The muscles in my abdomen shudder. Vibrating through my legs and out my arms. All my muscles are tense. My whole body lets out a muffled scream for its next dose.
I yawn until the skin around my mouth can stretch no further. My mind has only one concern—the oxymorphone I’ll soon be snorting. The oxycodone, I already popped to kick in.
Pills test my patience as I wait for them to dissolve and swarm the blood brain barrier. Until they spill over and spread shivers through my spinal chord and the rest of my nervous system.
My stomach has been empty all day. Powered on by my morning coffee and the handful of pills I take. I’m basically a walking talking pharmacy. Swallowing pills for depression, ADHD, arthritis, inflammation, asthma, anxiety, and, of course, pain.
The same tablets and capsules I spill across my tray all day, count by 5s, and pour into bottles. To heal their mental and physical defects or deficiencies or at least to mask them.
The oxycodone kicks in a few stops from home. A thick layer of sweet pleasure warms my back. Each muscle has relaxed, as if my whole body is breathing a sigh of relief.
We’ll only 1 more day then I see my doctor on Wednesday. I can make it through. I know I can.
It’s a phenomenon I experience a few times a week. I’m not sure if it started before or after I started using—now almost a decade ago. An immediate realization that the person in front of my face is a mirror. Their addiction pulsing a silent signal that I instantly receive.
Whenever it’s confirmed, a bit of joy courses through me. I’ve found one of my own. Sometimes there’s a bit of loathing as well. A mirror image of my own self loathing?
I rest on my arms, palms on the counter. Old scar on my inner arm—a mess of twisted flesh the color of buttermilk—a secret badge of honor. Only for them to see.
The fire trucks are wailing outside the window. Flying down Manor to a distant emergency. Their lights flicker on the blinds before stopping, screams growing quiet in the distance.
I feel tired. Not high. Just drained. I’m dissapointed in my nightly dose. It isn’t strong enough. I hold my cravings inside. Lurking at the back of my skull. Hoping to hold them at bay until tomorrow.
I picture the junkies across America. All of us snuggled up warm under the covers. Cradling track marks and secret desires for more more more. It is comforting and disgusting all at once.
I'm sitting behind the pharmacy right now. The sun pouring through the trees on to the brown, cracked leaves. All the amphetamines in my system has made the day fly. My mind keeps flipping from project to project--unable to stay focused on the task at hand.
My guts buckle. But I ignore it and keep smoking my cigarette. Blowing blue smoke into the cool fall air.
Last night I gave into temptation. we had dinner with my parents. I couldn't abort my oxymorphone--I didn't want to fall nose first into my plate of enchiladas. But even the alcohol from my margarita and my pills couldn't get me high. I needed it like so many nights before. I returned home, unable to settle down, without the thought bubbling up. There was no more fighting it.
I crushed up the pill and inhaled through my left nostril. The powder didn't burn.
A few minutes later I was overcome with a warm pleasure. My eyes fell closed half closed. Heaven was finally within my grasp. All the customers and pain drained away into a puddle of oblivion.
Each cigarette felt better than the last as I chain smoked outside. Unable to stop myself. Once more entangled in my vices.
Fuck, back to work. At least they replaced the employee toilet. I can get some peace as my guts roll out my stomach like a sick joke.
I'm sitting on the bus right now. Babyshambles blasting in my headphones to tune out the hum of the motor. Evening sun pouring through the thick plastic windows. My eyes are half open, I've been struggling to stay awake all day.
Last night's high has bled into today.
I get home and immediately get to work. R and our friends are over hanging out in the living room.
I go into the bedroom and grab one of my generic oxymorphone er 10mg tablets. I take an alcohol pad to wipe off the outer coating. The sunkist color has been removed, now leaving it slick, white. I put it in my pill grinder and turn until it is a fine powder. Then I inhale deeply through the $2 bill shoved into my left nostril. My pharmacist gave it to me for good luck a few months ago. I snort all of it in a single breath, leaving the back of my throat coated in grit.
By the time it starts to rush over me, the 2 oxys I popped are already flushing my cheeks red. The oxymorphone hits me square between the eyes as I walk outside.
