28 Days Without Suboxone Makes One Weak

As of this morning it has been 28 days since my last dose of Suboxone and I am still not feeling completely better. I hesitate to tell anyone that I still feel like crap for fear that it will deter someone from proceeding with treatment. I feel tired, weak, slow, unmotivated. I went to my Shrink today and he sent me to the lab for a comprehensive blood test in an attempt to rule out some disease that popped up concurrently with my detox from the Subox. The tests came back today and for the most part, there is nothing wrong with me, therefore, my doctor and I can only assume that this is pretty much the typical course for withdrawal from Suboxone.

The literature claims that the withdrawal syndrome from Suboxone is "mild" compared to withdrawal from a full-agonist, and in my experience so far that's true, however, the length of time it takes to complete withdrawal is amazing. I've read that the length of the half-life and the total duration of use determines the length of the withdrawal syndrome. Suboxone has a half-life of about 36 hours, so it is a little shorter than Methadone, but let me tell you, I am shocked that I don't feel better yet.

I was down to 1 mg. per day when I quit. To put that into perspective, the manufacturer doesn't even make a 1 mg. tablet...I was cutting the 2 mg. tablets in half for about a month. When I quit, I was taking a daily dose of Suboxone the size of a breadcrumb. It amazes me that the lack of such a small substance could make me feel so bad.

It took about 8 or 9 days before I really started feeling better. That is, I was able to walk without getting too tired, I could sleep without taking Clonidine, and most of the symptoms had subsided. However, the tiredness remains after almost a month, and that is amazing.

I used Suboxone for 18 months. I started at 24 mg. per day and worked my way downward, continuously until the end. In retrospect, I wouldn't have changed a thing. I know that had I used Suboxone for a shorter amount of time, say only six months, I might have had a better experience coming off of it. However, I am completely certain, in my own mind, that had I not stayed on Suboxone as long as I did, it is very likely that I would not have been able to remain abstinent from the Oxy. I am feeling quite strong about staying away from the Oxy at this point. Of course, I've got the potential for a huge addiction to the stuff, so who can say what tomorrow will bring, however, right now I'm pretty sure I don't want to go through the hell I've been through all over again!

Saying goodbye to Suboxone was difficult; a lot more difficult than I ever thought it would be. On the other hand, it saved my life. It took me two serious attempts to get off of it, and I still feel like hell, but I hold out for hope for the future. During the first few days off of the stuff I would have these manic moments of intense happiness that were better than any 'high' I can remember, but those days went away after a week or so and then the hard part began. It is still difficult to keep going day after day and feeling physically unwell, but I believe that things can only get better.

I am finishing up the book about this whole experience. Now that I have finished the Suboxone, I guess I need to wrap it up. So, I've been doing a lot of research to support the informational part of the story. Hopefully the book will be done soon. It seems so timely....the death Anna Nicole Smith from prescription drugs, stars and starlets going to rehab because of opiate addiction, and just the other day, a US Congressman admitted his addiction to Oxy. Hopefully I'll be able to help a lot of not-so-famous people make decisions that will suit them.

Talk to ya later.....

Gus Montana....hehehehehehe

Oxy Hell

I can't share a lot of what I have written in the last year because what I have written is now part of the book. However, just because I cannot share with you the text that I wrote, does not mean that I cannot share the story with you.

Here's the best part. The last time I posted to the blog, I was getting ready to go on Suboxone. I don't believe I ever mentioned this on the blog. I did it. I was on Suboxone for one and a half years. I just detoxed on Suboxone. I am at nine days.

I am not the same person I was before. As a matter of fact, the transformation has been so substantial that I believe I am better off for every stupid thing I've done and everything that's happened.

There is more to come...so much more. I am so alive. Life is so good.

Sylvia, Catrina, and Victor: Continued 05/16/06

Pleased, I asked Rick about Catrina. How often did she have pills? How much did she charge? When could I meet her myself? I was so incredibly excited. I knew that, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and if I could make contact with whoever Catrina was, then surely that connection could lead to further connections, which in turn would lead to further connections, and so on. Perhaps, I would hit the mother lode. Like the purveyors of multi-level marketing who schlep everything from soap, to cosmetics, to vitamins, I would soon learn that drugs of all kinds are marketed similarly. By the time the oxycodone hit the palm of my hand, it had been palmed by many others before me, acquiring value with each pass. With Catrina’s introduction, maybe I could tap into the heart of the highest levels in the pyramid, assured of a steady supply of the little compacted biscuits that made life so hospitable.

Rick assured me that I had no need for his cousin Catrina’s phone number. Any time I was suffering from my “back problems,” I could just call him and he’d take care of the problem, he said. My guess is that Rick didn’t want to miss out on the rebate he was earning. By putting me in direct contact with Catrina, he would be taking himself out of the lowest rung in the multi-level marketing druggie ladder, and who in their right mind would do that? As we passed each other in the office that day, we’d smile, an acknowledgement of the high we shared.

My tolerance for oxycodone was fairly high at the time. I have spoken with addicts (only a very small few) who were gulping, snorting and firing as much as 640 milligrams of oxy per day, which needs to be pointed out to the uninitiated or naïve, as an extremely gluttonous and dangerous amount. At the time I met Catrina, my trips to Mexico every three or four days were netting between six and eight 80 milligram Oxycontin tablets. So, it is no surprise that Rick was shocked to learn that I was already looking to make another connection with Catrina the day following our initial score. Typically, 20 Percocet tablets contain 100 milligrams of the nectar known as oxycodone. In contrast, two Oxycontin “80’s” contain almost twice that amount of juice. So, the haul from Catrina didn’t last me very long. Even still, it was one less day that I would have to drive to Mexico.

Despite his shock at my appetite, Rick obliged. He made the call. Thirty minutes later we were off again to the Southside, my new happy hunting ground, and back to our desks in time to enjoy the pleasant stream of oxy-consciousness. However, for me, it was more of a trickle than a stream. At 5 milligrams per hit, Percocet just wasn’t much of a replacement for Oxycontin, but it did keep the withdrawals away, and really, that is all I needed.

Withdrawal is such a painful experience, that addicts who have been clean for many years experience anxiety from any physical sensations that remind them of withdrawal. Some addicts I have known will slide into a full-blown anxiety attack at the first sign of a fever, the sensation of low blood sugar, or an unexplained hot flash. The fear of withdrawal is nearly as bad as withdrawal itself. It is this fear that keeps an addict in search of a continual, uninterrupted supply. Although the physical symptoms of withdrawal may outwardly appear to resemble the flu, they are merely an announcement of the mental torture to be encountered in withdrawal, and it is this fear of a mental hell that drives an addict to maintain their usage, usually at any cost.

The secondary benefit of Percocet over Oxycontin, from my addicted point of view, was a matter of simple economics: Percocet was cheaper on the street than Oxycontin.

Syvia, Catrina, and Victor - Continued

“That was easy,” I thought. My paranoid, White, middle-class instincts were tempered by how quickly everything went down. Contrary to my Wonderbread perception of the hood, I did not die in a hail of gang gunfire. I was not threatened with my life, as my ideas of the Southside led me to believe would happen. It was over quicker than losing my virginity. I was quite pleased, and as we drove away I felt that perhaps there was now a possibility I could feed The Beast indefinitely, given enough money and hard work. The fact that The Beast itself made work all the more pleasant, was reason enough to believe that such a fantasy could exist forever.

When I have listened to addicts in the past, it seems like everyone passes through a period where they honestly believe that the care and feeding of the monkey can actually be accomplished indefinitely. I can’t tell you how many times I told myself, “If I just maintain, if I just keep the cash flowing, if I keep it all under wraps, there’s no reason why I can’t just stay high…forever.”

