I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, Faith, I’m sure you were told that we don’t normally take clients into the program straight off the street unless they go through a telephone screening first.”
“Yes, ma’am, Mr. Macer told me. So I am very grateful. Because if he would’ve turned me away, I can’t say whether I’d be alive to see tomorrow,” I replied, and then my eyes became extremely watery. Before I could catch it, a single teardrop fell from my left eye. Mrs. Williams handed me a Kleenex from her tissue box. I thanked her and wiped my eyes.
“When was the last time you got high?” she asked.
“I had a pill of dope about two hours ago.”
“You do know that you’re going to go through the whole withdrawal thing, right?”
“Yes, I know. But don’t you guys give out meth pills to help with the vomiting and the aches and pains?”
“No, I’m sorry. We are not a detox center. Every addict that comes through our doors has to go through the withdrawal process on their own.”
Hearing Mrs. Williams tell me that they weren’t going to give me any meth pills gave me a really bad taste in my mouth. I started to get up from that chair and get to stepping. I mean to go through a withdrawal period was very painful. It was not a pretty sight. I sat there in silence for a brief moment and thought about whether I wanted to go through all that excruciating pain and the fucking vomiting. Trying to kick heroin wasn’t a fucking joke.
Mrs. Williams looked into my eyes and said, “Are you having second thoughts?”
I hesitated for a second, and then I said, “No, I can do this.”
“Good for you.” She smiled and then she looked back down to my paperwork. “Oh, yeah, did Mr. Macer tell you that we take you through a twelve-step program?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he tell you how it works?”
“No. He told me you were going to take me through that.”
“OK, well I will explain it to you. But first I need to know if you are serious about getting treatment.”
“Yes, I am.”
“How serious are you?”
“Mrs. Williams, I used to be an assistant principal at the Performing Arts School in the city of Norfolk. I owned a two-story home in Virginia Beach and had purchased a brand new Jaguar off the show room floor, and now all of those things are gone. I even had a good husband and a beautiful little girl who both walked away from me after I got hooked on heroin. So to answer your question, Mrs. Williams, I’ve been ready. I am so tired of the way my life is right now. And not only that, I want my family back. I swear I can’t go another day knowing that those drugs are keeping me from being with my family. It’s killing me. So I got to get clean,” I explained to her as tears continued to fall down my face.
Mrs. Williams sat there and listened to me pour out my heart. When I was done she asked me a series of questions and then she asked me to sign a few documents indicating that she went over the rules and regulations of the program. Soon thereafter she welcomed me into the program and showed me around the facility.
After the tour of the facility was over, she showed me to my room. I noticed immediately that I had a roommate because of the other twin size bed that sat against the wall. Before I could make reference to it, Mrs. Williams said, “You will be room mating with Denise Adams. She’s been in the program for a little over sixty days and she’s doing great. I’m sure she will be instrumental during your treatment here.”
“I’m sure she will too,” I said, and then I took a seat on the edge of my bed. I looked at the clock on the wall and noticed that it was a quarter to six. My stomach was rumbling like crazy. “What time is dinner?” I wanted to know.
“Dinner is served in the dining hall every day at six thirty. “
“Good, because I am starving.”
Mrs. Williams smiled and patted me on the back. “You’ll be fine,” she told me and then she turned to leave. “See you in the morning.”
“OK,” I replied, and then I sat there and stared off into space. I started reflecting back on my life and how I got to this point. I swear, I made some bad choices.
The Candy Shop Part 2 Kiki Swinson
The Battle Just Begun
Shortly after I ate dinner in the dining hall, I went back to my room, got undressed, and took a hot shower. I didn’t have a change of clean clothes, so I had to put on my same dirty clothes. It was about ninety degrees outside, and since I had not had on any deodorant, my clothes were pretty smelly, especially underneath my armpits. I wanted to call my in-laws and tell them the good news about my road to recovery, and that I needed them to bring me some clothes, but I decided against it. I figured if I called them now, they wouldn’t take me seriously. But if I waited to call them after going though two weeks of recovery, then they’d believe that I wanted to change my life.
As I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, my roommate entered the room. This was the first time I had laid eyes on her. She said hello as soon as our eyes met.
“Hello,” I replied.
She walked by my bed and sat on the edge of hers. I turned my head toward her. “So, you must be Faith,” she said.
