Liquid Handcuffs

In 1978 I was a skilled machinist making machine parts for the US Navy’s national security.  I was trained to make parts for the F-A-18, the V-22 Osprey, the Seawolf Submarine, nuclear triggers, and parts for NASA’s satellite. One day, five years into my career, I fell at work breaking four disks in my back. I was put on workman’s comp and sent to quite a few doctors. All of them provided me a shit load of painkillers that my insurance covered. I took six Percocet a day for five years. Eventually, the case was settled and I walked away with $55K. They also discharged me from all of my doctors and my now five-year habit of opiates. That’s when I met heroin.  I was twenty-nine. I first I snorted it. It wasn’t too long after I was shooting it. From there I was hooked. I didn’t drive and I didn’t live near where I coped, so I had to start taking the bus down ‘The Way’. One day I met a guy at the back of the bus whom I saw frequently. As we started talking I asked him where he was going? He told me he was on his way to the clinic. I asked, ‘what kind of clinic?” He said a “methadone clinic.” I went home and researched about it and got the impression that methadone would save me from impending doom. Now that I look back, everything seemed to happen in reverse.

I started drinking methadone for the first week and found that it did help me physically, but not mentally. I still had trouble passing the where I used to cop on the way to the clinic because it was in the same area as the dope. As I got to know people there, I found access to just about anything I wanted waiting in line with me to get our juice. I had to go seven days a week.  I went every day and fell deeper and deeper into addiction. Instead of getting better, I got worse. I went to the clinic originally to get help and instead I met a fist full of addicts and a handful of ignorant therapists that could care less if I lived or died. For the next thirteen years, I went year-round without fail putting methadone and the lifestyle that came with it in front of everything including my family.

Most of my life has been spent alone. Before my addiction to heroin both my wife and I worked. After my accident, I was medicated so heavily on dope and other drugs, that even after my settlement and physical therapy I became unemployable. I spent most of my settlement on dope. When that was eventually gone I was left to con, cheat, steal and manipulate every day just to get a fix either before or after the clinic. After my early mornings, I would come home, nod out on the couch, burn holes in my clothes and stay that way until the following morning when I had to do it all over again.

During these years my wife was a terrible enabler. She didn’t want to accept that I was an addict and even worse a legal hostage to methadone. My daughter was only two years old when I started using it. Throughout her entire childhood and well into her teenage years all she saw was an angry and impatient father. We rarely had any communication. I never showed my daughter any affection and she was too scared of the monster I had become. That was twenty-two years ago.

A neighbor I had known for ten years who lived above me was also a dope fein. We had become like brothers over the years. I still consider him my brother today. He had also gotten onto methadone but jumped off in a year onto another opiate blocker called Suboxone. One day we were hanging out and he mentioned how well the Suboxone was working for him. I was envious of his freedom. We were close as neighbors and even closer friends. I trusted if worked for him maybe it could work for me. He even offered to take me to his doctor and get me in. He also said he’d sit with me and my family through the initial horrible detox and transition which would last about three days because methadone and Suboxone don’t mix!  I was hesitant at first because I was scared to death of change. But after thirteen years of hell, I said, at this point the only option left was death.

I followed the doctor's procedure and my neighbor, my wife, and even my daughter stood by my side during those three days until I was stable. Within two years of leaving the methadone clinic, my anger dissipated to almost nothing. I am still currently taking Suboxone, but being away from the lifestyle of a methadone clinic has changed me profoundly.

I might not be the book's definition of sobriety. I don’t attend 12-step meetings, but then again I fear for my life ever going back to the way I used to live. I’ll admit I’m an isolator; I always have been. Coming off of methadone was the greatest thing to have happened to me, and to my family who were as beaten up from the clinic as I was. Just not having to stand in a line and report to a window every morning is a freedom that only another hostage who broke free themselves would understand. My loving wife who has stuck by my side for almost three decades deserves the credit for why I am alive, and when she fought for her life after being diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer I thank God that I could be there for her. My daughter who will be twenty-three soon just graduated from Dean’s List from Jefferson University Hospital and is currently studying arterial ultrasound. She has never done drugs or smoked cigarettes. I can’t tell you how proud I am that she never followed in my footsteps. I was her example of what happens when you get strung out on drugs. You lose everything and everyone you love the most, even if you see them every day. It was just a short time ago I would pray to die in my sleep. Today, I close my eyes at night in peace knowing I have nowhere to be in the morning.