After all, I was raised on the American Dream: If I work hard enough, long enough, and make sacrifices, I can do anything. If I am determined, and put my mind toward it, there isn’t anything I can’t accomplish. Whenever I was high, the American Dream was always closer to my grasp. Anything could be accomplished, and I believed so, with all my heart and soul. However, when I was high, I also believed that the American Dream could wait, at least until later. I would think, “No need to rush anything. Right now, all is possible. That doesn’t mean that I need to do it all right now…” Unseen to me was the fact that ‘right now’ turned into tomorrow, which turned into the day after, which turned into the day after that, and so on. Maybe eventually I would reach for the stars, but never today. Today I was high and everything else could wait. What couldn’t wait, I would fake my way through.

Knowing that there were resources like Catrina, gave me hope that my dependency could become immortal. Rick was more than happy to give me her phone number, and provide me with an introduction, which are the two minimum requirements for any dealer-user relationship. In exchange for his referral, Rick would earn a type of frequent-flyer bonus, which consisted of the four free Percocet Catrina gave him in exchange for coordinating my buy.

We rolled back toward the business district, where drugs are given a less gansta distinction, and under the right circumstances can even be passed off as medically necessary. Pleased, I asked Rick about Catrina. How often did she have dope? How much did she charge? When could I meet her myself? What was her number?

Sylvia, Catrina, and Victor: Continued - Off to the Southside

Off to the South Side


Two guys in ties, on the Southside. That’s what we were. We were as discreet as the desperate look in our eyes, which bore the kind of image that transmits the message “I’m on a mission.” The only time a man is found on the Southside with something tied around his neck is during a suicide investigation. Paranoia waved hello.

Surely every city has its equivalent to my city’s Southside. Weary people drift along the sidewalk, some with all of their possessions in tow. Nooks and crannies of the public street grid are laden with corners occupied by persons trying too hard to look invisible, and all too eager to strike up a conversation punctuated with references to parties and good times. We made a right-hand turn into one of those nooks and turned left at the first cranny, not too far from the action on the street, but close enough to the object of my desire.

“Right there!” Rick exclaimed, “Next to that mailbox.” I missed the mailbox, but I did notice the 1980s model Ford LTD in the front yard. It had a beautiful chocolate metallic, powder- coat finish with elaborate spoke wheels, directly from the old-school low-rider era. Unfortunately for its owner, all four tires were flat and it was obvious that it had not been driven over the span of many elapsed bi-weekly pay-periods.

“This is Catrina’s place.” Rick said. “Wait here, I will be right back.” Rick grasped the door handle on my Yuppiemobile, bolted past the LTD and toward the warped screen door to my salvation. I watched as Rick was swallowed into the darkness of the entryway to the house. I waited alone, in my starched and pressed Nordstrom’s Oxford while the tension of my Windsor Knot weighed heavily upon my jugular veins; this was no place for a man to be wearing my costume.

Money is never more paper-like when it is passed in the desperation of a drug deal. The Hamiltons and Jacksons flipped through my fingers like cards through the hands of a blackjack dealer. As I paid Rick for the plastic sandwich bag bulging with the discs of hydrocodone and acetominophen, I gave no thought to the value of the cash I shoved in his hand. I had a good paying job and more money than I needed to keep my façade erect. At the negotiated price of five dollars per tablet, I would likely never even miss the three hundred bucks that I carelessly shoved, bill by bill, into his palm. Every time I stuck my ATM card into the machine, money came out. That was all I knew for the moment. Occasionally, a small part of me would notice that my wallet was bulging from ATM receipts. “The cost of doing business,” I thought. It was just another slice of me consumed by the god of hydrocodone.

Sylvia, Catrina, and Victor: Continued

Everywhere I have ever worked, there’s always that one person who everyone in the company knows can get drugs. Just ask around and you’ll find them. I found Rick Herman. He was a smiling, backslapping kind of guy who knew everyone. He always seemed to be in some kind of trouble at work, but he was so likeable that management kept him around. He was the kind of guy who always seemed to come in on Monday mornings and brag about what a wild weekend he had and the parties he had gone to. It was obvious that many of Rick’s colleagues (myself included) were living vicariously through him, and his storytelling was always welcomed. However, merely coming out and asking a co-worker if they know where to find drugs is imprudent no matter how freewheeling that colleague seems to be. But, if I was going to make a connection to replace my Mexico trips, Rick was the best prospect out of all of the people I knew. Shortly after I found out about the arrests of other users in Mexico, Rick and I passed each other in the parking lot while on our way to work one morning.

“Gus, my man! ‘Sup bro?” he asked.

“Awww man, everything is fine except my aching back. Sure wish I had something to fix this up.”

“Really? What’s wrong?”

“Oh you know, my back gets all messed up sometimes and I need to take Percocet to get over it, but I am out and I can’t get in to see my doctor. Know where I can get any?”

That was it. I had dropped my line and all I had to do was wait for something to happen. If he didn’t bite, or didn’t have a connection, at least I hadn’t come out looking like a druggie. If he did bite, I’d reel in a new connection. After all, I made it clear that it was strictly for a medical purpose and that my doctor had even prescribed it for me. In the event he didn’t know anyone, my request would seem as though it were merely a matter of convenience, not a plea for relief by a hopeless drug addict.

“Sure man! No problem, Gus. I’ve got the digits right here” he said as he waved his cell phone.

Jackpot. If anyone in my sphere had a connection, I knew it would be Rick. Even better was the fact that Rick apparently had more than one source. The first call came up empty, so Rick merely scrolled through his speed dial list for another number, and yet another. As I waited patiently, he conducted a muted conversation on his cell phone. While he spoke, he flashed a thumbs-up. It was only 8:30 in the morning. This would be a great day. Percocet wasn’t what I was really after, but I figured that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and if Rick had a connection for Percocet, then Oxycontin couldn’t be too far behind.

“We can get sixty if we go right now,” Rick said.

“Right now? Where to?” I replied.

“The Southside, of course Gus-man! My cousin is loaded! Let’s go.”

Sylvia, Catrina, and Victor - Part 1

Going to Mexico every three or four days was getting to be inconvenient, but it was nonetheless necessary. A local source would make feeding the dragon a hell of a lot easier. It never crossed my mind that finding a local source might also be a lot less dangerous. People go to Mexico and disappear without a trace, but all I cared about was pounding another hit up my nose and finding the fastest, most efficient way to get it there.

Every time I went to Mexico, I tried to keep a low profile. My job as a bank executive was very flexible, and did not require me to be in the office at all times, so I could usually make the hour-long trip and back just about any time I wanted to. Because I always traveled to Mexico during a weekday, I was usually wearing the business attire required for my job. Additionally, I would always bring some kind of folders or paperwork with me. In the event that either U.S. or Mexican law enforcement saw me, they would probably have assumed I was one of the many local businessmen participating in the economy that straddles the imaginary line. It is exactly 210 paces from my favorite parking lot on the U.S. side to the one-way turnstile crossing the international border. From there it is another 200 paces to the pharmacy that paid the mordida necessary to keep Los Federales (the Mexican Federal Police) from busting their customers. As the months went by, and as my habit grew more powerful, I would count each pace in my head every time I went there. The paces clicking off in my mind, “one hundred forty seven, one hundred forty eight,” seemed to turn off all the input around me: bustling border crossers with bags of merchandise, hustling taxi drivers shouting to attract fares, a blind beggar with a tin can, singing and playing Mexican music on a battery operated keyboard. The air was always heavy with vapor from stagnant pools of liquid in street gutters and the fumes of Mexican cars, which all burn, low grade, old-fashioned, leaded gasoline.

