by Amanda
December 5, 2001

No matter how much people disagree about various topics, there are always certain common bonds that we all share. As addicts, Methadone patients and recovering people, we can all say with complete conviction that we know what it means to be so close to death that we could almost smell the foul breath of the grim reaper sneaking up behind us at any given moment. There is a familiarity between patients that I could never fully describe. It's as if we can just glance at one another and instinctively know what the other is feeling. It is this familiarity that keeps some people around at times. I have seen on many occasions when someone is ready to run out the door because of some disagreement or conflict with someone and it is always one of US that stops them and says. “Hey, slow down, I have been there…” I remember being that person heading for the hills and I will tell you what stopped me time and time again.

It was YOU that kept me here. At a time when I was dragging my ass to the clinic in the morning still feeling my last shot, it was your smile that made me think there was another life for me. If you don't know why I am referring to you here, think for a second. Think about the times you stood in line and talked about your take homes and how thankful you were that you had finally received them. Think about the reassuring look you gave me when I could barely keep myself in an upright position. You must remember the groups we sat in together when you kept tapping me on the leg to wake me up and I would look at you with annoyance but also with gratitude. Maybe you can't remember these things because they didn't seem like much, but I just want you to know that they meant a lot to me.

I am sure glad I finally found someone like you because I was starting to think that you were all like this other person I know. I know that this person will certainly not realize I am talking to him because I am sure he doesn't even realize that he had had an impact on me. The person who stood in line with me and looked down on me with disgust when I couldn't keep my eyes open probably doesn't know that I did see those looks from behind my heavy eyelids. I not only saw them, I felt them. I remember sitting in groups with this person and feeling my face turn red when he would refer to the junkies who were “taking up space and had no desire to get clean.” The time I was really humiliated was when he actually announced out loud that he couldn't stand being in the same room with someone who was so obviously wasted and couldn't keep her eyes open for even one hour. I guess he didn't realize that I was struggling with staying clean and that the Methadone didn't seem to be doing anything for me. Maybe he didn't know that I had just spent last night and the previous ten years of my life on the street and I had no idea how to relate to people who weren't getting high. Maybe if that person had known that I was still selling my ass everyday to get by they would have gone a little easier on me.

I knew that I was different than these people. They obviously had it easier than I did because they were all clean and I just could never imagine me being clean for one hour let alone one year. Then I realized that they were all probably lying. After all, junkies don't get clean. Everybody knows that. Junkies use until they die and all these people sitting here looking down on me are just better at hiding it than I am. Sure, I did think that their smiles looked real and they did appear healthy but they all have to be using on the side, right?

Sitting in that group that this clinic made me go to only reaffirmed the fact that there was no hope for me. I couldn't even fake it like these people so obviously were. I would look at the clock on the wall and count down the minutes until I could get out of that place and go cop a bag. It was really difficult to focus on anything else because the ache in my back and the chill up my spine would remind me every time. I guess these people are really stupid too because they actually think I am high when really I am feeling like I want to die. That lethargic feeling always preceded the sickness and the bullshit Methadone barely did a thing to make me feel any better. If anything, all it did was make me have to shoot more and more dope to get well. I was really barely hanging on yesterday and now today I feel even worse. When is this stuff going to start working anyway? Those nurses keep telling me to give it time and my counselor can't imagine why I won't stop using. She keeps telling me that I must not have the desire to get clean. Maybe she thinks I ENJOY the life I lead? Laying down with some stinking guy and letting him do whatever he wants to me so long as he pays for it is not exactly my idea of a good time. This life is about survival. My life has boiled down to one constant truth. I need to do whatever I can whenever I can in order to make some money to buy dope. Maybe this lady sitting across from me in her clean suit and manicured nails thinks I like sleeping on dirty mattresses crawling with lice. After all, I guess I can see why she thinks I have no desire to get out of this place I am in. Who would want to leave this? Sitting in that freezing cold hole in the wall and counting the roaches should be an Olympic event. The throbbing pain I have come to know as a constant companion from the bleeding abscesses on my arms would be hard to give up. Not to mention the infections and illness and CONSTANT TEROR. When I do manage to find a place to sleep, it is always so exciting to wonder how I am going to be when I wake up. Am I going to be naked and lying in a pool of urine after I had just been raped? Will the two pairs of pants, one shirt and one pair of shoes I own be gone too? I guess these little mysteries are what keeps life exciting and keeps us addicts on our toes. We would not want to get complacent in our lives after all…

I guess I sound angry. I do realize that I have no right to be angry with anyone else considering I am the one who put myself in this position. I am the one who chose to stick needles in my arms and therefore, I have to pay the price for my actions. What I can't get out of my head however is WHY I chose to do all this to myself. I had a good life once upon a time. I lived in a nice home and had a family who loved me. Sure, I had some problems but doesn't everybody? What would make me want to throw it all away to go live like an animal and feel like I would rather be dead? Even more importantly, why do I keep doing it? Why don't I just stop? I guess I will never know…

So, I come to this clinic everyday and drink this stuff that doesn't so a thing and every so often, I get to hear how I am taking up space. This morning I was handed a letter that I have thirty days to stop using or else I have to find another treatment program. They say that I am just not ready for treatment since I consistently submit dirty urines. I want to laugh when I read that because I just find it so ridiculous that they expect me to give clean urines. I mean, do they REALLY think they have offered me a viable alternative to my lifestyle? I know there are people out there who feel that we need to go “cold turkey” to really prove that we mean business about getting clean. Believe me, I tried that. The last time I tried I ended up at the emergency room because I slashed my wrists. I guess I really didn't prove anything that time except that I am weak.

