How did it happen? If I have asked myself that question once, I have asked it a thousand times, and I still don’t have the answer. By now you are probably asking yourself, how did WHAT happen? How did a reasonably intelligent, hard working guy like myself get hooked on drugs? More specifically, that nasty bitch we lovingly, at first, call Mz. Tina….
Oh, it started innocently at first when I stop and think back on it. Out for the weekend at a club and a friend says, here try this, it’s great you’ll feel like a million dollars and we can party on ALL night!!! And the sex is going to just be Fabulous…with a recommendation like that, I thought, I’d be a fool to not try it. At least once, I said.
I tried it, just a small "line" at first I mean its not like I was one of those "druggies", or one of those low life homeless guys…I had a job and a car and a house. I wasn’t like them. That could never happen. Guess what? I DID feel like a million bucks and sex WAS fabulous…even sex with people I would not normally even speak to let alone have sex with!!! It just made me incredibly horny and sexual and I just felt like every one was my friend…there wasn’t always a cute guy around who was my type but with Mz. Tina around, I didn’t care…I’d just "snort" them pretty and go ahead and do the deed anyway…yes the standards definitely got lowered a bit…at first it was just once every couple of weeks or so…I was only partying on the weekends, Friday night and Saturday night. I had to work on Monday so I stopped partying Sunday so I was good to go on Monday morning. By this time Id been doing Mz. Tina for about 6 months, but only "recreationally", meaning on weekends. I told myself it was okay because it was only 2 days a week and I did have a job and a car and a house…and it WAS the weekend I deserved to have some fun…
I managed to always get to work on Monday and get thru the week in good shape…. I soon found myself daydreaming and wishing that Friday would hurry up and get here…hey I was ready to have some more fun again, as so often happens with Mz. Tina, the weekends began to start on Thursday and end on Sun night…I started to show up at work looking like the wrath of God has been thrown at me. BUT I was still at work on Monday so how bad good it be I told myself…and I did have fun, I think, hmmmmm parts of the weekend are awfully fuzzy. I just did not always remember the whole weekend…I knew that Id had fun and id made some new friends…now if I could just remember what his name was. Did he give me his phone number? Did I give him mine?
I wrote it on a scrap of paper somewhere. Ill find it later. He liked me, I could tell…but what the hell did he look like? Did we have sex? Was it fun? Better yet, was it safe…?
No time to worry about it now Id tell myself…I'll be better next weekend…
By now a year has passed since I first made Mz Tina’s acquaintance…so I’m a little late for work a couple days a week…I own the company … what I’m going to fire myself? Ha!! Fat chance of that happening…. Any reasonable person I think would have started thinking by now that that maybe there was a drug abuse problem here…. But that was the deal… I wasn’t a reasonable person any more… Mz Tina was ruling my life…. I had gone from being stable and well grounded to being a totally functioning out of control druggie…that was how I saw myself at the time. …Soon to be replaced by the simpler and more correct term of Drug Addict…. By now 14-15 months into it I was using 5 days a week and the only reason it wasn’t 7 was because 2 days a week I simply crashed and burned and didn’t wake up for 20 hrs at a time. Damn I missed a day!! 1 Ill just do a double dose of Mz.Tina now that I AM awake…Snorting just wasn’t doing it for me anymore either… I just didn’t get the same wonderful high I used to, What to do, what to do, I asked myself…It seemed like the only exercise I was getting was chasing the next high and running in circles at work…About this time another friend, suggested that maybe I should just “ slam “ it. Hey that sounds cool to me I thought … what does “ slamming “ mean I asked? I soon found out. For those of you who may not know … “slamming” is injecting the liquefied Mz Tina directly into a vein. I wasn’t so sure abut this at first, but after my first “ slam”, and the really nice high I got… I was on the way again…It didn’t take long to get over my initial aversion to needles…Lets see do I have everything I need? Cotton? Check. Spoon? Check. Mz Tina? Check. Water? Check. Needles and syringe? Check. I was in the big leagues now, I was told. Wow… I’d never been in the big leagues. I liked it… I got very good at it too. I could have it all mixed and slammed home in less than 3 minutes…. Which is very good if you’re doing this in places you don’t want to get caught in…That first time was the most incredible high I had ever had I thought at the time… It was awesome!!!! It was even better than sex!!!! Looking back on it now it was also the last time I got that incredible high. I kept chasing that same level of high for the next year and just never did accomplish it…Oh I got close a few times but I think in reality they were more like mini Overdoses than a real high…Lucky for me that they were minis rather than Maxi overdoses huh…By now I have been doing Mz Tina for about 20 months and Im doing here 2 or 3 times a day every day of the week…using any vein or hidden spot I can find that will still take a needle and not collapse… Those were getting harder and harder to find….
What was really getting hard to find was the money to pay for this little habit of mine? By now, I was spending $1000 a month on Mz. Tina. AND I was getting her from a close friend at “cost” … Isn’t that a kick? Illegal drugs at below wholesale prices…. I loved it at first. I could be a big shot and give the stuff away to my friends and it wasn’t too bad because it really didn’t cost me all that much…at first. Then it got to be VERY costly because I was using so much…. I quit giving it away and started selling some of it but I wasn’t a drug dealer I told myself… I only sold to friends and I had another job and a car and a house…. I wasn’t like those low life’s at all… no sir Not me…I was just doing the smart thing and selling to save some money That was all…But you know what happened? When I started to ask my friends for money when they wanted to party with me…. They all thought that was awful… I mean how dare I ask them to pay for the stuff when I had a job a car and a house and they had nothing. I should still give it to them for free, they said. I tried to explain but they just didn’t listen and one by one I had no friends anymore…they just disappeared on me…go figure. I don’t know why it surprised me but at the time I just didn’t understand it….. I do now…..Fast Forward to Now, Sept 30, 2003.
