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Recovery Journal Day 14

by GabGabriRheaume el

(Michigan )

14 Days

Wow. 32 years old. I feel like I just woke up from a 10 year nightmare, longer than that really, Christina would be 30 years old and I probably would have never stuck a needle in my arm. I can accept all the horror that I created, what have I been doing?

2015. Sacred Heart Rehabilitation Center. Just earlier today I drank about a cup of my own blood trying to stop a nosebleed coming out of both nostrils, which, over the past couple weeks, has been the least of my problems.

This building has a virus going through it that I caught after coming out of detox, a nasty chest cold and stomach flu that I’m getting over, not to mention the old springy mattress, like a bed of nails, which nearly paralyzed me for two days until I started sleeping on the floor. I feel really good today, considering. I need to shine a little light into my past, for in the darkness, there is no light.. err, whatever. So, let’s rewind the tape.

Stole a check from parents, cashed it, then overdrew my bank account. OWI in Port Huron, od’d in the car woke up in the holding cell missing my Xanax. Panhandling at Mack and I-75. Living out of my car. Megan lost her mind on meth, I hope she’s alive and well somewhere, for her kids’ sake.

A year back and forth between Alabama and Florida in the Cenacolo Community, studying the Franciscan Monks, before I took off on foot with a backpack in the hills north of Birmingham, caught a bus to Detroit to cultivate a habit and live on the streets and filthy squats.

Oops, forgot about the couple months in New Orleans, stupor drunk, warrants pending. Jorge Diaz Jr. double homicide, decapitated one, killed a woman, brutally maimed another, and chopped a man’s hand into just an index finger and thumb.

A mortifying witness in the court room when he pointed his stub at Jorge and said, “He did it, that man, Jorge Diaz Jr!” Man, Jorge was such a nice guy when he didn’t drink.

David Livous died on Valentine’s Day and so did Mike Saldana, a couple years earlier when I was in NOLA. DXM overdose, stayed at a crisis house for a week, swimming through trees, staggering, stuttering. Rx amphetamine, benzodiazepine, and Ambien, come on Doc, you know better than that.

Larceny Of a Check. Befriended a cancer patient, took his door off the hinges while he was dying to steal his Dilaudid, he died in a couple days anyway. 5,000 mile round trip on a Greyhound from Detroit to LA, up to Seattle and back to Detroit across the northern tier of the United States.  

Oh, Montana, your big skies are majestic as your mountains. Back to Detroit, dopesick most of the way and hungry. Downtown Hoedown to see Willie Nelson. Starting to think the life of a tramp is not for me. Graduated from Wayne State University with a BA in English and a BS in, well.. everything.

Home Depot gift cards, leading to a high speed chase in Rich’s Porshe Boxter, me and Bill Bishop sitting double in the passenger. Retail Fraud. That’s when I told my mom I was addicted to heroin that must’ve been around 2006. Forgot to mention that Bill’s dead now too, and so is Andrew Webster.

I just heard today that Fentanyl is out there again and people are leaving Sacred Heart and dying in the blink of an eye. Matt Benjamin died, I’m sorry Matt, I’m so sorry that I didn’t call an ambulance. Jen’s a hooker, last I knew, probably dead, and Ben, man, I haven’t thought of him in years.

College book return scams, by far the biggest lick with the most longevity. Fed Exing K from Laredo came to a halt. Drinking liquor for breakfast. Flipping jars of pills for sheets of acid in Columbus, OH.

Christina hung herself. I miss you. I hope you found peace. I’m sorry I wasn’t better for you. Matt and Stephanie came back from California, strung out on heroin, before I knew what dope sickness was. When I thought all they needed was a hot meal and shower, before I got sick and jaundiced, diarrhea and restless legs, my body revolting against me, dry heaving with skin crawling, paranoid and desperate.

All of these faces and places are rushing back to me in a mad blur and I’m clutching at the confetti of my memories, I could go deeper and darker as rhetoric echoes, “You’re only as sick as your secrets”.

What a relief it’s over. I’ve surrendered; the white flag is in the air. I need to relive the agony of those moments when complacency is conniving and seductive, like a beautiful woman whispering, “It’s okay, it’s just a little weed.” Because the monkey on my back lives in disguises, the albatross, the gorilla.

I’m going to try and forget about time and live in the present. Those ten years went by too fast, now I’d like to slow down and enjoy the ride, who do I need to impress anyway. It’s like that external locus thing where I am what others make me to be, not anymore! I am not what you think I am, I am not what you say I am, I’m just like you.

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and Finally Remember:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
– Matthew 7:7-8

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