My Innocence Has All But Faded

Now playing: Ben Folds Five “Mess.”

Relapse is said to be a part of recovery. But what if you don’t feel like you’re in recovery at all? Does fucking up and getting drunk have the same bearing on your progress if you’re “cutting down” on drinking instead of stopping completely?

At this point it’s pretty common knowledge that I’ve got some sort of problem, at least. Whether you wanna go the BK route and call me a druggie/junkie/cokehead/alcoholic or the “I’m in denial route” like I do, it’s there and it’s giant and it’s not going away. So what do we do with this information? Oh right, we check ourselves into more intense treatment.

But that would be too easy, right? A quick and easy method to ensure my recovery — sorry, my Road to Joy — is linear and that I can finish the program in 30 days. So what do you do? Ask a friend/coworker to share their legally obtained and medically necessary narcotics and benzodiazepines. Duh. This friend knows about this “non issue” of mine and that I’m taking time off of work to get sober —  so naturally she gave me four. I don’t even usually fuck with benzos because of how highly addicting they are. But just having prescription anything in front of me left me with a rush that I hadn’t felt in months. It all came flooding back to me and my demeanor changed immediately.

Ativan Halen and Deja Vu. Right.

In the blink of an eye I found myself reaching out to friends I hadn’t spoken to much since I started talking groups. Friends with other friends (but those friends are also my friends? We pretend I don’t know that.) Started asking what kind, how much, when can I get it? In .2 seconds I went from “yeah I’m gonna kick sobriety’s ass!” to Googling “how long does Ativan stay in your system?”

BK was a real one and offered me the chance to come pick them up. Said he’d toss them for me. I was so close to saying yes — in fact I did originally say yes. Like the plan was made! BK was going to actively put himself in a situation that could lead to his own relapse by picking up four perfectly safe-to-use-not-laced-with-fentanyl pills to help me. Because I knew I needed help; I even cried.

Then I said “nah, I’ll be okay.”

Then I had a drink after getting home.

Then I took an Ativan.

And it didn’t do anything. Granted it was .05mg because I don’t take benzos and haven’t taken prescription drugs in a long time and relapse scares me because I’m always chasing the high and my body’s all fucked up and if I was using like before, I’d have just taken all four at once. I’m surprised I didn’t even take the second half.

But why am I always self-sabotaging? Why am I always rationalizing shit? Why am I a drug addict? Why is there a persistent need inside of me that drives me to alter my state of existence so that I feel comfortable enough to exist? This pressure is so much all of the time and I don’t know how to make it go away. It has been there all of my life, clouding me, and all I can do to numb out the noise is to slow it down.

There are moments where I consider the possibility that the stressors I’ve identified might be perceived rather than real. Maybe I’m making it all up type of thing. That happens, right? While I was writing my thesis, articles on the effects some situations/events/what have you had on people and whether it was real or perceived provided me with a lot of insight but my main take away is: whether I’m imagining the disparities or not, they’re still having this negative impact on my life, I’m having the same consequences, and I’m being harmed in the same way.

Whether someone doesn’t like me or I just think they don’t like me, I will respond the same way physiologically, socially, and psychologically.  It doesn’t matter what the answer to these questions are if I’m not going to do anything with the answer.

All of my life I’ve been finding some way to exist, to explain my existence, when my existentialist ass faux intellectual heaux self really could have just accepted that there is no one way to “be” and that the only explanation beyond my parents procreating is whatever I make it out to be. As the search went on and led me to (perceived) dead ends, the explanation factor turned more into an escape, and it got easier to drown in a sea of vodka and norcos than to deal with dissatisfaction, boredom, and insecurities. Trying to remember a time when I felt naturally welcomed and like I “fit in” anywhere and didn’t need to drink is hard. Within the last two years I can only think of one time. My grad school interview. I loved it there, immediately. White people aside (I mean, it’s in the city of Buckaroos. I knew that.) the institution is exactly where I want to be all the time. Always. A huge part of my desire to seek more intensive treatment is so that I can go back to school and be alright.

So back to relapse. Where does it fit in? Because in all honesty, I probably will use today. I started, so why stop now? Treatment starts Tuesday, it’d be out of my system by then, pretty much.  I’m aware that there’s a higher chance of overdose after a period of recovery and I’m pacing myself; I’m aiming to not take all at once and not with alcohol. I don’t want to use, really, but I rationalize and bargain with my use because I’m a druggie. I’m scared and nervous and self-sabotage because I can’t handle not knowing and I only know how to function if I’m not myself. I don’t have a life. I have a drug problem. They’re there and I’m here and I feel weird and I can’t process anything at all anymore.

