Sunday morning 5am
These last few days have been as hard as any. My endorphin levels are much better. Still sneezing, feeling under the weather and the doom like darkness that always accompanies depleted serotonin levels that accompany low endorphins but the benzo withdrawall I also had to undertake is around its peak. Opiate withdrawall or certainly heroin withdrawall peaks around 24 hours to three days after last dose and though long does begin to improve after day five or six. I was on substitute opiate subutex which seemed to take a fortnight to peak before beginning the slow climb back to normality. Realistically you're talking a year for weedy endorphins to return after the mighty opiates you have come to see as normal. Benzos however, and first time i underwent benzo withdrawall I didn't know, this being second time, saturate your body. So they take a month to slowly drain away meening withdrawall increases in intensity for about four weeks getting more severe each day. After the first month you slowly pick up. This takes anywhere from a year to eighteen months. I found it far worse than heroin or certainly equally bad. Benzodiazepenes such as valium, Xanax or Mogadon work on the GABA receptor family. These have many functions but essentially calm a person. They allow sleep to overcome you. If a shock, a car nearly hits, a rush of adrenalin floods the body readying you for fight or flight. Once danger is passed, GABA rushes in to stabilise and calm you. Stripped of these neurotransmitters leaves you unable to sleep, return to normal after a shock, adrenalin can remain flooded for three days unsurpressed. The climbing volume of a kettle boiling seems to torture the brain. Easily the most unpleasant thing I have experienced in my lifetime.
Benzos make you blind to a lot of things. More murders are committed on benzos relative to the ammount carried out on being on any other drug. You think you are straight but are far from being so. They are very dangerous but until recently, massively over prescribed drugs. Waking up from what I have done has been horrible. It has slowly dawned on me how mad I was around the time I first met you. I was clean for two years but my relapse lasted nine months or so. During this period I went from a period of crack to ethylphenidate and diclazepam. Both affected my mind. The ethylphenidate nearly killed me on several occasions and this was what finally made me realise how self destructive I had become. I was also pretty horrible to people around me. I couldn't see this then but now the veil is removed feel overwhelming guilt. I saw jeremy Kyle shouting at an addict on television the other day in mindless confusion. It does take some getting ones head round but the meaning of addiction is of having lost control or any free will in the activity. You don't know you are doing it to an extent. You are blind unto yourself. That isn't to say you don't feel responsible, just you are unable to stop. Now my eyes are opening I feel like the hulk waking up in another smashed up city as Dr bruce banner, slowly looking round himself in shock and guilt at all the mess you've made. This is why rehabs accompany a detox with lots of group therapy and counselling so one can contextualise what happened. I honestly don't know why I relapsed. I can blame others, being around addicts, drugs being pushed my way but ultimately it was me who took them. Me with the difficulty in saying no. I can lay claim to some notable points but very few. In eighteen years of addiction I never borrowed or stole to my recall. Heroin does not make theives of people, it will however, test their moral scruples in a way most never have to endure. I took a step a couple of years back to admit to anyone who asked that I was an addict figuring lieing to others is the start of lying to yourself. Ive seen many addicts carry contradictory narratives, they'll tell you how they've basically given up as they put foil tube to mouth, fully believing their own propaganda. So I began telling the truth. This drove family, freinds etc away. Despite never having borrowed from them whilst in the deepest pits of addiction they suddenly become under the assumption you are after thief money for drugs. When in the middle of a stable habit people will comment on how well you look but once you stop you become ill. It is then you get the looks that say,'oh, he's a druggy'. Even people you assume have brains become as inteligent as jeremy Kyle. Shouting at an addict is as intelligent as shouting at a man with a broken leg to get up and walk properly, or shouting at a schizophrenic to stop being so bloody weird. The world of the ignorant won't bend it's reality to accomodate their frustration. And addicts are very frustrating. So I would never advise anyone to 'come out' as I did. The only people who will ever understand you are other addicts, and they soon forget once they've retrained their nature. Few do but some do, usually by submitting to a higher power but most essentially to realise they have no control over their actions. Many, after being treated a la Kyle do as Lotti in the curse of millhaven does and say, '...that I'm a wicked young lady but ive been trying hard lately, oh fuck it, I'm a monster I admit it.' Call someone bad for sufficient time and they will fulfill your accusations. This is the story of most criminals and addicts. A self fulfilling prophecy. So many say, 'fuck it, I'm a dirty junkie, an animal. You pompous self righteous straight headed prick'. And why wouldn't you? There is no deeper guilt can be dealt out than you already feel. Nothing to add to what you know already. And from here many abandon themselves to their fate. If friends and family won't support you, who will?
