me and my shadow (part 2)
( If you havnt read part one you might want too before you read this) After coming home from hell ,(hospital) you might think that my spirits would rise. No longer did I have to deal with the rude nurses and the gloomy feeling of pain and death associated a hospital. No more smells of urine mixed with cleaning detergents and no more two inch needles being stabbed into my abdomen every morning (anti-clot) by the sadistic ,cranky little nurse on the day shift.(I swear she enjoyed it)..... No now it was a different feeling. Now I had time to absorb everything that had happened. Wave after wave of emotion ranging from depression to anxiety to rage swept through my body. Panic now had set in big time. A panic that I was about to lose everything I had built for myself and my family. Where was my morphine pump when I needed it?........ A month before my accident I had blown through a large chunk of my savings after an alcohol drenched binge I went on to drown the pain of my girlfriend of eight years leaving me. My ex was quickly diving head first into alcohol and drug addiction herself (a big part of the breakup). I knew she would be of no help and my home would soon be gone. Over the previous ten years I had built a reputation as the best home exterior contractor around. It took me a little longer than most crews but over a those ten years I never once had a callback to fix any of my work. The owners of the huge home building companys came to me to do their own personal homes. I was a very proud man............was! The doctors had informed me that I may never walk again so I guess climbing ladders, installing siding, building porches, decks, and room additions was definitely out of the question. In a split second my life as I knew it was over. I hate reality and reached for my pain pills.........................darkness...... The one constant at this time was my new girl Jenn. She amazed me with her always upbeat attitude and constant smile. Without her I don't know if I would be here telling this story. I now lived with my mother and during the first few months I was mostly bedridden. I occasionally came out to the living room to watch television ,but about an hour was all my hip could take. I was in constant pain and I soon found myself eating lortabs and percosets like they were candy. My bedside table was littered with empty pill bottles........I really need some weed! I had smoked my only joint a week earlier and amazingly it helped more than the opiates I was gorging on.( I am a firm believer in medicinal marijuana) This joint wasn't a regular joint though. It was a joint of Indiana's finest, grown from some wicked clone in a cornfield just outside town by a close friend of mine. After smoking it I found myself glued to the t.v. set watching an infomercial about some amazing vegetable juicer for about an hour and enjoying every minute of it like it was some fascinating four star movie. It made me quit thinking about my pain and it quit making me think about life in general...................But man that juicer was cool as shit!! ........ Another month or two came and went in a blur of pills mixed with an occasional rum and coke and a little weed here and there. Depression seemed to be a new constant in my life. My house was foreclosed on, I was forced to give away my best friend Zeke (the coolest pit bull in the world ), and I really missed having my kids with me.I missed them SOO much...they were the only thing holding me to my past life.. They came and stayed with me here and there but they were a little much for my mother to handle by herself along with my constant needs. After a trip to Indy to see my doctor I found that after they removed my body cast my knee was now locked in a thirty degree angle. It would not straighten out so I now had to have another procedure. I was told that I would be put to sleep for this and they pumped me full of drugs. The next thing I see is the doctor place his hands on my knee and suddenly put all his weight down on my knee as hard as he could. I could hear this horrific grinding noise and a sudden "POP".......WHAT THE FUCK MAN! IM NOT ASLEEP YET YOU DUMBASSSSSS...................................darkness!..... Its a good thing The medication put me out when it did because one more second and the doc would have had to have his own surgical procedure on his nose. My next huge hurdle came in the form of physical therapy. Just for reference if any of you out there are into sadism and putting people through the worst pain possible, this is the career for you! To this day I would rather have nails driven slowly under each one of my fingernails than go through that again. All I could do is look at these people through my horrified eyes and wonder " Do you realize I was just hit by a car? Do you understand that my screams indicate Im in agonizing pain? "and " You want me to do What??!!!"Day after day I had these demonic people bending my broken body into pretzels. I would arrive home each night ,kiss Jenn and use my new walker to quickly get to my room before anyone saw me crying like a child. During this period my doctors had increased the dosages of my painkillers but I needed something extra. The pills