Addiction

by Margaret McHeyzer

  The hall is quiet. Only the whirl of the air conditioners can be heard. In my ears, I can hear the pounding of my heartbeat. It takes me a long few moments to compose myself before I have the courage to lift my head and look at them. It’s not always this hard, but sometimes I can’t deal with the shame of what I did. Nor can I deal with everyone knowing about my past. But I’ve become the warrior Mrs. Drew encouraged me to be, because my story needs to be heard.

  I wipe at my cheek, clearing the wetness from my face. I know this is hard. But it’s also worth it.

  It’s not about humiliating myself, it’s about educating these kids. If one person is thinking about picking up the glass pipe for the first time and they hear my story, maybe they’ll decide to take a different path.

  Breathing a few deep sighs, I finally look up.

  In the front row, I can see two girls sitting next to each other. Both have been crying. Both are wiping at their faces with tissues. There’s always someone who responds the same way when I read passages from my book. I get it. It’s raw and confrontational. You’d have to be made of stone to feel nothing after reading Addiction.

  A student’s hand flies up from the center of the auditorium.

  This is the most painful part. Sometimes I get asked questions that I don’t want to answer, but I have to because I made the commitment to educate teenagers on the risks and dangers of addiction.

  “Yes,” I say and point to the girl whose hand is raised.

  She stands and straightens her shirt. “How hard was it for you to write Addiction? I mean, there’s some deeply personal things in here.” She holds up my book, showing me the cover of the girl walking down a lonely road. What an apt cover, because that’s exactly what my addiction did to me. It isolated me from everyone who loved me.

  “Writing Addiction was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I thought when I went through rehab, that nothing could be harder than that. But once I started writing, I found I had to be real and tell the truth. No matter how much it hurt me, I needed to write everything down. It serves as a constant reminder of how easy it is to fall prey to and become a victim of something you were never looking for.”

  She sits down with a satisfied smile that I’ve answered her question.

  Another student from the high school where I’ve been asked to speak stands. It’s a male student, which I find interesting because usually the males don’t ask a lot of questions. The males usually sit and listen. “Was there anything you left out of the book that you wish you could’ve added?” he asks before sitting and waiting for my answer.

  A sick feeling twists in my stomach. I hate being asked this. It doesn’t happen often, but when it is asked, I tell the truth. They need to see how bad this can be. And I was a lucky one, because I made it out of that world alive. “I did something I’m extremely ashamed of doing,” I say as my voice cracks and another tear falls.

  “Worse than stealing your grandmother’s jewelry?” the same boy asks.

  Turning to my Dad, I see the tears glistening his cheeks. He knows what I have to say, and I’m not proud of it at all. “I wrote it, but decided to take it out. I’m still so ashamed of it.” I wipe my hands over my eyes, trying to hold onto whatever dignity I have left. But I know I do have dignity, worth, and self-respect. Because I fought tooth and nail to get myself out of the heavy addiction I once was victim to. “At my lowest, I went back home and tried to steal whatever I could carry. I thought my parents would be at work, but Dad was home.” I swallow back the tears and shame I have in myself. These kids need to hear it, they need to understand what lengths a drug addict will go to. “I was in a bad state, coming down off a high, needing money for drugs.” I shake my head, ashamed by my low. “I asked my Dad for money, told him I needed to eat. He said no.” I look at Dad, almost seeking his permission. He nods his head. Mom is crying, Dad is crying, and I’m in tears.

  “What happened?” the boy asks.

  “All I could think about was where I was going to get the money for my next hit. It’s all I wanted. I yearned for it. It burned through my veins. It was pounding through me, like a tsunami of desperation.” I take another deep breath. “Dad and I were arguing. I wanted crystal meth. I craved it, more than a drowning man at sea would crave air for his lungs. More than a mother would crave the touch of her newborn baby. I needed it, like nothing I’ve ever felt or known. I had to have it.”

  “And what happened?” he asks again, pushing.

  “I asked my Dad for money again. He told me no. I begged him, promised I’d pay it back. He said no.”

  “Is that the worst of it?” another boy asks whose sitting in the front row.

  Shaking my head, I grimace at the remembered, painful memory. “I told my father I’d have sex with him if he’d give me fifty dollars.” Everyone gasps. I look up, and see so many mouths are gaping in horror. “My Mother walked in when I made my offer. He backed away from me and told me I needed help, and my Mother grabbed me and dragged me outside. In a fit of anger, I hit her a few times. She fell back and hit her head. My violence sent her to the hospital for stitches.” I hear more gasps. “That was the day I tried to kill my junkie roommate. And that was the day I was raped by four men who then tried to overdose and kill me so I wouldn’t identify them for raping me. They’ve never been caught,” I add in a small voice.

  “Oh my God,” I hear someone whisper.

  The hall is quiet, but it doesn’t take long for another hand to fly up. I point to the girl in the back. She stands and says in a loud, confident voice, “What happened to Mr. X?” I changed the names in my book for legal reasons. Mr. X is Edgar.