Though having spent a decade as a registered addict, 'in treatment' which involved weekly talks to key workers, psychologists and psychiatrists in order to maintain a prescription, I never got a proper understanding. What I would describe as their professional inadequacy and lack of knowledge, they would call denial and trust issues. Finally, being given a child as key worker whose knowledge was as slim as a blue rizla paper, I abandoned the professionals. During two years of abstinence I read nothing but neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry books and anything on addiction. I was already au fait with Descartes and dualism, the idea the mind is seperate, a sort of pilot to the body, and Gilbert Ryles 'the concept of mind' that soundly defeats the notion but had not realised the depth of contemporary arguments on free will. I came to the conclusion its kind of an illusion though still widely heald. Here, no doubt I again would be counter accused of denial. Yet, through modern technologies of pet and fRMI scanners it has been proven that the electro chemical biological processes that are the origins of a 'decision' begin up to ten seconds before 'you' become aware of them. This kind of throws understanding of addiction in to acceptance of Darwin, we are just animals, we act in accordance with our nature. This isn't to resign responsibility but a recognition that to become free you must be reconditioned much like you must retrain a dog that bites or jumps on strangers. Choice has very little to do with it. And this can be achieved. The predisposition to go bite, to want drugs will remain for life but a dominant counter impulse can be trained in.
You can say I have structured an argument to slip responsibility, say it's denial. But it's the only working model ive come up with. It is based on a lot of research, not just my personal experience. Scottish philosopher David Hume is worth reading to find out about bundle theory. The self seen as the strands of hemp in a rope. These are a metaphor for all our impulses and urges, our lines of identity, once stripped away, one by one, there is no underlying self. The Buddha came to a similar conclusion. We are the impulses and urges. Otherwise we revert to dualism. A little man inside your head piloting your vehicle, the body. But then arises the question who is inside this little mans head, and who inside his. A clearer understanding is that this isn't taking place. Opiate receptor sites exist not just in the brain but all over the body. The mind may seem to be seperate from body but take drugs and you will quickly see otherwise. Visit an Alzheimer's ward. This helps to bring home the truth of our 'selves.'The mind is biological. Superstition of a transcendent soul may help one through life but I doubt it will transcend death. At least not in the simplistic sense.
So what to do? Well, NA and AA have high success in keeping addicts sober and straight. By meeting with other addicts they form peer groups that understand what it is like. Crucial to their success is accepting of a higher power. Not much use to an agnostic or atheist and, personally, I believe most people, if push comes to shove, are agnostic. As ruby wax put it, 'none of us know what is really going on, it's only fools who think they do.' I would say accepting that you are not a dualist system of mind and body but an animal subject to drives and impulses, often these threads of the rope run counter narratives. The skill is to strengthen the impulse to refrain and weaken the drive to take drugs. Ultimately you do need a reason outside of yourself, beit god, children or a new love, even an old love, but something that is more important to your love of drugs. And people don't always find one.
Despite knowing this I look back on my actions with such guilt and remorse it can be hard to live with. This is an illness that has nearly killed me several times, no doubt caused me personal physical and mental damage, shortened my life expectancy, ruined my career, killed many of my closest friends, yet still remains a part of me. Nothing any self righteous idiot can say can hurt me as much as I have already. Despite this there is a jeremy Kyle in all of us, looking down on those weaker than ourselves, supporting our hero or survivor narratives. The bullshit stories we tell ourselves. Everyone is innocent according to their own story. I too feel aversion to wingeing junkies because we do bring it on ourselves. Who else is there? But I know I am wrong to feel this. 'But for the grace of God, there go i.' I did. There is the story of the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion asks the frog for a lift across the river. 'You promise you won't sting me half way across? We would both die then!' 'Of course not, no one is that stupid,' replies the scorpion. So he hops on the frogs back who begins to swim across the river. Half way across he feels the scorpions sting. As his life wanes he asks the scorpion, 'why the hell did you do that? Now we both gonna die'. 'It's just in my nature,' replied the scorpion.
By the time she was fifteen years old the mother of liz Murray was dead from aids and her father in care with hiv. She found herself homeless and looking after her younger sister. Despite all this she excelled in school earning a scholarship to Harvard. Her book 'From homeless to harvard' is an inspiring read on the triumph of personal strength over adversity. What is its message? That if we try hard enough we can achieve anything? Clearly this is not true. It's more a tale of human inequalities. Liz Murray is remarkable but the exception as most people don't overcome conditions and hurdles that stand in their way. Many consider Liz a winner, the flip side being others are losers. Where does this fallacy that we blame individuals for their predicament rather than circumstances arise? This is known as the fundamental attribution error in human reason. When other people screw up it is because they are stupid or losers, when I screw up its due to circumstances. Putting the blame on the individual self is tantamount to excusing all the policies that create inequality in our society. Maybe it's time to redress this imbalance by rethinking success or failure not so much as issues of the self alone, but more issues of society.
We get up in the morning, we do our best.
Sent from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment