American Drug Addict: a memoir

by Brett Douglas

  A couple of weeks later, I pulled up to Barbie’s house to pick her up. When she got in the car, she said, “I want to get high.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t resist.

  We purchased everything we needed and went back to my house. Being the middle of the day, no one was home. As we smoked crack, my sexual shyness dissipated. “Do you find me attractive?”

  “Very,” she said.

  “Why haven’t you ever said anything?”

  “Because you were always Marion, Marion, Marion.”

  “Well, here I am,” I said.

  Barbie lunged at me, and we kissed. I started to take my shirt off, but she stopped me. “Not now. I don’t have time. I want this to last. Meet me tonight at the Best Western when you leave for the meeting.” Barbie put something in my hand. “And be ready,” she whispered with an evil grin. It was a Viagra pill.

  That evening, I met her at the motel with a large amount of crack. While we had sex, she reached back and handed me a loaded pipe. Right before I climaxed, I took a huge hit of crack. It was the most intensely pleasurable sensation I had ever experienced. At that moment, sex and crack became inextricably entangled. I didn’t want one without the other and would enthusiastically chase this feeling through the gates of Hell.

  My home life became more bizarre and dysfunctional than ever. I hid my drug use from Paula, and she hid hers from me. This Jerry Springer episode didn’t last long. I soon failed a drug screen and was taken back to jail. The judge gave me no bond, which meant I was going to be incarcerated for a while.

  The Vacation

  My state-imposed vacation started in a holding cell while I waited to be taken to general population. After two days, I was escorted to my cell. At least no one will know me here.

  My cell was actually a spacious room with approximately seventy-five other men and several rows of bunk beds. As I walked into the pod, someone yelled, “Brett! What the fuck are you doing here?”

  That person was Charles, a man I knew from AA. As I got accustomed to my new environment, I met two other men who, like Charles and me, attended AA in the past, started using drugs again, and were now in jail. The significance of this did not escape me. The ominous warning from the counselor at the Friary came to mind: “Jails, institutions, and death.”

  Other than the ex-AA members, the first person I spoke to was a mostly toothless, country man named Ray, who was there for pawning a stolen bicycle at my family’s pawn shop. He claimed to be an ordained minister. Aren’t all hillbillies ordained ministers? Although I disregarded most of his incoherent rantings, he did say something which resonated. “Ya’ know, God hates idolatry.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. It’s one of the Ten Commandments.”

  “No, I mean, what’s idolatry?”

  “Idolatry is the worship of false idols. In your case, drugs are a false idol.”

  After our conversation, I thought about the meaning of idolatry. Drugs were a false idol. AA’s suggestion of developing a concept of a power greater than myself was one I fought, believing that caving to that idea, admitting I may have been wrong since I was twelve years old, meant intellectual defeat. But drugs were my higher power. They had vanquished every other force which had once empowered me: willpower, morality, love, compassion, or intelligence. I bowed at drug’s altar every day of my life and did exactly what they told me to do. Either drugs were the one and only great power in the universe, or I was missing something.

  A Note to the Reader

  If you already have a concept of God, you can skip this section. If, however, you are an atheist, one who says “God doesn’t exist,” an agnostic, one who is too much of a pussy to say “God doesn’t exist” so instead says “I don’t know,” or you have an innate hatred or suspicion of organized religion, I want to reassure you this story will not deteriorate into a Christian sermon, a “I found Jesus” testimony, or a series of Bible quotes. I must discuss some spiritual concepts, so please bear with me. You will see the entire “God” thing in a different light when I’m finished. I am not a Christian, Jew, or Islamist. Rather, I’m a hopeless drug addict who wants to change. No amount of religious dogma would ever help me in that regard.

  The Corner

  Every evening of my mandatory vacation, I called Paula to check on her, Devin, and Jordan. At first, the conversations were pleasant, probably friendlier than I deserved. Yet, as the days dragged on, Paula’s tone started to change.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Stressed. You know how hard this is on me?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ya’ know, I have to do everything now,” Paula snapped. “I have to work all day, take care of the kids, do all tha’ cleaning, pay all tha’ bills. Why do I have to do this shit because you’re a fuck-up?”

  “You don’t think I would trade places with you if I could?” I was getting annoyed.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit.”

  “Let me ask you this. What did ya’ll have for dinner?”

  “I took them to Chili’s cause I didn’t feel like cooking.”

  “Chili’s huh? Well, guess what I had for dinner. The taste and texture equivalent of cow shit! I didn’t even eat it; it was so bad. And if I get hungry in the middle of the night, I can’t walk to the frig and grab something—”

  “Sorry, but I don’t want to hear your sob story.”

  “Sob story?! You’re the one with a sob story! I go to sleep listening to other men fart, and you’re bitchin’ about feeding our children? What the hell is wrong with you?!”

  “Fuck off!” Paula hung up.

  My question was a rhetorical one. I knew what was wrong. I had once felt the same way. Every moment spent dealing with life was one less moment spent enjoying my buzz.

