I climbed the exterior staircase to the apartment above me.  I was living in a house that was divided into 4 apartments.  I was in the basement.  It was a dreary little space that  I had just moved into a few weeks earlier, at my parents' insistence, to get away from Dan and Bill.  I didn't know my new neighbor very well, other than a friend had told me that he was a semi-reliable source for various substances.  It was cold.  I was leaving in the morning for the Menninger Foundation- some psychiatric hospital in Topeka, KS that the drug counselor had recommended.  I was out of money and wanted to get fucked up one more time before they locked me up for 30 days or whatever they were going to do me.   I knocked on his door. 

"Hey.  I'm leaving in the morning for drug treatment.   Do you have anything tonight?"

"Yeah, I have some cocaine.  It's good stuff". 

"I want a gram. I don't have any money, can you loan it to me?"

"You just said you are going away for drug treatment."

I thought for a minute.  I felt crazy, scared, sick, depressed.  Everything had spiraled so fast.  I needed something. Bad.

"I'll trade you my Christmas tree.  It's decorated....with lights."  I added, in my best salesperson voice.

He looked interested.  "Let me take a look at it."

He followed me downstairs and came inside.  Even though I had just been there a few weeks , I had the place fixed up.  The "going away thing" was a new development.   My parents thought if I was in my own house, away from my drug buddies, I could stop using and get my act together.    I had been living away from home for the past year since I was 17.  I had dropped out of high school and entered college early because my high school routine was cramping my partying routine.

My apartments always looked like a 30 year old lived there.  I had been "30" since the age of 12; that was part of my problem.  Obsessively organized and clean,  great art, a 5 foot long bar with a tile top that used to be stocked, a Sony stereo that I had saved all my money for and had hooked up to get MTV through the speakers (the only one of my friends who had figured that out-this was 1983), etc.   So of course, at Christmas, I had a 5 foot Christmas tree complete with ornaments and a tasteful string of lights.  

My parents had no idea I had a problem.   I was 18 and in the first semester of my sophomore year at a state university.  I was your typical first child.  Over achiever, "A" student, student council treasurer, French Club president, honor society, 3 sport athlete.  I started working at 12, pulling a mower behind my bike and had my own cleaning/painting business at 15, hiring friends in the summer.  I also worked 15 hours a week at the hospital delivering trays after school or, during sports season, the 7-3 shift Saturday and Sunday.   Me an alcoholic and drug addict?  Never.

I had a friend who had been sent away for "chemical dependency" treatment the year before.  I had never even heard of that.  When he came back, he started up again and we began dating.   He used to tell me that I was "chemically dependent".  I would argue with him.  I quit smoking cigarettes for 5 days to prove it (although I increased my pot smoking significantly).  During the summer, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. to find him sitting in my bedroom.  He had some way of climbing up to the roof and coming in my window.  He was hunched over in a chair and was crying. 

"What is wrong?  What happened?"

"I just shot up cocaine."

No shit!  None of us had done anything like that.  We didn't even know people who did this.

He looked up at me and said, "You can never do this.  You can never shoot up.  We will never see you again."

That was the "ominous warning I failed to heed." 

I held him in my bed.  He was shaking and crying.  I would NEVER do that.  Needles? No way!

Fall semester, I had only been to 2 of my 4 classes by late November.  Who can get up for an 8:00 a.m. lecture?   I had my first drink at 13 (guzzled half a bottle of vodka, threw up, blacked out and passed out).  I had been a daily pot smoker for a couple of years, took a lot of speed, cocaine when I could afford it.  Didn't like downers- had lost a whole week of my life that summer when I was taking valium.   There was a supply of opium for a while- liked that.  Drank when I couldn't get any drugs.   But I  had spent this entire  semester using any hallucinogenic available:  acid, mushrooms, mescaline.   I had found this to be the least expensive and longest lasting high.  I read all the books about LSD.  I thought of myself as born in the wrong decade.  I  believed I was "experimenting" in the tradition of Hoffman and Leary.  It was all about control.  

December 7th, my own metaphorical Pearl Harbor Day, I dropped out of college and confessed to my parents.  My parents had been divorced for 8 years, but were on good terms.  My dad was teaching at a small college and I went to his office.  He was shocked, but tried not to show it. How do you react when your kid tells you they have been using drugs for years and you didn't know it?  We spent hours talking, purging, planning.  My dad rationalized  and my mom played ostrich, as my dad liked to describe it.   (We would learn later that this was a family disease.)  The signs had been there but none of us knew how to label it.   The night before I had drawn a graph on the bottom  of a case of beer.   I put  school, work and family on one axis, and drugs on the other.  In front of me, on the bottom of a cardboard box, scrawled out in black magic marker was a picture of my life.   I suddenly saw that as my drug use increased, my school performance, work and family interactions had plummeted.  I had never seen a causal relationship before. 

The plan.  First: move away from my roommates (it was their  influence, my parents want to believe).  Second: appointment with a drug counselor.  Third: my dad sent an old friend of his who had been sober about 6 months to talk to me.  I wasn't like him.  I was 18.  He described these meetings and how you had to believe in a higher power.   I was an atheist.  What is he saying?  I can stop on my own.  Fourth:  I stop using drugs.

A week went by.  The next appointment, I haven't stopped using and my parents are not rationalizing and denying as much this week.  Residential treatment is recommended.  Strongly.  I am beyond depressed.  The world is cold and black.  At one point, I put my BB gun in my mouth to see what it would be like with a real gun.  That scared me.  I can't wake up, I sleep all day, I can't stop using.   I agree to go.  I will be there during Christmas.  My dad is depressed and withdrawn. 

"What will we tell your grandparents?" My mother asks.  

We will be leaving in the morning.  It's a 4 hour drive.   Ironically, it would have been my parents' 19th wedding anniversary.  I just want to get away from them and head back home to pack.

"So, what do you think about the tree?  Is it a deal?"

"OK.  1/2 gram though- not a gram."

I am desperate and afraid to bargain.  "Sure."

I take off some of my childhood ornaments my mom had given me.  The wooden cut out of a tin soldier from my 2nd grade teacher,  the basketball player from my 8th grade coach.  

He handed me the little football shaped package and carried the tree out the door.  

I sat down and got out my mirror, razor blade, dollar bill.  All the tools of the trade.   "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" is on and I curl up on my couch to watch.  It's in black and white.   Like my life.

 No needles yet.  I would learn all about that at Menningers.  

This event happened 25 years ago today.

Earlier related posts:

The irony of a drug dealer named Joy

Your loving son, B