“I don’t want to lose my child,” she said.
I glanced over at her and tears were welling in her eyes, smears of angry red puffing up around her pale azure irises. Long strands of flaxen hair pirouetted in the gentle breeze like miniature ballerinas framing her slender face.
I said what any normal human being in my situation would say:
“You won’t.”
But I didn’t know if that was true, yet I hoped it was true. That’s all you can do with the broken. Hope, nudge and pray that with enough tinkering, they eventually find a way to function.
We’ll call her Triss.
I looked up at the open blue sky from the bench that we were sitting on, wispy swirls of cerulean indigo dancing across the horizon like the blonde hair framing her face. It was the end of October, just before November would settle in during the 2016 election year, but the warm breeze still resembled summer more than the impending fall in Los Angeles.
We were free for a moment, Triss and I. Sitting on the hospital bench outside, facing the main entrance where a Starbucks was tucked inside the gaping electronic doors. It was a rare moment to feel the sun kissing our faces on day four of detox for both of us (that’s the gift you get, once you’ve stabilized enough in detox. They let you outside to go on a one-hour supervised walk and get one Starbucks coffee a day. Oh, the little things in life.)
The others were inside, copiously arranging their caffeine fixes with the unaware baristas, while Triss and I were taking a moment to enjoy this illusion of freedom together.
She wiped her face with her sleeve. Quick spurts of breath sprinted in and out of her lungs.
Triss’s husband was going to bring their baby to visit her for the first time tonight. You don’t want to do that at the start because we’re still too fucked up between chemical imbalances and our emotions turned upside down – tsunami size waves of anxiety and depression battering us around like ships lost at sea. You need a few days to drain the poison before the physical healing can take a little effect.
This was Triss’s second trip to detox this year and she didn’t know if her husband was going to leave her. Plus, even worse, she had a nine-month-old baby she might lose custody over as well. To say that she was nervous and beyond an emotional wreck would be an understatement.
Like all of us in detox, her future was hanging in the balance.
I felt for her, because I absolutely understood that I had no clue what she was going through. Sure, my life was a shit show and lay smoldering in ruins, but I had no idea what it would be like to face losing your child.
Triss and I had first met earlier in the week when I was stepping back into the main detox hallway from being admitted, which was the rawest point I had ever been at. My wife had just left and basically, the nurse takes all your belongings, strips you down into the hospital robes, checks you for drugs and then takes your whole recent history down on paper. This is the moment when shit really starts to sink in, and you finally break down. The tears came and there was no shame, because nothing was left. You realize one life has just ended and another is beginning. But this new beginning doesn’t have any rose-colored glasses and sure as hell won’t be staring back at you out of some pretty magazine cover. No, this new life is one that you’ll more likely find on the bottom of someone’s shoe after they’ve smashed a cockroach. You’re sliding into the dark slums of the mind now.
And back to my point of meeting Triss, well, we didn’t actually meet at that juncture. She was being wheeled into the detox ward in a wheelchair because she was so fucked up and couldn’t walk, but our eyes met only for a second, yet we recognized each other in that glance. It was the gaze of the afflicted acknowledging one brethren to another. We were both here. We had taken the first step.
“God, the drinking,” she sighed in a fit of regret. The light breeze had picked up again and we probably only had a few more minutes before the others returned with their coffees in hand. “If only I had learned from last time.”
“It will be okay,” I said softly. “There’s no telling how many times it will take.” My gaze shifted, and I watched the endless stream of people filtering in and out of the hospital entrance – normal people with normal lives. God, how I envied them. “All that matters is you keep trying.”
She seemed to be nodding to herself – searching somewhere inward and desolate that I had no access to – before looking back up at me suddenly. “Alcohol took you down too, right?”
She had caught me off guard and I let out a chuckle.
“What?” She smiled. And it was the first time that she had smiled since we’d been outside.
I glanced over at her and then did that famous one-eyed squint you see the actors do in the movies when they’re about to say something important. I laughed again to myself before saying, “it might have been king alcohol that finally took me down in the end, but it was queen opiates who softened me up for the taking. The drinking just filled the void when I tried to quit drugs. I lasted for about two years on that liquid diet while fending off the turkey. And don’t get me wrong, I was always a heavy drinker… so maybe it was just a matter of time anyway. But now I’ll never know…”
I drifted off and went back to watching the clouds, her question stirring a mass of jumbled memories that I couldn’t make any sense out of.
“I never did any drugs,” she finally offered into the silence. “What was it like?”
I turned to her again, “what do you mean?”
“You know,” she said, and there was a sparkle back in her eyes. “You said opiates earlier, why were they so great?”
“Well,” I paused. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Then do your best.”
Her sudden persistence solicited a wide smile from me. “Alright,” I finally nodded at her. “Touche.” The words came slowly to the tip of my tongue, as if I were thinking out loud. “If I were going to describe what opiates were like for me, I’d call them a starless… black… heaven.”