How did it happen? You probably think you know the answer to my question. I mean when I last wrote of my drug addiction and the problems it was giving me, and the ways I was going to fix things, and how I understood the whole thing, It sounded as if I was on the way to controlling that bitch we call, lovingly at first, Mz. Tina. Right?
WRONG!!!!
I still have a house, a car, and a job. Unfortunately, the house has been refinanced to the hilt, 2x in last 2 yrs to pay legal fees associated with my arrest in December of 2002 for drug charges that included Transportation, Sales, Distribution, and Manufacture of Amphetamines…
I was , of course, NOT guilty of the charges. Well not TOTALLY guilty. Okay, I was a little guilty. I was having too much fun partying with my friends, and having sex and doing whatever I wanted to do. Whenever I wanted to do it that I just didn’t see the “ Train Wreck of the century” as I call it now, coming down around my shoulders. I had by this time become involved in a relationship with someone, who shall remain nameless, that I met on AOL one early morning in July. It was just supposed to be a one-time hookup for sex and then on to the next one. Well, that was over a yr ago, and we are still in a relationship of sorts. Not living together, but still seeing each other and fighting together and loving together, and hating each other together and being violent with each other together and co-dependent with each other together and, You get the picture? I had a great time that first night with him. I mean it was earth shattering, I think. Details are a bit fuzzy, as was often the case then. I remember asking him if he had ever “slammed” tina before. He said he had so I went about getting our shots” ready and before we did them, he looked at me and said, “please take care of me!” I slammed the shot home. The look in his eyes and the movement of his body told me I had done a good job!
Or so I thought that night. In the course of the evening we had sex non-stop, 10-14 hrs and several “shots” later we finally stopped to rest. I did sleep some and my newfound friend just hung out and watched over me.
I thought that was so cool, some one watching over me. But what I didn’t realize was that that moment of slamming him with drugs, and my subsequent actions had doomed me to the absolute un Raveling of all that I had worked for, all that I had saved for, all that I believed the future would hold for me.!!!
I, actually he and I, spent the next 14 months in one of the most acrimonious, violent, co-dependent, drug crazed relationships I have ever heard about, let alone be in. Lots of factors came in to play with us… BUT they all had 1 thing in common: Mz Tina!! We couldn’t break the hold she had on us, we tried and tried. Bullshit!! NOW I’m trying to get away from this drug and Im not doing a good job of it at all…. Back then, we just pretended to try and quit. That’s obvious to me now. It wasn’t back then. I mean, after all I still had a house, a car, and a job. I wasn’t like my low life druggie friends who had nothing. Pretty stupid thinking on my part, I came to discover. Those factors I spoke about? I’m 52 yrs old now, my friend is 26. What the hell was I thinking? That it was going to be a “marriage made in heaven”?
Actually that’s EXACTLY what I thought at the time. Don’t get me wrong here, we had some really really good times and over the period of the last 14 months, I did fall in love with him, and I know he loves me still, and I love him still. BUT, and this is what I didn’t realize at the time, but believe me I do now: My actions have grave consequences when I don’t act responsibly in ‘Slamming” my tricks, or in this case boyfriend/lover. He has what is known as a Bi-polar Dis-order, Type 2. Now that’s a really nasty thing to have BY ITSELF, but when you add in a boyfriend who sells drugs, and gives you shots whenever you want? Then it REALLY REALLY gets bad…
The police have been to my house no less than 17 times in the last 14 months, we have each gone to jail at least 3 times each, I have spent in excess of $45,000 for us to bail out of jail, and to keep me out of prison for 5-7 yrs!!!
We have been to the Emergency Room at the hospital no less than 2x each. My last stay was the result of one of our fights at which time he kicked me in the face and I got a detached retina. I am now blind in one eye, and have hospital bills in excess of $9000 to pay for.
You are probably thinking right now, “ Boy, this guy is FUCKED UP!” And you know what? I’d have to agree with you. BUT, at the time it was happening, I was totally on the ball…Or so I thought. Yeah right!!! I was so out of control, I didn’t even realize that the path I was on was going to get really bumpy… That’s putting it mildly.
I still have my house, as I said. But just barely, and I have had to take in roo mates to help pay the mortgage. My car? Yes I still have it. Only now its so worn out and ugly from all the abuse it received while I was drugging and tweaking that I hate to drive it or be seen in it. Can’t afford a new one either, No credit! That was one of the things to suffer with all this: My Credit Rating went from PERFECT, to “don’t give Johnny any credit, he’s a low life druggie!” My job? That’s the worst part of all of this. I wanted to party and play more than work, so I had a nice man from LA sell it for me. I sold it for practically nothing, took and sold what was to carry me in to retirement and gave it away almost. JUST so I could party and have fun…..BIG Mistake. Now at the age of 52, when I should be slowing down and enjoying myself, I am out looking for a job and let me tell you, boys and girls, Jobs that will hire a 52 yr old, Drug Addicted, One Eyed, Felon, are almost non existent!!! This brings me to where I’m at right now in my life.
Not a pretty picture is it? So what, or where do I go
Now??? Well I’ll tell you exactly what I am going to
Do….
To Be Continued…………………………….