As I exited the pharmacy one morning, dressed in a tie and glistening wingtips, I clicked off the paces in my head while I strolled on autopilot, back to the U.S. border. At about 110 paces, I looked up and made unplanned eye contact with a pair of Federales. It is easy to forget that the civil protections we take for granted in the U.S. do not exist in Mexico. In the U.S., the military is not permitted under most circumstances to conduct law enforcement operations, but in Mexico, the line between the military and the state is blurry. The Federales are widely feared because they are not part of the local system of law enforcement and its mordida system, which consists of payoffs and kickbacks. The Federales have a separate mordida system of their own, and their power, granted by the central federal government of Mexico, is unquestioned. No matter where one travels in Mexico, the Federales are present. Their shiny black boots, tan paramilitary uniforms, and Mexican made Mendoza HM3 submachine guns create a fearful appearance.

The moment our eyes connected, I intuitively knew there would be a problem. One of the Federales gestured to me.

“Excuse me señor. Are you carrying pharmaceuticals today?”
Panic, terror, images of everything slowed down in my mind. Simultaneously, the thought of lying on a filthy concrete floor, going through withdrawals, emaciated in a Mexican prison cell, oscillated with my inner voice, pleading with my body to not show any sense of fear as I turned toward the two stout soldiers.

“Yes sir, I am. Antibiotics.”

“Let me see.” He reached for my bag.

One of the feints in my attempt to divert attention from myself was Doxycyline. It is a cheap antibiotic that can be purchased in Mexico without a prescription. I bought a box of the tablets, and almost every time I went to Mexico, I would carry the box in my pocket, in a small plastic bag as I crossed the border. When I exited the pharmacy, I would pull out the bag and its contents. My thinking was that, if I was ever questioned about buying drugs in Mexico, or asked why I had been in the pharmacy, I could always respond that I had bought something perfectly legitimate.

The soldier flipped his machine gun over his shoulder and peeked into the small plastic bag. He glanced at the box of antibiotics. As he looked up from the bag, his eyes made contact with mine. Although it probably lasted a mere millisecond, it was not a simple glance, but more of a peering, the kind of which law enforcement personnel seem trained to do. It was if as if he was searching the window of my soul to see if I was hiding anything. I slowly turned away and began walking, knowing he had neither officially released me nor required me to remain detained. Knowing, as I turned my back to him, that he could shout out “STOP!” at any moment, I counted the remaining paces to the U.S. turnstile in my mind.

I crossed the border, shaken, with Oxy brimming from my pocket. Had he searched me, I would have easily and quickly wound up in a Mexican prison, where an ancient form of Napoleonic law dictates that persons are guilty until proven innocent. It can take as long as a year before a defendant can appear before a Mexican judge for a pleading, and the sentence, if found guilty, is five years confined to some of the most grotesque conditions on the planet. To calm my nerves, I stopped at a gas station as I left the border and purchased a pack of cigarettes. While there, I noticed the headline on a newspaper rack, “Rx drug crackdown under way in Mexico.” The previous day, four persons like myself had been taken into custody by the Federales for buying Oxycontin without a legitimate prescription. It was definitely time to acquire a safer source for my habit.

Oxycontin's Ugly Little Sister

Everything smells funny. The first thing I would notice whenever I would come off the Oxy, was the way the world smelled. Just like a whiff of perfume conjures up memories of a lover from years past, the aroma of the world enhanced the piercing reality that I was not high, and the first realization I had was that life had been going on, without me. I had passed the 72-hour mark, and the morning air reminded me of what life used to be like. Except for a few brief periods of abstinence, I had been high for nearly a year and a half.

My wife got ready for work and I pried myself away from the sheets, still moist from a sleepless night of sweat and restlessness. I was beginning my fourth day and I still felt awful. She left for work and I trembled my way to the bathroom to start a workday with the nagging awareness that it was going to be a very, very bad day. Even worse was the knowledge that I hadn’t even passed the half-way point yet. I had been through withdrawal before, and it took at least a week or more before I physically felt better. Even after a week, when I had felt somewhat better physically, the craving for the drug hung over my head incessantly, endlessly. Because this withdrawal episode was so violently worse than anything I had experienced before, I had no idea what to expect. When you catch the flu or a virus, at least you know that you’ll eventually be well again, and you can at the very least take comfort in that fact and ride it out. Unfortunately, when you get sick from withdrawal, your mind gets sick too. It plays an evil trick on you. As irrational as it sounds, in the midst of withdrawal you don’t believe you will ever feel better again. Your mind loses all hope for the future. My legs trembled as I attempted a shower, and I got myself ready to let reality slap me around like a rag doll all day.

I love my wife. She is the strongest-willed person I know. I admire her ability to do and say exactly what she sets out to do. I, on the other hand, am weak-willed, and prone to impulses. The drug I am addicted to can be a life saver in the hands of a responsible person. Doctors prescribe oxycodone for many painful ailments. Used responsibly by persons afflicted with everything from migraines to broken bones, it can mean the difference between living a productive life or being incapacitated. One of the first times I can remember encountering oxycodone was in my wife’s medicine cabinet when we were first dating. She had a prescription for Percocet, a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen (Tylenol) which she only used at the point where she simply couldn’t tolerate the pain from migraine headaches. Because Percocet requires a prescription, and because doctors are hesitant to prescribe it due to its potential for abuse, she was quite judicious and sparing in her use of the drug. For her, it was difficult to acquire. She absolutely waited until the pain was intolerable before she would resort to it. One sunny afternoon, with a complete lack of respect for the woman who would become my future wife, I decided, like a kid with a cookie jar, to reach in to the medicine cabinet and rustle up some Perkies. My motivation was merely to satisfy my curiosity about the pill bottle marked “May affect your ability to drive a car or operate heavy machinery.”

Fifteen minutes later, I completely understood why people popped pills. I had lived through the 1970s, and I had tried lots of different substances, but pills always seemed like things that were consumed by an older, less hip generation. In the consciousness of anyone who grew up during the Decade of Decadence, pill poppers just weren’t cool. But now, I totally got it. I had found my nirvana. Over the next few days, my hand got stuck in the cookie jar. By the end of the week, my wife had noticed that an appreciable amount of pills were missing from her very necessary supply of Percocet. I underestimated her reaction. We very nearly broke up over that incident. I lamely apologized and we managed to put things back together again, but it wouldn’t be the last time that I stole her pills, and it wouldn’t be the last time that we came perilously close to adding another notch in the never ending calculation of divorce statistics because of it.

As I exited the shower, a wave of hope came over me. I remembered that my wife always kept a handful of Percocet in her bathrobe that she hung on the back of the bathroom door. On those occasions when she was incapacitated from a migraine, she would lie still in her bathrobe with the antidote tucked away in her pocket. While I dried off, I rationalized that there was no way I’d be able to maintain my composure at work while suffering through withdrawal, and because the active ingredient in Percocet was the same as Oxycontin, perhaps the best way for me to kick the habit was to switch to Percocet. One tablet of Percocet usually contains about 5 milligrams of oxycodone. This is a fraction of the 80 milligram Oxys I had been taking, but I figured that maybe I could use the small doses contained in Percocet to wean myself off of the drug. However, grabbing the tablets of relief that hung before me on the bathroom door also contained the pain I might experience if my wife found out that I had stolen her pills again, for the umpteenth time. I paused briefly, and then gobbled down three of them like a lost man in the desert finding water at an oasis.

