American Drug Addict: a memoir

by Brett Douglas

  She had to have noticed all was not well with her son. Perhaps she just didn’t want to see it. Perhaps the pain of acknowledging the failure my life had become was simply too much to face. Maybe she saw some redeeming quality in me that no one, including myself, could see. Whatever the reason, she continued to give me money for the myriad of false reasons I gave her, fueling my addiction even further. I knew how much love she had for me and wielded it like a weapon against her.

  Mom made the mistake of giving me her credit card number to order some takeout food. Over the next month, I took $14,000 in cash advances with it, every penny spent on crack and heroin. When she received the credit card bill and confronted me on the charges, I blamed the fraud on Paula, although she had nothing to do with it. What happened next added credence to my false accusation.

  There goes another one.

  I have never stolen from my mom

  Flush with money, Paula and I spiraled out of control. After a four-day binge with no sleep, we decided to wind down by drinking liquor. As she spoke to a friend in the other room, I heard her make a disparaging remark about me. Thoroughly drunk, I confronted her while she was still on the phone. “What the fuck did you just say? Look who’s talking. You’re the worst wife ever, you fucking whore.”

  If I dished it out, I had better be able to take it. And no one dished it out like Paula. “Fuck you, you piece of shit! Look at you! You lost your business, you stole from me, your mom and Devin, you fucking worthless drug addict! You don’t fuck me because you can’t get a hard-on. You’re a fat, bald, ugly, disgusting waste of a human being! I wish you would have killed yourself when you had the chance! I can get any man I want! Why did I waste my life with a piece of garbage like you? No woman would ever want you, you’re so disgusting!”

  In my heart, I knew she was right. I drunkenly stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. I walked into the bathroom, locked the door, and held my left wrist over the toilet. I made three hesitation marks, then closed my eyes, pressed the knife against my wrist as hard as I could, and quickly yanked it across. The blade sliced my arm open to the bone. All the fingers in my left hand stopped moving, and blood poured into the toilet along with my tears.

  I had never seen that much of my blood at once. I knew this time I wasn’t going to walk away. I leaned back against the bathroom wall as a large puddle formed on the floor. Paula started banging on the door, “What the fuck are you doing in there?”

  She jimmied the lock and barged through the door, witnessing what I had done to myself. “Oh no, that’s not how you kill yourself. Give me that knife, and I’ll help you,” Paula gleefully screamed as she stood over me.

  “Fuck you. Just leave me alone.”

  “Hurry up and die, motherfucker!”

  I staggered into the living room and laid on the couch, holding the cut against my shirt. Paula followed me. Standing at the end of the sofa, five feet from me, she bellowed, “I fucking hate you! I hope you bleed to death!” She picked up my cell phone and hit me in the head with it, shattering the glass screen. I instinctively kicked her in the chest, causing her to fall backward. She remained motionless for a few seconds, then stood up, her face red with fury. She grabbed the knife out of the bathroom. I jumped up from the couch.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you!” Paula screamed. She swung the knife at me twice, which I avoided by jumping back. The next swing came at my face, which I deflected by holding up my right arm. The blade left a three inch gash. She then stuck the tip of the blade against my stomach. “I’m going to gut you like a pig!” she snarled between her teeth.

  I believed her. Killing myself was an idea I had no problem with. But having this crazy bitch do it was unacceptable. I ducked around a table, ran outside, and drove off.

  Another one eliminated.

  I have never had someone try to kill me

  As I drove down the street, blood flowing from my wound, I debated if I should drive to my children’s house and add more insanity to their lives. I was having difficulty staying awake as I drove, thus felt I had no choice. The thought of driving to a hospital never occurred to me.

  Around 4 am, I arrived at Devin and Jordan’s apartment. My daughter gasped when she opened the door. I collapsed on their kitchen floor, my shirt drenched in blood. She called 911, and within minutes, I was being wheeled into the back of an ambulance. I lied to the paramedics about the cause of both wounds, blaming the entire incident on Paula. I was too embarrassed to admit the truth.

  As I rested in the hospital room waiting for the doctor to sew up my arm and hopefully restore movement to my fingers, a sheriff’s deputy walked in to take my statement. I told him the same lie; Paula caused the wounds on both arms. “We were arguing,” I explained, “and I don’t want to press charges against her.”

  “That’s out of your hands now. Your wife’s been arrested already,” the deputy stated.

  “What? When?”

  “Right after the 911 call was made. She’s been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”

  The seriousness of her charge didn’t dawn on me until several days later. Paula was facing prison time, a punishment I knew she didn’t deserve. Despite my hatred for her, I couldn’t bear the idea of her going to prison for something she didn’t do. I moved in with my parents, and she moved in with hers. Both families agreed divorce was the correct course of action. I filed a restraining order against her to help facilitate the separation.

  During this craziness, our house was taken in foreclosure. Paula and I were now homeless.

  The list is almost gone.

  I have never lost a home due to foreclosure

  Over the course of the next two weeks, I mentally wrestled with the gravity of Paula’s charges. Her plight plagued my every thought. I knew I had to keep her from going to prison. The restraining order prevented us from speaking directly, so I promised her mother I would fix this problem somehow.

