I grew out of
crystal meth like a toddler grows out of his Oshkosh. “Uppers” were substances
I found I could walk away from semi-easily. I didn’t like the comedown, the
strabismus that seemed to plague me each time (I’d nearly always have to cover,
or keep one eye closed whenever I would try to read anything while on tina),
and I plainly grew tired of it.
I went back to getting stoned off weed and drinking alcohol
every night. At 22, I had still not had major run-ins with the law, or participated
in criminal activities besides illicit drug use, but what was about to happen
to me, set me up for the introduction to the love of my life: opioids.
I had finally moved out of my mom’s house into an apartment with a roommate named Vaughn. It was a fantastic setup, and I enjoyed being on my own. Vaughn worked as a bartender at a very, very classy joint, making more in one night shift than I would make in an entire week at my regular, full time retail job. We lived behind the Greene, going to happy hours often, and because Vaughn made so much more than me, he typically footed the bill.
I had a routine schedule for how I drank. I worked first shift, and when I would come home to the apartment, and if Vaughn & I had no happy hour plans, I timed how much I drank, or I would make sure I had consumed X amount of beer in X amount of time, to ensure I had the proper buzz I wanted to feel. Usually this was one beer every 15 minutes for the first 60 minutes, and then two beers every 15 minutes for the next hour. By doing this, I steered clear of any hangovers, but maintained just the right level of inebriation. My taste was not discriminatory, and I savored quantity over quality: Milwaukee’s Best was my beer of choice; cheap and effective. After I finished with the beer every night, I’d retire to my bedroom and smoke pot until I passed out. I did this every single week night, and most certainly was always alone.
Weekends, that ritual went out the window, and normally I’d be with friends. And on Thursday, March 12, 2009, my friend Lillian & I went out drinking at a local bar in Kettering called the Shroyer Inn. I gravitated towards low-key bars instead of the fancy lights and throbbing dance music of the clubs I went to as a teenager. I traded Top 40 Pop played by a DJ, for Guns & Ruses from a jukebox; places where moonshiners lurked in the shadows, and your friends were liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar.
My drink was Long Island Iced Tea, and the Shroyer Inn made them strong. I was well on my way to double digits when I came up with the brilliant idea to buy some heroin. The twisted thinking I had told me, Hey! It’s not meth, so it’s cool!
Lillian knew somebody, who knew somebody, who knew someone else, and I had syringes from my meth days, and a short while later, I was back at the apartment, alone in my bedroom, the syringe full of dope in my palm.
I was incredibly, incredibly drunk, and I am unaware how I was even able to take the shot, and in fact it would have been so much better if I would have missed, or flat passed out first. But I didn’t miss, and while I did go unconscious, it was not because of the Long Islands.
When I next opened my eyes, it was morning, and I could not move my body. My heart beat an allegro in my ears, and while I was thoroughly confused, I knew something was definitely wrong. I could barely breathe. It was labored, and it felt like trying to suck in oxygen from a tiny straw. And the only way I can describe how my body felt, was that it felt like the circulation was cut off everywhere. Imagine laying on your arm and it “falls asleep,” and you have to shake it to get the blood flowing again. Now apply that to every appendage, down to the tips of your phalanges, except when I tried to “wake” my body up, it was not working.
Vaughn came into my room. He had heard my strained breathing and was concerned. I’ll never forget the look on his face; he was in shock because I was laying there in a mangled mess of limbs, contorted into a pile that human beings should now be contorted into.
He came over and helped me untangle my body, but I still had yet to gather the strength to lift my arms or legs on my own. Vaughn asked me what happened, but all I could muster between gasps of air was that I desperately needed water, and when he brought a red Solo cup to my lips, I almost couldn’t drink it. I saw his eyes look to the ground beside the bed, and then he asked me, “What drugs did you do last night?”
I traced his line of sight, and saw what he had seen, what made him ask that question of me, and that cloudy confusion parted to let in a brief moment of clarity. It came rushing back to me as I looked at the syringe on the floor, a touch of blood at the base of the point. I had shot up heroin.
