Sue Perry's Blog: Required Writing, page 35

Dirty Chips

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict — now just about 60 days sober. Like all addiction milestones, this one is important, reassuring, bittersweet, and just possibly a meaningless sham.

Without a treatment program, relapse is almost guaranteed – 97% of addicts who try to quit on their own will relapse. So I am deeply thankful that SILD had willingness and health insurance to go through treatment. With a treatment program, relapse is slightly less guaranteed: 90% of addicts who try to quit using a treatment program will relapse.

I get why the relapse rates are so high. Hell, it took me three tries to quit smoking. You have to learn how to live without your drug; the learning includes mistakes and some mistakes lead to relapse. One big difference is that I wasn’t at risk of overdose when I lit up one more Chesterfield. The chance of overdose goes up when an addict relapses: recovery messes up an addict’s tolerance for the drug.

SILD says “I am going to be in the 10%” and I mostly believe that SILD wants to accomplish this and will do so. Mostly believe, because I may never fully believe SILD again. In everything SILD says, I hear a whisper of an alternate reality: what might be true instead. That is a consequence of the years of lies while SILD was using.  At the same time, I can no longer live in a state of perpetual  mistrust. It left me debilitated and combustible. From what I can figure so far, with an addict, love and trust can have little overlap, at least for the first many years of recovery.

Two months ago, I knew nothing about this universe I now permanently inhabit. When I first learned the relapse statistics and heard all the relapse stories, I didn’t think I could face that future. Now it’s just another fact of life. So maybe someday I will shed my abhorrence of dirty chips.

There are three kinds of addicts in recovery – those who are not using, those who are using, and those who are secretly using. The addicts who are not using earn chips at meetings, chips that proclaim recovery milestones – for example, SILD has a 30-day chip and will soon earn a 60-day chip. The addicts who are using either stop attending meetings, or resume the effort to quit and reset their count of days sober, starting again at day 1. The addicts who are secretly using keep coming to meetings, keep collecting chips they have not really earned. These are called dirty chips.

I am outraged by the existence of dirty chips but I need to get over it. A dirty chip feels worse than just a relapse or just a lie but it is merely another fact of life in the addict universe. As SILD points out, “Addicts lie. It’s what we do.”

And those who want to  feel love for an addict without letting that love destroy their lives had better find a way to love without trust and trust without fully trusting.

Health and Trust

You know the saying. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me (oh, I dunno, ballpark estimate) nine thousand eight hundred and seventy two times and you must be my addict.

When people talk about their personal blessings, health is typically at the top of the list – and rightly so. Good health is important to so much else in life. When it comes to relationships, the health equivalent is trust. I’ve been thinking about trust a lot lately.

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict, now in treatment, and for the last few years has been a master liar and manipulator. Masterful, savvy, cunning – brilliant, really. SILD even turned my growing distrust against me, made me feel bad to have doubts. That was back when the heroin was a secret, back when I sensed something big and bad was wrong, but couldn’t prove it – and man did I feel like an asshole: what was my problem, how did I devolve to be so incapable of trusting...  In the old days we called that mind-f***ing, kids. But I digress.

So I didn’t trust SILD, I don’t trust SILD, and every statement SILD makes, I doubt. Yet at the same time, trust is so ensnarled with love in me, that even when I know SILD is lying there is a still part of me that – preposterously! - still accepts the lie verbatim, because it comes from SILD.  But that part of me doesn’t hold much sway, nowadays.

I fear to discover more lies from SILD, because at this point, every lie chips away at the love I hold for SILD.

Lately, my relationship with SILD feels like my neighbor’s retaining wall. In my neighborhood, many yards have quaint rustic walls constructed of rocks and mortar. But this one neighbor has a wall that is just artfully piled rocks with no mortar. For years I was amazed at the skill that kept the rocks balanced and in place – yet baffled that the wall stayed intact. Then one day, my skepticism proved correct. Part of the wall collapsed into an unstable pile of rocks. The old wall is doomed – it can’t be rebuilt as it was before: no way can the collapsed rocks be reinserted nor the balance restored. And meanwhile, the dirt and lawn, formerly held in place by the wall, will at some point also collapse and add to the damage. Left long enough, the whole yard will be wrecked.

I hope SILD and I have the courage strength wisdom to tear out the old structure and replace it in time. Some days I have more hope than others. It’s amazing how rapidly I can cycle from hope to despair. I have done several cycles just in the typing of this post.

Better? Worse?

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict who has recently entered treatment. SILD is doing great, on a tremendous voyage of self-discovery and new beginnings. Meanwhile I seem to be in the throes of some kind of PTSD and all my initial work in discovering codependence and in recognizing changes I need to make — all of that overwhelms me, saps me of energy, and really pisses me off. I just want to live my frigging life. I already did therapy back in my 20s and 30s. I don’t want to go to more meetings. I want to wake up having learned what I need to learn, adjusted what I need to alter. However, that approach never worked for learning Spanish so I assume it won’t be effective here, either.

