psychedelicate
Bluelighter
I met grace in a 30 day rehab program. She was trying to kick a painkiller addiction and I was all but ready to escape and find that one last high, with a .44 caliber back up escape plan. She’d been in treatment a few weeks before I arrived. And when I did arrive I was running on a month long binge that had me destroyed and soul-less. Veins torn up and raw, track marks like a roadmap to the end. I could hardly move except for my hands that I couldn’t stop from shaking. I showed up at their door with a back pack full of clothes and a couple of books. One of them being Burning in water, Drowning in flame.
They wheeled me straight into the detox ward. There was a gaunt man of around thirty in the bed next to me who was a meth addict. On the other side of me was an older man, maybe sixty five years old who said he was addicted to morphine.
“I got addicted after a workplace accident,” he said quietly, his eyes pale and hollow. He lost a hand in the accident. “That was the first time I tried morphine.”
The next week crawled by like some hellish psychedelic trip gone wrong. Every muscle ached. I spent the time tossing and turning, in and out of consciousness, wracked with delirium. The high doses of sedatives hardly helped, I felt as though I was trapped underwater. Eventually the tortuous William Blake visions began to subside, the pain and restlessness slightly lessened. I began to sleep again.
They put me through a psychological assessment and told me I was highly depressed, crippled by anxiety, a sleeping disorder, and serious poly-substance abuse issues.
I was a dead man walking. I was terminal. I already knew this.
Thirty days of meetings, of sharing, listening. I faked my way through each day, just wanting to get free as soon as possible. It seemed like an eternity, but soon enough I was back on street, with a backpack full of clothes and a few books. No place to stay, and a hundred dollars to my name.
After I got out, I began attending inner city 12 step meetings. I recognised grace from the rehab facility I had recently been released from.
I first saw her sitting in the corner, headphones on. She was pretty, with expressive green eyes, fair skin, and short brown hair. I hadn’t noticed those eyes last time. She gave the impression that she knew something about life, something secret. I’d see her sitting at the back drinking coffee, sitting outside chain smoking. We’d talk about our treatment and make small talk. But there was something about her I couldn’t quite define. One night after a group session I was sitting outside smoking and she approached me.
“So, what are you doing tonight?”
“Trying not to walk into a bar and get plastered,” I said, laughing.
“Sounds like a good plan. How about some coffee?”
That night over coffee and burning cigarettes we told each other our respective stories. She came from a wealthy family, and grew up in Melbourne. Two brothers, one sister. Her mother was a materialistic pill-popping bitch and her father was a functioning drunk who owned a chain of hardware stores. Her brothers were soldiers and her sister was a depressive and had killed herself at eighteen years old.
Grace worked as a secretary even while heavily addicted to pain medication. She was a professional addict who never missed a day of work, never lost control, never went to rehab. Until now I suppose. Her story was the typical drug tale: at first her using was recreational, a weekend escape. And then quietly, gradually, then suddenly she was in the throes of full-blown addiction: pills were running her life, waking her up, putting her to sleep, and in charge every waking moment in between.
She avoided friends and family. She lost self-respect, her dignity. And then she didn’t care. Didn’t care what happened to her. She packed up and drove to the sea, not remembering much of the drive. I knew the story all too well. I disconnected from friends, family, and eventually myself. I told her that when my addiction was at its worse I knew damn well I was killing myself but didn’t care. The pleading voices over the phone didn’t mean a fucking thing. The concerned faces of those who loved me were featureless, blank, nothing.
The needle won and was eating me alive.
We started to see each other a lot. We’d go to the movies, have dinner. We’d jog the into the city, hike the Dandenong ranges. We flew to Sydney and sipped lemonade in circular quay. We watched the sunset and held each other. We couldn’t change the past. What the future held in store for us was a mystery. There were no guarantees—our promises just fragile mantras which could be obliterated at any moment by the destructive voice of the addictive mind. But we were sober today. That was our mantra.
Today.
Today.
Today.
On the night that it happened we were walking in botanical park and I reached for her hand. We walked for quite a while without saying a word. There really wasn’t much to say. Our hands weaved together said all there was to say.
“Want to go to my place?” she asked.