The danger of ruining my relationship was just one of the potentially negative consequences of taking those pills. As I would later learn, there’s no easy way to break the dragon’s hold. No pain, no gain. Oxycontin addicts sometimes wind up in the hospital with liver failure. The reason is not because of the Oxy, but because of Percocet. I wasn't the first Oxy addict to come up with the idea of using Percocet to mediate a habit. Percocet commonly contains 325 milligrams of acetaminophen. A dose of 7 grams of acetaminophen can produce irreversible and sometimes fatal liver damage. This means that an Oxy addict, who uses Percocet as a substitute, cannot take more than about 22 Percocet tablets without seriously damaging their body. Twenty two tablets of 325/5 Percocet contain a little more oxycodone than a single 80 milligram Oxycontin tablet. Some Oxycontin addicts take as many as eight 80s a day. The danger is obvious.

As the three Percocets melted away in my gut, I felt better almost immediately, but I knew I wouldn’t feel better forever. I had made it out the door and managed to put in a full morning of phone calls and paperwork at my desk, but shortly after lunch, the withdrawals started slowly rolling back in like a tide. I was going to need a far cry more than three Percocets per day if I was going to make it. However, I felt pretty confident that using Percocet would be the best possible way to wean myself off of Oxycontin, if I could only find more. Mexican pharmacies don’t sell Percocet or anything quite like it. If I was going to succeed, I was going to need to find a supply. I had managed to con my doctor into prescribing Percocet to me, so a phone call and a quick visit to his office would solve that problem temporarily. Because I would be taking more than three a day, any supply I received would run out quickly, and ordering a refill too soon would raise suspicion. There are ads for Percocet on the internet, but it is impossible to discern the ripoff sites from legitimate online pharmacies, and at $400 per order, it is just to risky to buy off the net. I would need to find an alternate source.

That’s when I met Sylvia, Catrina, and Victor. Over the coming months, I would make them wealthy by their neighborhood’s standards.

Better Than Sex

(This was written in May of 2004)

This is better than sex. Damn!

A couple of minutes ago, I split an 80mg Oxycontin tablet in half and crushed it with the backside of my cell phone on the center console of my fine European sports car. I ground the tablet into the finest powder I could. The more finely chopped, the better the high. I used the edge of my American Express card to shape the powder into a neat line and rolled up a Post-It note into a small tube suitable for snorting. I had read somewhere that people were catching diseases from snorting drugs through rolled up dollar bills, so out of concern for my health, I always kept a Post-It handy. It never occurred to me that snorting drugs might be just a tad more dangerous than any microbes that one could encounter by using pictures of dead presidents to deliver a high. I inhaled. Everything was good. Damn good.

Because I had awakened only a couple of hours ago, with the onset of withdrawal upon me, I needed to get that marvelous stuff it into my bloodstream as soon as possible. Got to get feeling right. No time to grind the other half. I merely chomped on it, and let the nasty taste dribble down my throat. As long as you chew up the Oxy really good before you swallow, you’ll get every last bit of ecstasy it can provide. Ah, Relief.

I gazed out the window of my car at a big, puffy white cloud against a cobalt sky. How beautiful. Everything is wonderful. I could sit here all day. No worries, no fear, no problems, my dear. I can’t even smell the Mexican border behind me. I can’t remember the face of the bracero who just fixed me up, but I’ve got eight 80s in my wallet and I won’t have to worry about coming here again for at least a week. Well, maybe at least for a few days. No need to think about that now. Everything’s beautiful.

Right now, I don’t care what happens today. I don’t care about what will happen tomorrow. I don’t care about anything at all. It’s all good. The leather seat of my car wraps around me like skin and I am sinking into it like a giant hand, comforting me. I’m gliding down the freeway, part car, part human. I am one with the road. As I approach the secondary Border Patrol checkpoint, about 25 miles in from the U.S. border, I giggle.

My cell phone interrupts the purr of my engine, and breaks up my daydream. I can deal with it. I can deal with anything when I am high. A client? Sure, anything you need. Whatever. But this time, there’s a problem. Something I forgot to do. I was so worried about getting more Oxy that forgot a meeting. This one will cost me some money. Anything that costs me money, costs me Oxy. Now I’m pissed. So, it appears that this little annoyance also cost me a good high. Used to be that 80 mg would last me all day, but after that phone call busted up my buzz, I need to pull over and get fixed up again. It wasn’t always like this.

I used to be able to do a couple of 40s on the weekend and then get on with my life as planned. I miss those days. Now I can’t seem to quit worrying about running out. With each hit I take, I am one step closer to running out. I used to be able to chew up a half tablet, sip a glass of Scotch and enjoy a night of total pleasure. Everything is so pleasant when I am high. The simplest of objects seems wonderful to hold, to look at. Even network TV is interesting. The dullest of companions has something interesting to say. The most mundane tasks are accomplished without boredom. I don’t need food, and sometimes I think I probably don’t even need air. The earth’s crust is a giant piece of foam rubber, and I bounce upon it when I walk, or maybe I am floating. Where there used to be dark clouds of doubt, worry, and frustration, there are blue skies filled with infinite possibilities. But lately, those blue skies have been darkened by a nagging reminder that I am going to need to make sure I have enough Oxy to make it through tomorrow, because if I don’t, tomorrow will be intolerable. I know I’ve got a problem, but I am going to take care of it, tomorrow. What bothers me though, is that deep down inside, I know today is the tomorrow of a thousand yesterdays that I have put off time and time again.

How did I get here? After all, the government had made sure I was warned. I remember my seventh-grade health class in the early 1970s. The teacher, Mr. Clark, would utilize the most progressive teaching tool of the day: the filmstrip. A tape player or phonograph would play an audio text while a strip of 35 millimeter film was threaded through a projector one frame at a time. The narrator of the audio text would pause and a beep tone would indicate to the classroom’s audio-visual geek that the film should be advanced to the next frame. Every week we’d receive another hi-tech (at the time) admonishment of some health related issue that existed in the big-bad-world outside the classroom. We’d learn the dangers of drinking and driving as the narrator described blood alcohol content while the film strip projected horrid scenes of carnage from alcohol related car accidents. When we weren’t viewing the horrors of strewn body parts and blood stained vehicles, we were warned, in Technicolor, of the dangers of “Social Disease” and premarital sex. The filmstrips about the dangers of drugs still stand out in my mind. I remember seeing pictures of Hippies with flowers in their hair at rock concerts having what looked like the best time of their lives. Ultimately though, the filmstrip Hippies would later be depicted with needles in their arms, passed out beside a garbage can or being hauled away to prison. I remember thinking to myself that I would never, ever become like one of “those people.”

In fact, I wasn’t like “those people.” After all, I was driving a fine European sports car, had a beautiful wife, house, and a successful career. I had all those things that made me a good American, but underneath it all, the only thing that now separated me from “those people” was that I wasn’t (yet) lying in a pool of vomit somewhere, and although I didn’t have a needle in my arm, the monkey on my back bore a striking resemblance to the one perched upon the shoulder of the Hippies in the filmstrip some 25 years earlier. Mr. Clark never told me it would be like this.

It wasn’t just the school system that tried to keep me out of this predicament either. The church made damn sure I was warned about the temptations of the flesh. I learned in Sunday school that my body is a temple, a gift from God that I shouldn’t misuse or abuse. I remember being told that pleasure is a sin, and that those who indulge the pleasures of the body would forever be condemned to the misery of hell. I make my tax-deductible charitable donations, give money to the poor, and treat my fellow man with kindness and respect. But here I was, a grown-up man, who never hurt anybody, enduring the daily hell of addiction. I always thought the church taught that hell occurred in the hereafter, not the here and now. Perhaps I should have listened. The devil was on my tail here on earth, any day I ran out of Oxy.