were no longer enough. I started drinking and taking some of Jenns xanax just to fall asleep at night. Even when I finally would get to sleep I would have these psychotic dreams all night and wake exhausted. One night after Jenn had gone home for the evening I gave my weed man Roy a call. Roy was no huge dealer but he knew them all and if you needed anything he could always find it. I informed him that I was in pain and needed a little something for the head. "Ill be right over "he said . Little did I know that this one phone call would change my life forever. About an hour later Roy and his girlfriend arrived at my home. Roy walks in with a small backpack grinning from ear to ear informing me that he had just hit the weekly drawing of $1500 at one of our favorite little bars. "Have I got something for you!" I couldn't help but notice that Roy was sweating and grinding his teeth together to the point that I wondered If he was having a heart attack. He then proceeds to pull out a small water bong out of his bag. Ive smoked from many bongs in my life but this one was different. Instead of a bowl to put the pot into he had attached a long one inch in diameter glass tube packed with copper wire (chor boy scrub pads). Roy then proceeds to pull out a spoon all blackened on the bottom and a huge bag of cocaine! I wasn't an idiot. I knew exactly what this was . In the past I had snorted cocaine with Roy a couple of times at parties and I had heard rumors that he was now smoking it. "Chris!" he says" I'm about to take all your pain away instantly" Now I had always heard of this thing called addiction but to be honest I didn't buy it at all. I was always told that weed was addictive and I had been smoking it on and off for 15 years. I never once felt that I had to have it. I just enjoyed it.! Addiction to me was a government made conspiracy to keep people from enjoying the wonderful world of drugs! Besides it wasn't like I had a lot to lose ........right? Roy then proceeds to pour about two and a half grams and some baking soda into this huge spoon and begins cooking. I thought to myself "this shit must be awesome because Roys eyes were about to pop out of his head as he intently cooked away. After cooling the spoon he pulls out his pocket knife and peels this huge clear snot looking slab of freebase off the top of the spoon and slaps it on a plate.(editors note: Ive been clean over 3 years and just writing this has my heart pounding so hard it feels like its gonna jump outa my chest.) Roy then takes a dime sized piece of this and smears it on the glass pipe. Like an artist who is proud of his masterpiece he hands it to me all the while grinning an evil grin. Roy then takes out a cotton ball ,clamps it on a pair of hemostats,and dunks it in a bottle of rubbing alcohol he had brought. "you'll need a big flame for this" he exclaims. He informs me to hit the bong slow and steady and he would control the flame and carburetor. I figured if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this right. He lit the cotton ball and I inhaled as long and steady as I could. Ive always had huge lungs so Roy had to pop the carb twice during my cherry popping hit. Roy grins and says "oh fuck! that was huge!" He then takes the bong from my trembling hands and says "Hang on!"...........Holy sheeeeit!!!! The only way I can describe this feeling is to take the best orgasm you have ever had and and combine it with the adrenaline rush of skydiving all at once. Roy then packs his bong in his bag.he then places the $200 worth of freebase on the bed along with a smaller glass stem and says "this is for you my brother" I layed on that bed in complete disbelief of how powerful this drug was............One hit!!! One hit and my pain was no more. One hit and all my worries were gone. One hit and life as I knew it was changed forever!!!!!!!!! (next comes my introduction to the people of the night ,one of the midwests largest dealers and the insanity that followed)
Friday, January 21, 2011
me and my shadow
Hello. I am Chris and Im an addict.......... In this page I will be explaining the metamorphoses I have taken in the last few years from a happy productive citizen to a rock bottom dwelling crack and intravenous cocaine and heroin junkie to the enlightened ,never take anything for granted individual I am today... Prior to May of 2002 I lived life as a "normal person". I owned my own home, I had a small construction business and 2 beautiful kids (a daughter and a son). I spent weekdays working hard and spent weekends with my friends playing cards drinking and smoking an occasional joint. I often took vacations to amusement parks (I love adrenaline) and to Florida (Love the ocean)a few times a year .I skydived ,rode mountain bikes and I was an avid hunter and fisherman who loved the outdoors. Life was AMAZING ..... On may 30th 2002 I spent the day celebrating my birthday while attending the funeral of one of my closest friends. After the funeral my friends and i had a few too many drinks at the bar to drown our sorrow we returned to my friends home (the brother of the deceased).I had recently been left by my ex of 8 years for a scumbag of a man. My ex pulls up with the man who she left me for a