rock bottom

You know, I thought, when I put it out there for people to pick my brains, that I'd get easy questions like, "What's acid like?" and I could give easy responses like, "Every last person who has ever tripped will tell you that they have this experience of 'one-ness' with a capital 'O' and 'we're all connected, man' and it's all bullshit," which would be a true and accurate response. But y'all are not taking it easy on me.

Anonymous writes:
Every addict has a rock bottom. What was yours?

Deep breath.

Rock bottom, for me, didn't happen once. The first bottom I hit was breaking into my friend's house (whom we shall call Fred) to get at his stash of Oxycontin. My other friend (whom we shall call...Thomas) and I were on the withdrawal end of the spectrum, not feeling good, and we were trying to figure out what to do about it. It was, oh, five in the morning.

In the car:
"Well," said I, "I know where Fred keeps his Oxycontin."
Said Thomas, "..."
"And he keeps his back door unlocked."
"..."
"Ugh. I mean. He wouldn't mind, right? I'll leave him the money."
"Yeah! No problem. He won't even be angry."
"I don't know, man. Maybe we should just wait til he wakes up."
"I don't want to wait."
"Me either."

We drove over to Fred's. Not a creature was stirring, etc. The problem I knew I'd have was the dog. He would be loud. But, I thought, he knows me. I was a regular at Fred's. If I could just get through the door silently, it'd be alright.

Long story short, I got past the dog, I got the pills, I left the money, Thomas and I got high, and a few hours later, after I'd woken up from the sleep/daze, I had some pretty heated messages from Fred. Go figure.

This, as I said, was the first bottom. I'd been stealing from my parents for years - starting with a $20 here and a $20 there and ending with hundreds at a time - but this was the first time I'd stolen outside the family. (Wow. That's the first time I'm seeing that in writing, and I can't tell you for the life of me why the two were different. That's plain crazy, and no mistake.)

So. I dealt with the storm of Fred's anger - which mostly involved telling him that Thomas pushed me into it, Thomas, don't you see, was the bad guy - and had a big moment of "What. in the world. am I doing." except the coarse version. The whole debacle ended with a phone call to my sister. She hadn't known, I don't think, the severity of my drug use, and without prodding from me, decided to drive down from Chicago the following day. As soon as she walked through the door at my parents' (I hadn't known she was coming), I told her I was coming back with her, and she said, "I know. That's why I'm here."

Makes me weep every time.

That launched the long road to rehab, and there are plenty of stories surrounding that journey, but I don't have time for them now. The next and lower bottoms I hit were in between rehabs. I kept convincing my parents to allow me to come home after I'd finished one or was on my way to another. I stole from my parents every time, got high. every time. At the last, I was in Chicago preparing to attend Teen Challenge after a brief visit home, and I received a call from my mom. She'd just found out about a check I'd cashed for something like $500, and I was at the theater with my girlfriend when my pocket buzzed.

"I know about the check, Ian."
"Mom...I'm so sorry."
"It's like you're two different people! You say you want to get clean and then you come home and steal from us again and I just don't know what to think. Do you even want to get clean?"
"Yes. I really do. I'm sorry."

But my sorries didn't mean anything anymore. Not at that point. Words, my friend, are useless at that point. I was so tired of it, but I didn't know how to tell anyone so that they really believed me because that's the thing, right? It's TOTAL insanity! What are they supposed to think? You want to do one thing, you do the opposite. You love people, you really do, and you despise them with your actions. I can't explain that. I can point to a letter a guy named Paul wrote to his friends in Rome, though. "I do not understand my own actions," he wrote. "For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...Wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:15, 24)

So. That was what bottom looked like for me, that conversation with my mom. I felt so empty when I hung up because I was standing there looking at myself from the outside for just a second, and I LOOKED. so. empty. I mean, all my promises...

All I wanted to do after that phone call was get high. By God's grace, I didn't (read: wasn't able to).

I've said before, and I'll say again: I didn't go through what so many others have. I was never on the streets. I never sold my body. My dad was AROUND, for pete's sake, unlike so many others'. I thank God for that. And I thank God my mom and I were still close enough that such a conversation made me so ashamed and provided an impetus for change.

I should stop here, though it doesn't feel complete, probably because that's the beginning and end of a story fraught with many evils committed, each worse than the last. I can talk about those, too, at some point, but I'm going to let this ride, for now.

Blessings.