Windmills in fog on the Oklahoma prairie...sometimes it's hard     to see what's really there.                                                     (c) 2008 CBerg

I am seeing him again tomorrow.  I really like him, and he likes me, I think.  We are meeting at his place.  It’s really nice, on the edge of a forest.  He says that we are a lot alike.   Intelligent, active, attractive, caring, spontaneous, health conscious, artistic, and addictive.  I assume that he is addictive, although I don’t really know that.  I know he doesn’t take his own drugs...like the ones he provides for others.  He has his exercise, family, work and religion to satisfy his addictions, I think.  

We were talking once and he said that he thought that people were never meant to live the way we do...slaves to a nine-to-five economy.  We are meant to move around, hunting and gathering, sitting around the fire and telling stories.  We were meant to spend more time with our families and friends whose relationships were necessary for our survival.  We weren’t meant to take the night shift and sleep all day.  We weren’t meant to look for shortcuts to everything from walking to eating.  We weren’t meant to eat so much meat all of the time, and to eat things that traveled thousands of miles to find us. We weren’t meant to take more than we produce because we have more dollars, the false economy we have all agreed upon.  He and I both care for the Earth, have compassion for our fellow humans, and work at making a difference.  You’d think we would both be fine.  

He is.  I’m not.  I’m addicted.  I’m codependent.  I feel crazy.  

The last time I saw him, I was coming down.  I had been cutting my drugs, trying to come off of them, and I was feeling the effects.  He said, “Why don’t you try another drug...we can mix them and it will be better.  It will give you more energy and focus.  You can do it!”  I took the additional drug, and now I wonder if it was such a good idea.  It made me feel more detached.  My drug doesn’t make me feel detached from the world.  It doesn’t really make me feel anything different unless I don’t take it.  Then it hits me with a hammer.  The first twenty-four hours are okay except I notice I am more emotional and can be weepy.  Then I start getting a headache, and begin feeling nauseous.  By the second day I am feeling really sick with flu-like symptoms and a pounding headache.  I haven’t made it past the second day.  I have to have my drug!  I look all over for my hidden stashes.  I learned to squirrel some away in several different places for these times.  I look in the bottom of my purse, in the medicine cabinet, in with the spices in the kitchen.  If all else fails, I go to my daughter and see if she has any.  Of course, she comes to me if she runs out, too.  

I want to get off drugs, and have gotten off most of them, but still there is one...no two left.  I worry about what long term drug use will do to my mind, to my body.  I already know that many things we thought were harmless are not at all, and they effect humans with only tiny amounts.  The gold shots my grandfather and mother-in-law took for arthritis for years?  They left her with constant burning in her feet from nerve damage.  We just don’t know the long term effects of drugs.  But I  do know the long term effect of having NO DRUGS on my grandmother, lived and raised on a chemical-free farm with plenty of hard work and sunshine.  She hung herself at age sixty-one. 

He shakes my hand as I leave, giving me some of his stash with the other hand.  He is really good, and really caring....not like the other dealers I’ve dealt with who were just handing out drugs to anyone.  He really cares about me and if I’m okay.  I reach for my money to pay him.  Would he still like me if I couldn’t pay?  Would he still give me drugs and be my friend?  Yes, I think so.  He would help me find a way to pay him.  I know he would....and maybe he would even carry me for a while.  Or would he?  Could he afford my habit when even I can’t?  

If he couldn’t, would I end up on the street like my friend’s sixty-year-old sister who ended up killing her mother when she couldn't take her life on the streets, or get her drugs?  How many people are in jail like her because they didn’t have health care?

I love my psychiatrist...he’s the best.  But I get scared.  What happens when my COBRA health insurance runs out?  Mr. Obama, when are we going to have a national health plan?  When are we going to get consistent help for those who are ‘mental.’   How many more people will have to die?