month or so before all of this. Needless to say we did not get along.We had already fought once in my driveway a week before and after getting the best of him I was jumped by several of his cousins and friends . He ran up to me after I pushed my ex away and told her to go home. After a lot of chaotic screaming and fists flying he jumped in his car and backs out of the driveway at full speed. My son who was 4 at the time was standing in the direct path of his car. It was like slow motion as I dove and knocked him out of the way. I immediately saw red and went into a rage. I chased his car down the road for about 40 feet. He then travels about a hundred yards down the road and turns around with tires screeching. Im still in a complete rage at this time stand at the side of the road begging this moronic idiot to stop. My desire to put a few dents in his head and a large amount of tequila left me without any fear of the car he was driving. As the car sped closer i realized he was coming right at me. I had no time to react and he swerved onto the grass and smashed into me doing 40 mph. I often wonder what I looked like flying through the air as I have no memory of the actual collision. I do remember landing some 30 feet away.The next memory i have is that of me trying to continue running after his car.. With each step I kept hearing this weird crack and pop sound. Suddenly i realized one of my legs seemed a lot shorter than the other one. Apparently my ankle was so smashed my foot was only held on by the skin still surrounding it... I was running on my ankle while my foot was flopping around 45 degrees to the side. I reluctantly decided to give up the chase and sit down on the grass. Immediately I see all my friends surrounding me with horrified looks on their faces screaming things like call 911! and look at all the blood ! and Oh my god hes gonna DIE!....... Wow some birthday !...... After hearing my son was ok I started to try and evaluate just how messed up my body was. I started to make small movements in various parts of my body and realized things were not quite right. I wasn't really in any major pain i just realized some things were definitely going on. I immediately looked for the source of the massive amounts of blood that covered my entire body. As I searched my body over, someone shrieked look at your hand! As I looked my hand had a massive gash in it and I could look into it and see all the sinew and bones. It looked pretty bad but amazingly I still felt no real pain. Its amazing what a huge dose of adrenalin can do . By this time the ambulance had arrived followed shortly by a half dozen police cars. It took most of them to subdue my best friend who was screaming "Im gonna kill him" .I still wasn't seeing the severity of my injuries... I tried to relieve the insanity with a joke that I was pissed the EMT s were cutting off my brand new bluejeans i had just purchased the day before. I was taken to the local hospital (a pretty big one that is respected) and told that they were trying to get me a helicopter to medi-vac me to Indianapolis Methodist hospital. I was getting concerned at this point because i felt a lot more discomfort coming from a lot of different parts of my body. Then i thought to myself,..... wait a minute..... a fuckin helicopter? Just how bad am I? I remember asking the doctor to please loosen the bandages on my ankle and him replying with an insane look on his face as he worked at a frenzied pace on my smashed up body "Thats the only fucking thing holding your foot on!" ... At this point im getting a little freaked. It didn't help that while this was going on my best friend , who just lost his brother the day before is screaming at the top of his lungs "im gonna kill the motherfucker!" ,all the while punching the wall. Thank god my family showed up when they did. My family is and always has been my strength. My mother who knew my friend well ,calmed him down enough to get him and his bloody fists out the door just as the police came in to arrest him. I then overheard a transmission over an EMTs radio that the helicopter was not available at the moment due to it being used by a small child who fell into a grain elevator..... (I often wonder if the poor kid made it.) I was then stuffed into an ambulance and away we went down the highway at a pretty good speed. I remember that it seemed the driver was intentionally hitting every pothole he could. By this time huge waves of pain were creeping from my mid section down to my feet. Reality started to take hold as the initial shock was wearing off. Strange gurgling noises were coming from my gut.I realized now something serious was going on.. I started to panic a little..........Darkness!..........The EMTs must have noticed this and put me to sleep............Suddenly as I opened my eyes this insane feeling that I was dead came over me. I was in a small dark room with a sheet over my entire body. Everything was fuzzy as looked the room over. Next to me was another body on a gurney covered with a sheet as well.There were no windows . Was I dead???....The walls were stainless steel and I just knew I was either dead and in the morgue or an abduction case and in some kind of weird UFO. I then