Wasting Face

Saturday, August 24, 2018
Midnight

The soft pallet at the back of my throat is caving in, expanding my nasal passages. Soon when I snort pills all the powder will simply fly down the back of my throat, no better than popping them. I ignore the niggling pain in the roof of my mouth, that burns after each line. The oxymorphone clings to the wet spaces, the irritation never goes away—no matter how much water I gulp.

It's been 8 hours since I got home and inhaled my nightly medication, but the sting of the powder lingers. That last bit of sugar stuck at the bottom of the coffee cup.

Tonight I decided to make tea for the first time in probably a year at least. I made the first batch an hour ago, and only drank the second about 10 minutes ago. It pours into each of my limbs like thick concrete. My muscles ache with each movement under the weight. Around 11:30pm, I ate a bowl of cereal--my only meal of the day besides breakfast and a bag of sour gummy bears this afternoon.

1:50 am
The tea only weighed me down with a stoned-out, stomaching-churning, body-high. I relented to the thought rattling on in my brain: "snort your morning dose at 3am, you'll end up doing your night one at 3 in the afternoon anyway."

R was nestled under the covers in our bed. The handmade quilt (made for us by a friend as a wedding gift) pushed to my side of the bed. A swirling noise hung in the air from the fan spinning overhead. It has to be kept on low at night, on any of the higher settings it squeaks and rocks wildly. I have imagined it flinging itself from the ceiling, onto my prone body far too many times.

I am sure his eyes opened just enough to see me slide my nightstand drawers open, pulling out all my supplies in silence. Until it came time to grab the medicine bottle, I gave the first one I picked up a shake--too empty. The next one was far too heavy. But that third one was my oxymorphone. With my index finger I fished one out, before returning the bottle and closing the drawer.

After the drawer was closed and I put everything down on the sofa, I realized I had forgot the alcohol swabs. Once more, I snuck in and grabbed a couple--1 for now, the rest to be kept in the living room for next time.

I hit play on the remote to continue watching Live PD. (I love the stupid people on that show... R hates it, so I have to watch it when he's asleep). The alcohol pad was slowly stained with orange dye as I rubbed the ever-whitening tablet on it. The most heavenly creamsicle. I then toweled it off with my paper towel, removing the slimy film of alcohol left on it.

I dropped it and twisted down the lid of my pill crusher (the best $5 a junky with a pill habit could spend available at any grocery or drug store). Each time the resistance grew weaker as the powder became finer, until I felt none.

The $2 bill I use to snort my oxymorphone with was a gift from my old pharmacist. She had given it to myself and another tech to put into our wallets as good luck--that way we would always have $2 if an emergency arrived. Instead, I found it more amusing to do the act she found most abhorrent with it. A sick joke just for me.

My future-self requested that I only snort half. Enough to top off the tea for a good high, and leave me with enough for later on in the morning. However, as has been proven for over a decade now (as retold on this blog), I have no self-control. Once the thought enters into my mind, it becomes immovable.

2:26am
To breathe, I have to keep my mouth open a little bit. Whenever I'm not sucking down another cigarette, at least. I'm all alone outside our apartment, feet pressed to the painted green bars of the walk way, leaning back in one of our wicker kitchen chairs. They were my father's from his first apartment in the late 70s, our kitchen table chairs when I was a child, and then ours. Now 2 of them are always outside are place, except during downpours.

There's a light breeze blowing my smoke across the computer screen. Nausea keeps creeping up on me (I baked some cookies a little while ago), but I can't control the desire for the pull on each cigarette I devour. There's a lamp post on the other side of the courtyard

The morphine mixes with the oxymorphone to create a strange high--the heavy morphine numbness and the oxymorphine pleasure. It blasts up my spine once more and leaves an aurora of pleasure in every extremity. My blood pulses faster along the my skin, reverberating in my ears.

Orbs glow on top of the lamp posts beneath me. Like tiny moons, so close I could touch them, if only I could get a little closer.

Wednesday 5:53pm

There is no high. 25 mg of oxycodone produces nothing. I might as well have taken a tylenol and called it a night. Once more, I fucked myself. The same story each month repeated ad nauseam. I've used up my pills too soon and now I have to make up for 2 missing doses. I decided to skip my regular oxymorphone dose tonight, opting to take 2.5 oxycodone instead--hoping they would make up for it. But that thick oxymorphone high, or upbeat oxycodone, is elusive.

My cravings are growing steadily with each passing second. All I want is to feel that warm, fucked up glow.

What can I say? I'm a junky to the core. There will never be enough chemicals in my blood stream to fill the desire in my head. The spot in the middle of my forehead pulses, waiting for a sensation that isn't going to come.

Maybe if I split one of my oxymorphone er tablets... one half tonight, one half tomorrow... but I still be short my morning dose the day of my appointment on Tuesday.

But once Tuesday rolls around, that fat bottle full of chalky tablets will be more than my greedy mind can absorb. Sometimes I'm surprised I haven't OD'd yet after receiving a new prescription. I pop the tablets with a reckless abandon more fit for the end of the world, than a regular week night.

Time to go back inside now, put down the cigarettes and reevaluate this situation. Once the thought of taking another dose hits me, it runs rampant. All logic vanishes. Concern for my future condition are erased and supplanted by the screaming desire of now.

6:09pm

And my overwhelming desire overrode my better judgement once again. Sniffle every few seconds to keep the powder in my nose, running through the passages and burning my throat. That raw hole in the back of my pallet is expanding every day.

I don't feel high. I doubt I will. It was 4 when I popped those oxycodone, and after 2 hours, this 5 mg of oxymorphone won't do shit. It's more to quiet the screaming. However, I feel them growing louder.

Fuck the future. Sniff the rest of the pill now. You can take lots of loperamide later... over the weekend. You'll be home if you end up shitting yourself. You deserve to be miserable anyway. You could always get drunk, that'll strengthen the effects. Invite people over Saturday and get wasted, 

Or maybe I'll just take some alprazolam right now. Even if the high doesn't surface, it'll quiet my mind.

6:45pm

Nine tiny alprazolam tablets (Xanax) floated at the bottom of the bottle. I took two, washed down with Glacier Freeze Gatorade (The best flavor--and if you don't think so, fight me! ;). They're only 0.25mg tablets, but two will fuck me up easily. I have no tolerance to benzos, unlike the monstrous once I've created with opioids.

It was a bad sign when I did black tar those couple times last year and found the high lackluster. Perhaps it was also my overwhelming histamine response, resulting in me stripping down naked to try and sleep (not really appropriate attire with friends in the next room). Out of Benadryl, still awake with a constant need to scratch, Lee and I walked to the gas station at 6am to purchase some (and I don't do anything at 6am, so this is a testament to my dire need for antihistamines).

6:53pm

I swear the alprazolam is kicking, but it may be that more of the oxymorphone has been absorbed.

7:17pm

Giggles stream from my mouth. Idiotic jokes funneled through my euphoria become examples of my great wit. Every thought is no longer consumed by an overwhelming desire to take more opiates.

8:09pm

But that freedom is short lived as the disinhibiting properties of the alprazolam grow stronger. That shitty opiate high. That apathy to the future.

It has dawned on me that this RX for xanax from my psychiatrist may get me in trouble with my pain management doctor. All the rules I had to sign there, as far as I know, none stated I couldn't be prescribed benzos.)