  I felt despondent. My children were ashamed of me, and my wife wasn’t concerned about me at all. After moping for a couple days, I needed to get my mind off my predicament. I looked around the pod for something to read. Of course, the only books available were Bibles. I laid back down on my bed and pouted some more. Suddenly, something occurred to me. I’ve criticized this book my entire life, and I’ve never read it.

  Thus, with nothing better to do, I started reading the Bible. Some of the chapters were interesting. The Book of Numbers, however, was like reading the instruction manual for a blender. Proverbs was like reading a printing template for a fortune cookie company. But the story of Lot’s daughters was distressing. Getting an erection while reading the Bible is uncomfortable, even for a heathen like me.

  Much to my surprise, one story helped me turn a corner I thought I could never navigate. In Exodus, when Moses was leading the Jewish slaves out of Egypt, they came to the Red Sea. The slaves said to Moses, “We can’t pass. We’d be better off slaves in Egypt.”

  The Red Sea parted, and the group made it through. Soon after, the Jews got thirsty and told Moses, “We have nothing to drink. We’d be better off slaves in Egypt.”

  Suddenly, they found water, but it was unfit to drink. The Jews told Moses, “The water is bitter. We’d be better off slaves in Egypt.”

  Moses made the water drinkable. Soon after, the Jews got hungry and said, “We have no food. We’d be better off slaves in Egypt.”

  At this point, if I were Moses, I would have said, “The next time one of you Jews complain, I am sending you back to Egypt. And good luck crossing the Red Sea again!”

  After reading this passage, I thought of all the calamities I had experienced in my life: the car accident, drowning in my own vomit, being robbed at gun point, knife point, and screwdriver point, overdosing multiple times, losing Devin while I was high. I thought of all the opportunities I threw away, the relationships I had destroyed, the trust and love I had betrayed. After surmounting these adversities, my attitude was always the same. “I’m better off being a slave to drugs.”

  I attributed my survival to luck, an imaginary resource I perceived as an actual substance. I never once t
hought to be grateful. Catastrophe was simply the cost of doing business. Having such an epiphany was remarkable for an atheist like myself, but a different book would drive the point home.

  After complaining to Mom about the lack of reading material, she mailed several books to the jail, but the guards allowed me to have only one: the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was pissed. Reading the cryptic messages and archaic language of the Bible had become tedious. So, trading one God book and for another didn’t thrill me in the least. Not to mention, I had already read the AA book. Well, most of it. Okay, some of it.

  The first chapter of the Big Book tells the story of Bill W., the founder of AA. He was an alcoholic of the hopeless variety, until one evening, a former drinking buddy visited him. Bill’s friend was sober, an accomplishment he attributed to religion. When Bill expressed his disdain for such things, his friend casually mentioned an idea which became the cornerstone of the AA program, and in my opinion, the reason it still exists almost a century later. “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?”

  I had read that line before, but reading it this time caused me to see a glaring flaw in my atheistic belief. Every time I had argued against the existence of God, I was negating someone else’s concept. All atheists are guilty of this fallacy. I had never considered what I believed God was. Why did I care so much about what other people think? Finding fault in the beliefs of others was easy. But how could I not believe in my concept?

  This revelation was a thorny pill to swallow. Atheism was such an important idea. To abandon it and admit my reasoning had a fundamental flaw seemed drastic. Atheism made me unique, controversial and more intelligent than others. Of course, I was sitting in jail, so I’m not sure how intelligent it made me. I spent a lifetime thinking about what God isn’t. Now, I had to decide what He is.

  I outright reject the God of organized religion. God is frequently referred to as He or Him as if God has a gender. My penis, the most irrefutable symbol of my gender, has caused me to make some pretty stupid decisions, a primordial urge God is not plagued with. But I understand the notion of semantic respect. Referring to God as It seems wrong for some reason. Also, religious doctrine states He is a jealous God, which implies He is afflicted with emotional frailties. And since God suffers from envy, He must also suffer from the other Seven Deadly Sins, which makes Him an angry, fat, egotistical, womanizing, filthy, titty-baby. Wow! Simon Cowell is God!

  The most common analogy used for the existence of God is the watch and the watchmaker. A watch is a complex system which could never spontaneously generate by happenstance. It must have an intelligent designer: the watchmaker. The complexity of the natural world seems to indicate a similar creative force, which is called God. Now, let’s reverse this argument. The designer of the watch isn’t another watch. The watchmaker is beyond anything the watch could ever be. The creator is always above the creation. Similarly, God is something that is impossible for humans to completely understand.

  Years ago, the Pensacola News Journal ran a story about a man who took his infant child to the top of the Bob Sikes Bridge and threw him over the side. During an AA meeting, someone asked, “How could God allow something like that to happen?”

  Of course, Mike had the correct answer. “That was not God. That was lack of God.”

  For me, God is simply the natural order of things. No one will ever see a cat, carrying her kitten in her mouth, walk to the top of a bridge and toss it over the side. In the natural order of life, parents raise, love, and nurture their children.