started shaking violently with the worst chills I have ever encountered. I have sat in the dead of winter half covered with snow for 4 or 5 hours while deer hunting and never known this kind of cold. I felt very dizzy and groggy............Darkness.......The next time I opened my eyes I was relieved to see a room filled with balloons ,cards and a nurse intently putting a new I.V bottle on a stand next to me. Well well, Chris you are finally awake. She then showed me a button attached to my shirt and said if I was in pain to push it. I did...........Darkness...........I later realized this was a morphine pump and I could push it every ten minutes as needed. I had never taken anything like this and it was an amazing feeling of cold surging through my arm into my chest followed by euphoric waves of energy followed by the most vivid and amazing dreams I have ever encountered. This became my escape from the horrifying reality of life. I pushed it as often as I could so I didn't have to think... Days came and went with fleeting moments of seeing my family and friends standing around me. I was later amazed about how many people came and said I spoke to them but I remembered very few. I remember my mother saying your dad flew in from Florida ..say hi . I did and all I remember is him saying don't push that button yet!!!.........Darkness.......I guess I hit the button. After about a week a deep dark depression started to come over me. I had started to realize the extent of my damages. My hand was sewed up and resembled something from a Frankenstein movie. My knee had a quarter inch steal rod going threw it holding it up in traction. My knee also had an enormous gash carved into it and my ankle was turned to powder. I found out that my pelvic bone was broke into pieces and shoved up into my intestines.(this explained the gurgling noises coming from my abdomen) My hip joint was damaged with a very bad gash into it from being ripped from my broken pelvic bones. My mother then notified me that I almost died during my first surgery because of a severed artery and internal bleeding. I guess I lost like 7 units of blood . Something like half my blood I guess. I had felt depressed before, especially when my girlfriend of 8 years left me for another man but something about this was different. This depression hurt in every inch of my body. the mental pain was more tan i could handle... While waking one day there was my beautiful son sitting next to me looking horrified at my bandaged body. I missed him soooo much and just wished my daughter was there too.........Darkness....... After something like 4 more surgeries ( I think I blocked alot of it out) and them taking my leg out of traction the depression was getting the best of me. I would awake in bed at night soaked from the tears streaming down my face. I cried like a baby every waking moment. I hated the nurses who gave me shots day and night and I hated the doctors who told me that I may never walk again.... I hated the drab hospital colors on the walls and I hated the smell of the hospital itself.... I hated the physical therapists that would make me sit up and I hated that after my caphetor was taken out I needed help to go piss or wipe my ass.... I started realizing that my house would be foreclosed on and that I would probably never work in construction again.... I realized simple tasks like playing catch with my kids or going for a bike ride were now probably things of the past.......Darkness.........I couldn't take it anymore. They had taken my morphine pump away by this time and I couldn't stand being there anymore.The pain meds weren't working... After heated arguments with my doctors and nurses I told them I just wanted to go home. After many debates, and with the doctors not liking the idea I decided enough was enough. I was wheeled to my grandparents car and away we went. After arriving home my friend (from the hospital) had to come and help carry me in to my mothers home.....was this the way it was gonna be now?...needing help to do anything? One good thing came from all this. Prior to my accident I had met a girl who used to date my brother years ago and she had informed me she used to have a crush on me. She and I had gone out a few times before my accident and now she was at my bedside almost daily...I could see in her eyes she truly cared ... She was amazingly beautiful and made me very happy that she cared enough about me to drive to Indy to see me like she had done . Now at least I could be closer to her. ........................................TO BE CONTINUED (SPIRAL INTO ADDICTION NEXT)