“Well, you can’t just leave it that,” she joked.
I paused and then thought for a moment before elaborating slowly…
“Starless, because there is no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel. You always know how things will culminate, dope sick and looking for more. You keep on slipping down this path and there are only three options. We all know them by heart in the rooms: jails, institutions or death… and the two former, always lead to the latter. Black, because everything is tainted, there’s a darkness interwoven into the fabric of that euphoric oblivion, and each time you go to that well it steals another piece of your soul. And you know it’s not real. It’s a chemical happiness, manufactured in some lab meant to numb and dull the pain. Yet it doesn’t provide happiness; it only shields the despair. And heaven, because for a while, when it works, that’s what it is – escape, relief and comfort. The stars have aligned, the world is glowing, and everything is going to be all right. You’re at peace and nothing can pull you down when you’re flying high on that kite. That’s the part that we always forget. The end is so terrible that we can’t remember that the drugs worked for a long time.”
“It seems like you’ve thought about this more than you realized,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess I have.”
“I’m glad I never got into drugs.”
“I’m glad too.”
The hospital doors suddenly flung open and our chaperoning counselor appeared, shortly after with the other depraved denizens inhabiting the detox ward with us in tow. It was time to return with our cohorts to the prison of our own making. We had bent the bars a little today, but there was still such a long way to go in escaping our cages.
“C’mon,” I said. “You have an important date with your husband and child tonight. Just focus on that. Get through today and we’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes. One day at a time…”
She looked up at me and I caught the smallest glint in her eyes – for a moment the ice was thawing, for a moment the gloom had parted. And as her dark pupils dilated in the scattered sunshine, those tiny black circles made me think of something I had just said…
A starless, black heaven.
-Q-FI
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P.S. What is your own starless black heaven? Or have you ever made a mistake and lost something forever?
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Update: I don’t know what happened to Triss – did she make it, did she relapse, is she even alive? I tried contacting her when I was first out of rehab, but she never responded, which is perfectly fine. Most of the time it’s easier to forget then to relive those old wounds. I don’t blame her at all, and I know I did my part by trying to check-in. All I can hope is she found the peace and serenity to stay sober, be a good mom and stay in her child’s life.
This story is the most incredible and impressive story I’ve read on any FI blog, even if it’s not directly FI-related, though we know it played a major role along your journey and always will. I grew up with addiction in my family and have always found these stories fascinating because I know my family wasn’t alone. It also gives me a glimpse into the mind of an addict.
I hope you’re doing well and managing your sobriety. From what I’ve read on your blog, it seems you’ve turned your life around. Congratulations! That’s no small feat.
Thanks for the kind words Katie and reading. You are correct that my blog has definitely strayed from being FI and has just turned into writing about my random scattered thoughts. Haha. If I had hindsight, I would have probably done a different name.
It’s been both fun and cathartic to write about addiction. I like to try and tell small stories about detox and rehab to describe how things really were. Maybe it helps people, maybe not. But at least I can offer a glimpse of what some people struggle with.
If you grew up with addiction in your family, then I’m sorry. You know all too well and are one of the few who understand, addiction is a sickness that infects the entire family. It’s not just the addict who suffers. Each family member is affected differently and strong boundaries are needed in order for healing to occur.
Yes, I am doing well and thanks for asking. Coming up on four years clean in October, which I’m insanely stoked on. No one’s left from my group, so it can get lonely at times. But you put in the work daily and hope for the best.
A great and exceptionally well told story. Again, I commend your courage and candor in sharing these accounts. It’s awesome that you’ve been sober for 4 years and, for that, you ought to be very proud.
Thanks bud and always much appreciated.
i don’t know if it was my mistake but a few winters ago an old chemist friend came to visit us in buffalo. he was a long time drinking buddy who lived 4-5 hours away. we always overdid it to some extent but he was in kinda rough shape. i know what you mean when you say you can only hope and nudge a person so i asked the commander “you ever think about giving up the wine or cutting back?” – “yeah, i’ve been thinking about it.” was the response. fast forward a year and the commander was dead of liver failure. he never called or anything when he really got sick. you wish you could have done more or at least said goodbye but we just do our best in life.
nice post. i took a month off the sauce this past winter just to know that i could do it at will. stay clean, bro.
It definitely was not your mistake at all Freddy. One of the hardest parts for people to grasp, is that if the addict/alcoholic hasn’t hit bottom and doesn’t want any help themselves, there isn’t that much you can do. You can’t force someone into rehab to get sober no matter how fucked up they are. It’s painful to watch, but the person has to want it themselves. You did the right thing by gently asking and in my opinion, that was the perfect way to handle it and all that you could have done anyway.
Sorry for your loss and good for you taking a month off. It’s always good to clean out that liver once in a while and give the body a break. I used to do that as well back in the day.