I keep thinking about all the ways addicts seem to have more energy and fun* than those closest to them and in my darkest moments I imagine addicts as vampires of the spirit. In my self-sorriest moments I see the codependents as second-string sidekicks, leeches who latch on to give themselves purpose.  In more open moments I look around me in the meetings and see the addicts and the loved ones united by a drive to improve, to not waste another hourdayyeardecade of our lives.

Curiously, of late I am learning a lot from a character in my novel Scar Jewelry, Heather. “Curiously” because I don’t entirely like Heather. But lately I keep thinking about back in her wild younger days, when she was Heater, and her husband died in a motorcycle accident, and her friends feared that her devastation would provoke suicide. When they voiced their concerns, her reaction was No way! I’m not done yet! Lately when I spiral into the darkest or self-sorriest  moments I find myself repeating that phrase.

*After all, as Neil Young first pointed out, “every junkie’s like a setting sun.”

Feedback Therapy

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a newly-revealed heroin addict and I am a newly-discovered codependent and in dealing with all of this I find it very lucky that I love so much aggressive and feedback-laden music. Something about feedback, played loud enough, can smooth the roughest of moods. These songs have been particularly soothing of late:

Bullet With Butterfly Wings – Smashing Pumpkins
I Was Wrong – Social Distortion
Hey Hey My My – Neil Young w Crazy Horse
New Day Rising – Husker Du
Revenant – Distillers
Institutionalized – Suicidal Tendencies
anything by X
anything by Sex Pistols

Additional recommendations welcomed.

The Risk That Never Ends

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict who has recently entered treatment for the first time. Two driving motivations are SILD’s fear of overdose, and SILD’s observation that “If I OD no one will do anything; no one help me.” Because, you see, addicts hang with addicts and addicts aren’t the best choice for friends. I haven’t the strength to ask what experiences inform SILD’s point of view.

So how many old heroin addicts are there? In our particular rehab center there are old alcoholics but no old addicts. Coincidence or reality? I don’t have the stomach to ask. How long has SILD got to get clean or get swept away?

There are lots of statistics about heroin rehab on the internet and they all suck. 97% of all addicts will relapse if they try to quit on their own. 90% of those in rehab programs will relapse. For many the rehab-relapse cycle continues for decades. I can’t handle decades. Can I handle decades?

When I attended my first couple of meetings for the friends and family of addicts, I thought I would dissolve with fear and dread, hearing about all the cycles of getting clean and going out, getting clean and going out. That’s treatment slang for relapse. Going out of the program: using, lying, crashing, burning.

The thinking is that the addict has to hit some kind of profound low, has to scrape a horrific bottom, in order to muster the will to stop using. Compared to the other stories I’m hearing, SILD hasn’t hit bottom. I don’t think I have the fortitude to witness any further descent.

I already get it: these kinds of thoughts are so debilitating, there is no hope where such thoughts live. Thus the instruction to focus on the moment and concentrate on one day at a time. Easier said than…

New Terms, Longtime Conditions

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict who has recently entered treatment for the first time, and this has thrust me into a parallel universe where we all have new identities, distortions of our familiar ones. In this new world, I am a codependent. That means I have gotten so entangled in SILD’s life – futilely trying to fix and re-route and protect, entombing myself in worry and anxiety – that I am in danger of losing my own identity, not to mention niceties like the ability to feel happy. Or successful. Or loved.

So far, I have not been much of an enabler, except to help muster excuses for irresponsibilities. But I can see how enabling is unavoidable once one codepends. Enablers smooth and correct problems, helping addicts avoid consequences of addiction-driven choices and actions. Enabler reports her credit card stolen, then calls off the police when she finds out who – Addict – has been using it. Enabler apologizes and concocts excuses when Addict misses yet another loved one’s birthday party.  Enabler notices that Addict forgot to do laundry and handles the chore while Addict sleeps in, probably ignoring the reality that Addict is passed out, not resting, after being too high to care about clean clothes.

It turns out that self-rescue is the only option.  Some codependents change because they have become so angry and resentful that they feel no more love for their addicts. I can see getting to that point. Most of the rest of us start the change process because – what else? – we hear that it will help our addicts. But I am determined to stop and to change.

I want my life back, or a new improved version. The catalyst, for me, came with observation of break time at the rehab center. At breaks the alcoholics and other addicts are vivid: talking and laughing – energized and enjoying life despite it all. The families are muted: somber, sad, round-shouldered, resigned. Not a mold I want to fit.