We sat at her kitchen table listening to Elliott Smith and talked long into the night. We wondered and worried if we were ever going to kick our habits. We knew we were in trouble, that our addictions had a stranglehold on us. We knew that if we continued to use then the end result would be the grave. There was no doubt about it. Two months before I lost a dear friend to heroin. A year before that my girlfriend lost her battle with those demons. One dead at thirty-one, the other at twenty. Good people. Funny, intelligent, gentle. But sick and damaged beyond repair. I was right behind them. So was Grace.
We knew we were in control of this. We knew we were out of control.
“I know you don’t love me,” Grace said, looking through me. “But will you make love to me?”
My ex-girlfriend’s face flashed in front of me. Her telling me to wait, to not sleep with anyone, love anyone, that it will only complicate matters, not yet, it’s too soon. She has only been dead for a year. I shut off my picture-making machine, pushed away her words, and followed Grace to her bedroom as “needle in the hay” slurred behind us.
now on the bus
nearly touching
this dirty retreat
falling out
6th and Powell
a dead sweat in my teeth
going to walk, walk, walk
four more blocks
plus the one in my brain
down downstairs
to the man
he's going to make it all ok
I can't be myself
I can't be myself
and I don't want to talk
I'm taking the cure
so I can be quiet
whenever I want
I woke up to Grace sitting on the bed Indian-style reading a book of poems I bought her. She looked beautiful, peaceful, her green eyes bright and clear.
“Hey,” she said, in a soft voice.
“Good morning.”
We stared at each other, examining each other’s face looking for something. I finally sat up, held her face in my hands, and kissed her. Tears rushed down her face. And then I started crying. We wanted each other to get well, to be happy. We wanted the best for one another. We wanted each other to be clean and sober. We held each other thinking the same thing: please don’t use.
After three months we completed the program. Grace finished before me, but continued her treatment at another place. We continued to see each other, but as time passed we saw less and less of each other. We were in love, but knew that because of our addictions a serious long-term relationship would be a precarious situation. We were dangerous for each other and didn’t want to bring the other down if our addictions surfaced again. The statistics said there was a high probability they would. This terrified us and eventually broke us up. We cared for each other too much to take the chance.
I remember our last phone call which would be the last time I’d hear her voice. We thanked each other, wished each other good luck, said that we’ll always love one another, but that it just couldn’t be. It was devastating. I hung up the phone empty, crying, lost, but sober. To this day I can still hear her voice coming over the wire.
“We’ll be all right. We’ll be O.K.”
They wheeled me straight into the detox ward. There was a gaunt man of around thirty in the bed next to me who was a meth addict. On the other side of me was an older man, maybe sixty five years old who said he was addicted to morphine.
“I got addicted after a workplace accident,” he said quietly, his eyes pale and hollow. He lost a hand in the accident. “That was the first time I tried morphine.”
The next week crawled by like some hellish psychedelic trip gone wrong. Every muscle ached. I spent the time tossing and turning, in and out of consciousness, wracked with delirium. The high doses of sedatives hardly helped, I felt as though I was trapped underwater. Eventually the tortuous William Blake visions began to subside, the pain and restlessness slightly lessened. I began to sleep again.
They put me through a psychological assessment and told me I was highly depressed, crippled by anxiety, a sleeping disorder, and serious poly-substance abuse issues.
I was a dead man walking. I was terminal. I already knew this.
Thirty days of meetings, of sharing, listening. I faked my way through each day, just wanting to get free as soon as possible. It seemed like an eternity, but soon enough I was back on street, with a backpack full of clothes and a few books. No place to stay, and a hundred dollars to my name.
After I got out, I began attending inner city 12 step meetings. I recognised grace from the rehab facility I had recently been released from.
I first saw her sitting in the corner, headphones on. She was pretty, with expressive green eyes, fair skin, and short brown hair. I hadn’t noticed those eyes last time. She gave the impression that she knew something about life, something secret. I’d see her sitting at the back drinking coffee, sitting outside chain smoking. We’d talk about our treatment and make small talk. But there was something about her I couldn’t quite define. One night after a group session I was sitting outside smoking and she approached me.
“So, what are you doing tonight?”
“Trying not to walk into a bar and get plastered,” I said, laughing.
“Sounds like a good plan. How about some coffee?”
