The mechanism of addiction varies from substance to substance. Heroin, just for example (and because it’s the one I’m most familiar with), effectively replaces endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers (which is what makes it and its derivatives wonder drugs in pain treatment), but once the body thinks it’s getting regular shots of the stuff it
stops making its own.
The root cause… it varies. Lots of junkies actually get their start self-medicating for chronic pain. Others want to escape a dismal reality, even if temporarily – strngrnrth’s door is a good depiction. Some may try it out of curiosity, realize
it feels really, really good, and pick up a habit unexpectedly. And sure, there’s no want of stupid kids.
Me, I was in group #2 for a couple-few years, though I’ve had friends or acquaintances from all across the board. I actually managed to keep as good a handle as one could hope for on it, though that
really isn’t saying much. That little sachet of brown powder is bigger than any human being.
Which isn’t to say, as some people have, that one must turn to God or a nebulous ‘higher power’ as in AA/NA to get clean (nothing against AA/NA, group therapy helps a great many people, but it is not the only way out). Nepenthe and I quit for love – we get high on each other, if you get my drift
And yeah, it’s going to be with me for the rest of my life. That’s okay. So’s everything else I’ve accomplished, good and bad alike. The only things I regret are the ones I
haven’t done (well okay, I don’t regret never trying PCP or acid). You’re never totally past it, just like people who went through AA and have been sober for decades still count themselves ‘recovering alcoholics’.
Bottom line, when it comes to talking and trying to help addicts, the most important thing to remember is that we’re human, with human problems – nothing more or less. We have pasts, futures (even though they may look a bit bleak at points, there’s
always hope), and we play just as much a role in society as anyone else. Treating addicts as subhuman or otherwise stigmatizing them is all too common a reaction from many people (such as the poster here who told me I was obviously incapable of coherent thought from all the overdoses turning my brain into ‘Swiss cheese’). All that does is alienate the people you’re hopefully trying to help, turning their problems loose on them to boost your own ego. Avoid it.
The best thing to
do is really just to be a friend, even if it’s a distant relationship (of the ‘I’m not letting you into any room in my house I’m not in’ or ‘I’ll talk to you on the phone, but really can’t hang out’ variety, in extreme cases). Social contact is what keeps us human and
reminds us of that – not just junkies, but
everybody.
But you want stories? Oh, everyone’s got them, good, bad, and just plain crazy…
Ending up in someone else’s van full of complete strangers in a rough-at-best neighborhood trying to figure out what the different regional slang
meant was… interesting. Realizing
my car, parked right in front of the pitch, had an ‘I Support My Sheriff’s Association’ vanity plate stuck on it was even more interesting.
Another sign of an interesting situation: the words ‘it’s not a crack house, it’s a crack
home’. We ended up having to go rescue one guy after he finally figured out he was too high on a drug he wasn’t used to to drive. It all worked out without any mishaps, and once it was over we all had a good laugh, and as far as we know neither he nor his fiancee have gotten themselves into that since then. They’re nice people, live in a big townhouse in a good area – just goes to show that stereotypes often don’t apply.
We bought a giant tin of tinkertoys for the young daughter of one of our very good friends (who also happens to be a dealer, and still one of the most thoughtful, honest, and just generally
good people we know; he grew up in the life, and right now is trying his damnedest to get out of it) for Christmas. A few days later, we were consoling him over his brother’s – non-drug-related – suicide.
And apparently once I tried to commit suicide by means of a
massive overdose. I don’t remember any of that last one beyond waking up ten hours later in bed with a puffed lip and a sore jaw (and I remember other, far milder overdoses quite vividly up to the point of unconsciousness, so I have to chalk that one up to a brief case of the non compos mentises – I was going through some pretty nasty stuff in my life at that point which had nothing to do with heroin). I’m extremely lucky that someone who was much more experienced than I in the areas of ‘practical pharmacology’ and field medicine was around.
Sure, these are more stories of living than of quitting, but you don’t get to part two without part one – and honestly, so many people regard addiction as
just the big scary boogeyman that
someone needs to put a human face on it every now and again, reinforce the idea that
everybody involved, dealers, users, even cops, are real people. And my ‘quitting story’ is really pretty simple: I decided I loved someone else more than I loved smack.
Nepenthe’s got stories going back a lot longer than I do, and was much more involved with all aspects of the whole thing (taking it up, living it, and quitting it) than I ever was. It’s not really my place to tell those, though, so wait for some tales of past whackiness which may sound like they’d be more at home announced in a drippy font on luridly illustrated pulp paper