I try to drag my eyes open as I smoke a cigarettes with Nic, Jeff, Lee and R. Lee is staring at his phone typing--his eyes never leaving the screen.
"Yo that dope I got this weekend was basically all fentanyl. It had crazy legs." Lee says breaking his silence.
"Like a fine wine?" I smirk.
"Yeah... I did a point and I was puking the entire show on Saturday night."
"Damn."
"Yeah, usually I need like 3 points to feel it. But I was nodding hard off of 1 point."
"You gotta be careful..." I sound more like an older sister than a friend. I worry about that kid.
"I know... I just can't get it out of my head. I hadn't done any for like 3 weeks, but then I ran right back to it."
"I hear you. It's rough."
Everyone else dissolves into background noise, scenery. They all walk inside, leaving the 2 junkies to commiserate.
"Dude, you don't want to be like me in a decade..." I say "Well, I mean, I have most of my shit together, but you know what I mean."
Lee laughs, "Yeah, it doesn't seem so bad what you have. But I get what you mean."
It hits me that I'm the definition of a functioning addict; with a great marriage, full-time job, apartment, plus a kitten and a rabbit, from the outside no one would ever know that my mind is consumed with thoughts of my next high.
"Anyway, I'm gonna go pick up like $40 worth." It's said more like an offer than a statement, since he usually picks up for me when I want some.
"That's cool man." I put the thought of my mind. The oxymorphone has got me good and high right now--I don't need anything else.
I look down at my phone and see a text from R: Don't buy H. The implication of the text annoys me, that I'm going to buy H because Lee is.
Lee follows me inside. Jeff, Nic, and R are sprawled out on the laid down futon and the floor. I recline on the futon next to Nic. It's nice to have her here with me. She's come down from NY to hang out for a few weeks. There's no definite day when she'll leave, and I prefer it that way. I wish I could convince her to never go back and move to TX.
Nic's arm is cradling a 40 of Mickey's mixed with 4Loko Gold; her drink of choice.
Rick and Morty are on TV. Jeff and R are having an animated discussion over Dan Harmon's storytelling formula. I've heard it a million times from R.
Lee is staring at his phone once more. Not even taking a moment away from it to sit down.
"I'm going to RBM to meet up with Tito, anyone need anything?"
Before we can respond he's out the door.
I've only sat down for 5 minutes before I'm back outside smoking a cigarette. The urge overpowering my desire to be social. Lee comes back up the steps. His cracked and ripped combat boots slapping the cement steps.
"I didn't pick up." He sighs, sitting down in the chair on the other side of our outdoor table.
"I'm proud of you dude, that's a really hard thing to do."
"I hadn't used for 2 weeks and then I picked up a few days ago, and I can't stop hating myself for doing it again. I can't get it out of my head, but I hate myself every time I do it."
"That's one of the hardest things. I understand that. I'm really proud of you. It's a tough decision, but you did it. I know it sucks."
"Yeah, it really fucking sucks." He sucks on his cigarettes.
"You can always talk to me about this stuff. I won't judge you, like I get it."
"Thanks, that means a lot."
"Of course."
Silence descends over us. I stare back at my phone, shuffling through Facebook and Twitter.
Lee returns inside, but I don't follow him. I need another cigarette. Another moment of silence to think.
Love you,
Lucy
P.S. This song has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks... bang bang I'm gone!
The muscles in my body are tense as my intestines spasm. The heavy rains last night have brought out cooler weather; a nice respite from the scathing Texas sun. It's 10pm, so I'm sitting outside for one of my nightly chain-smoking sessions.
I've been out of oxy for 3 days. The computer keeps trying to correct it to "oxygen"--which it might as well be. The Opana ERs only work so well. I used 2 small batches of poppy tea on Saturday to help ameliorate my cravings. It worked. I felt high and relaxed all day. The closet I've been to nodding out in a month at least. One more day to survive until Doctor day. It's like Christmas once a month.