  “Wow, I knew this question was coming.” I half chuckle, knowing my answer will horrify these teenagers. But I’ve vowed to keep it real. I refuse to lie. “I wasn’t able to mention anything about Mr. X in the book, but now I can. Mr. X is serving five life sentences in prison.”

  “Because of the drug dealing?” the same girl asks.

  “Strangely enough, no. The drugs weren’t the reason for his prison sentence. He decided movies would be his thing. And went from the pornographic material he was filming with me to what’s called ‘snuff films.’”

  “What’s a ‘snuff film’?” this girl is really curious.

  “Snuff films are real-life torture and murder that occurs on film, and they sell it to the highest bidder.”

  “Oh, my God,” she says with a gasp.

  “He killed two girls.” Ginger, whose name I changed to Jade, and Sky who I called Cat in the book. “He killed them by slashing their throats on camera. The blood sprayed all over his face. What he didn’t know was that one of the girls he murdered had AIDS. Some of the sprayed blood got into his eye, and mixed with his blood. Mr. X will die in prison, because he didn’t know he had HIV and didn’t get treated for it. It developed into AIDS.”

  “Yes!” I hear a lot of people collectively mumble and scattered applause erupts.

  “I don’t wish death upon anyone,” I say, although, Edgar deserves whatever fate wants to hand him. I take a moment and hold my hand up, where I’m wearing my grandmother’s ring. “The one good thing that happened was when the police raided his home, they seized all his property. My parents filed a police report for this, of which he’d kept, and I got it back.”

  “You never said what happened to Hunter in the book,” another eager male asks. Hunter being Zac.

  “I see him around from time to time. He told me how sorry he was for not standing up to Mr. X. As it turns out, Hunter was terrified of Mr. X. I can see why, and I don’t hold any bad feelings toward him.” A long silence falls over the students.

  “How do you feel about Mr. X now?” a different student asks.

  I smile. “I used to think I loved him. That he was what I wanted and needed. But the reality is I just wanted what he got me hooked on. I thought there was a pull toward him, but that’s what predators do. He created a wedge between my parents, my friends and me. He even went so far as t
o falsify those documents he gave me. He conditioned me. Made me need him, made me think he took care of me. He took me on our first ‘date,’ and I use that term loosely, because after he was arrested his method of operation came out. The restaurant meeting wasn’t a date, but an audition. The men who were having dinner there offered Mr. X money for pornographic movies with me in them. He knew what he was doing, from the moment he met me. Everything was a lie. He was a seasoned predator. How do I feel about him?” I shrug my shoulders. “He’s getting what he deserves.”

  Another hand flies up to ask a question. “You seem to be so…” They pause thinking about the word they want to use before adding, “… normal. How are you finding life now?”

  “It’s a struggle. Every day I think about my old life. But I’m lucky, because Addiction is now going to be made into a major motion picture. I know this book and the movie will be able to reach so many people at the same time. I love traveling from school to school to talk about my experiences. Because one of you, or a few of you will at some point be offered drugs. And when you are, think about what I went through. Think about the pornographic movies of me that are out there on the Internet, and will probably be out there for eternity and ask yourself if that’s the road you want to travel.” I see a lot of them nodding their heads. “They say the truth will set you free.” I take a deep breath and try to look at as many faces as I can. “My truth is this… ” I pause for a further second, looking at more eager faces staring up at me.

  The students are watching me, waiting to hear what I’m going to say. Their eager faces are glued to me.

  Relief floods me. The words I’m about to say were something I once completely refused to acknowledge. I wasn’t an addict, a junkie. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t dirty, and I wasn’t a hooker. But my reality is here in print for everyone to see. I was. My strength increases every time I say the sentence aloud.

  I turn to my parents and see the pride in their eyes. I’m proud of myself too. I survived.

  “My name is Hannah Rose Mendes, and I’m a drug addict.”

  The End

  Phone numbers

  Drug Abuse Hotline US: 1877 978 1523/1877 659 9350

  Life line Australia: 13 11 44

  SupportLine Telephone Helpline UK: 01708 765200

  Action on Addiction UK: 0300 330 0659

  From the Author

  I first saw the cover to Addiction, and noticed the simplistic beauty of it. The girl, walking down an isolated road with small bruises on her arms. It immediately took me to a dark place and made me question why she was there. And why she had those bruises. What was she escaping from? Who was she running from?

  Hannah came to me like a bullet. She began telling me what a wonderful family she had, and how her parents loved her more than life itself.

  She showed me snippets of the man she was seeing, the man we know as Edgar, and how in love she is.

  Of course, Edgar isn’t a nice a man. We know that now, and so does Hannah.

  As Hannah told me more and more about her life story, I became increasingly frustrated with her, and her choices. There were many times I wanted to slap her face, shake her and tell her how much of an idiot she was. Being in the mind of a drug addict was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. The fact I could see Edgar’s deceit and she couldn’t, was frustrating to me. I hated him from the moment he interjected himself in her life. Many a time, I would have to get up and walk away, especially when he was in a scene. He angered me, and sent my blood pressure sky rocketing. His manipulative ways were obvious to me, but not to Hannah. Hannah isn’t stupid, she’s simply naive. Something a lot of people are, not through choice, but because of lack of experience.