Oxycontin tablets fit nicely in a wallet, on an airplane, in a desk drawer, or a book-bag at school. They require no expensive or cumbersome accessories, like syringes. They leave no unusual odors, like a pipe. Oxycontin leaves few visible signs like injection marks, bloodshot eyes, or revealing breath. And, if anyone becomes aware of your little habit, you can always pass it off as a legitimate treatment prescribed by your very own doctor. Oxy is the perfect drug, with the perfect high. You won’t be incapacitated, won’t stumble, hallucinate, or likely give yourself away. Board meetings are no longer “bored” meetings, isolation is joy, havoc is peace, despair turns to carefree, and all is well. Life is a seat on a big puffy cloud and smiles are easy to come by.

Oxy is perfect, or at least it seems that way. There is absolutely nothing that doesn’t feel better without Oxy. Physically, your body feels lighter, your pace slows down, and you feel comfortable no matter where you sit, stand, or move. You sleep well, eat less, and there isn’t a single pain in your body that matters. How could something so perfect be so bad? When I think about what the answer to that question might be, several possibilities come to mind, but none more important than the fact that: because Oxy makes everything seem so pleasurable, nothing else can ever be so pleasurable on its own. For example, would you really want something to be “better than sex?” If something really was “better than sex,” wouldn’t that “something” lessen and cheapen what most of us consider one of the most important aspects of being human? If you find something that really was better than the most wonderful thing you could ever experience, then whatever that “thing” is will become pretty underrated, and that is exactly what Oxy does. Oxy, in and of itself is not bad. Yet, Oxy, as perfect as it is, makes everything else in life seem less worthwhile in its absence.

For right now though, there are seven 80 mg Oxycontin tablets left in my wallet. So, I’m off to my private heaven. I will stop at the rest area ahead, just off the highway. I will pull over there, park myself on a picnic bench underneath a shade tree and grind up another tablet. There, my busted high will get fixed up and I won’t worry at all about the meeting I missed or the client I pissed off. And isn’t that what we all want: to be free from our cares? I can feel good about disregarding everything I don’t like about life when I am high. Oxy is perfect, isn’t it?

Withdrawal

My hands feel like they are encased in two large blocks of ice. They feel like they are on fire, and as if they are frozen, all at the same time. The feeling is similar to the type of burn one might get reaching into a refrigerator, touching a frozen piece of metal.

I am lying on a bed in an unused, extra bedroom in our house. My wife kicked me out of our bed hours ago because of my restlessness. I can’t stay still. My legs, arms, and body feel uncomfortable no matter what position I lay. Everything that touches me feels like it shouldn’t be there, and the only relief is to move.

The sheets are soaked through to the mattress. Every inch of my body is oozing sweat. Every body part alternates between feeling searing heat and freezing cold. Right now my hands feel like I have set them upon a stove top and my back feels as though I were lying down naked on an ice rink. In a few moments it may change and the sweat on my back will feel like boiling hot oil.

I am trembling and jerking. The jerking streaks through me like a jolt of electricity, a convulsion that occurs every few moments. The cold ball of ice in my gut makes my entire thorax quiver, oddly resembling the way I’ve felt when standing in front of a large audience delivering a speech, like stage-fright.

My nose is running and my eyes are burning. Goose-bumps appear and then evaporate in patches all over my body. I have vomited twice in the past hour, and when I am not throwing-up, I crawl to the bathroom with violent diarrhea. I cannot walk without holding on to a wall. My legs and arms have barely the strength to lift their own weight.

It has been eight hours since I broke down and revealed my relapse to my wife. It has been 12 hours since my last dose.

The first time I realized I was hooked was also the first time I had experienced any sort of withdrawal symptoms. It occurred about a month or so after I first discovered Oxycontin. This was during a period of time when I would buy a handful of pills, enjoy them for a couple of days, and when they were gone, I would go for several days without them. No problem. I would casually pick up some Oxys before a big weekend, and when they were gone, I would go without them until the next “Special Occasion” came along. I did not realize that my Special Occasions were becoming more and more frequent. Nice weather and a sunny day were grounds for celebration. As the Special Occasions became more commonplace than extraordinary, I was only going for one or two days without buying Oxycontin, but either I wasn’t conscious of this fact or, more likely, wasn’t aware of the repercussions.

I remember waking up one morning realizing something was wrong. I had been using about two or three 40mg Oxys for several days and I had consumed the last pill the previous evening. As I made my way to work, I felt very tired and my energy was depleted. As I approached my office I barely had the energy to get from the parking lot to the front door. Coffee and Red Bull seemed to have no effect toward increasing my energy. I thought that perhaps I was catching a cold. The suspicion that I was going through withdrawal didn’t occur to me until the day afterward. It got worse.

By the second day, I was feeling frozen cold from the inside and I visited the bathroom every 30 minutes. I was weaker than the day before. It still hadn’t fully dawned on me that I was going through withdrawal. I simply assumed I had a cold or simply wasn’t feeling well. This provided the impetus for another Special Occasion, I reasoned. Off I went in search of my magic bullets. Thirty minutes after I scored, the frost melted from my frame, my head was clear, and I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. That’s the exact moment I knew I was hooked. I knew the reason I had felt sick was because I ran out of drugs and what made me feel better was getting high again.

As I drove away from my connection, feeling revived, I had a thought. There are many thoughts in a person’s life, but none more pivotal than the thought that “I have become…something.” These “becoming” thoughts are the kind of thoughts that acknowledge the realization that one’s life will never be the same, like “I have become…bankrupt,” “I have become…a convict,” “I have become…disfigured.” My pivotal thought was “I have become…a drug addict.” However, what makes this sickness so insidious is the fact that I didn’t care. It didn’t shock me to the core like the revelation one might have upon finally realizing they’ve committed some crime and are on their way to prison, but it should have. I was high, and when I was high, there was nothing that could bring me down...at least, not until I ran out of dope.

What I didn’t know then was that I would go through withdrawals many more times, with each time becoming successively more painful. Had I known then that I would wind up on a mattress, like a sponge, soaked with tears and sweat, I wonder if I would have quit. After confessing to my wife, we talked and I cried for several hours. After all we had been through in the past with my drug use and my lying to hide it, she could not believe we were reliving it all over again. On top of the pain I was about to experience, there was the realization that I had imperiled something far more precious to me than drugs: my wife and family.

I get a kick out of seeing the medical description of opiate withdrawal. It is so often compared with the symptoms of flu. What the medical literature cannot possibly describe is something that transcends the physical characteristics of withdrawal. Medical literature fails to include the emotional effects of withdrawal. Never have I felt so hopeless, helpless, and bitterly depressed as I have during withdrawal, and this was the worst ever. The despair is piercing.

I could not stop crying. After the sun rose, I managed to crawl out from under the tangled, wet sheets. I wandered into our back yard and collapsed, crying and vomiting. My wife had errands to take care of that Saturday morning and needed to leave. She had never seen me so incapacitated. I have often wondered what she must have been feeling at the time. On the one hand, she loves me very much, yet on the other hand I was a liar and a cheat, secretly getting high and spending our hard-earned cash on something I loved more than her. Here I was, completely helpless yet undeserving of empathy. I was a wretched splatter of vomit smeared clothing and frayed nerves, wailing like a baby in the grass of our middle-class back yard. Like a waterfall, a half-year of deceit and self-abuse was crashing down upon me. For the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to want to be dead. I could not feel the future. The future seemed futile.