  One evening as I rested in my parents’ spare bedroom, my cell phone rang, displaying a blocked number. “Hello?”

  No response.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi,” Paula whispered.

  “Hey.”

  “You’re not going to have me arrested for calling you, are you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  She started crying. “Please don’t let me go to prison.”

  “Baby, calm down. I’m going to fix this. You have my word.”

  “My mom says there’s nothing you can do.”

  “Well, she’s wrong,” I said, knowing she was probably right.

  “I miss you. Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I answered. Despite everything that had happened, I still had trouble saying “no” to her.

  Paula informed me she had secured a lucrative nursing job in Houston, Texas. She suggested we start a sober life in a new town. The idea sounded irresistible. Pensacola had become a museum of horrors; every street contained a sad or painful memory. I believed a relocation would solve my drug problem. Of course, we were moving closer to the Mexican border. The next day I filed a statement with the State’s Attorney assuming all responsibility for the injuries I sustained. All charges against Paula were dropped.

  Before we left, we had a drug blowout. Paula and I smoked crack and had sex for an entire month. We purchased a gram of heroin and shot up on the drive to Houston, agreeing to stop using and go back to AA once we arrived. During the trip, I nodded off at the wheel and caused two separate accidents within an hour, destroying our car.

  I managed to rent a vehicle, and we pulled into Houston hours before her first shift started. Immediately after dropping her off at work, I found an AA meeting. The recovery community in Houston was incredible, with literally hundreds of meetings throughout the day. I quickly made new friends and attended two meetings every day.

  Paula, on the other hand, was not interested in sobriety. Despite the promise we made, she continued to drink and insisted on going out to ni
ghtclubs on the weekends. I managed to stay sober for a little over a month before I succumbed to the urge. Within two weeks, we were both shooting heroin and smoking crack again. Devin, Jordan, and Mom stopped speaking to us. Paula and I fought constantly and stopped paying our bills. Eventually, an eviction notice was posted on our apartment door. Despite all the change, nothing had changed.

  To make matters worse, Paula’s venom increased in intensity. Every day, she threatened to throw me out on the street, leaving me homeless in a large city I barely knew. In hindsight, her tossing me away would have been best for both of us. Fear prevented me from seeing the truth. Every evening, I listened to her review the lengthy list of failures my life consisted of while she sucked on a crack pipe. My hatred for Paula had grown to the point where I started thinking about hurting her. Staying high was the only way I could squelch such thoughts. But eventually, I could no longer suppress my fury.

  Within weeks, Paula lost her job. We were about to be homeless and penniless in a huge city. The noose I had placed around my neck had become so tight, I decided to jump and get it over with. Paula’s last paycheck would be direct deposited into her account on Friday. My plan was to wait until the money was available, murder Paula, spend the money on crack and whores, and, when the money was gone, take my own life. What a plan!

  I cut a section out of an extension cord and fashioned a garrote. Early Friday morning, once I knew the money was in her account, I placed it under our mattress. Paula sat at the end of the bed with her back to me smoking crack and hurling insults at me. I decided to approach her from behind, yank the cord around her neck, and at the same time, thrust my knee into her back, pushing her forward. She would fall face down with my entire weight on top of her. Within minutes, she would be dead. Every stinging word she spoke reaffirmed my decision. I pulled the garrote out from under the mattress and carried out my plan.

  The last one is now gone.

  I have never committed cold blooded murder

  Wait!

  Before we cross that last one off; something completely unexpected happened. As I stood behind Paula, garrote in hand, my mind went to a place I hadn’t visited in a long time. The image of Memaw and Pawpaw popped into my head. What would they have thought of the man I had become? I stared at the lethal weapon in my hands, thinking of the irreversible action I was about to take. The thin thread of humanity my grandparents had woven into my dead heart stopped me from crossing that final line. I stuck the garrote back under the mattress. Letting Paula live was a more fitting punishment.

  My new plan was to take my own life by means of a drug overdose. Later that evening while Paula slept, I drew up the largest shot of cocaine I could manage to fit in a single syringe and injected it into my vein. I thought the large dose would cause my heart to fail. Instead, it produced an episode of cocaine psychosis, a condition brought on by the ingestion of an excessive amount of cocaine and results in the human brain detaching from reality. As soon as I pushed the plunger down, I fell to my knees, and the walls around me disappeared.

  When I looked up, I was standing in a chapel with a large picture of myself sitting on an easel at the end of the center aisle. Mom, Devin, and Jordan were hugging each other in front of me. Through their tears, they kept repeating, “What a shame. What a shame.” I was witnessing my own funeral. Looking back, I realize this vision was a warning. At the time, however, I took it as a directive.

  I had another debilitating crying fit which lasted an hour. When the grief had subsided, I knew exactly what I had to do. I left the apartment, purchased some alcohol, and rented room 320 at the Texan Inn for a week. I smoked the last of my cocaine, drank the alcohol, and made a bed of pillows and blankets in the bathtub. I took a bar of soap and wrote on the mirror, “My lifelong torment is over. Don’t be sad. I’m at peace.”

