Acrobaddict (24 page)

Spring break was ending, and so was my living situation. With homelessness as my alternative, I called my mother. Working for Greg’s dad and sounding sober during the phone call helped me build my case, and I convinced her that I was trying to change. I asked if I could come home for a few weeks until summer, and then I’d go to Brooklyn with Nick. She agreed. I think somewhere inside her, guilt gnawed at her to give me another chance. We drove back to Holyoke and I got on a train home.

I missed Nick every day, but was happy to see old friends who had either flunked out of college from partying too much or had just given up. In the year since I’d last seen them, I had been on a concentrated
diet of beer, cocaine, and benzodiazepines and had attained my desired pilled-out, lost look—a dehydrated waif with deep, black moats around my eyes. I was ecstatic when my psychiatrist transferred my prescriptions to a pharmacy in my mother’s town. Now I had refills all over the state of Massachusetts.

After we hung out for a few days, I noticed my old friends were not enjoying my company. Standing at his front door, I heard a longtime friend say, “Dude, don’t let him in here. He’s a complete mess. I don’t know what happened to him, but I don’t want him in my apartment.”

I didn’t care. I’m sure I did stupid things; I just didn’t remember. I did find Piper and the old Southie addict crew. Everyone was taking something new called Rohypnol. I had heard horror stories of girls being slipped “roofies” and getting date-raped, but didn’t think people took them recreationally. We had gained such high tolerances for pills that roofies didn’t knock us out like they did civilians. My first roofie high was amazing, and I bought as many of them as I could afford and went back to my mother’s house.

The next month I spent completely anesthetized, with little recollection of what happened or what I did, just glimpses of people, laughter, and fighting, like beautifully illusory, never-ending dreams. But it finally ended with the sound of my mother’s screams. Who knows how long I was asleep? I was untouchable, safe, alone, and happy—until her voice penetrated my broken bedroom door, calling me to war. I tried fitting pieces back together, but I had nothing to work with. I didn’t remember returning to the house I swore I’d never return to, wanting only to escape from her demons. I looked around my clothes-strewn room, the high school posters and fist holes punched into the walls, knowing it was about to get ugly.

I could feel her energy approaching.
What did I do this time?
I didn’t know, but I put my clothes on, downed a handful of pills, waited for them to hit, and made my way out to the living room. Like a samurai sharpening his sword, I was now ready for battle, confident her disease could not penetrate the prescription shield of unconsciousness, for I was the Chemical Master. Without a chance to explain whatever evil I had summoned, she told me through clenched
teeth, “Get the fuck out of my house.” I didn’t argue. When she left the room I grabbed a bottle of liquor and chugged it in my room as I packed and called Nick. The semester was almost over and he was picking me up in a week, but I made it clear he had to come now. Since we had totaled his truck on our romantic Maine trip, he needed to convince a friend to make the trip. “Just ask him what drugs he wants. We’ll stop by Southie and I can get anything. Piper has sugar cubes, they’re insane.”

He convinced some friends to make the trip, and they would be at my mom’s house in a few hours. I returned to the living room to resume the fight. I felt nothing from her aggression; my roofie armament made me invincible. I was a zombie; words were my bullets and I used them gallantly against this other human being—against love, hope, and goodness. I felt no love for or from my mom. It was disease versus disease, and my disease was winning.

I kept drinking and packing my things as a fire inside me melted my flesh. After a few phone calls, several addicts in Southie knew to meet us at a friend’s apartment in Mission Hill. Nick and his friends arrived at my mother’s, and we packed the car like I was moving out forever. Once again, I never wanted to return to my childhood home where the God of Movement’s arrow first shot me. I was a drunken, pilled-out monster who looked like a pathetic, homeless raver carrying boxes of junk.