As my wife prepared to leave, I sobbed incontrollably. The thought of being alone was too much for me to withstand. I spent the next eight hours crying and wretching in despair. The physical symptoms of withdrawal are intense, much more so than any flu I have ever had, but I can truly say that the emotional symptoms are the worst experience I have ever endured. To put the experience into words is difficult, but I can best explain it as the same intense feeling one might have at the death of a loved one or at the termination of a cherished relationship. It is this deep sad feeling, combined with fear, that best approximates the experience.

I tried as best I could to keep my mind together until my wife returned, but it was of little use. Somehow, I managed to pick up the phone book and contact a psychiatrist specializing in drug addiction who was available that afternoon. When my wife returned, we went to meet him at a nearby hospital. We arrived, me in tatters, and spent about an hour talking to him about approaches to the problem. He turned out to be some sort of an arrogant advocate for a treatment center, and confidently informed us that the only hope for me would be to enter an in-patient treatment center immediately. Most in-patient treatment programs require a 28-day stay. Because of the characteristics of my job we decided that an in-patient treatment center would not be an option for me. The psychiatrist pushed the treatment center upon us with the skill and tact of a salesman hawking time-share condos. He offered to give me a prescription for enough Methadone to make me well until Monday morning, when I could check in to the center. However, this offer of mercy was conditioned upon my checking in with the particular treatment facility he was pitching, which of course, he worked for on-the-side. The only other option he provided us with was to ride out the storm.

The psychiatrist-salesman had mentioned to my wife and me that an in-patient treatment center would probably prescribe diazepam (Valium) during the worst part of the withdrawals, to help me sleep off the experience. Fortunately, Valium is just one of the many a la carte items on the menu at Mexico’s pharmacies, and I happened to have some in stock (I’m not quite sure why. I never found a use for it other than helping to overcome an occasional sleepless night.) Over the next two days, my wife gave me a 20mg Valium tablet every six hours or less. It would knock me out for several hours and I would awaken again to the fear, despair, and pain.

By late Sunday evening I was able to walk again. I was feeling better, but not by much, just enough to keep me from shaking and crying uncontrollably. I had racked up almost 72 hours of clean-time, but I still felt half-dead and half not wanting to live. I had my fill of Oxycontin. I was done. I could not go through this again. I wanted to be alive again so badly, but I felt like it would be easier to simply die. Never again, I thought, would I go through withdrawal. The pain was too much, both physically and emotionally, but mostly emotionally. Oxycontin was an evil monster that I would need to slay. In fact, I did stop using Oxycontin, but my troubles were far from over. I was about to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Recover, relapse, repeat.

I did “90 in 90.” That is 12-Step-speak for the regimen prescribed to the incoming wounded. For 90 days I religiously attended the non-religious meetings of Narcotics Anonymous. Did I mention I had been down this road before, in a different decade? Yes. I am not sure what the rationale is for doing “90 in 90” as the program dictates that you are suffering from “…a disease for which there is no cure.”

No bells went off at 90 days. No grand epiphanies. No astounding revelations. I was unhappy, frustrated, and reminded daily that I was a very sick person. The clamor that surrounds the effectiveness of 12-Step programs will likely go on forever, and I am sure that for some people, these programs have saved their lives. But at the time, I remember wanting more than just to have my life saved. I wanted to feel good too. Feeling good was a mere hour long drive and a dip into the ATM. I relapsed.

N.A. didn’t make me feel good, although the ritual may have actually helped to keep me from actually doing drugs for a while. I remember thinking though, that simply not doing drugs isn’t enough. I need to feel satisfied with life as it is. I was not.

So, I made my way back to the Mexican pharmacy. November 2004 came and went in a blur. The trips to Mexico became frequent. December 2004 bled just as rapidly. Each week I told myself that I would reduce my use, but each trip was like a reward. I would ignore my goal of reducing the amount I used and begin each haul with a celebratory high that far exceeded what I needed to simply and slowly cut down. Each trip increased my tolerance and dependence. I remember one morning, early, hauling ass down the interstate at 120 miles per hour to make the 75 mile pick-up. I needed to be accounted for back home at a certain time.

The braceros at the Mexican pharmacy loved me, but their love was truly more directed toward the portraits of Benjamin Franklin that emerged from my wallet every three or four days. There were no frequent-flyer miles, or baker’s dozens. I had inquired about getting a discount for my excessive patronage but was informed that perhaps, on an order of $2,000 U.S. or more, a couple of freebies might be thrown in. I briefly considered it.

The pharmacy opens at 9:00 am, Mexican Time. That means maybe 9:00, maybe 9:30, or maybe whenever. One particular morning I arrived promptly at 9:00 with the early onset of withdrawal. The braceros had not yet rolled up the impervious steel door of the pharmacy. Impatient, I sought what I was looking for at any one of the dozens of other stores that line “La Linea.” Buying Oxy in Mexico is not merely as simple as walking in, placing your order, and floating euphorically out the door. There is an element of trust that must be established, as even in Mexico, the sale of Oxy over-the-counter without a prescription is not necessarily legal. However, everything in Mexico is “not necessarily legal.” The concept of “Mordida,” the paying of bribes to officials, determines the trade of nearly everything in Mexico, from zoning laws to speeding tickets, and everything in between. I strolled the streets and inquired door-to-door for the pleasure I was looking for, desperately.

I succeeded. Because I don’t have the appearance of some young person seeking drugs, which arouses the suspicions of both U.S. and Mexican officials, and perhaps because I dropped the name of my contact at my regular store, I was obliged by the dealer-clerk at this pharmacy where I’d had no experience. $300 on the counter produced six 80 milligram Oxys in all their bluish-green glory. 240 paces later, I would be over the U.S. border and they would be ground to a fine powder and snorted off the console of my abused car.

As I strolled back to La Linea, happy at the prospect of thwarting withdrawal once more, I passed by the braceros at my usual shop. They were not as happy as I. Their faces, for the first time, lacked the love they usually showed for my presence. “What are you doing here, Gus?” they asked. I explained that I had just made a purchase at a competing store. This was a terrible mistake. They decried it as an act of “traición.” Betrayal. In all of my pick-ups in Mexico, I had never considered the prospect of violence, nor had I ever seriously contemplated that my life could be in danger. The silence amongst me and the three braceros was chilling. I apologized, repeatedly, and directed my contrition primarily at the jefe of the three, the one who runs the operation. His arms were crossed and he reeked of anger saying only these words: “If I ever find out that you’ve been buying from anyone else, there’s going to be trouble,” and he slowly turned and walked to the back of the pharmacy. The other two braceros explained that when I buy from them, I am protected, and mordida does not come cheap in Mexico. Buying drugs from someone other than them means they paid the protection but didn’t get the profit. It had never crossed my mind. I did not know the inner workings of their trade. Life is cheap in Mexico. The daily papers frequently display front-page photos of half decomposed corpses, each with its own tough luck story; an unpaid debt, a drug deal gone bad, a political opponent who was in the way. The local paper could just as easily display the mutilated body of a rich American drug addict who didn’t know the rules. Everyone sees the photo and life goes on. Just another brutal Mexican day.

