friend and told him my dad was outside and he should wait before picking anything up or dropping anything off. The shocking news echoed in my head: “Too late… Your dad saw me!” Apparently he parked a few meters from the house, walked over to the postbox, reached in and my dad saw him. He ran back to the car while my dad was calling him and he drove off!” I froze. No matter how we spun this story. No matter how hard we were going to try and lie – this was going to be trouble.
I used heroin just the day before as well. If they checked my arms for track marks they would surely find them. Seeing my friend at the postbox screamed suspicion – they were going to check my arms for sure. And so they did. My dad came into the house and wanted to know what my friend was doing there. I denied everything of course. In my drugged and delusional mind they had no other choice but to believe me, right?
Here they thought they had me locked up safe and sound away from the poison that was slowly killing me. All hell was loose in the house and one of the mayor ways I sneaked the drugs into the house – was reluctantly revealed. Nobody ever thought I would go that far – including me! It is absolutely amazing how resourceful a drug addict can be. No matter what they tried, how many walls they tried to put up – there was always a way to get around it.
My dad always said that if I really wanted to stop, I would tell them the ways I did it – before they caught me. I would come clean and help them, help me! I struggled for months to get rid of heroin and every time it came back like it never left, making it even harder to stop. I was beginning to give up hope – give in to the critics who say that it only ends in death.
Then came the day I started this recovery, the one you are all currently part of. I revealed all the methods I used, places I scored, ways I got money. I was honest for a change. I told all before they ‘caught me out’. That was the day I knew everything was going to be okay. No matter what it took, how hard it was going to be – I was going to stop taking heroin!
Day 91/14 – “The Postbox (Part 3)”
Day 90/13 – “The Postbox (Part 2)”
Wednesday, 21 February 2007 – Day 90/13 – “The Postbox (Part 2)”
Continues from Part 1…
Some of the dealers stayed across from me, but they weren’t always available. There was a time we had to get the heroin from the runner about 4 km’s from my house. That made quickly running across the street and scoring impossible. But I had help. My fellow heroin addict friend and I took drugs together a lot. Each one of us wanted to get better, wanted to be rid of the clutches of the addiction – but neither of us could ever get that far. So, we always helped each other because we both knew better than anybody else what the other one was going through! The pain; the craving; the desperation!
We had a plan. I would sneak out of the house. Put money in the postbox. He would come and pickup the money, get the drugs and drop them off. This routine he skillfully completed on a regular basis, sometimes 2 or 3 times on one day. Very often I got the baggie of heroin, other times he prepared it beforehand and I just got the needle – ready for injection.
It was a Saturday and the same events were set in motion. I sneaked out and put the money in the postbox. My parents usually work in the garden on Saturdays which made the possibility of being caught out so much greater. I phoned my friend. Sometimes I didn’t have my phone and used the landline or on odd occasion I sent a SMS over the internet – but we found some way of communicating. He always took his time, or maybe I was just being an impatient drug addict, I don’t know. The mere 20, 30, 40 minutes it took him felt like days. Days and days of relentless pain while anticipating the arrival of the drugs.
My mother came into the house. She heard a noise outside. My heart skipped a beat. I looked out the window and saw my dad outside. My mom said she could have sworn she heard an animal, probably kittens, outside somewhere. I can’t remember exactly where they found them… but I know it was close to the postbox.
... Concludes tomorrow
Day 89/12 – “The Postbox (Part 1)”
Tuesday, 20 February 2007 – Day 89/12 – “The Postbox (Part 1)”
I haven’t been there in three months. I haven’t been consciously avoiding it… but I have been avoiding going there. Not so much because I’m afraid of memories or passive instigation but because I don’t want anybody to question my presence there. It was one of the mayor ways I got the drugs into the house. This is the three part story about The Postbox…
It was quite a while that passed since I told my parents about my Heroin Addiction. We were all hopeful that this problem would soon be gone. I saw the doctor. Got the medicine. I was going to get clean! I still had access to my accounts at that point and could basically come and go as I pleased. My parents thought I was doing great but in the meantime I never stopped taking. Slowly as they learned I wasn’t as honest as I pretended to be – the walls closed in and I was confined to the house and my room.
This was the same room I would spend countless hours lying on the bed too sore to move, too depressed to stand up, to ashamed to show my face. This was the room I would stand and arrange for the next drop off. This was the room I would shoot up heroin.
By this time my parents were watching me closely. They couldn’t really tell if I was using just by looking at me – because I was on so much medicine. This is an art they perfected since then. They soon learned that even though I looked fine – I could still be using. But they could never understand how I seemingly stopped for so long and then just started again.
What they didn’t know at the time. What they couldn’t know. Was that I never stopped. I was sneaking the drugs in!
Part 2 and 3 continues the rest of the week…