Somewhere in my delusions I believed I was moving in with the man I loved. Nick was not open to his friends about our developing relationship, and I always respected his decision, but on that day it weighed on me and stuck like a splinter in my brain. I was so trashed I made the proclamation that Nick and I desperately loved each other. His friends fell silent and looked shocked, and so did Nick. He had walked straight into the tornado of Joe, having no idea of my capabilities for destruction—and sadly, neither did I. All I knew was that I needed some coke or crystal to clear my head; I was starting to fade away. Nick looked furious and was amazed at how messed up I was. He whispered, “Dude, shut the fuck up,” and I stayed quiet for a moment.

We drove to Southie where every drug desired was waiting for us, but even my addict friends were shocked at my condition. I had surpassed them and was now partying with something evil. A girl I used to date said, “Joe, man, you have to slow down, seriously . . . take it easy.” I looked at her like she was crazy and asked, “Who has the roofies and who has the coke?” Nick’s friends bought a lot and I got my roofies and coke, which turned out to be some other powder with no stimulating effect, but I sniffed it anyway, burning out my nose for a desperate high.

As we got into the car and headed toward Brooklyn, I took two roofies and everything slowed down. As I did with everyone now, I started a fight with Nick in front of his friends, challenging him and unearthing our secrets for public viewing. I don’t remember much after that except a long, five-hour drive telling everyone in the car to go fuck themselves. Through the grace of God I finally passed out in midargument and woke up in Brooklyn—my new home of opportunity.

Once again I woke up not knowing where I was or how I got there, but recognized Nick’s clothes and felt safe. He wasn’t there, so I assumed he was with his friends and would be back. Still embraced in the arms of the pills, I saw Nick’s aunt and introduced myself with comfortable, slurred words. Nick had mentioned that his aunt took Xanax for anxiety attacks, and I felt so connected to her through pills that I said, “I’m having an anxiety attack. Do you have some extra Xanax?” She silently left the room, I thought nothing of it, and then Nick showed up.

He said angrily, “Do you remember anything about what happened?” I didn’t, but now within seconds I would find out. I had entered his house, had fallen asleep while walking upstairs in front of his aunt and uncle, and then had continued making a complete asshole out of him in front of friends and other family members. Way too fucked up, I told him the argument with my mother had upset me so much that it had made me cross a line, and I promised I would slow down. Nick was only a few handfuls of pills behind me on the path to disaster.

I convinced him that I just needed some strong uppers to straighten out my head. We made a call and secured some crystal meth. Afraid I’d embarrass him again, Nick left me at home. Sadness and shame swelled up inside me as I sat in his basement and cried, coming down off a mountain of pills.

Nick got the crystal meth, but his friends confronted him about the devil he had brought home with him. They hated me and wouldn’t come over if I was there. I was partying above the level of fun and was literally trying to kill my body and soul. The fun had stopped for me a long time ago, and I was trapped in a riddle: how many pills does it take to kill the human spirit? I would find out. If I wasn’t gone in a few days, his friends threatened to escort me back to Massachusetts. I laughed at that; my years of training plus pills made me feel fearless and invincible, though the truth was I couldn’t even see straight and would have fallen on my face in a fight.

Nick and I snorted all the meth in one line each. We weren’t meth-heads but we used it occasionally, and this was way beyond our recommended dosage. Instead of calming my anxiety, it created an urgency of raw fear in the form of physical energy, resulting in the need for more downers. Nick, on the other hand, was overdosing, seeing spirits trying to take us away, going in and out of a seizure. Somehow I was the more sober one, and made the decision that we needed to go to an emergency room.

After we left for the hospital, Nick’s friends contacted his parents to arrange an intervention for Nick and to restrain me, but they couldn’t find us. The ER nurse called Nick’s parents after our intake, so the cavalry would soon be on their way to rescue and destroy. The nurses searched us for drugs, but we were clean since we had already eaten every pill, and then they made us take a drug test. Nick dunked his urine cup in the toilet water to dilute it and told me to do the same. Before any results came back they took Nick away as I waited outside the emergency room. I paced the floor, filled with terror that he would overdose and die. The horrible question stung my heart:
Did I kill him? Is this my fault?

His mother arrived, yelling, “All of Nick’s friends are after you, so you better just leave.” I didn’t care. I felt macho and tough. My body’s chemical rage would keep me standing like a scrappy street thug. I was ready for a fight and would die proving my toughness.

