THE GRASS IS GREENER…(Chapt 19)
I came to realise that an addiction can have so, so meny reasons and forms. I seem to have gone through the whole spectrum. Believing to be genetically inclined and growing up in the invironment, (both countrty and family), where alkohol was a naturall way of coping with life, meny would say I didn`t stand a chance from the beginning. Yet it was not a form of escapism for me then, not either a result of some trauma, but a search for the new experiences that drove me.
Later it had become a banal pleasure seeking and at the later stages the great escape. Boredom was a big part.
Tell me how you eat your cookies, and will tell you who you are. Do you eat the delicious filling, discarting the dough, do you eat both at once, as you are supposed, or do you eat the crust first, saving the best for the last? Yet when it comes to drugs, speciall rules, dictated by the addiction come into play for most of us. One seldom saves anything for later, even knowing that some rationing may save one from a hefty withdrawal. Smoking, injecting and snorting up all there is, untill feeling sick is the usuall way to go. One often gets high not to think about the future, adopting the pfilosophy, that problems solve themselves. Most of them often do and rarely are something worth worrying about. Drug abuse has it`s own logic and rules, except maybe for one. For every action there is an equall and opposite reaction. For the extra energy on speed one pays with a complete deplition of once reserves, crushing in exhaustion. After extreme excitement comes extreme boredom, after a bullet proof calmness- a spirit crushing anxiety. It was worth it, I thought, specially that tired body can just sleep it off and boredom be cured with some pot, while anxiety turned into numbness with tranquilisers and booze. It was better to feel to the maximum, be it negative or positive, than hardly feel at all. Little did I know that I was on my way to a comlete numbness, missing the times I could feel… Love, grief, joy became nothing more than ubstract ideas.
It was my personality as well- the restless mind, never satisfied. Searching, anticipating, hunting, but never standing still. I could not imagine what it is to simply rest, take a walk or a sunbath- I had to DO something. Read, talk, listen to music, get high or all of the above at once. I could not just watch a good film on the TV, but tried to watch several shows at once, constantly surfing the channels and a result completely loosing the plot. The same concerned even my drug use, when I was taking up to 6 drugs at once. A psychedelic trip would be enough of an experience for most of the people, but I was mixing LSD with alchogol, amphetamine, hasch and later during the day opiates. The weed was allways greener on the other side of the fence.
As there are meny reasons for doing drugs, there are just as meny to take a relapse once you try quitting. Self pity. Feeling bad- coping with sorrow or a loss. Feeling good- celebration of an accomplishement, which often is “I was staying sober for so long that I deserve a drink”. But perhaps the most dangerous one is the loss of meaning- that dark place, where one stops for a moment to reflect and realises that life has no longer any meaning or a goal.
I`ve mentioned that drugs are no more to blame for misery than a kitchen knife for a murder. Having a knife on you, however, dramatically increases the chances for a violent outcome. 70% of the time you would get hurt by your own weapon. Maybe one should never pick it up. Drugs that is. Yet the majority does not develope an addiction- some finding the first drug experience dissapointing, others managing to stick to that mythologicall one glass of wine with a good meal. Is it the emptyness that has to be filled with the chemicalls or the black hole developed by the drug abuse…
There it is again- the question of what came first- chicken or the egg. Was that my character that led me to becoming a junkey or was I, my personality a product of the constant drug abuse? Maybe one doesn`t have to know that to be able to quit and start life allover again- the cirkle of cause and consequence can be broken. It can. I hope it can…
