Recovery houses, pre methadone, homelessness, tough love, heroin addiction

  A Story About Vulnerability and Resentment    

 Looking back on the things that have happened to me in my active addiction, I sometimes have a raging anger that I feel is inappropriate for someone that has had almost three years clean.  I think about some of the people that have used me and I see red still.  I sometimes wish that something bad would happen to them and I try to calm down.  Sometimes, when I can’t get an unpleasant thought out of my head I focus on a neon green box.  I think about this bright green box with its sharp corners until the bad thought disappears and I am distracted by something else.

       One thing that happened to me that I go back to often is an incident that happened during the winter a few years ago.  I had been kicked out of my recovery house for drinking and their policy was that I had to leave the house for three days for whatever drugs that I had taken to be out of my system.  I hadn’t been caught drinking but there was suspicion and being that I had gotten out of rehab recently, I had been on an honestly streak and “told on myself” to the house manager.  When I look back on it, I could have spared myself some pain and trauma if I had kept it to myself.  Anyways, I was kicked out of the house in the middle of winter with absolutely nowhere to go.  I didn’t even have a cell phone at this point in my life.  My dad, who was the only family that I was in contact with, would not let me stay in his home.  I had finally worn out my welcome a few months prior.  He had always tried to do the tough love thing but since getting remarried over the summer, he was actually enforcing it.  I was angry and at times hateful about this for years after I got clean.  It's only been a few months since I've understood that for the first time in my life he was telling me no.    

       I tend to ramble, I’ll get back to the story.  I had walked through the snow for a few hours until I got to a local recovery hangout.  I had my laptop and they had wifi so I would take the few hours before they closed (and I was back out it the cold) to network and find someone to take me in for the night.  This recovery center had a hall where people would have meetings multiple times a day.  In the front of the hall there was a little café where other addicts in recovery would order drinks or food and play pool.  This particular center was known in the community for people hooking up with others there.  It didn’t have the best reputation, but at that point, I didn’t care.  I was just happy to be indoors for a few hours.

       I wasn’t having any luck finding anyone to let me stay that night on social media.  I tried so hard, but my group of friends wasn’t very great.  Everyone I knew was using heroin at the time and had their own problems.  I already have mentioned that I didn’t have any family that trusted me so that wasn’t an option either.  I was vulnerable.  I didn’t care where I slept as long as it was inside.  Around the time that the center was starting to close, I had started to talk to an older man that had a nickname that I’ll never forget.  He called himself Wombat.  I remember thinking at the time, What kind of man in their early 50’s would walk around with a nickname like that?  He looked like he had been through hell and back.  The kind of addict that had used for 85% of his life.  He had stringy bleached hair, a limp, and a lip ring.  He was also wearing a fitted band t-shirt.  When he talked he had no volume control whatsoever and he sounded like he had been smoking for a century.  He was way too old to be wearing a lip ring I thought.  This man was gross. I told him what had happened at my recovery house and he told me that he lived right across the street and that I was welcome to stay there for as long as I needed.  To any normal person, he would have been someone to avoid, but to me it was an opportunity to stay warm.  I was relieved.  I would make conversation with this guy as much as I had to and get through this until I was allowed back in the house a few days later.  I had put up with worse than a gross old guy before, I would be fine. 

       Wombat and I walked across the street to his run down one bedroom apartment.  It was the smallest living space that I had ever seen before.  There was a living room with a two burner stove in the miniature attached kitchen, a small loveseat, and a bathroom that you could barely turn around in.  The only door there was attached to the even smaller bedroom with an oversized bed in it.  I could see that there was a dresser with a television from 1994 on top of it.  He takes his shoes off and goes into the bedroom and starts to unmake the bed.  I go and sit down on the love seat and start to lean back to let him know that I am tired and would really like to be done talking.  This man, however, would not stop talking the whole time.  He just talked about nothing and I remember how annoyed I was. He had a raspy voice and a demeanor that was similar to if someone just smoked out of a crack pipe.  He was unnaturally wired and hyperactive and did I mention annoying?  He came out of the bedroom and asked if I was ready for bed.  I looked at him and said “Yeah, I’m falling asleep right now”.  He ignored what I said and told me that his side of the bed was by the door and mine would be by the window.  I wanted to scream.  There was no way that I was sleeping in this bed with this crusty old dude.  No freaking way.  But I did.  He was so insistent, so obnoxious, and so loud that I finally gave in and settled on the farthest part of the bed that was away from him.  He turned on a movie and spent the next five hours trying to snuggle up to me.  He tried to play with my hair.  He kept putting his arm around my stomach and bury his head in the back of my neck and nuzzle me.  I wanted to throw up.  I had pretended that I was asleep but that didn’t stop him.  I finally rolled off of the bed and curled up into a ball on the floor.  He said in his raspy voice, “Hey silly, you fell off the bed!  You should come back up here!”  “NO!”  I finally managed to grunt, still pretending that I was mostly asleep.  It was then that I was finally left alone.

       The next morning, we walked across the street to the center to go to an early meeting.  His whole attitude had changed from the night before.  He was mean and wouldn’t look at me.  I just wanted to be away from him.  He was unstable and I knew that I had probably offended him by pushing him away that night.  Instead of sitting in the meeting with him I sat in the café on my laptop trying to find alternate accommodations.  I had left my trash bag full of clothes at Wombat’s house and when I went back to check on them, they were outside.  He came out and told me that I needed to leave and not come back.  He knew that this was a power move because he was aware that I didn’t have anywhere else.  He was actually yelling at me because he didn’t know how to control his voice.  Whatever control he had over the way that he spoke must’ve been damaged during his 45 years of drug abuse.  I was really scared.  I was promised a place to sleep and I really thought that I was going to freeze outside once the center closed. 

       The story has a happy ending in that I was able to stay with a guy that I had been sleeping with occasionally for the next two nights.  The guy also turned out to be a scumbag but I didn’t find that out until months after that.  I know that this isn’t the most graphic or disturbing story about being taken advantage of, but it still bothers me years later.  I was so desperate for a place to sleep after being kicked out of my home for making a mistake, that I was willing to overlook certain huge red flags.  There are other things that happened as my addiction progressed that are far worse but I needed to write about this one.  I write this blog/journal for myself to get out some of the awful thoughts that I have in my recovery and to share some of my happiness.  If for some reason, the parent of a loved one in addiction comes across this, please know that they are in these positions constantly.  I know that tough love is a recommended course of action, but I don’t think it’s necessary in every situation.  I did put myself in that situation with Wombat, but does this mean that I deserved it?  Maybe.  Maybe not. 

       Those in the recovery community aren’t always there with the best intentions either.  Just because someone decided to stop putting a needle in their arm doesn’t mean that they decided to stop their bad behaviors.  Those don’t change overnight.  I don’t know what happened to Wombat, I don’t really care.  I am just glad that I have a warm home now and a husband that loves me more every day.  Whenever I think about wanting to get high (and it’s not often), I think about that dirty old pervert and how I deserve better than to ever be at someone else’s mercy again.