I'm 14 years old and nursing at least 3 developing personality disorders. Trainspotting is playing on IFC, and I watch it; being every concerned (and active in the community) mothers straw-nightmare, I decide post-viewing that I really want to try heroin.
If this were a movie, I'd like to think angsty, pseudo noise rock would start playing at this point.
It's worth mentioning that I didn't try heroin until 25. It's not that it wasn't around or that I didn't have the temerity to, but rather that I simply had 0 friends or associates. I was all alone; in school, at home, and everywhere in-between, there was no non-relative who cared for my company or conversation. It had been like this for nearly as long as I could remember, and it wouldn't change for about 4 years. I lived in a manufactured home in a very small town with my single mother, who struggled with substance abuse (and whom would eventually find herself incarcerated for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine.)
The sad recollection of my past has a purpose: to give you an idea of the kind of conditions necessary to turn an otherwise normal human into the kind of person who, upon viewing what most consider a sad, cautionary tale that should dissuade anyone from drug abuse, would consider heroin a viable outlet for my budding dysfunction. I considered several nouns, but outlet fit the most; there simply was nothing else in my life, nothing to draw my attention in a constructive or destructive manner. I had only my boredom. Time moved slowly, a description I've also heard from those who have been incarcerated when referring to prison. I kind of always considered myself somehow to be a kindred spirit to all those sad imprisoned people. Remember, 14 year old neurotic angsty kid logic.
My first drug was, like nearly everyone elses, alcohol. Then pot. For about 2 years this duo held the spotlight, not just by my actions, but also by my thoughts; FINALLY I had something to look forward to. This continued until I left my original highschool (a story I hope to tell one day) and right before I was sent to a behavioral clinic, followed by a rehabilitation facility. It just wasn't the same after that, pot couldn't do the same things it used to do for me, and I had simply tired of it. In fact, those former outlets of mine now caused me great paranoia and anger. Change was coming.
I took 45 milligrams of hydrocodone the first time I did an opiate. 6 7.5 milligram lortabs; I was sure my mother wouldn't notice. I was wrong. She didn't even need to count, because my slurred speech an unresponsiveness was all she needed to know. This is actually what got me sent to my first behavioral clinic (I was told quite strictly not to call them mental hospitals), and when I got out, I knew I wanted to kick things into overdrive.
That's exactly what I did; I quickly graduated to xanax, then adderall, then meth, then coke, and then I swung alllll the way back around to vicodin. I had finally found a group of people willing to be around me; while they might not have been the best influences, I at least had company. I'm happy to say I've never returned to that isolated state. Anyway, my habit got pretty bad, because eventually I was at 20 10's a day. This was around the time my mother had de-gentrified our house into a meth lab (boy do I hope I get around to writing about that.) Things snowballed rather quickly and eventually I spontaneously moved out of the house and into the apartment of my future AA sponsor. I've detailed this in another story.
Time goes by, I turn 22 and go to school. Different story for a different day, but right about the time 25 comes around is where our story gets good. I'd been back on drugs for about a year; I had fallen in love with someone yet failed to make a move. Shes the one who got away, as they say; I decided in my misery that it was time to do misery correctly and get back on drugs. Things go okay at first, as they often do in these kinds of situations, and I meet Amber, who again has her own story. Then it gets bad. Really bad. I never thought I'd be more miserable than when I was living in a meth house, but Amber was a damn artist.
I'm actually listening to Mile End. I suppose part of me is still an angsty 14 year old, because I feel such a kinship to Trainspotting.
Amber is on a date with some random girl. I wasn't happy about it; we entered into our relationship with the idea of monogamy, and she suddenly switched it on me and said I was being weak and unmanly when I objected to her having another partner. "Most guys would love seeing their girl get with another girl", she taunted. She might have been right, actually, but I wasn't most guys. While she was gone, I happened upon a dealer at a convenience store, and bought a 20 of H.
I could talk alot about how the next few months went. I could bring up mixing cocaine into the equation, or how me and Amber both became hooked, or how we sacrificed out grades, but it would be pointless. That's an old story, and I doubt there's anything new I could add to the narrative most people have already seen regarding just how heroin addiction goes. I'll simply let that part be.
We finally break up, and despite all the abuse, and the infidelity, and my own established dislike of her, I feel devastated. I ordered 30 1 mg tablets of diclazepam (a technically legal benzo often used to sedate dogs) from a research chemical website, go to my hometown to see my first group of friends, and mix them all with a full bottle of rum. The next week is very hazy, but I do recall yelling at cops, getting cathed, drinking orange juice to combat the horrible taste of activated charcoal, and being told I was being sent upstate to a state hospital. This time there were no objections to it being called a mental hospital.
Yet again I stumble upon a topic best left to it's own story; I will say, however, that the three weeks I spent there were actually quite helpful. I had a diagnosis (substance disorder and personality disorder NOS with BPD, AvPD, and APD traits), an introduction to the kind of therapy most useful in combating said diagnosis, and most importantly, a break. A three week break from life which allowed me to hit the reset button on life.
I'm glad I went when I was still young. Three weeks is a lot longer in your 20s than it is in your 30s or 40s or 50s. I think I've done okay since then; I've slipped and teetered in the past three years, but each time I came right back into recovery in one form of another. I doubt that I'll ever be cured, but I can at least be happy.
Or maybe thats not the inspirational ending that I'd like to have. Forgive me, at this point I think it's obvious I have an obsession with Trainspotting (actually I have an obsession with all of Welsh's works, I've read the entirety of his works.) Trainspotting 2 just came out, and while it deviated from Porno even more than the first film deviated from its source material, I still loved it. There's two parts in that movie that stick out to me; the first is when Renton is telling Sick Boy about his little existential crisis brought on by his inability to think of something to do for 30 years. The second is near the end of his updated "Choose Life" speech.
Choose the slow reconciliation towards what you can get, rather than what you always hoped for.
That's the fork in my road; can I be happy with the unexpected results of my life, or will it just deaden me? I think it's important to ask this question, because it's very easy to fraudulently claim happiness in order to appease common human sentiment, and yet doing so often sets the stage for such deadening to occur.
I still have goals, and I'm not completely content. There's much more room for improvement, and I'm nowhere near complete. But I think even having that conversation with yourself shows that you're on the right track, and there's many things that give me real happiness. My relationships with the people around me, memories of my youth, martial arts, cooking, and all sorts of big and small things have started to form something nearing meaning in my life, and I think that's the best thing you could ask for.
Oh yeah I also transitioned starting a year ago; this neat-o age app thinks im a 17 year old girl so thats pretty awesome