That night over coffee and burning cigarettes we told each other our respective stories. She came from a wealthy family, and grew up in Melbourne. Two brothers, one sister. Her mother was a materialistic pill-popping bitch and her father was a functioning drunk who owned a chain of hardware stores. Her brothers were soldiers and her sister was a depressive and had killed herself at eighteen years old.
Grace worked as a secretary even while heavily addicted to pain medication. She was a professional addict who never missed a day of work, never lost control, never went to rehab. Until now I suppose. Her story was the typical drug tale: at first her using was recreational, a weekend escape. And then quietly, gradually, then suddenly she was in the throes of full-blown addiction: pills were running her life, waking her up, putting her to sleep, and in charge every waking moment in between.
She avoided friends and family. She lost self-respect, her dignity. And then she didn’t care. Didn’t care what happened to her. She packed up and drove to the sea, not remembering much of the drive. I knew the story all too well. I disconnected from friends, family, and eventually myself. I told her that when my addiction was at its worse I knew damn well I was killing myself but didn’t care. The pleading voices over the phone didn’t mean a fucking thing. The concerned faces of those who loved me were featureless, blank, nothing.
The needle won and was eating me alive.
We started to see each other a lot. We’d go to the movies, have dinner. We’d jog the into the city, hike the Dandenong ranges. We flew to Sydney and sipped lemonade in circular quay. We watched the sunset and held each other. We couldn’t change the past. What the future held in store for us was a mystery. There were no guarantees—our promises just fragile mantras which could be obliterated at any moment by the destructive voice of the addictive mind. But we were sober today. That was our mantra.
Today.
Today.
Today.
On the night that it happened we were walking in botanical park and I reached for her hand. We walked for quite a while without saying a word. There really wasn’t much to say. Our hands weaved together said all there was to say.
“Want to go to my place?” she asked.
We sat at her kitchen table listening to Elliott Smith and talked long into the night. We wondered and worried if we were ever going to kick our habits. We knew we were in trouble, that our addictions had a stranglehold on us. We knew that if we continued to use then the end result would be the grave. There was no doubt about it. Two months before I lost a dear friend to heroin. A year before that my girlfriend lost her battle with those demons. One dead at thirty-one, the other at twenty. Good people. Funny, intelligent, gentle. But sick and damaged beyond repair. I was right behind them. So was Grace.
We knew we were in control of this. We knew we were out of control.
“I know you don’t love me,” Grace said, looking through me. “But will you make love to me?”
My ex-girlfriend’s face flashed in front of me. Her telling me to wait, to not sleep with anyone, love anyone, that it will only complicate matters, not yet, it’s too soon. She has only been dead for a year. I shut off my picture-making machine, pushed away her words, and followed Grace to her bedroom as “needle in the hay” slurred behind us.
now on the bus
nearly touching
this dirty retreat
falling out
6th and Powell
a dead sweat in my teeth
going to walk, walk, walk
four more blocks
plus the one in my brain
down downstairs
to the man
he's going to make it all ok
I can't be myself
I can't be myself
and I don't want to talk
I'm taking the cure
so I can be quiet
whenever I want
I woke up to Grace sitting on the bed Indian-style reading a book of poems I bought her. She looked beautiful, peaceful, her green eyes bright and clear.
“Hey,” she said, in a soft voice.
“Good morning.”
We stared at each other, examining each other’s face looking for something. I finally sat up, held her face in my hands, and kissed her. Tears rushed down her face. And then I started crying. We wanted each other to get well, to be happy. We wanted the best for one another. We wanted each other to be clean and sober. We held each other thinking the same thing: please don’t use.
After three months we completed the program. Grace finished before me, but continued her treatment at another place. We continued to see each other, but as time passed we saw less and less of each other. We were in love, but knew that because of our addictions a serious long-term relationship would be a precarious situation. We were dangerous for each other and didn’t want to bring the other down if our addictions surfaced again. The statistics said there was a high probability they would. This terrified us and eventually broke us up. We cared for each other too much to take the chance.
I remember our last phone call which would be the last time I’d hear her voice. We thanked each other, wished each other good luck, said that we’ll always love one another, but that it just couldn’t be. It was devastating. I hung up the phone empty, crying, lost, but sober. To this day I can still hear her voice coming over the wire.
“We’ll be all right. We’ll be O.K.”
