A fucking mess.
I was homeless.
I was looking at three years in jail.
My family wanted nothing to do with me.
Any friends I once had at this point had walked away.
There was no longer College to contend with.
The job was gone.
I had nothing left.
I was on my own.
It was me and only me.
I had not only burnt all my bridges, I had completely obliterated them until they were nothing more than the ashes of what my life had once been floating in the wind. I no longer had any places left and no longer could afford the price of trying to avoid myself any further. Scared, terrified, and feeling more alone then I have ever felt in my entire life I entered that detox with one thing in my mind … to stop using heroin.
That was the same intention most of us came in with anyway. But as one day turned into two, then three … people that had come in on a wave of desperation began to leave.
They couldn’t resist the call of the next one.
Jobs, relationships, families, bills … things that had not mattered one bit when using, suddenly became the focal point of why they had to leave immediately. I would smile, silently wishing them well, not bothering with futile attempts to convince them to stay. I knew those lies, that swam in their minds, I had told myself the very same ones with every previous detox I had checked into. I knew the power of the disease and I knew that its call to us was more powerful then my pleas of sanity of why they should stay.
One by one … they left until only three of us remained.
New people came, new people left. It was a revolving door that turned on the hinges of misery and sadness. It swung one way only to those who would sit and wait out the frustration and anger that raged within us all, offering to us the promise of a new chance at life … if we let the cravings pass.