I argued my way back to Nick and saw him throw up the activated charcoal they had made him drink to absorb the drugs. The nurse told him, “You’re either going to have to drink more or we’ll pump out your stomach.” A stomach pump should be on every human’s “Things to Avoid in Life” list, like being choked to death and forced to vomit simultaneously. He looked horrible, sheet-white, sunken eyes and sickly, his entire body writhing in pain.

What if he died?
I loved him so much. I had never loved anyone like that. My body filled with guilt, remorse, self-hatred, and sadness. I looked Nick in the eye and saw his God. It spoke louder than my own and echoed to my core, “Joe, let him go. Leave him to save him.” I would never tell Nick what I heard, but I knew his relationship with me was killing both of us. I loved him and I left him. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. I left him in that emergency room, covered in black vomit and with tears in his eyes, to drink his liquid charcoal alone. I walked out of the hospital and down a double-laned street, not knowing where I was going or what I would do.

Down the road I passed a police station and walked in. Still intoxicated, I pulled myself together as the situation approached a new tragically horrible reality and said, “I don’t have any money or food. Is there a homeless shelter around here?” They gave me a bus ticket and a coupon to a grocery store nearby. I bought a bagel and water, and got on the bus.

The bus driver told me where to get off. In the middle of the danger zone behind a broken-down building full of street people was the homeless shelter. I walked straight toward it, ready to receive the next orders of my life. It was time to stop.

I walked through the door and saw a beautiful woman with blonde hair. I began talking to her and fell apart. I’d never shattered into so
many pieces. Every aching cell in my body shrieked with an urgent need for help. I cried my heart out. The woman looked shocked at my breakdown and kept telling me it would be okay. I don’t think she had ever seen anyone fall apart so completely. I couldn’t stop crying, and as I told her my story she sat beside me, holding my hand and listening. God met me there at that shelter, holding me and caressing me, a broken-winged angel at the bottom of the Earth, suffocating and dying.

24

INNOMINATE

T
HE INNOMINATE OR HIP BONE IS A LARGE, FLATTENED, IRREGULARLY SHAPED BONE, CONSTRICTED IN THE CENTER AND EXPANDED ABOVE AND BELOW
. I
T HAS ONE OF THE FEW BALL-AND-SOCKET SYNOVIAL JOINTS IN THE BODY—THE HIP JOINT
. I
T COMES FROM THE
L
ATIN
innominatus
,
MEANING “NAMELESS.”

The woman tried to calm me as we walked to another room, where she sat down and asked questions about my past. Her voice soothed me, and I didn’t want her to leave. The shelter was surprisingly clean, starkly different from the rest of the neighborhood. We walked upstairs to a room filled with bunk beds where I would sleep. When I saw the other guys, I immediately stopped crying because I realized I wouldn’t get by on tears in that place.

The cafeteria was next on the tour, and I got in line for food. The gymnastics team had volunteered once at a soup kitchen in downtown Holyoke, and now I had graduated to the other side. Surprisingly, it wasn’t soup but a giant container of chop suey behind a small glass panel, a dish that made my stomach turn; but I was starving and ready to eat my own fingers.

She came by again and asked if I was on any medication. I wiped away the slop of sauce on my face and quietly told her Klonopin and Prozac. She told me they would keep me on my pills to avoid seizures and hold and monitor my meds, but I was relieved to know my prescribed dosage still gave me a good buzz.

I found out from the guys in the room that I could only stay there at night. One guy said, “For the first two weeks this is how it works: You have to stay outside during the day and come back by eight o’clock at night for curfew, then you get a bed. After that, if you’re following the rules, you get more privileges.”
Outside?
I thought to myself.
That doesn’t make sense. Isn’t this a homeless shelter? Can’t I just stay in here all day?
Then I turned toward a man who drew me in; my preternatural radar went on high alert. His dark eyes glimmered, and I knew he had something I needed: drugs. We talked quietly. He fronted me some Xanax when I told him I was getting my prescription later that night and would pay him back.