Hello. I am Chris and Im an addict.......... In this page I will be explaining the metamorphoses I have taken in the last few years from a happy productive citizen to a rock bottom dwelling crack and intravenous cocaine and heroin junkie to the enlightened ,never take anything for granted individual I am today... Prior to May of 2002 I lived life as a "normal person". I owned my own home, I had a small construction business and 2 beautiful kids (a daughter and a son). I spent weekdays working hard and spent weekends with my friends playing cards drinking and smoking an occasional joint. I often took vacations to amusement parks (I love adrenaline) and to Florida (Love the ocean)a few times a year .I skydived ,rode mountain bikes and I was an avid hunter and fisherman who loved the outdoors. Life was AMAZING ..... On may 30th 2002 I spent the day celebrating my birthday while attending the funeral of one of my closest friends. After the funeral my friends and i had a few too many drinks at the bar to drown our sorrow we returned to my friends home (the brother of the deceased).I had recently been left by my ex of 8 years for a scumbag of a man. My ex pulls up with the man who she left me for a month or so before all of this. Needless to say we did not get along.We had already fought once in my driveway a week before and after getting the best of him I was jumped by several of his cousins and friends . He ran up to me after I pushed my ex away and told her to go home. After a lot of chaotic screaming and fists flying he jumped in his car and backs out of the driveway at full speed. My son who was 4 at the time was standing in the direct path of his car. It was like slow motion as I dove and knocked him out of the way. I immediately saw red and went into a rage. I chased his car down the road for about 40 feet. He then travels about a hundred yards down the road and turns around with tires screeching. Im still in a complete rage at this time stand at the side of the road begging this moronic idiot to stop. My desire to put a few dents in his head and a large amount of tequila left me without any fear of the car he was driving. As the car sped closer i realized he was coming right at me. I had no time to react and he swerved onto the grass and smashed into me doing 40 mph. I often wonder what I looked like flying through the air as I have no memory of the actual collision. I do remember landing some 30 feet away.The next memory i have is that of me trying to continue running after his car.. With each step I kept hearing this weird crack and pop sound. Suddenly i realized one of my legs seemed a lot shorter than the other one. Apparently my ankle was so smashed my foot was only held on by the skin still surrounding it... I was running on my ankle while my foot was flopping around 45 degrees to the side. I reluctantly decided to give up the chase and sit down on the grass. Immediately I see all my friends surrounding me with horrified looks on their faces screaming things like call 911! and look at all the blood ! and Oh my god hes gonna DIE!....... Wow some birthday !...... After hearing my son was ok I started to try and evaluate just how messed up my body was. I started to make small movements in various parts of my body and realized things were not quite right. I wasn't really in any major pain i just realized some things were definitely going on. I immediately looked for the source of the massive amounts of blood that covered my entire body. As I searched my body over, someone shrieked look at your hand! As I looked my hand had a massive gash in it and I could look into it and see all the sinew and bones. It looked pretty bad but amazingly I still felt no real pain. Its amazing what a huge dose of adrenalin can do . By this time the ambulance had arrived followed shortly by a half dozen police cars. It took most of them to subdue my best friend who was screaming "Im gonna kill him" .I still wasn't seeing the severity of my injuries... I tried to relieve the insanity with a joke that I was pissed the EMT s were cutting off my brand new bluejeans i had just purchased the day before. I was taken to the local hospital (a pretty big one that is respected) and told that they were trying to get me a helicopter to medi-vac me to Indianapolis Methodist hospital. I was getting concerned at this point because i felt a lot more discomfort coming from a lot of different parts of my body. Then i thought to myself,..... wait a minute..... a fuckin helicopter? Just how bad am I? I remember asking the doctor to please loosen the bandages on my ankle and him replying with an insane look on his face as he worked at a frenzied pace on my smashed up body "Thats the only fucking thing holding your foot on!" ... At this point im getting a little freaked. It didn't help that while this was going on my best friend , who just lost his brother the day before is screaming at the top of his lungs "im gonna kill the motherfucker!" ,all the while punching the wall. Thank god my family showed up when they did. My family is and always has been my strength. My mother who knew my friend well ,calmed him down enough to get him and his bloody fists out the door just as the police came in to arrest him. I then overheard a transmission over an EMTs radio that the helicopter was not available at the moment due to it being used by a small child who fell into a grain elevator..... (I often wonder if the poor kid made it.) I was then stuffed into an ambulance and away we went down the highway at a pretty good speed. I remember that it seemed the driver was intentionally hitting every pothole he could. By this time huge waves of pain were creeping from my mid section down to my feet. Reality started to take hold as the initial shock was wearing off. Strange gurgling noises were coming from my gut.I realized now something