He's changing me from the Opana ER 10s to the generics, hopefully. I've heard you can snort/shoot them, which gives me giddy anxiety. One of the blessings of Morphine ER was that it has almost no recreational properties--snorting it is useless, oral is useless, plugging it worked a little bit. Overall, it's shitty. Opana can be graded down into plasticine chunks, but trust me, it's not something I really want to stick up my nose. Even in alcohol it was a gelatinous mess. The oxymorphone is combined with polyethylene glycol (aka Miralax) which it allows it to dissolve slowly over 12 hours. It was basically abuse proof besides taking extra at a time.
This was good. I couldn't abuse my extended release pills, which I need to keep me mobile on a daily basis. It meant I wouldn't run out early--ever. But now, staring down the possibility of a bunch of oxycodone and amusable oxymorphone, I know what I'll do. I'm very aware that I'm an idiot and will snort or shoot away whatever I can get away with doing.
I haven't shot up drugs since we were doing coke in Queens--3 years ago? But old habits don't die hard, they hibernate. I think about it a lot. More than I admit to anyone. There's no one who I know that both understand and won't talk to other people about it.
When I got the flu shot the other day (which it is time to get everyone! get your flu shots!), I saw the needle and I got a big giddy. I couldn't help but look at the needle as he pushed down on the plunger. Even a fucking vaccination gives me a rush. I love giving myself my weekly injection because I get that fucking rush. It's great if I can perfectly time it so my meds hit me right when I'm doing the shot--one part physical high and one part mental high. Hey, as long as I feel good I don't care how it works.
Anyway, I'm hoping that Wednesday I'll get the oxymorphone er and get to have a bit of fun that night... but you know, not too much. Never too much.
Fuck it. I have a naloxone kit for a reason (not really going to over do it to that extent, don't worry, I'm not suicidal. If you're dead you can't get high).
It's fun to have a secret sometimes--to nurse and enjoy, knowing a private joke that's all yours. Doing H is now my secret, my little personal free fall into the void. I've only done a little H out on the east coast--powder, not the Mexican Tar out in the west. Smoking it and water railing it (mixing it in a needless syringe and shooting it up my nose) tasted like how i imagine catpiss would taste.
L said he liked the taste. I imagine it's just a reaction to the euphoria that rolls around his brain right after it hits the back of his tongue.
It wasn't that good a hit. But I can't stop thinking about it. It reminded me a lot of morphine, that thick viscous high, that sucks me down into the couch, shuts my eyes, and fills me with apathy. It reminded me of shooting oxy as s 16 year old, the euphoria never being that amazing, but my brain learning to crave it--filling me with unforgettable lust.
Im consumed by desire, want, need.
I don't know how someone could take opiates and not feel this way. I watch them pick up their RXs and I just after each one, as I imagine they must. But I somehow they don't care. Is my mind so fucked up or is theirs?
I don't have an answer, just my own fear of feeling the void surrounding me once more.
The naloxone is stashed in my drawer, waiting for the day I fulfill my destiny and return back to nothingness. I don't worry about my own fate, just the pain of those around me.
What the fuck am I doing?
I'm scared I'll test positive on Wednesday at my pain management appointment. Please god don't let him test me. I don't want to go back to endless pain or the embarrassment of having to take suboxone/methadone at the pharmacy.
Please let me just get this one by the doctor and I won't fuck up again.
I was better at chasing it on the tin foil than B was. We both kept swapping between lighting and chasing, as my fingers burned holding it trying to angle it downwards.
I said fuck this, not high enough! Like a toddler who hasn't gotten the right flavor of lollypop.
I added water to the big spoon my grandparents once used to serve up mashed potatoes--now a charred up heroin spoon. I held the flame away from it, watching it bubble but not boil. Using the syringes, the sliptip needle pulled off, I sucked up the remnants. I pulled back the plunger and watched the shit colored water fill the barrel.
Ducking into the bathroom, I got down on my knees and slipped the it into my asshole. It didn't hurt, it didn't burn like the coke had 3 years ago. I pushed down until there was nothing left.
Coming out of there, I felt R and Bs eyes watching me as I laid down on the couch. Now L was there too, getting his 1/2 gram I had picked up for him.