A Codependent Emerges from the Closet

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict, newly revealed. Over the last few years, I have been ever more sucked into the addiction behaviors without knowing them as such. In many ways it is an enormous relief to have it all out in the open and to be going through this now – the rehab, the meetings, so many hidden cards on the table. Turns out that the kind of lies I have faced and the kinds of mental backflips and self-doubts I have entertained to accommodate the lies are akin to abuse. It was getting to the point that I was so uncertain about everything that I couldn’t bring myself to ask for help in a store.

But the last thing I want is to swoon with hand to forehead. The role of victim is such an unpleasant one.

It staggers me. The truth was slapping me upside the head for so long, yet I didn’t see it. I knew something was wrong.  I knew it deeply enough to distress my sleep and trash my ability to meet the day head-on. But I was completely clueless about what and how bad.

I didn’t think I was capable of that kind of denial. I am someone who so values honesty and who so regularly spotlights any emperor sans clothes. In this case, I could see the figures under the ice, gesturing and shouting; yet it never occurred to me to get a pick and smash a hole so I could hear what they were screaming.

When SILD admitted the heroin, my first reaction was “Oh no oh please no.” My second reaction was “No wonder.” After all these years, eagerly awaiting messages from my subconscious, I wouldn’t have thought I could so successfully block its transmissions for so long.

In Lieu of Goodbye

A bit more than a month ago, life shifted, irrevocably. (Four weeks two days 1 hour 25 minutes – I expect I’ll remember the details forever, my personal version of I remember when I heard Kennedy /MLK /Kennedy /Lennon was shot. All the images I can conjure are from horror movies. Ground splits and previous paths disintegrate. Steep fall from a suddenly looming cliff, to land on a road with treacherous forks every few steps, each new path quickly vanishing into darkness and fog. You get the idea.)

A bit more than a month ago, I learned that Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is addicted to heroin. Actually that isn’t quite right. It’s not a situation. SILD is a heroin addict. It’s a part of SILD’s being. And it turns out that I am a codependent.

When I sit down to blog, I got nothin’ to say.  Not surprising. When I launched my blog a few months ago I had no idea where it would lead but my blogging tendencies have proved playful and lighthearted. My current thoughts are anything but.  I expect that at some point the light stuff will again rise to the top. Maybe. Meanwhile I’ve got plenty I need to say, and I’ve decided to say it here. For those who want to skip the gory parts, I will make sure it is obvious when I am writing a SILD-related blog.

Which One Are You Like?

Bo, Leo, and Arrow.

Recently our kittens had to wear cones after surgery. Their reactions captured their personalities and some basic differences in approaches to life’s troubles.

The cone disturbed Bo mightily.  He didn’t know what to make of it and he immediately became miserable. I’m trapped in a cone. This is terrible.  He dragged himself backwards until he hit a corner, where he hunched down and gave up.

Initially, Leo also wigged out and dragged himself backwards. But he quickly adapted. I guess now I’m a cat who — wears a cone. Okay! Within a few minutes he had evolved an odd but successful, neck-craned gait and had found new ways to pursue his favorite pastime, playing with tiny pieces of crud.

Arrow rebelled against the whole concept of cones. As soon as we put a cone on her, she began whipping her head from side to side and pawing the cone’s edges. No way am I wearing this, get this @#&%$ thing off me. She had it removed and hurled across the room within about 10 seconds.

So far, I have gone through life with responses on the Arrow-Bo spectrum, but I aspire to become more like Leo. How about you?

Spread the Word: Free eBooks! (thru March 9)

Until sometime on March 9, 2013, you can download a free digital version of either Scar Jewelry or C.R.I.M.E. Science. 

Here’s how:  click on the title, which will take you to each book’s download page at Smashwords, where you will find formats for every common ereader. Use the code RW100 to get your free copy of each.

If you are an especially cautious individual, you may first want to read free excerpts of either or both, available under the Novels menu on this blog.

This giveaway is part of the annual Read an EBook promotion at Smashwords.

Please help spread the word about this giveaway.

Brief descriptions of each book follow.

Cover art by Lars Huston.

Scar Jewelry

What do we really know about our parents or the ways they shape us? For twins Deirdre and Langston, 20, the answer is: not enough. With their father long dead, and their mother now in a coma, they realize they don’t even know whom to notify. In fact, they understand almost nothing about their mother. They delve into her life and uncover secrets that revise the past and transform the future.

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Cover art by Lars Huston.

C.R.I.M.E. Science

A misfit group of scientists and tech whizzes form a detective agency in order to solve crimes and right wrongs. In this, the first book of a series, they investigate the death of a renowned volcano scientist. He dies in a volcanic eruption in what everyone considers a terrible accident. Everyone except his widow, who insists he was murdered.