Russian Roulette (Requiem 9)

Note: This is the story of a few days of my life that I am not proud of. I am retelling it to remind myself where I come from and what I am capable of while drinking. I hope nobody will find it too distasteful. I don't condone any of the things I did while drinking and using. Neither will I try to offer any excuses. My goal is to tell the story truthfully and accurately.

Readers are doubtless wondering to themselves "What is wrong with this kid? Why doesn't he just stop drinking. This story is the same thing over and over." If it sounds repetitive while reading it, try to imagine living it. They say insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. According to that definition I was insane. It had been about a year and a half since I came to recovery and each time I drank I found myself caring a little less about what happened to me. The danger with relapsing is that after a while it stops being that big of a deal to you. You figure 'I'll just get sober again. Anyways I only have a few weeks. That's nothing.' It's a real life version of russian roulette. Each time I took a drink was one more pull of the trigger. Eventually it was bound to catch up with me.

On my way to Wendover, I drank 7 or 8 beers in about 80 minutes. Being too much for me, I was forced to pull over to the side of the road to be sick about 20 minutes from Wendover. Somebody driving by at the time would have seen a car rolling down the shoulder of the road with the door open. My foot had slipped from the brake, and because I had my head out of the door throwing up, I hadn't noticed. I only noticed when I went off the road into the dirt. Braking the car again, I grabbed the cans (crushed and still full) rolled down the passenger window and tossed the lot out the window. Being now composed, I drove into Wendover. I played at one casino, drinking while playing. I jumped back into my car and drove to another casino. I very nearly crashed the car into another parked car while parking mine. I got out, went in and began to play again. At some point I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital again, disoriented. I was at the university hospital back in Salt Lake. I walked outside and called my mom. I laid down to rest and fell asleep. About two hours later I woke up still outside the hospital. I called again. She sent Tony to come get me.

When Tony got there, I told him I had some money and was looking to cop. No problem, he said. We got back to the house, I found a bed and crashed while Tony set about getting some coke. I woke up with Tony asking me how much I wanted. As much as you can get, I told him. In the meantime, he had some pain pills he could sell me for 5 bucks a pill. I bought them all and popped 4. He brought out the coke and we proceeded to smoke some. It was only at this point that I noticed a porn was playing on the TV. I went back to ignoring the TV and focused on getting high. At some point my mom joined us in the TV room. People were coming and going and at one point my mom and I were left alone in the room. Mother and son smoking coke together while a porn played. The most striking thing about the situation was the fact that neither of us noticed or cared. Tony happened to walk in the room then and had a moment of clarity. He told us it was wrong what we were doing, that it wasn't right for a mother and son to smoke coke together while a porn played. I always laugh to myself at that. How messed up do you have to be that the coke dealer is disgusted with you?

One of the people that came over was a stripper. She showed me how to take a hit of coke via a kiss. Naturally, I was smitten. This was a Friday and my mom had something or another going on that night, so we had to leave. I went with my new stripper friend to her house with her kids. We smoked more of what I had while her kids were in the next room. She had plans to do something or another, so she left with the kids. She came back a little while later and took me back to my moms house. I spent the rest of the night until early Saturday morning smoking coke and popping pills. I finally had too much and passed out. (Cocaine is an upper, but if you do too much of it your body shuts down. It should be a huge warning sign to lay off, but I didn't see it that way) I came to Saturday afternoon with the house to myself. A knock on the door and the stripper was over. She was acting strange. I didn't get why she wanted me to stay upstairs and talk to her. Then it occurred to me that my stash was downstairs. I ran downstairs to check my stash and found it gone. I ran back upstairs in time to see her drive away. They had unlocked a basement door and hatched a plan to steal my drugs.

When my mom and Tony came back I got some more coke. I was smoking some, but a funny thing was happening. I kept throwing up. Because I hadn't eaten anything, I was only dry heaving. I tried to take some pills to calm down, but I kept throwing them up. Saturday turned into Saturday night and I was ill. At some point all of us heard someone walking around upstairs. We were all supposed to be downstairs, so we panicked. We started getting rid of our stuff and vaccuuming the floor to clean up any coke that might have fallen. My mom and her friend took off, leaving me alone. I was convinced the cops were going to arrest me. I did the only thing I could think to do: call 911. The ambulance was there within a minute. They put me on a stretcher and took me out of the house. As I was leaving I saw my aunt and my grandma watching the goings on. I was delusional and shouted at my aunt that she stole all my money. At the hospital I told them I had a seizure. They loaded me up with painkillers. At around 3 in the morning I called my dad to come get me. He took me home and I fell asleep on the couch.

When I woke up, I took inventory. I had a few blister packs of pain pills, a prescription for more, and only my new stepmother was around. I asked her where my dad was. She said he was at work. I was confused. Why would he work on a Sunday? She told me it wasn't Sunday. It was Monday. I had been out for nearly 30 hours. I spent an hour thinking about what I was going to do. I couldn't go back to the recovery house. Neither could I go back to my moms. I decided that if I didn't go back to a hospital I was going to be dead in only a matter of time. I asked my stepmom if she could take me to the hospital. We stopped first by the pharmacy to fill my prescription. On the way to the hospital, I took all twenty pills in the prescription. When I got there, I didn't tell them I had. My thinking was that I didn't want them to pump my stomach, and if I was going to be sobering up than this might be my last hurrah.