Today I was thinking about the lives I’ve lived. Intentional plural there, folks.
It’s crazy to look at where I’ve been and where I am in the same moment. It offers an aggressive clarity about why I’m choosing to live sober and moreover it offers strength to stay consistent in the tightest of moments. I really can’t imagine returning to the life I lived before. It’s almost as if it was a past life that I have the ability to glance at in a moment and transport back to reality. I’m basically a time traveler, you guys.
So today I remembered how I would bop down to the 3900 block of Wabash Ave at around 12am and post up with a crew of dope boys a couple nights a week. They befriended me probably because I didn’t care about life and would risk possible physical injury, possible arrest and my life in order to stay high. There were blocks of apartments where we would stand in the staircase and serve people coke and dope all night. They would “let” me run out and hand off the product and would give me drugs throughout the night. It was a great arrangement I thought. To think what could’ve happened to me is horrifying today, but then…in my previous life, it was nothing. It was easy. It was actually sought after. It was exciting. I felt like I was getting over on them.
I also remembered shooting dope up in the McDonald’s bathroom on Coldspring Lane, falling out on the floor and waking up to the paramedics standing over me and me basically just running out of the restaurant just to do it again.
There was a house on Park Heights known on the street as “Momma’s House.” You could go there and buy needles, heroin (even though it was stepped on) and crack. It was heated by the oven, which was sometimes my only source of warmth in the winter months. It was where I first used a needle. I was like 24 years old.
I was damn near a local in that part of town, the only one of my kind I thought. I would expect that 90% or more of the residents of that part of town wish they lived somewhere else, but I chose to be there. I embraced it.
It had everything I needed.
Or rather, it had both of the two things I needed. Cocaine & heroin.
It didn’t have my mother or father. It didn’t have my child. It didn’t have my brother or my uncles. It didn’t have my grandparents when they were alive and it didn’t have their memory after they died. It didn’t have my bills. It didn’t have any of my responsibilities. It didn’t have my regret and my shame. It didn’t have my warrants (it did, but I don’t think anyone cared about them) and it didn’t have hope. It was an empty existence and it is part of me. It’s in me as a constant reminder and lesson about the choices I make.
Today I was appalled by it. I was confused by it. I know people today who choose to live that life. You know them too. It is so sad to watch. People who have been exposed to a way out, and are trapped in a delusion that the solution that was placed at their feet was either too cumbersome to pick up or was never truly there in the first place. They look at their time in “recovery” as a waste of time and a disappointment. They believe that there is an easier or better way. They are convinced that there are human powers that are a sufficient substitute for God Reliance.
I wish them well. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m the one who has been tricked. Who knows? What I do know is that the life I live today offers freedom. It offers true happiness. It offers challenges, let downs, sadness, tough moments and it offers real pain. But it offers a Solution as well. A Solution that doesn’t wear off in 3 hours. A Solution that allows me to be present for my family even in the thick of it. A Solution that keeps me out of dangerous situations. A Solution that prevents me from waking up on a McDonalds bathroom floor with a belt around my bicep.