I was taken by ambulance to the hospital on Friday, March 13. I remember telling the nurse when I first arrived that I needed to get well in a couple days, that I had to work on Sunday and I could not miss. Her answer was simple enough, and I quote her verbatim. Her words are ingrained in my memory: “You are very sick, Christopher. You are going to be here awhile.”
I stayed in the hospital until I was discharged on April 10. I had never done heroin before, and because I was opiate naive, when I shot the dope, with all that alcohol in my system, it caused me to pass out. I had fallen onto my bed, with one of my legs tucked up and bent underneath my body. This cut off blood flow, causing my muscles to break down and release toxins into my blood stream. These toxins were too much for my kidneys, and they had shut down. The official diagnosis was Acute renal failure due to rhabdomyolysis.
I was put through medical tests every single day. I was so swollen that I could barely even bend my arm to feed myself; my mother or a nurse often had to spoon-feed me like an infant. I felt like a sausage casing injected with too much meat. I was put on a liquid restriction, and only allowed a very small amount of water to drink per day. I don’t know if I can accurately convey how wretched it is to be thirsty, and denied anything to quench that impregnable thirst. My dreams were filled with images of waterfalls and swimming pools.
I had finally moved out of my mom’s house into an apartment with a roommate named Vaughn. It was a fantastic setup, and I enjoyed being on my own. Vaughn worked as a bartender at a very, very classy joint, making more in one night shift than I would make in an entire week at my regular, full time retail job. We lived behind the Greene, going to happy hours often, and because Vaughn made so much more than me, he typically footed the bill.
I had a routine schedule for how I drank. I worked first shift, and when I would come home to the apartment, and if Vaughn & I had no happy hour plans, I timed how much I drank, or I would make sure I had consumed X amount of beer in X amount of time, to ensure I had the proper buzz I wanted to feel. Usually this was one beer every 15 minutes for the first 60 minutes, and then two beers every 15 minutes for the next hour. By doing this, I steered clear of any hangovers, but maintained just the right level of inebriation. My taste was not discriminatory, and I savored quantity over quality: Milwaukee’s Best was my beer of choice; cheap and effective. After I finished with the beer every night, I’d retire to my bedroom and smoke pot until I passed out. I did this every single week night, and most certainly was always alone.
Weekends, that ritual went out the window, and normally I’d be with friends. And on Thursday, March 12, 2009, my friend Lillian & I went out drinking at a local bar in Kettering called the Shroyer Inn. I gravitated towards low-key bars instead of the fancy lights and throbbing dance music of the clubs I went to as a teenager. I traded Top 40 Pop played by a DJ, for Guns & Ruses from a jukebox; places where moonshiners lurked in the shadows, and your friends were liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar.
My drink was Long Island Iced Tea, and the Shroyer Inn made them strong. I was well on my way to double digits when I came up with the brilliant idea to buy some heroin. The twisted thinking I had told me, Hey! It’s not meth, so it’s cool!
Lillian knew somebody, who knew somebody, who knew someone else, and I had syringes from my meth days, and a short while later, I was back at the apartment, alone in my bedroom, the syringe full of dope in my palm.
I was incredibly, incredibly drunk, and I am unaware how I was even able to take the shot, and in fact it would have been so much better if I would have missed, or flat passed out first. But I didn’t miss, and while I did go unconscious, it was not because of the Long Islands.
When I next opened my eyes, it was morning, and I could not move my body. My heart beat an allegro in my ears, and while I was thoroughly confused, I knew something was definitely wrong. I could barely breathe. It was labored, and it felt like trying to suck in oxygen from a tiny straw. And the only way I can describe how my body felt, was that it felt like the circulation was cut off everywhere. Imagine laying on your arm and it “falls asleep,” and you have to shake it to get the blood flowing again. Now apply that to every appendage, down to the tips of your phalanges, except when I tried to “wake” my body up, it was not working.
Vaughn came into my room. He had heard my strained breathing and was concerned. I’ll never forget the look on his face; he was in shock because I was laying there in a mangled mess of limbs, contorted into a pile that human beings should now be contorted into.