serious was going on.. I started to panic a little..........Darkness!..........The EMTs must have noticed this and put me to sleep............Suddenly as I opened my eyes this insane feeling that I was dead came over me. I was in a small dark room with a sheet over my entire body. Everything was fuzzy as looked the room over. Next to me was another body on a gurney covered with a sheet as well.There were no windows . Was I dead???....The walls were stainless steel and I just knew I was either dead and in the morgue or an abduction case and in some kind of weird UFO. I then started shaking violently with the worst chills I have ever encountered. I have sat in the dead of winter half covered with snow for 4 or 5 hours while deer hunting and never known this kind of cold. I felt very dizzy and groggy............Darkness.......The next time I opened my eyes I was relieved to see a room filled with balloons ,cards and a nurse intently putting a new I.V bottle on a stand next to me. Well well, Chris you are finally awake. She then showed me a button attached to my shirt and said if I was in pain to push it. I did...........Darkness...........I later realized this was a morphine pump and I could push it every ten minutes as needed. I had never taken anything like this and it was an amazing feeling of cold surging through my arm into my chest followed by euphoric waves of energy followed by the most vivid and amazing dreams I have ever encountered. This became my escape from the horrifying reality of life. I pushed it as often as I could so I didn't have to think... Days came and went with fleeting moments of seeing my family and friends standing around me. I was later amazed about how many people came and said I spoke to them but I remembered very few. I remember my mother saying your dad flew in from Florida ..say hi . I did and all I remember is him saying don't push that button yet!!!.........Darkness.......I guess I hit the button. After about a week a deep dark depression started to come over me. I had started to realize the extent of my damages. My hand was sewed up and resembled something from a Frankenstein movie. My knee had a quarter inch steal rod going threw it holding it up in traction. My knee also had an enormous gash carved into it and my ankle was turned to powder. I found out that my pelvic bone was broke into pieces and shoved up into my intestines.(this explained the gurgling noises coming from my abdomen) My hip joint was damaged with a very bad gash into it from being ripped from my broken pelvic bones. My mother then notified me that I almost died during my first surgery because of a severed artery and internal bleeding. I guess I lost like 7 units of blood . Something like half my blood I guess. I had felt depressed before, especially when my girlfriend of 8 years left me for another man but something about this was different. This depression hurt in every inch of my body. the mental pain was more tan i could handle... While waking one day there was my beautiful son sitting next to me looking horrified at my bandaged body. I missed him soooo much and just wished my daughter was there too.........Darkness....... After something like 4 more surgeries ( I think I blocked alot of it out) and them taking my leg out of traction the depression was getting the best of me. I would awake in bed at night soaked from the tears streaming down my face. I cried like a baby every waking moment. I hated the nurses who gave me shots day and night and I hated the doctors who told me that I may never walk again.... I hated the drab hospital colors on the walls and I hated the smell of the hospital itself.... I hated the physical therapists that would make me sit up and I hated that after my caphetor was taken out I needed help to go piss or wipe my ass.... I started realizing that my house would be foreclosed on and that I would probably never work in construction again.... I realized simple tasks like playing catch with my kids or going for a bike ride were now probably things of the past.......Darkness.........I couldn't take it anymore. They had taken my morphine pump away by this time and I couldn't stand being there anymore.The pain meds weren't working... After heated arguments with my doctors and nurses I told them I just wanted to go home. After many debates, and with the doctors not liking the idea I decided enough was enough. I was wheeled to my grandparents car and away we went. After arriving home my friend (from the hospital) had to come and help carry me in to my mothers home.....was this the way it was gonna be now?...needing help to do anything? One good thing came from all this. Prior to my accident I had met a girl who used to date my brother years ago and she had informed me she used to have a crush on me. She and I had gone out a few times before my accident and now she was at my bedside almost daily...I could see in her eyes she truly cared ... She was amazingly beautiful and made me very happy that she cared enough about me to drive to Indy to see me like she had done . Now at least I could be closer to her. ........................................TO BE CONTINUED (SPIRAL INTO ADDICTION NEXT)
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