Maybe it was the orgasm, or the knowledge that my bottles are almost empty, but the cravings are rushing over me. Like those crashing waves of the Jersey shore of my youth--tumbling under rough, cold waves. Every fiber of my being screams, "just snort an oxymorphone... maybe just a half of one... you can take the other half tomorrow, half another two to make up those 2 doses you'll be short until the appointment. 2 oxys and 1 oxymorphone tomorrow and Sunday. You'll be fine."
But I know how this ends, as it does every month. I'll spend the last 2 days writhing, without sleep, muscles tight to the bone, as I wait to reenter the doctor's office and a pharmacy. I don't care about the disapproving looks of the techs faces behind the counter, unable to see my degenerative spinal condition. In need of the medicine that soothes my body and spirit.
Earlier, itching as if I'd swallowed 10 codeine tablets due to the mosquitoes bites that dot my legs, I took 2 benadryl. I now understand why they cut shit on the street with it. That post coital high, naked and entangled, sheets shoved to the foot of the bed, but it is a high from the sex or the drugs. Opioids make sex better, besides how difficult it can be to cum. This time I howled through the last minute. Sexual pleasure bursting past the walls of chemicals running down my nervous system.
The air is cool outside tonight. A nice respite from the scathing sun and triple digit heat. The bliss that I should be feeling is over run by racing calculations--how do I indulge this yearning while still having enough until Tuesday morning? A math problem that will hang over my head until that morning, desperate for a fix--any kind--before I dive into that fat bottle of pills later on. My dry mouth is now salivating at the thought of those chalky tablets.
Fuck. I wonder if I'll be this way forever. 11 years spent nursing this nice habit. This unimaginable desire that consumes me every moment of the day. I doubt there's an hour that goes by, even as the baskets of prescriptions stack up around me at work, that the next dose doesn't flit through my thoughts. It's that spot in the center of my forehead, constantly aching until the chemicals start to break down, and I'm once more lost in my own little void. And who would I be without it? This addiction raised me from a 16 year old punk to a 27 year old pharmacy tech. As the world is crumbling down around us all, I figure we each need our escape. Mine happens to be trapped in the bottom of an amber vial.
This past week the same junky came in twice. The first time, he asked for syringes. His long, thin frame carved with black tattoos and a stud in his chin. The bones in his skull protruding through his jaundiced skin.
"What do you need them for?" My pharmacist asks his expressionless face.
"I'm diabetic. I need it for my insulin."
"Okay, do you get your insulin here?"
"No, I get it at _______"
"Well, I can call and verify that with them, then I can sell you a package."
"I have HIV." The subliminal message that he is a drug addict now cresting his lips.
"I need to verify your insulin prescription in order to sell you syringes."
"Okay, never mind." He walks off in defeat.
I would've sold them to him if he could've told me the insulin or dosage. But, irregardless, if he was an HIV positive diabetic, his status was not a necessary disclosure. He was basically admitting his reason for getting them, and I doubt it was to inject some Lantus or Novolog.
That benadryl is grinding into the oxymorphone right now. This 3rd cigarette in 15 minutes is making it hard to keep my eyes open, as it increases the pleasure.
Fuck. I better get some sleep before I do something I'll regret on Monday--fiending and burning with pain.
Night friends,
Lucy