I felt fucked up. I felt high like I had done a ton of morphine and was now melting out of existence. My artheiric pain melted away leaving me content. I curled up on the couch so B could sit down.
He and L had water lined it--cooking it up to shoot up their noses. It made me gag after trying it, that cat piss taste at the back of my throat.
I probably plugged 1/5th of a gram--not embarrassed at the stigma of shoving a syringe up my ass, better than in my arm.
Every time my eyes would close I'd here "Lucy!" As I nodded off. Only to open them and see the 3 of them in front of the kitchen staring at me--scared I had ODd.
R was so depressed, hopeless watching me as I fell into a deep sleep. The oxymorphone and heroin pushing my eyes closed.
His brother got out of detox from h on Friday. I was the reminder that R could never escape h, and the pull it had on the people around him. I was his wife which was becoming a casualty of the opioid epidemic across the country. I was becoming another statistic.
I'm scared I'll come up positive for it in 2 days for my drug test although it'll be 3 days since I did it by then. Sunday morning was the last part I plugged and then I could be tested on Wednesday. I feel like I will be.
But what happens happens, and I'll have to live with the consequences. I am a fuck up, what can I say!?
Waiting outside the Twin Liquors right now, the car is hot and close, but I won't open the window. Excitement in the pit of my stomach mixes with a tinge of guilt and shame.
R is off getting a bottle of liquor and meeting up with Lee. That's all it takes to get a 19 year old to cop dope for you.
The patter of rain drops starts to mix in with the cars driving through the shopping center--law abiding citizens with no idea about the shadowy dealings in the parking lot.
All the traveling kids are sitting in our living with their dogs at their feet right now. 4 of them spent the night plus Kilo and Cannabis (their pups).
G and A are off to pick up an eight ball from some dealer downtown. R and I agreed it was best not to know where he lives or his number. Apparently he already left his spot so now they're eternally waiting in a bar for him to show. I have a belief that coke dealers take some deep pleasure out of making us wait--thrilled with the power they hold in their pockets.
G just texted me now that they're "getting things" and then leaving.
I'm slightly nervous. Last time R and I did coke it was from a dealer G knows down in Houston--it was too pure for my own good. I felt the world spin out around me, my stomach lurched into my throat, and nauseous spun to my head.
I was too fucked--how I imagine smoking crack would feel... aka unpleasant.
R won't do coke anymore. He's been having full on body tremors and muscle spasms, which we haven't found the cause of yet. He's stopped drinking too. I'm really proud of how much he's taking care of himself. He worries the coke will only cause them to get worse.
I wanted to spontaneously combust at work earlier, standing behind the cash register, time ticking too slow out there and too fast in the system, stress crushed me under it's heel and was proceeding to rub me out. Every customer was slowing me down more than the last, and I was cutting them off mid sentence as they spelled out their first names--"3 letters is all I need" felt like my mantra, all I need to find you in my system, all I need to sell you the pills and get the fuck out of here.
Everyone always wants to tell me their life story. I was more than not in the mood. It seems like anyone outside the plexiglass partition has all the time in the world, and assumes that I do too. But the company times every activity I do there, from how fast I fill an RX, pick up a phone call, scan your rewards card, have your meds in stock, and how many more Rxs I can get you to fill--even if you don't need them. It boggles my mind that each person who calls in starts the conversation with a huge prologue before ever giving me his name or date of birth; he is always inevitably offended once I ask, as if my interruption had ruined his tale of woe and shitty doctors offices, mazes of insurance, transferring pharmacies, or some combination of all 3. Other people call in immediately on the attack, ready to curse out whoever picks up, until it becomes apparent whichever one of us who picks up has no idea what she is talking about. Usually, our confusion doesn't faze any of them, they enjoy a chance to fuck with someone who has no choice but to listen.
I felt my tears welling up as I sold some impotent 35 year old guy his medication to help him produce more sperm; his eyes looked straight through me, I had forgotten to act less like a human and more like a placid, Hindu cow.