So, I stand here in line once again and try to remain upright and YOU walk in with that smile and that walk of assurance. I am just in awe of you. I even start to think that you really are clean and not just lying like all those other people in my group. When you asked me how I was feeling I could see that you really wanted to know and weren't just making conversation. Rather than just giving my standard answer of “okay”, I open my mouth and it's as if the floodgates have opened. Through my tears I explain that I am just barely hanging on here and that I cannot understand how I am supposed to stop using. Then you asked me that question that nobody had ever asked me before. It threw me a little because I didn't think that the answer really made a difference. When you asked me what dose I was on, I assumed you were just curious. I told you that I was on the forty milligrams that the clinic started me on. That was the amount that they said would hold me and I didn't think to question it since they are the professionals and they know more than I do. Not one second after the words, “forty milligrams” come out of my mouth, I saw the corners of your mouth start to turn up and a twinkle in your eyes. I just assumed that you were going to laugh at me for thinking I was sick when I was obviously getting a dose that should suit me. When you put your arm around me and said, “I think I can help you” I really felt that I had just been taken under your wings and for the first time in a very long time I felt a sense of hope. For hours I listened to you open up a whole new world to me. I listened to you talk about optimal dosing, clinic abuse, state and federal regulations and uneducated and misinformed clinic staff and though much of what you said was a little over my head, I heard you and I was amazed…

I never in a million years thought that my problems were dose related. I just assumed that I was different than everyone else. I assumed that I was just sicker and could not be helped. I even started to believe the counselors after awhile and thought that maybe I really didn't have the desire to get clean. I was always told by people who went to twelve step meetings that in order to get clean, I had to really want to stop. When I said that to you, you said, “Look, none of us wants to really stop. We just want the PAIN to stop. The desire to not use comes later.” Then you told me that I had been lied to all this time and it was about time I found out the truth about myself. You told me that I had a disease and that it wasn't my fault that I was the way I was. It all became so clear to me all of a sudden when you taught me that. I finally had the answers to all those questions I used to ask myself endlessly. I knew that I didn't do this to myself.

The people who I thought were lying about being clean had also found salvation in a proper dose of Methadone and were really doing well. It is the nature of addicts to assume that when they are doing poorly, everyone is as well. Though, when I asked why those people had treated me with such disrespect, you said it was simple. They had done what so many addicts do after a little time clean. They had forgotten where they came from. All too often, once the smoke has cleared and people are feeling better than they have in years, they lose sight of where they were when they first came in and that the people they are looking down are spitting images of who they once were. Perhaps they just don't like what they see when they look in a mirror…

I found out that you were really clean and had been so for a very long time. You didn't make a deal with the devil, you didn't have to attend shrinks, meetings or go away for long periods of time. All you did was educate yourself. You found out what worked for others and tried it that way. You met other people on Methadone and began working to make things better for all of us. You work with patients, clinic staff, doctors and legislators. You attend conferences and spend countless hours online researching and sharing ideas with other people just like you. You devote your life to us and for that I am grateful. When I told you that you were a true angel, you modestly said, “No, I am just an advocate trying to help others. Now you can repay me by helping someone else”.

And so, here I am months later on triple the dose I was on when I came in and my life has changed so dramatically. I am off the streets and living in a real home for the first time in over a decade. I have my own family now and have repaired much of the damage I had done when I was sick. I work now at a real job and I am able to support myself and family doing something that makes me feel worthwhile. However, those are just the physical changes. More importantly, I can look in the mirror and smile for I finally like the person looking back at me. I can close my eyes at night and know that in the morning I will wake up in my bed and not feel the horror of dope-sickness. Through my ability to feel good physically and have that area of my disease handled, I have begun to work on the things inside of myself that have been damaged by my disease. I am growing and changing everyday and I have truly come back to this world reborn.

Now, once a week when I stand in line for my medication and my take homes, I look at all the faces around me and try to focus on the ones showing the most pain. Amidst all the activity and conversation, there is always that one beaten soul who can barely manage to speak. It is that person that I will focus my attention on and ask, “So, what dose do they have you on?”

I know I can't help everyone and some days, I can only help myself. However, I am hopeful that I can do for another what was so freely done for me. I am hopeful that one day through me, another advocate will be born for that is how we keep this thing going. One cause at a time, one battle at a time…one patient at a time…

This story isn't necessarily mine though it is all of ours in some way. We all have been where this person has been and luckily, many of us have made it back. It was therapeutic for me to speak about addiction in the first person for a change. I have been guilty of forgetting where I come from and unconsciously treating the person new to treatment poorly. So, now I try to do what the heroine of this story did. I try to extend my hand to those in need and if I am successful, that person may do the same for someone else. A little bit at a time, we can work to lower the casualties of this horrific disease so that we no longer have to hear of another nameless faceless victim dying needlessly. In a perfect world, every opiate addict will know the miracle of Methadone and it will accessible to all who want it. Until then, there is much important work for all of us to do and there will always be the need for more advocates.