Jesus. This was supposed to be lighthearted. Maybe some posts about “back in my day, we used to roll our blunts with cocaine” type of shit. Not this crap.

I’m gonna start reading again. I need to do something besides destroy myself.

EMO KID OUT.

It’ll All Be Fine This Time.

Now Playing: ODESZA “A Moment Apart.” 

Sometimes it feels like my life’s a dream, that things are happening and I’m just someone watching it go by. Head leaning against the seat of the bus, all I could think about was how typically mundane the day had been, with some exceptions. I got up this morning after oversleeping, got dressed, took a crowded train to work, then was busy until the day was done.

Where it was extraordinary was the two hours that I was gone because I was meeting with my drug counselor. Remember when I said that my current program wasn’t going to be enough to keep me clean and sober? Surprise! Now I’m going to programs 4 days a week. Woo-hoo!

But back to dream land. For most of my life, I’ve detached myself from things. School, work, family — they are important and they are things that I’ve worked towards, work hard for, and have fought for, but they aren’t exactly real. Graduating felt fake because there wasn’t really anything behind it. Sure, tons of Instagram photos and long captions because dream or not, I didn’t get into those honor societies without hours of blood, sweat, and tears. But my life didn’t really change afterwards. Nothing happened. My family and AJ went to Applebees then home. I went to work the next work day.

It’s like things happen and they fade away and I don’t know what meaning anything is supposed to have. Maybe I never have. Growing up there was such impermanence surrounding everything that I felt secure with nothing. Volatile relationships, dysfunctional family dynamics, no security even with remaining in the country. What was my poor C-PTSD brain’d self to learn?

I don’t know. Camus wanted it all. For it mean nothing and everything at once. There has to be a way to have that. For me to realize that yes, all of these bad awful things happened and you’re a sad little bitch for it. Yes, there’s a reason why you can’t hug your friends and only tell them you love them when you’re drunk. But also to move the fuck forward and move the fuck on. That’s existential, I think, and critical for this to work.

But I’m not there yet. We’ll get to that in a moment.

My counselor and I made a new treatment plan. I forgot that I was in treatment, not just some fun talking groups that give me content for blog posts. I’m trying to get better even if I don’t know what better means for me. She recognizes that I’m not ready for abstinence; maybe it was me saying “yes” every time she asked if I wanted to keep using [insert drug here.]

Woah — my ADHD ass totally just took like, a 20 minute break to watch ODESZA videos from Coachella. And I may or may not have cried. Nostalgia kicks my ass every damn day. But the tears weren’t really from missing the festival or even from regret of using that weekend. No, it’s more because my counselor asked me “what would it be like to not use substances?” And watching those videos, I can’t imagine not using molly in that moment. It seems so different now from a computer screen. I don’t remember them having all of these special guests or exactly what they did onstage. But I remember what I felt, and all of the emotions that each song elicited, and just how happy I was. The way BN danced and the other people around us, the way the lights were too much and not enough all at once. The interconnectedness of it all. It may have been serotonin-sucking worst comedown you’ve ever had drug fueled happiness and introspection, but it’s real. It’s as real as the sparkling pink auras you see around your friends when you’ve taken acid. It’s everything I’ve ever felt and everything I never wanted to, rolled up and swallowed and it comes out in shiny colors that last about 6 hours.

So me not taking substances feels like watching a kick-ass EDM set or Beyonce’s performance from my bed on a Monday night. Like standing in the back of a general admission concert and bobbing my head. It feels like.. normalcy that I don’t want. It feels like sitting in an office, sharing all the things about my past, and knowing absolutely nothing about the future.

It’s scary. I am scared.

ODESZA makes me feel like a dream, drugs or not, and it fits with my detachment in the sense that it ties me down. LR tells me I should stop listening to it because I associate it with drugs but that would have to go for everything. From ODESZA to Dua Lipa to One Direction. They’re all associated with drugs because I am drugs. (Shout out to Dali!) You could play solely Spotify’s Hot Country playlist and I’m sure there’s songs about drinking. Like, there have to be right?

Escapism is my best friend even when life feels like a game but every once in a while life throws you a curveball (I spelled ‘throw’ wrong approximately 4 times. Just thought I’d let you guys know that that word is too difficult.) And that little treatment plan that you and your counselor came up with has to be given to your job because like, oh yeah you haven’t lost that yet somehow and you need to have your schedule adjusted — again. And the paper has “chemical dependency recovery” on it and it has to be approved by the director and you’re not sure what the policy is for drugs and failed drug tests and BAM!

You can’t keep telling yourself that your life is a dream you’ll wake up from.