Now I'm safe with a cigarette in hand, leaning back in a chair in front of my apartment, looking down at the courtyard below. My mind is left to crave only oxy and opana, forget food or sleep, all I need are drugs. Like my customers, I'm hooked on each new rx you give me, doc, and all I want are more.
I know I'm only supposed to take 3 oxys a day, I'm doing better at following instructions so that the bottle lasts me the full month this time around. That way I'm not wasting hundreds of dollars on some poor old ladies pills.
I was on the phone with insurance for 3 hours today for 3 different patients. For one of them, I was trying to get his suboxone to go through for free like it did last week when we didn't have any. Once it finally came in, he needed to pay his deductible which he hadn't done yet. Well, fuck, it went round and round, until finally the lady on the other side of the phone told him. I don't want any more calls today, any more people to talk to; once I get off work I become a misanthrope.
The opana is dissolving into a gelatinous blob of oxymorphone, that my stomach slowly eats away at over the next 12 hours. It takes 2 hours before the effects begin to peak, which is too long to wait today--please let it start sooner, and take me anywhere but here.
Without drugs, I'd be another miserable 26 year old punk--working my ass off during the week, going to shows on the weekends, and drinking my anger away. The constant need fills that void and gives me a way to fill my time, lying in wait for the moment euphoria to rush over me. When there are no pills, when withdrawal looms over me, then the void is filled with the hunt for relief and pills and to return to nothingness of opiate's embrace.
Texas is getting hotter by the day, but right now the breeze is perfectly warm. The burning menthol tasted in my mouth almost satiates me while I wait for the high to begin.
It seems like I have all the time in the world to wait now that I'm on the other side of the pharmacy, just like the rest of them.
Until next time...
Love,
Lucy
P.S. comment if you read this... let me know there is someone else out there...
I am ready to curl up and die there. Unable to stop the pain raging from my head down to my feet. The doctor wouldn't rx me anything until I saw him this week--2 days after my mirphine rx ran out. A week from my when my last oxy rx should have been refilled. The muscles in my legs contract. My eyes burn. I yawn again and again--I would take death over this feeling. I forgot my wallet and have nothing to eat.
The asphalt steams my scrubs; my arms feel hot and sticky. Rain in Texas is always dangerous weather, trucks barrel down the freeway spraying water, sedans end up swept into puddles, and I'm stuck on wet cement for the 30 minutes I have away from the pharmacy in the back corner of the store.
A homeless guy presses me for a cigarette--3 times no and he won't listen to me, "I have 2 ciga left and I'm on my break." A lie to protect my only respite from the world.
Back behind the pharmacy counter, I wanted to scream at people to fuck off all morning. We can't see them approach the counter on the other side of the partition. Usually, within 20 seconds or less, we'll call "be there in a minute." Some immediately knock on the counter, scream hello, it makes me want to stab them with my spatula as I count out 120 Metformin 500mg. A Stetson floats above the glass, a disembodied hat. Fucking Texas.
Everyone is here for their speed and opiates--ready to get legally high, with their doctors' nods of approval.
I pop my own, sitting in the thick air of the parking lot. Customers stare at me as the awning drops on me, I pretend not to notice either. It doesn't matter if you don't look.
I gulp down a 10/325 Percocet and 30mg XR adderall. My own legal euphoria. I have a legitimate condition, undifferentiated spondylarthritis and hypersomnia, along with a million other conditions I take 12 pills to keep in check. I'm a walking disease, an invalid.
I need to pick up my handicapped placard. The prescription is waiting for me at my rheumatologist's office. I'll probably pick it up after I see my new pain doctor.
I hate pain doctors. They treat us all like junkies--piss tests every time. The glances of disbelief at your first meeting, as is maybe all the MRIs and years of testing are wrong. The new guy sounds good though, maybe he'll be able to help me with the burning pain in my feet and the tearing sensation in the tendons of my ankles--along with the deep, crushing aching in my spine and knees, my hands as well.
My break is done, my cigarette barely finished. I watch the clouds of smoke trail off. I grind it out with my feet so that annoying homeless guy can't smoke it. Maybe that makes me an asshole. I haven't decided yet.