  I laid in the tub and pulled a knife from my pocket. I placed my arm, palm up, on the edge of the tub. My plan was to stab my arm deep enough to start an arterial bleed. With the knife in my right hand, I thrust it down as hard as I could into my upturned arm. I felt the tip of the blade hit the bone as blood gushed from the wound. The only problem with my plan was it hurt like a motherfucker. Three of the fingers on my left hand stopped moving, the same ones doctors had repaired almost a year earlier. Initially, I panicked over the loss of movement. I’m never leaving this room. What does it matter?

  The puncture wound bled profusely for fifteen minutes, then started to clot. I realized my plan was flawed. I stood up from the tub, blood dripping on the floor, and walked over to the mirror. I looked at the ghost of the man I used to be between the letters of my suicide note. Undeterred, I placed the blade up to my neck and sliced it open. By the time I laid back in the tub, my shirt was drenched. Every time I leaned my head back, blood spurted into the air, synchronized with my heartbeat. I finally succeeded where I had failed so many times in the past. I had the car and Paula’s debit card, so I knew she couldn’t find me. I had barricaded the door so no one could get in my room. I felt relief.

  As wave after wave of warm blood flowed down my back, I knew I was experiencing the sensation of death. I had often heard before someone dies, their entire life flashes before their eyes. But that’s not entirely true. Since I was fortunate enough to have some time for reflection before I died, I mentally rehearsed the events which led me to this moment. I thought of the people I was leaving behind, the opportunities I had squandered, the trust I had destroyed, and an entire life wasted for drugs. I couldn’t conjure up a single reason to stop what was happening. Although the air conditioner was off, I started to feel cold, and my breathing became labored. As I fell asleep, my last conscious thought was, It sucks to die alone in this shitty motel room.

  I closed my eyes for the last time.

  The Aftermath

  Clean

  by

  Depeche Mode

  Clean

  The cleanest I've been

  An end to the tears

  And the in-between years

  And the troubles I've seen

  Now that I'm clean

  You know what I mean

  I've broken my fall

  Put an end to it all

  I've changed my routine

  Now I'm clean

  I don't understand

  What destiny's planned

  I'm starting to grasp

  What is in my own hands

  I don't claim to know

  Where my holiness goes

  I just know that I like

  What is starting to show

  Sometimes

  Clean

  The cleanest I've been

  An end to the tears

  And the in-between years

  And the troubles I've seen

  Now that I'm clean

  You know what I mean

  I've broken my fall

  Put an end to it all

  I've changed my routine

  Now I'm clean

  As years go by

  All the feelings inside

  Twist and they turn

  As they ride with the tide

  I don't advise

  And I don't criticize

  I just know what I like

  With my own eyes

  Sometimes

  Clean

  The cleanest I've been

  An end to the tears

  And the in-between years

  And the troubles I've seen

  Now that I'm clean

  You know what I mean

  I've broken my fall

  Put an end to it all

  I've changed my routine

  Now I'm clean

  Sometimes

  My eyes opened. An unfamiliar ceiling rushed past. Someone was repeatedly pressing on my chest. A plastic mask was covering my nose and mouth. I knocked it away and attempted to sit up, but someone else pushed me back down. “Don’t move. Just relax,” the person commanded.

  My slight movement caused the world to spin uncontro
llably as if I had rolled out of an airplane and was plummeting to the ground. I followed the suggestion of whoever was talking.

  I heard a car door open. With all my might, I lifted my 1,000-lb. head. I was being placed into an ambulance.

  A paramedic asked for my name and an explanation as to what had happened, but I barely had the energy to talk. A different paramedic attempted to start an IV but noticed the horrendous track marks which littered my arm. Instead, he started one on the back of my hand, the only veins I had not destroyed.

  By the time the ambulance reached the hospital, I had absorbed enough life to speak. “Why didn’t you let me die?”

  “Because nothing’s worth dying over,” the paramedic responded.

  “That’s what you think.”

  My gurney was wheeled into the emergency room as nurses and doctors rushed around me. By this time, I felt better, a fact I was not happy about.

  “You’re wasting your time. As soon as I get out of here, I’m finishing what I started,” I snarled at the doctor.

  “So you’re still feeling suicidal?”

  “No, I’m referring to the crossword puzzle I didn’t finish. WHAT THE FUCK YOU THINK I’M TALKING ABOUT?”

  A Hispanic police officer had been standing near the foot of my bed the entire time I was lying there. After the medical staff left my bedside, he handcuffed my wrist to the armrest.

  “What the fuck is this?!” I yelled.

  “You have a warrant for your arrest in Florida,” the cop smugly answered.

  “YEAH WELL, FUCK YOU, PIG! I HOPE YOU DIE IN THE LINE OF DUTY!”

  He just smiled, enraging me even more. “WHY DIDN’T YOU MOTHERFUCKERS JUST LET ME DIE!” I started violently yanking my cuffed arm, trying to break free.

  “If you continue doing that, I’ll cuff your other arm,” the police officer stated.