  When I drop something, which happens more than I would like to admit, the object falls to the ground. Not sometimes. Not most of the time. Not 99.99999% of the time. But every time. Gravity is a universal truth. That is God.

  On a more personal level, using drugs to elevate my mood or anesthetize my feelings does not fall within the natural order of life. I’m supposed to feel emotions. Pain and sadness have a function; they’re not meant to be blotted out. Also, a higher power insinuates a higher purpose for my life other than self-gratification. That is God. As the counselor at the Friary told me, “Good Orderly Direction.”

  This newly discovered concept also resolved another quandary. Scientific knowledge and spiritual beliefs had always seemed mutually exclusive. In other words, the two mindsets appeared contrary to one another. For the first time, I understood the two ideas were harmonious. If God is the natural order of life, then science is the study of God’s marvel. If God created Man, He did so through the process of evolution, which is a natural progression. Man is part of nature, not above it. Science is man’s feeble attempt to understand how God works.

  What happened next may sound silly, trivial, or unbelievable to some. I refused to eat jail food and lived on Ramen noodles and honey buns instead. Mostly honey buns. But the excess sugar caused severe acid reflux. I suffered from it regularly during my incarceration. One night, before I went to sleep, I did something I had only done once before in my life. I prayed. “God, please take this heartburn away.”

  The next morning, I had been awake for several hours before I realized my acid reflux was gone. Although my attempt to eat every honey bun in Pensacola did not stop, I was heartburn-free for the remainder of my stay. Intellectually, I knew a logical reason had to exist for this change. But, I had to admit, the timing was remarkable.

  After some more thought (I tend to overanalyze everything), I started to grasp the causality of prayer. I didn’t think praying caused my heartburn to go away. Instead, it created awareness and gratitude. I never would have noticed the absence of my acid reflux if I had not prayed about it. And I can’t feel grateful for something without acknowledging it first.

  For instance, when my employer hands me a paycheck, my attitude will fall into one of two categories: indifference or gratitude. Since I worked the hours and had the money coming to me, indifference is the default position. I may feel satisfied or relieved about receiving the check, but these feelings are not the same as gratitude. In fact, they are degrees of indifference.

  If, once I was handed the paycheck, I prayed or said to myself, “God, thank you for this paycheck,” then I think of it as a gift. Feeling grateful for a gift is almost automatic, requiring little or no effort. Thus, prayer facilitates a healthy outlook on life.

  Without daily vigilance, gratitude fades like sunlight at dusk. For example, every time I started a new job, I felt gratitude. I was thankful the demeaning process of interviewing and the financial stress of being unemployed were finally over. Within a short time, however, my gratitude faded. I complained about the long hours, the unenjoyable work, and the unpleasant boss. The job didn’t change; I did. I used drugs to elevate my mood. Gratitude does the same thing.

  I started praying every morning, “God, thank you for this opportunity in jail. Help me gain something useful from this experience and accept whatever happens.” Despite the loss of freedom and Paula’s hateful rantings, my feelings about the situation improved. I saw my incarceration as a gift instead of a curse. My circumstances had not changed. My attitude did. So much so, the officers in my pod nicknamed me “Laughing Guy.”

  I don’t think anyone is listening to my prayers, but I must admit, it does work. Mom immediately noticed the change in my mood. Where once I was frustrated, I was now upbeat, positive, and full of hope. My tense conversations with Paula no longer bothered me. I knew the police didn’t pull me out of church service and throw me in jail for no reason. I put those walls around me.

  The morning of my court hearing, I prayed for the ability to accept whatever the judge decided. If I had to spend more time behind bars, I would call it God’s will and try to make the experience a positive one. This was an opportunity to correct myself. Jails are called correctional institutions for a reason.

  Jerry instructed Paula to bring my college diplomas, a copy of the lease for my business, family pictures, and anything else that would attest to my character to court. As I stood in front of the judge, I learn
ed she didn’t bring any of those things. The state’s attorney wanted me to spend a year and a half in prison. Not county jail, the Big House. My probation officer recommended the same. But the judge gave me another year and a half of probation with community control.

  I walked out of jail a different man. Because of the honey buns, my pants no longer fit. But more importantly, I felt hope for the future. Paula wasn’t there to pick me up, so I started walking. During the stroll, I realized God has a twisted sense of humor. He made me an atheist, then gave me disease only God can heal. If I were Him, I would do something like that just to amuse myself.

  The Salt Shaker

  A condition of my probation was community control, which meant I had to report to my probation officer, Becky, every Monday morning and submit a schedule for the entire week. I was allowed to go to work, AA meetings, and home. If she caught me any place other than what was on the schedule, I immediately went to prison for a year and a half. I also had to submit to random drug screens. A final condition was no drugs or alcohol of any kind in my house, which included Paula’s beer and wine in our refrigerator.

  Community control did have its advantages, other than accountability. One evening as I watched television, Paula called me. “Come up to the grocery store. My battery’s dead.”