He came over and helped me untangle my body, but I still had yet to gather the strength to lift my arms or legs on my own. Vaughn asked me what happened, but all I could muster between gasps of air was that I desperately needed water, and when he brought a red Solo cup to my lips, I almost couldn’t drink it. I saw his eyes look to the ground beside the bed, and then he asked me, “What drugs did you do last night?”
I traced his line of sight, and saw what he had seen, what made him ask that question of me, and that cloudy confusion parted to let in a brief moment of clarity. It came rushing back to me as I looked at the syringe on the floor, a touch of blood at the base of the point. I had shot up heroin.
I was taken by ambulance to the hospital on Friday, March 13. I remember telling the nurse when I first arrived that I needed to get well in a couple days, that I had to work on Sunday and I could not miss. Her answer was simple enough, and I quote her verbatim. Her words are ingrained in my memory: “You are very sick, Christopher. You are going to be here awhile.”
I stayed in the hospital until I was discharged on April 10. I had never done heroin before, and because I was opiate naive, when I shot the dope, with all that alcohol in my system, it caused me to pass out. I had fallen onto my bed, with one of my legs tucked up and bent underneath my body. This cut off blood flow, causing my muscles to break down and release toxins into my blood stream. These toxins were too much for my kidneys, and they had shut down. The official diagnosis was Acute renal failure due to rhabdomyolysis.
I was put through medical tests every single day. I was so swollen that I could barely even bend my arm to feed myself; my mother or a nurse often had to spoon-feed me like an infant. I felt like a sausage casing injected with too much meat. I was put on a liquid restriction, and only allowed a very small amount of water to drink per day. I don’t know if I can accurately convey how wretched it is to be thirsty, and denied anything to quench that impregnable thirst. My dreams were filled with images of waterfalls and swimming pools.
And the dialysis was the worst of it. As silly as it may
seem, all I knew of dialysis was that the character Shelby from Steel Magnolias
was put on it, and her arms looked like hell. My catheter was not put in my
arm, however, but ran directly into my heart. Three times per week, for four
hours per session, my blood was siphoned out of me like a gas tank, and
filtered through a machine to be cleansed, then pumped back into my chest. It
was a nightmare.
I was on so many medications, it looked like I was eating a handful of PEZ each morning, afternoon and night. I had my first taste of narcotic painkillers those few months, as I was prescribed 120 Percocet per month.
When I was taken off the Percocet, I reverted back to drinking alcohol, but this time around, I did it in secret. I had moved back home with my family after my stint in the hospital, and even though my kidneys had restarted and I was off dialysis, I knew it was stupid to put another drop of booze in my system. The key idea here is that I knew it was insane to drink again. I had nearly died, had to file bankruptcy due to $188,000 in medical bills, and I was now drinking alone, and in clandestine. I had every reason and then some NOT to drink, but knowledge alone will not keep me sober.
I drank at work, gulping wine from a thermos starting after my lunch hour, and chewing dozens of pieces of gum to cover up the smell. I drank at home alone in my bedroom. And one time, when my sister & I went to the movie theater to see The Lovely Bones, I had been drinking during the day as was usual, but then kept sneaking off “to the bathroom,” instead going to the bar to order double shots of vodka. I remember thinking, I don’t know who had the bright idea to put a bar in a movie theater, but praise Jesus they did!
At that point I blacked out, and the events that followed are snapshots of what I can recall. I was belligerent in the theater; I scared my sister out of her wits. She didn’t know what was wrong with me, and after calling 911, I was carried kicking & screaming out of the theater to a waiting ambulance. In the ER I regained partial coherence. Surrounding me on all sides were doctors and nurses. The bright examination light above me shone like a beacon and stung my eyes. I had to squint to make out my mother standing beside me as well.
Streams of salty tears ran down her cheeks from the islands of her eyes, and I thought of the song “Islands in the Stream.” She mouthed words I could not hear; the wetness on her face spoke enough.
I shouted over and over that they should just “let me die,” that I “didn’t want to live!” My mom muttered more silent words. My hearing was closed off to all but my own sobs.
And then... I vomited everywhere...
Click Here for PART ONE
Click Here for PART TWO
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