Addiction

by Kim Van Sickler

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Someone very important to me is a heroin addict. I found out a month and a half ago. His addiction started with prescription pain killers (he ended up buying them from a shady Indian—as in from India—outfit that hijacked his cell phone until he re-ordered, giving him a brief moment of peace before the process began all over again).


From there he started snorting heroin and finally injecting it directly into his veins. He got the heroin from an escort he had been seeing on and off for many years. But sometime within the last year he had convinced himself that he belonged with her.


His wife was the first of his inner circle to find out. She was willing to help him through his addictions but drew a line at allowing him to keep this other woman in his life in any way, shape, or form.

My friend, "Reese" balked. He couldn't just kick this other woman, "Jessie" out of his life. They were going to get clean and then really get to know each other. What if she was the woman of his dreams? She already knew how to make him feel good. That must mean they were compatible. The fact that Jessie was 20 years younger, had barely earned her GED (compared to his Master's degree), had taken no steps to detox herself in all of the years that they'd been getting together, but still managed to separate Reese from a lot of his money in his belief that he was helping her, was lost on him.

http://yourfirststep.org/facts-about-heroin-addiction/

If you had put my friend in a line-up of people and asked EVERYONE who knew him who is the person they think least likely to degenerate into a life of drugs and escorts, every single one of them would have picked Reese.

Which just goes to show how wrong we mere mortals can be about each other.

I have to tell you that watching what Reese and Jessie have been going through has shaken my very foundations. I am reassessing everything in my life, wondering what is true and what is MY illusion. This travesty has made me realize the need to verify what I want to trust. No more blind faith in earthly matters. Every dream needs to be examined in the light of day and reassessed on a regular basis.

How can one man veer so horribly out of control? Behave like a normal person outwardly but emotionally become so changed that he no longer makes any sense? And drag so many people who love and care for him along on his tsunami-like ride?

We are not islands. The choices we make impact others, sometimes severely. And our ways of looking at the world are so subjective and so easy to twist to fit our momentary desires. It's scary. I'm scared. For Reese and his wife and their kids, parents, and siblings. For his friends who can't believe what he's done. For what addiction can do to a decent human being.

Addiction is a lifelong problem. Addicts are never cured. Their addiction is only managed. Day by day. And any number of things can and do trigger relapses. Every day heroin addicts die of overdosing. (Most commonly coming off a period of sobriety when they misjudge how much heroin to ingest since they don't need the higher levels their bodies had been used to getting.)

Reese told me that he thought as long as his problems remained a secret he didn't think he was hurting anyone but himself. He stopped himself from thinking through the ramifications of his actions.

Chilling lack of awareness, denial, and self-absorption. Wrapped up in an attractive man who speaks well and can usually get you to see and understand his opinion.

Reese makes me insecure about life.