Life with drugs, life without

Way back in the beginning of time, which in my life was the early-early 80s, most of my friends were sliding away from me down the slippery slope of heroin.  I lived for about 6 months in a crazy household south of Market, near 1st and Folsom, on a tiny street called Guy, in a flat that was basically filled with heroin one way or another, except probably for Goldie and his pregnant girlfriend.  Each of the rooms each one of us rented in that beat Victorian had its own locking door, cool old skeleton key to hang around my neck, a key with an actual purpose.  Eventually my best friend moved in, too, probably the worst place for her, all things considered.

Mine was the very smallest room, above the staircase at the end of the landing overlooking the street.  In the photo at left, it's the window with the red sheet or whatever in it.  

The guy whose flat it was, from whom I rented my tiny room (which had belonged to Sportacus of Jak's Team, but he went back to Vancouver), was the lead singer in the band Code of Honor which I remember was prominently written on the griptape of his skateboard in silver pen. In my usual way, of course, I was always a little nervous of him, never felt like I belonged there, and also had this thing because he spelled his first name Johnithin, something which deeply offended my eyes.  He always acted like he was somebody, not just our landlord and a dealer, and I suppose he was, now that I look back on it, Google it to fill in the details.  His band was so not my scene, though.  I was too busy holed up in my own room, 1/4 of which was taken up by a large driftwood throne of Sportacus's creation, listening to AC/DC and studying for Russian finals, and getting ready to work the swing-shift at Happy Donuts on 3rd and King, accept big tips from cops in exchange for free coffee and donuts, endure their constant commentary about my hair.

Those days were crazy for me in so many ways.  I would walk to North Beach on a Sunday morning -- I walked everywhere except school in those days because I had NO money.  I'd go sit upstairs at Caffe Europa and nurse a cup of coffee and a roll for hours, eyeing the left-overs on other people's tables, marvelling at how they could walk away leaving so much food, then turn my head back to whatever Russian text I was picking my way through, whatever grammar or linguistics test I was always studying for in those days, hungry all the time but barely room on the table for anything, given the size of the Russian-English dictionary I lugged with me everywhere, obsessed with cracking the code.  And then I'd make my way back to the flat, where I never felt comfortable or safe, hole up in my room again, door closed, especially when two of the roommates were cranked out and manically cleaning the kitchen that otherwise reeked of the neglect of a household of junkies.  If we ever cooked something, my boyfriend at the time and I would escape up the fire escape to the roof, eat our food with that great view of downtown and across the Bay.  But mostly I lived there without living there, eyes elsewhere all the time.

I've always marveled at how I didn't slide with my friends, disappearing into addiction, vanishing the way so many of them did, lost to me now, lost for years.

Not to say that I didn't dabble.  That I didn't give it all the old college try.  But somehow it never took, somehow it never grabbed me, it never got its hooks in me deep enough. 

I remained always the early bird apart, with plans.

It was a drag in those days, always to feel like the no-fun goody-goody concerned with consequences. But oh, how well it served me in the end because here I still am, not dead of OD or AIDS-related pneumonia or still fucking up my whole life and that of my family with a drug problem that just won't quit.  Now Googling, looking at pictures preserved on the interwebs, how many faces I remember, how much sorrow for some. How sad that Jon Marsh, whom I remember idolizing a bit -- Margot and I would go to Marcello's at 1 or 2am after a show not because we were hungry but just to look at him behind the counter, accept the free slice and sit sneaking peeks at him -- how sad that he died in 1999, so young.  My former landlord, too, same year. 

I'm thinking about this today because this is my third day without pain medication since the middle of December.  From late in 2011 through last weekend, so a good six months, I was on a fairly steady daily diet of pain killers -- percocet, vicodin, morphine -- and then I ran out, so it's been just me + ibuprofen for the last couple of days.  I'm not going to lie: I'm still in some pain and there's probably a refill of some kind in my future. [Note: There's some question of whether I managed to re-herniate the disc (DAMN IT), since I've been in renewed pain for two weeks now, the same radiating nerve pain down the calf, the ache in the left booty.]  But the thing is I'm fine.

I freely admit that, when not in pain, I like them, these pills. I am at my greatest ease in life when I have some pills set by (I'm being honest) because then I have this feeling that no matter what comes -- migraine, above all, since those do come and crush me and suck all joy from the world -- I will be able to get through it.  

Bring on the zombie apocalypse: I've got pills.  

Also it's true that in them too sometimes is some faint sense memory, not always, of the feeling of heroin, some vivid remembery of the old days, like that time at that party above Terminal Drugs near the Greyhound Station when we were so comfortably high we just sat on a couch for hours and watched the party go by, watched the dour, serious, boring guys from U2 go by, laughed at them gracing us with their regal presence, the international sucess of their first album, sat for hours, so cozy and at ease.  I had on a vintage dress and coat and burgundy Chelsea boots that Vicki had bought me in London; my hair was either purple or orange. I was 20.  

I do think about those days as the old days, in many ways the good days.  We were so free then.  Or at least some of us were, I guess.

The deal with me is that here it is Day 3 and I'm fine.  I don't care at all.  I don't have this thing I've heard so many times in my life from recovering addicts who feel compelled to Twelve Step all over you, especially in the beginning when it's fresh, when they're compelled -- about how dull life is without drugs, how hard it is to face reality without that little helper, how harsh the light.

Not so me. [Or so my story goes.  Who knows: maybe I'm in denial.]  I am dazzled by what I see outside my window, about to head into the morning sun and plant some lettuce, moving delicately so as not to further impede healing or aggravate renewed injury (whichever it is), finding purpose and meaning without any assistance, thank you very much.  

But feeling a mix of emotions this morning, still: wondering why I survived it then, why I survive it now, when others slid and still slide off that precipice.  Probably it's one of those things that wondering at or even understanding doesn't change.  It's just to be accepted as fact.

No drugs and I'm fine.  The day is clear, and on we go.