Addict In Black ✔

Chapter Thirty

CHAPTER THIRTY: UNEXPLAINABLE

Whatever you're addicted to neither brings you happiness nor takes away your grief. It only keeps you company.
-Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Addiction is often paired with mental illnesses. Depression. Personality disorders. ADHD. Bipolar. For me, it's depression and anxiety. Smoking pot only made my anxiety worse. LSD made my intrusive thoughts nearly unstoppable whenever I was coming out of the haze.

The intrusive thoughts told me to pull on steering wheels, to step in front of cars, to jump off bridges, to hurt myself. I got intrusive thoughts that told me to go do a line, or find a needle, find her.

These are where a lot of my self harming urges came from. To me it was the same as getting hungry -you can go a while without eating, but eventually your stomach's going to growl.

As a therapist I can say with certainty that there is a clinical satisfaction in seeing just how bad things can get. How far people can push themselves.

You'd be amazed how much pain, unease, the human body and mind can take before it's broken.

There's a sickening fascination of pushing yourself to the point of completely shattering, of death only to reel yourself back in again. You can do thing with drugs, razors or cliffs but the end result will always be the same unless you find a way to stop yourself.

Death.

At the peak of my depression, I would hurt myself mostly to feel something again even though I was the one training myself not to feel something at all. If I burned myself, a few times I held the object to me for long enough that my arm would shake in pain and that's when I would let go.

Knowing I shouldn't, I mixed cocaine and hydrocodone to see if I would get a seizure and I did.

Attempting to escape from an in-the-moment incurable pain, whether physical or mental, usually gives someone instant relief through drugs, self-harm, recklessness or just simply screaming. 

And then? 

More pain than before.

The worst for me was the days when I would just scream, because I really wouldn't get much out of it besides a sore throat, weird looks and the want to want my head into a solid brick wall.

It's around midnight right now, and since Jem is passed out next to me in bed- -snoring, mind you- -my brain decided it was time for the big sad to make an appearance. Jem is sleeping like a normal person, head by the pillows and feet at the end of the bed but I'm laying opposite of him on my stomach with my legs crossed.

I lost my youth to a mental illness and those are years- -years I'm supposed to be a child, to be happy, to laugh- -I'll never get back. 

It's not fucking poetic, it's not for the better, it's devastating-

Two sharp knocks cut off my thoughts and make me tense in spot, glancing at the clock I gulp when it reads that it's actually past midnight. Scrambling up I shake Jem awake, "Someone's at the door." My heart starts to race, and thought this is a safe building where people bring their children, someone knocking on your hotel at any time after dark can lead to a very dangerous situation. "Can you go see who it is?"

I flick on the light, making us both wince at the brightness.

"Yeah..." Groggily, Jeremiah swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. Walking to the door he slips on his shirt from where he threw it across the room.