The only result of my Mexican standoff was that I spent January 2005 looking for a connection that resided on this side of the imaginary line, La Linea. Not that I couldn’t have continued to patronize my threatening friends. My efforts were directed at making it easier to get what I needed, when I needed it. My tolerance and dependence were increasing markedly, but I wouldn’t become aware of that fact until a couple of months later. My preferred route of ingestion for Oxycontin was through my nose. I would grind the pills into a fine powder, and divide the dose into the necessary size, which might vary from between 20 and 40 milligrams. Oxy does not burn when snorted, like cocaine or speed. It tastes horrible as it runs down the back of your throat, but you don’t really care. The effect from snorting Oxy is markedly more potent than from crushing it and swallowing it. When snorted, the high begins within minutes, and interestingly, it does not seem to ‘wear off’ any faster than swallowing. Most drugs that are swallowed lose a percentage of their ‘strength’ in the gut. From what I have read, this is termed ‘bioavailability’. It is also probably the reason why so many illicit drugs are injected or snorted. High bioavailability means more bang for the buck. The downside to snorting, and I assume injecting, is that one’s tolerance and dependence increase at the same rate as the increase in bioavailability. So, if a person is snorting 80 milligrams of Oxy a day, and if let’s say, 50% of swallowed Oxy is destroyed by the gut, then the 80 milligram snorter is taking the equivalent 160 milligrams of swallowed Oxy. By the time I began my search for a local distributor in January of 2005, I was snorting about two 80 milligram tablets per day. It would only get much worse.

As a ‘working professional’, trying to hide an addiction, seeking illicit drugs of any kind opens one up to exposure, which is something that could seriously impair one’s ability to continue being a ‘working professional’. The addict in me got lucky. Where I live, there is a large underground economy, composed mostly of very young minorities, who can supply whatever an addict needs. One day, in passing, I asked a colleague where I could find some Percocet for my ailing back, explaining that I couldn’t get in to see my doctor. Popping that simple question landed me two phone numbers to two young Latina women who would supply the Oxy I needed, sometimes unreliably, for the next two months. With these two connections, and the always available Mexican pharmacy, I set a course for creating an incredible tolerance to Oxycontin. What is undeniably sad is that these young people traffic in drugs, not out of a desire to earn fortunes, but out of what seems to be the only way for them to survive. They sometimes live four and five to a two bedroom apartment, sharing expenses for college textbooks, tuition, and whatever it takes to live. Most of them have jobs at the prevailing $6.00 per hour that are the only kinds of jobs available to a young person. One would never know from their appearance that they deal in drugs to supplement their income. Forget any preconceived images of young gangsters. These are hard-working young people, sometimes with children they bore in their teens, seeking some way to manage. They have hopes and dreams of a better life, one that doesn’t include selling drugs to survive.

By March 2005 I was snorting between 240 and 320 milligrams of Oxycontin per day. The inside of my nose was beginning to peel and burn, and there were other noticeable health effects. Every aspect of my health seemed to be effected by Oxycontin, and each of those aspects are cited in any literature about the long-term effects of high doses of the drug. I was beginning to fall apart. It was becoming more difficult to pay for the drug, acquire enough of the drug, and keep all of it hidden. I began to work on something I called “The Project.” I researched all of the different therapies and approaches for getting myself out of the pit that was widening around me. One of these approaches is a new drug therapy involving a drug called buprenorphine. (http://www.recoverythroughsupport.com/treatment/opiate-detox.html?OVRAW=buprenophine&OVKEY=buprenorphine&OVMTC=standard) In short, it will keep you from withdrawing without getting you high. Using smaller and smaller doses, an addict can eventually ‘jump off’ without going through a serious withdrawal.

Buprenorphine is available in Mexico. A few years ago, prior to the flood of Oxycontin, the braceros called it “synthetic morphine,” and would pitch it to passers by at the pharmacies. I had even tried it once, several years ago, but found it worthless for getting high.

One Friday morning in March, my local connection had run dry, and so had I. It was getting to the point that I needed to take Oxy at least once every six hours or the symptoms of withdrawal would come on very rapidly. I headed to Mexico with the intent of starting on buprenorphine. I picked the wrong day. It appears that, occasionally, the authorities in Mexico visit all of the pharmacies with the intent of some sort of audit, and such was the case on this particular day. As I entered my regular pharmacy, the braceros told me that not only would there be no buprenorphine sold that day, but that Oxy was out of the question as well. In disbelief, I visited every other pharmacy only to be told of the government audit to be conducted that day. Withdrawal symptoms were setting in and my time was running out.

Buprenorphine, I was told, could be purchased on that day, but only with a prescription. I was directed to a medical office and ascended up a rickety elevator and down a corridor to the office of a physician. I entered the sparse office, shaking, sweating, and emotionally unstable. Unlike a typical U.S. medical office, there was no receptionist, no nurse, just a one-man operation, and he was with a patient. He emerged from the examination room as I entered and could barely speak English. It was obvious from his reaction that he could see there was something quite wrong with me. He handed me some paperwork and told me to wait. Sitting alone, trembling, under the glare of a flickering flourescent tube, I worried that I had finally come to the end of my ability to manage my love affair with Oxy.

My cellphone pierced my ears in the silent waiting room. It was the braceros. Amazingly, the auditors had left. They told me that Oxy awaits, but no buprenorphine. The Project could wait. I bolted the doctor’s office, never to be seen again. I picked up about six 80 milligram Oxys and headed home, shaken, knowing that the game had become unworkable.

That evening the game came to an end. When my wife came home from work and we settled down for a romantic moment, she sensed something was wrong with me. I could not hide any longer. I began gasping for air and my heart felt as though it would escape my chest. I now know that I was having a full-blown anxiety attack. I feared that if I did not tell her what was going on, that I would surely die right there. It was over. I made the admission. I had relapsed. I had lied. I had tried to hide it. I could do no more. I ran to my stash, turned it all over to her and cried until my eyes felt as though they were bleeding. What would happen next is the nightmare that anyone ever addicted to a drug fears most of all.

Meetings

I’ve been down this road before. Back the 1980s there was an organization formed to deal with the special needs of cocaine addicts who were perched upon the crest of the wave of white powder that the tide rolled into the U.S. during the Reagan administration. The organization was Cocaine Anonymous. I had entered the CA ranks in the summer of 1985. I left a good job, career and friends in Las Vegas and sought cleaner pastures in Arizona in the hope that I could escape my dealer and drugging friends. It didn’t work. Within a month I had located ever source in town and was more strung-out than ever before. I spent 90 days going to meetings noon and night until I simply couldn’t take it anymore. When you enter a 12-step program they will tell you that you’ve got to do “90 in 90” which means ninety meetings in ninety days. The net result for me was that I never, ever did cocaine again. I abstained not because of the program, but merely because I knew, in my heart, that if I continued to do cocaine that I would have to spend the rest of my life with these people and with the program. It was a very good motivator. Unfortunately, Oxy was something I could not deal with quite so smoothly.
 
A lot of things have changed since the good old 80s. Now, NA is a big phenomenon, or at least bigger than it was. When I was in CA I would occasionally go to a small NA meeting, and as I recall there was only one a week, conducted in a small park around a tree. Now that I was faced with going to meetings again, I was surprised to see that there were NA meetings scheduled at least five times a day, seven days a week in my city.
 
My first meeting was dismal. I had failed. I had failed to realize the first step of any 12 step program: I was an addict and my life had become unmanageable. All of my attempts to keep my addiction a secret had failed. All of the hard work I had put into getting high had landed me here. I gazed across the room at homeless people, harpooners, meth freaks, parolees, white trash, brown trash, black trash, wierdos, freaks, and outcasts. I was now one of them. I was there because of my wife, but it became rapidly clear that I needed to be there because of someone else: me.
 
My name is Gus. I am an addict.

The Sh** has hit the Fan

What has made my withdrawals so much easier is the fact that my wife has been very supportive of me. At least she was until today. Today the shit hit the fan and it spewed far and wide.
 
