Never Once

Addiction can be gripping.

It was only supposed to be once; one smoke, one needle, one pill but it’s never once; no matter what you tell yourself. It can start with peer -pressure, that’s how it started with me.

A night out with friends, a house full of people; sweat and heat making the constant outpouring of alcohol and beer, already appealing, all the more addicting.

The beat of the music pulsed through my body as I passed by drunken dancers and various people making out in dark corners .Tumbling out of the crowd I landed on a couch among a group of guys; there was a plastic bag of pills casually tossed on the coffee table. Some of the guys were chopping them up as best they could with a small blade and wrapping them in bills others were already snorting and some were completely strung out. I was about to get up when one guy handed me a wrapped bill; taking it I simply stared, then shrugging, I put it to my nose and breathed in the stinging powder.

At first nothing happened and after all those stories you hear, it was kind of disappointing. Then it hit, the infamous high; my body went numb and the thumping sound of the music was drowned out by a sudden buzzing. Everything around me became blurred and the world seemed to spin; it was like an out-of-body experience.

As I came down from my high I walked away, trying to find my feet as I went.

I hadn’t thought about that night until almost a month later at another party, then again at another until somehow it became something I did regularly and then something I couldn’t stop.

Work became difficult, having to go hours at a time without so much as a hint of that which normally sustains me. The restroom became my best friend as I cut myself off from my real ones; on my breaks I would hold myself up in a stall, desperately taking another puff, not caring who might find me huddled in the corner of my stall as the main door squeaked open. Those all too short releasing breaks quickly spiraled from my control; five minutes turned into hours and those hours into most of my work day.

Then I found myself scrapping for pennies; what little money I had saved I wasted as I drifted from street to street, sleeping in unlocked stairwells, under cardboard boxes, or in trashcans when it rained.

I did odd jobs here and there, on occasion traded clothes with the other guys on the street all so I could have that feeling, that emptiness of a mindless void. More than worth the jitters, the shaking hands hardly able to hold this pen, the sleepless nights, the burning bloodshot eyes, the paranoia causing me to look over my shoulder, my eyes darting faster than a hummingbird, and the crazed mummers in my head badgering me as I hid in the shadows at the back of a grimy building waiting for someone to feed my need for euphoria.

Light flashed in my eyes and I was ordered to turn left, I’d gotten carless in my fight for the only food I came to need and ended up getting arrested. The cold stone floor, the steel bars, they would have been welcome, at least there I would have gotten my food; but they locked me away instead and strapped me to a bed to endure the convulsing, the push and pull of my body as it caved into itself. Twisted and contorted, strangling itself of air my cries of pain went unanswered until finally I was numb, but it wasn’t the numbness I hungered for.

I adjusted only to survive, functioning robotically, aimless of mind until, finally, I was set out into their world, lost and looking for the ground under my feet; my mind clouded and bogged.

I was like this for a year, falling back into the world that made so many things difficult until, in the middle of the night on a dark dreary street, someone reached out, handing me back my clarity.

It’s never once.

Reviews

[Sav]

I would say this is beautifully written because it is, but the subject makes the word beautiful seem poorly decided. I really like the way you go about describing the situation and the way you capture the realities of hard drug use.
Needless to say, this is extremely well written and I very much enjoyed reading it.