  While writing Hannah’s story, I often asked myself, what I would do if my child became dependant on drugs. I never want to be in that position to find out. And I hope you never have to either.

  Addiction is by far the most challenging book I’ve ever written. Because I’ve never been dependant on drugs, so I didn’t know how it felt to be hooked. But while writing, I got a very clear image, because essentially, although I’m not drug dependant, I had an insight into the mind of a drug addict through Hannah.

  I never write a book with sensitive subjects without doing my research. Yes, this is fiction, but to many it’s reality. The research alone had my mind jumbled with so many statistics. I can only imagine what clouding it with actual drugs would do to someone.

  Addiction has taught me something. And that is, to have compassion. The war on drugs is epic, the casualty numbers are climbing. Anybody can become a statistic.

  Acknowledgements

  Addiction wouldn’t have been written if it wasn’t for the encouragement from certain people.

  First and foremost. We are not friends (LOL), but your sprinting helped me when I was stuck and couldn’t write. Dzintra Sullivan.

  To my dear editor. We finally get to meet! YAY! You always make my words shine. Whenever I send you my books, I’m worried about how crappy they are. It’s the critical writer in me. And you read them and tell me exactly what you think. I love how you’re honest, and I love the magic you spin to make my words pretty. Thank you.

  My beautiful cover is designed by Kellie from Book Cover by Design. She’s been making my covers for years, and with every cover they are more beautiful. She’s truly talented.

  Tami from Integrity Formatting has always found time to take my pages, and make them perfect. Tami, I love how attentive you are, and I love how you work so closely with me to make the pages sing. Thank you.

  And my friend, Kylie from Give Me Books. I’m eternally thankful how you always make the effort for me, and spend time putting together the packets and sending them out to bloggers.

  To my proofreaders, Terry, Sam and Mandy. You ladies take time to read my books, and to find anything I may have missed. Thank you for being on call.

  To my beautiful friends who always encourage me. Bek, Lyndal, Anna, Kimmy, Jodi, Britt and Halle. You ladies are awesome. You’re so inspirational to me. Whenever I need a swift kick in the butt, you give it to me.

  And of course, to my readers. You motivate me to keep bringing you books that push the boundaries. I can’t do sweet and pretty. All I can do is me. And I hope I’ve bought you the best version of me possible.

  Thank you for reading.

  Margaret X

  Keep reading for Previews of:

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  The Gift

  I don’t recall the first time I cut myself, nor do I remember the reason why I decided to do it. I just remember the feeling.

  When the blade sliced through my skin, something was released. It wasn’t only the blood trickling out of my thigh, or the pain the blade was inflicting.

  Something inside me changed.

  The voice became quiet for a few seconds and everything seemed calm. I had no stress, no worries, no one in my head telling me how useless I was. For the few seconds after the blade ran through my skin, I was free.

  And ever since that first time, whenever life gets to be too much, I cut myself. I always feel better, calmer once I’ve cut.

  Over the years, I’ve learned how to hide it.

  When my Dad asks me how I am, I respond in the most natural way I can. “I’m great,” I usually reply and add a smile to my words to give them more authenticity.

  But, on the inside, I’m anything but great. Most of the times, I can reason with Azael (my demon), tell him he’s not real, and he’s trying to drag me down. He told me his name the first time he came to me and made promises he always breaks.

  But sometimes, my demon wins, and the only way to get him to leave me alone is to cut.

  Taking a deep breath, I stare at myself in the mirror of my bathroom. On the outside, I look like everyone else. My dirty blonde hair has shades of red in it, and my brown eyes sparkle. But all I see is dullness. Azael always tells me how
average I am, and how I’ll never amount to anything because I’m only ordinary.

  I don’t want to be anything special. I just want to blend into the walls and hope no one notices me.

  Wiping my hand across the steamed-up mirror, I stare at the blank face reflecting back at me. The blade is calling, Azael’s voice is chanting to take it out of the bottom drawer and slice through my skin.

  Do it he screams. Do it now!

  My heart races as my eyes slowly travel to the drawer.

  Do it!

  Closing my eyes for a moment, I try to silence the beast inside my head.

  Do it!

  Squatting down, I open the drawer and take out my small, black medical pouch. Slowly, I unzip it and reach in to feel for the blade. The moment my fingers touch it a bolt of electricity surges through my body.

  Do it!

  Anticipation sparks my awareness. My skin becomes hypersensitive and greedy. It demands the coolness of the blade.

  Do it!

  I lift the blade between my fingers, and my heart dances happily inside my chest.

  Lifting my left leg to balance on the bathtub, I stretch the skin taut near the crease of my thigh.

  Do it! The demon screams in my ear.

  I haven’t cut here for a while, and the old slice has healed nicely.

  I bring the blade close to my skin and shake with impatience. My mouth is dry as I move my hand closer to the skin. But I can’t be careless; I don’t want to hit an artery and bleed out.

  I need to take my time. Make it perfect. Draw in on the excitement and the rush.

  The blade makes contact with my skin, and the demon inside my head laughs with joy.

  Elation fills me.

  I let out a long breath of relief.

  The demon has been silenced.