During my withdrawals I stole some of my wife’s meds just to take off the edge. We’ve had this problem before. Over the past ten years she’s resorted to hiding her meds for migraines and other ailments because if I encountered them, I’d steal them. I stole them last week. I also lied about it. This sent my wife into a rage. No longer was she the sweet supportive consoler. Now she was pissed. She has a difficult time getting the meds because of paranoid doctors and when she realized that she was not really going crazy, and that the amounts of her meds were shrinking because someone else was absconding with them, she freaked out. Her mandate: I must go to meetings.
 
This was my greatest fear. Meetings are the end of the road for any addict. Meetings means that the jig is up and the shit is over. Going to NA meetings means that you’ve hit the last house on the block, as some of the NA meet-o-philes like to declare. I realized that this was the end of the road. No more living a second life. It was over. I was fucked with no escape.

How Much?

Last night marked five days. Yesterday, I was still feeling the physical symptoms of diahrea and fatigue, but I pushed through it and put in a full day at my job. It was difficult. This morning I am feeling better but have no idea what to expect. I know I can’t do Oxycontin any longer and I feel confident, but I know myself well enough to know that dedication can melt in the face of rationalization.
 
This morning, thinking back on how this all happened, and doing so within the context of this being my sixth day of what is probably the worst crash I have known over that time period, I realized just how much of the drug I was taking. I don’t think I realized it before, but I can’t remember going more than seven days without it in the past 26 weeks. When I get to seven days I don’t know what to expect because I haven’t gone that far. I really had never thought about it.
 
I crashed before, but none as horrific as this. Every time that I was feeling better, I rationalized that I was o.k. and that going to get more Oxy was no big deal. I reasoned that it was merely a type of recreation and that, if I could quit for a few days, then it was no big deal. However, reflecting back upon it now, I see that the problem was not quitting until I felt better, but rather quitting in the face of feeling better. 

How did this happen to me?

I stumbled across the Mexican border. Beer wasn’t enough. I had taken a summer Friday afternoon off. The thermometer was way past the century mark. I was simply out for a day away from work for a boyish adventure. In the potholed narrow streets of a Mexican border town you can buy anything: prescription drugs, weapons, or even humans. What I really wanted was Percocet, but it is not sold in Mexico. However, I had heard that one could get Vicodin. I had taken Percocet and Vicodin from time to time as prescribed by my primary care physician to help me get over an aching back, and I had enjoyed how it made me feel. I thought that perhaps I’d see what Mexico had to offer and maybe I’d get lucky and add some fun to my escape from the routine.

Tiny shops, crammed one after the other, dot the Mexican streets, and every four or five doorways leads to a Mexican pharmacy. Retirees, free to abandon the aching cold of the northern states, relocate to border states in large migrating flocks for cheap living and abundant sunshine. In the early 1990s, the federal government passed a law allowing U.S. consumers to travel across the border and return with enough medication for personal use. This has spawned an entire industry in border towns, where every other customer is a bobbing globe of gray, looking to stock up on cheap generic versions of Lipitor, Coumadin, and Viagra. In Mexico, prescriptions are required for controlled substances, but the line between what is controlled and what is not, is blurred to the degree that no one needs a prescription for nearly anything.

I wandered into a pharmacy that was down a frightening narrow tiled corridor and up a flight of concrete steps. It was a small windowless room about 15 feet wide by 8 feet deep and only accessible to customers by a waist-high counter cut into a small niche. I asked for Vicodin but was told to come back next week, which of course was not going to happen. I rarely, if ever, visited Mexico. I pressed the counterman for more. It was getting late in the day and I needed to return home, a very long drive. Finally I blurted out that I wanted anything with codeine. He handed me a thirty-tablet bottle and demanded eighty bucks. It was the summer of 2001. That was the first time I ever saw Oxycontin. I didn’t even know what it was.

The Fear

I am two hours away from the 96-hour mark. Every hour or so, the fear sets in. This is unlike any fear you will ever know. We expect fear to come in response to something in our environment that endangers us, and in that context, we see fear as a normal productive part of life; it helps us to survive and succeed in the face of threats. This fear is like the 800-pound monster that lives behind your closet door, never seen, but lurking there, waiting to eviscerate you. This is fear in response to nothing. This is fear for no rational reason, but it is still fear nonetheless. It is a kind of fear that creates questions rather than responses: will I ever feel good again? Have I ruined my life permanently? What did I miss out on while I was high and will those opportunities ever present themselves again? What will tomorrow be like, and what if it is worse than today.

96 hours is a long time when you are crashing. It is an eternity, a milestone that I am clutching like a half-inflated life raft; I have watched the ship slide to the bottom of the sea and I made it off the deck, yet I do not know if, while clinging to my flotsam, I will survive, nor do I know if this is a better fate. The physical symptoms subsided at 72 hours. The runny nose, diarrhea, the flames and ice cubes darting from my flesh, and a never-ending stream of sweat, were nothing compared to the fear. Some accounts place the physical symptoms somewhere next to the flu, which I believe is accurate. At 24 hours my nose became runny and my skin began to feel like pinpricks that I could not discern were either hot or cold. But most of all, at that point, I felt weak. I left work early that day. I only made it through about two hours when the crash began to fall. I crawled right into the bed that I would later make slogging wet with sweat. At 48 things were still the same, but perhaps slightly better. But at 72, after I felt as though my skin had been zipped back on, the fear remained, and in the absence of physical symptoms it seemed to be glaring at me and no longer subdued by the trauma to my physical body, which had subdued it. And here I am staring it in the face.

Two months ago, while I was high, I took out a 3” X 5” index card and wrote myself a note from the dreamy world of opiate intoxication. Having crashed a few times before, but never with the serious intent of leading to permanent abstinence, I thought I’d leave myself a souvenir from the netherworld; something that would let me know that, from the other side, everything would eventually be o.k. On the other side, everything is cool and everything is fine. There are no worries, no fears, no scary monsters under the bed. Like a time traveler who leaves a message in the past in order to mark the future, I wrote this:

“It is an illusion. See thought it. Everything is o.k. Things are not what they seem. You have seen that peace is possible, now find it. If you could find it then (while you were high) you can find it again. Don’t be a pussy! Do what you need to do. Do what you know is right. You can accomplish whatever you need or want to. Just don’t do it! Nothing lasts forever. This will pass. Believe it. There is no substitution. Do it all. There is no honor in second place. Push through it. It is not real. It can be whatever you want it to be. Don’t be afraid. Believe in yourself. Don’t believe the fear. It is not real and everything is o.k. It will go away.”

I squarely folded the index card and tucked it into my wallet where it has resided for the past eight weeks, unfolded, until today. The fear is so pervasive that the words from the index card seem as shallow as words of comfort from the executioner to the condemned. The words make no sense at all. I read the attempted encouragement from the netherworld like a treatise from a sophomore-year philosophy course: it can never be the case that things are not what they seem because how things seem is the only way that things are. At least that’s the way it seems at 96.

I am afraid. Afraid the Percocet destroyed my liver. Afraid I altered my brain chemistry. Afraid I will die. Afraid that if I live, I will never know pleasure again. There seems to only be the pleasure of the drug or life without it, and each is exclusive of the other, as though there is only one choice, yet somehow I know that one choice results in death. Yet, what remains, the possibility of life, but one without joy, seems no consolation. I once heard a story that the lowest Roman slaves were given a choice between two destinies. Supposedly they could choose between either a lifetime of slavery, or one night in Caesar’s Palace enjoying the lustful splendor of all the pleasures it entailed, but be executed at sunrise. Sometimes a choice is no choice at all. I am indeed going to die. We all are. I have merely made a choice about how I’d like to do it, and hopefully it won’t be drowning in my own vomit. That’s my choice at 96.

Tomorrow: How did this happen to me?