A New Beginning

Well, the time has come for me to start sending my Blog around to people i email. I have had too many good thoughts not to pass them on. I have these great thoughts while I am driving my car around. I used to carry a hand held recorder but i stopped using it a long time ago. All i would use that thing for was to bash my x husband Jimmy....Oh god the tape i wasted on that pointless endeavor. I have matured so much since then. Now i have opinions on things that actually matter to other people. Opinions on people i see, topics i read about, stuff like that. For example. I was sitting at my methadone clinic this morning and I was people watching. The age difference in the people that come there. There are kids in their early 20s and there are people in their 60s going there as well. I wish I had the time and the nerve to walk up to each and every one of them and ask them to share their story with me. What brought them to this clinic? What happened in their life that got them hooked on opiates. The people there aren't just there for heroin, oh no; they are also going to get off of Oxycontin's and other pain pills. Pain pills are that wonder drug that every person I know loves. The story is told a million times if it is told once. I can ask any person who started using heroin and it always started out like this, "I had an operation/broken leg/back pain etc and they gave me some Percocet/Vicoden/Oxycontin and I LOVED IT. I was hooked instantly. That is the story told over and over again. We are opiate loving species. Why wouldn't we be? It is a part of our make up...our bodies create opium...well, we create endorphins which is the same thing chemical wise. What our bodies doesn't produce, science can provide. When a person starts abusing opiates, we permanently rearrange our brains. No other drug is as difficult to get off of as heroin/morphine/pain pills/methadone. NONE.

Every drug I abused, I was able to walk away from. I walked away from cocaine because I got tired of being ripped off on a regular basis. I was purchasing my stuff from this one old has been biker dude named Walt. He carried his coke in two pockets. One pocket held his 'good stuff' and the other pocket held his 'bad stuff'. He used his good stuff for his "Friends" and people he cared about, and his 'bad pocket' was for people he didn't like or care about. When i found out i was being given coke from his 'bad pocket', I stopped giving him the money from my 'only pocket'.

Marijuana I quit doing because it made me think way too much. I would take a hit and start thinking about all the bad things going on in my life, being hooked on heroin, hating my husband, not having a job, not having any money, my husband was robbing banks to support our habit (that will be in another blog, I promise)...smoking that stuff made me think things like, "Oh god, get off of this stuff. You dont need heroin, you like being high on this alone, there is no need for that other stuff. You are so weak, nothing is going right in your life, what is wrong with you? You are a weak piece of shit...." and so on...so, instead of listening to thta voice, and quit doing the heroin and all the other thigns i was doing that was ruining my life.....I quit smoking the weed. Yeah....I know~ We would be driving to pick up our 'stuff ' and i would take a puff of some good bud and then I would say to Jimmy, "Let's turn around. We don't need to buy this, we can just smoke weed and be fine, please...Let's turn around." He would get pissed and say, "You can't do that to me Susan. I want to get high so bad, we can't just turn around now." I would lose that argument all the time...so I just quit smoking what was making me think that way. Not the best choice.

Drugs have been apart of my life for 37 years. Yep, since i was 14 years old. I smoked my first puff of weed when i was 13 and in the 8th grade. I took a hit from a joint and didn't feel anything. I did run down a hill that I would have died had I fallen down, the incline was so steep. Other than that, I also sniffed Scotch Guard when I wsa much younger than that. I accidently found out it got me high. I also made plastic models when I was like 8 or 9 and started sniffing the "Testors" glue. I started out doing a little bit spread on a sock and I would lay it across my face. I certainly want a pro because they used plastic bags...not me. I just put that caustic chemical right onto my skin. I remember having to peel that sock off of my face, leaving behind a big red mark that itched for days. I think I finally did move on to plastic bags because that was what my parents found in my garbage can in my room, that got me busted. It also got my foster brother George in big trouble too. Since he was the one who got me started on making monster models, they figured he was the one who got me started on sniffing the glue. He had nothing to do with it, but I let him take the fall...shame on me.

I moved off of that and on to other things, but much later on in life. The Scotch Guard happend earlier at my dad's furniture store. I found out i could spray it onto a piece of cloth and breathe in the fumes and just get ripped. I busted myself one day acting like a freaking fool in front of my dad. I was told i had answered a question in the wrong way and it was painfully obvious thta I was chemically altered. So, my Scotch Guard sniffing career was cut short, thank God. That is so hard on the brain. It kills so many brain cells, it isnt funny.

I don't really know where I was going with this, I think it was to try and figure out what makes the different types of people i see at my clinic, begin their journey on opiates. It is the one drug you don't walk away from with ease, like all other drugs (Except for alcohol...it too digs it's claws into you and doesn't let go without a fight). Booze and opiates have the same affect on the brain, they do the same thing and produce the same results....except for one small detail. Withdrawal from heroin without assistance can really make us very sick. Withdrawal from alcohol without medical assitance can make us very dead. In jail, people coming off of booze get Librium...people coming off of heroin get handed a bucket and a sponge (if lucky) and are aimed towards an observation wall where they can be viewed for any problems. Alcohol withdrawals, depending on how much the person drank, can be just horrible to witness.

well, there ya go. That is all I have to say on that topic, for the moment. I hope this leads to something at some point.