While putting some black underwear on top of the pink & white striped sheets in the washing machine to make a full load (whether to ensure our having matching beds or not, my mother, incidentally, has given Buddy a pink blanket to replace the $40 pad he chewed to bits the first couple times I left him alone with his separation anxiety) I processed through a couple things that have made me a little angry and that dovetail the arguments I’ve made before about drugs and the public.

The general public doesn’t very well understand illicit drugs, and they fear them. So when illicit drugs enter their normally calm workaday trampoline family lives, they circle the wagons defensively and look for answers. The easy answers are, well, easiest. And most readily available.

Take my example (of course): I “come home” & ask for help. My mother & siblings profess their love & support—God bless ‘em for that—and then hit the internet to see what they’re dealing with. Fair enough so far. The internet, or somebody on it (a distinction some may not make), says a coke addict only comes back home because she’s out of money (implying that the prodigal arrives manipulative and embezzelish). In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not only out of money but owe over $8 grand on credit cards covering medical, hotel, rental car bills and whatever else. I’m employable but feel I need to work on my problems first and that’s what I’m here to do. That’s why I went to my mother, voluntarily told her what was going on, asked for help, and immediately stopped using & abusing. I was totally open & honest & took positive steps. So when my bro in law (St. Wade, the subject of the last entry, too) mentioned this sweeping generalization found on the internet in our first real discussion on the topic the other night (Sun), I asked “So you guys thought that [bilk Mom for drug money] was what I was going to do?” “Thought crossed our minds,” he admitted. And that’s just not thinkin straight. Now to be clear on two points here at this juncture: 1. S&W have treated me very well and whatever suspicion they’ve harbored (or not) hasn’t been allowed to the surface, & 2. before anybody accuses me of not thinkin straight when it came to drugs, I don’t believe my think was ever much off; my actions were off—I was very self-indulgent—but I wasn’t deluded about that or other aspects of what I was doing. Okay. Defenses & disclaimers out of the way, I just don’t think it makes any sense to think that I would be trying to milk this homecoming that way. If I wanted the cravey train to chug forth, the last thing I’d do is tell everyone I’m a drug addict and have the spotlight trained on my every action. So it irritates me a little that some in my family would consider the broad proclamations of the dubious authority of a website without considering also what they know about me and my actions in the matter. I never have and never would do anything to harm or take advantage of my mother. This is essentially the problem I have as well with all these professionals on the phone & through my social-work-studying sister telling my mom she needs to go to Al-Anon. None of them asked enough (if anything) about me, my situation, or, most importantly, my mother’s experience to know that such a group is inappropriate for her. Mom’s all gung-ho to do everything she can and should, which is commedable insofar as it’s case-appropriate. I told her that I wanted her to do what she needed to do for herself but that I understood Al-Anon to be for family members & loved ones whose lives have been affected by the drug addict and his behavior. I’ve caused my mom concern & worry, perhaps even heartache, but I haven’t caused her any physical harm, no financial harm, no verbal abuse, no late night rage or rampage…none of that disruption or deceipt or disrespect that people go to Al-Anon to find support and healing for. The sons in jail, the neglectful husbands, the embarrassing wives, the manipulative children. I’m a drug addict but I’m not that. And no one bothered to find that out. They simply told my mom she needed to do this. It was something she should do. I told her I needed help in certain specific ways and that I appreciated those efforts in my behalf but that I really didn’t want to cost her time and effort that was unneccessary and at best proved to be a waste and at worst filled her full of unfair & inaccurate suspicions and fears, paranoia, & concerns. That didn’t stop her. She went anyway but didn’t tell me about it and when I found out I felt the betrayal of that. It was very hard for me to be honest with her—I risked everything in it, or so I felt—but I did it voluntarily & fully because I felt it was crucially essential to the process—not only my own honesty but hers & others’, too. I needed to know how my actions affected other people, and I needed to trust people, to know that they were working with me & for me and not for themselves, out of self-interest, or in the service of some other social, cultural, religious or personal ideal that would miss the point & backfire. When I asked her why she didn’t tell me she said she didn’t want me to say, “I told you so.” It was, as I had told her, irrelevant.

Another gripe I have in this area is everybody from Dr. Ellsworth to Carrie telling me I can’t do it on my own. Again, instead of bothering to find out how I intend to do it on my own & finding out I have a fairly comprehensive plan with steps to address specific & wide-ranging aspects of the issue, they assume I’m just going to decide to be abstinent and let it go passively at that. It also disregards my own strength of character, my specific needs, and the typical need for people to find out for themselves—to learn their own lessons. Maybe I will fail but at least I will have given myself a chance, trusted in my insticts, learned their limitations, and taken responsibility myself for myself and that’s more important than not every misstepping or stumbling again. But I’m not so lacking in requisite humility, not so stubbor, that I think conventional wisdom and hard-earned professional knowledge has no merit so that I fly in the face of it or beat my head against it like a childish hippy protesting any and all authority. Not as a concession to them but as safegaurd to/for myself, I give myself 1 chance to do it my way. That’s my number that I came up with and if I blow it, I’ll take steps of my own accord to get the help I need. That means a single ingestion of coke in any form (raw or cooked) in any amount. That’s my rule. And then it’ll be self-admission in a residential treatment program and the dreaded 12 steps and all that. But in the meantime, the suggestions that I can’t do it without that makes me only want to prove everybody wrong. And for that added impetus, I’m grateful to them.

Someday I want to apologize to my social-worker sister for meeting her family at Newark International on 8 days of sleeplessness and publicly pantsing my little 8 yr old nephew so that he wouldn’t speak to me for forever, and I want her then to admit she was wrong about all her institutionalized theories and generalizations and to realize that there for a second she saw me not as her brother but as a drug addict and a case study, which is the wrong thing to do.

Sometimes I think I had this experience—this lack of control that even in the midst of it felt so far removed from me—so that I could preach this gospel that’s so sorely needed in our times. Twelve isn’t everybody’s number.