“Yep, that’s me. And you must be Denise,” I chimed in, and then I looked at her from head to toe. Denise wasn’t the pretty type you’d see in one of those music videos. OK, well, I didn’t look like one of those chicks on the music videos either, but before I became a full fledged heroin junkie, I could’ve gotten a booty-shaking job at the snap of a finger.
But, Denise, on the other hand, wasn’t your feminine type. She was an average looking chick sporting a mo-hawk hair cut. The hair was completely shaved on both sides of her head while the hair in the center of her head was dyed blond. She was also on the chunky side. If I had to guess, I would bet money that she was every bit of two hundred twenty-five pounds, even though her clothes fit kind of baggy. She was definitely your typical man trapped inside a woman’s body. But what was so unique about her was that she had positive energy surrounding her, despite the sports bra she was wearing to hide her huge breasts and the body piercings she had in her tongue, the right side of her bottom lip, and over her right eyebrow.
“What’s your drug of choice?” she asked me.
“Heroin.”
“Welcome to the club. I used to be on heroin too.”
“How long?” I wanted to know.
“Twelve years.”
“Wow! That’s a long time. How old are you?”
“Forty-four. And you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“How long you been using?”
“A couple years now.”
“Is this your first rehab?”
“Yeah.”
Denise sighed heavily. “Get ready, because you’re about to go on the rockiest ride of your life.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said.
Denise got up from her bed and walked over to her TV. After she turned it on she looked back at me. “Gotta favorite show you would like to watch?”
“Denise, I can’t even tell you the last time I sat down and watched TV.”
Denise picked up her remote and started sifting through channels. Then she took a seat back on the edge of her bed. “Are you married?” she asked.
“I used to be. After I got hooked on drugs and started hanging in the Huntersville neighborhood of Norfolk, my husband divorced me and filed for full custody of our daughter.”
“Drug addiction will definitely tear a family apart.”
“Yeah. But I am going to get my family back. Because as soon as I’m done with my treatment, I’m going back to my husband to see if we can make this thing right.”
“What if it’s too late?”
“Oh, it’s not too late. My ex-husband loves me. And so does my daughter. As soon as he sees that I’ve gotten my mess together, he’s going to welcome me back with open arms.”
Denise sighed. “OK. If you say so,” she commented and then she changed the subject. “If you need anything like some soap, deodorant, or just a clean T-shirt, just let me know.”
I looked down at the dingy tank top I had on and quickly took Denise up on her offer. “Can I borrow a T-shirt?” I asked.
She smiled and stood. “Sure you can,” she told me as she walked over to her locker and grabbed out a few garments. After she finished going through her things she pulled out a couple of shirts and two pairs of men’s blue boxer shorts. “Now I know I’m a few pounds heavier than you, so these T-shirts and boxer shorts will be a little baggy on you, but you’ll be all right.”
I sat up in my bed and took the things she handed to me. I smiled at her and thanked her. “Oh, you don’t have to thank me. I’m just doing what my old roommate did for me when I first came into the program,” she told me and then she walked back over to her locker.
I got up from the bed and stripped myself of my old, dirty clothing. After I slipped on a pair of Denise’s boxer shorts and a T-shirt, I felt really clean. At that moment I wanted to throw my old dingy clothes into the nearest trashcan, but Denise told me to throw them in her laundry basket and she would wash them with her clothes in the morning.
Denise and I chatted some more after I changed and got back into my bed. She told me about her life before she came into the program. She told me about the woman she had out on the streets that introduced her to drugs and how that same woman was still out there using. She also told me that her family accepted the fact that she was gay. They just hated the women she had in her life. All of her women were gutter trash chicks who hung out at gay bars and either had an alcohol addiction or a drug addiction.
“How long you been gay?” I asked her.
“I was always a tomboy, even when I was in middle school. I always played men sports and ran track while I was in high school. So when my parents sent me off to college, I was able to spread my wings and be myself.”
“I take it that’s when you came out of the closet.”
Denise nodded. “Yep, that’s exactly when I came out. My first girlfriend’s name was Liz Carter. She stayed off campus but we had two of the same classes, so we saw each other a lot.”
“Where did you go to college?”
“I’m originally from northern Virginia, so when my parents sent me down this way to attend Hampton University, I went buck wild. But you want to know something that’s so crazy? I didn’t start using drugs here. I started drinking like crazy and smoking a little bit of pot here and there, but I didn’t start using heroin until I went back home.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. But you know what?”
“What?”
“This is the fifth rehab center I’ve been to for treatment, and I can say that I am finally done with using drugs. They were dragging me to my grave very fast, and my parents were being affected by it. I come from a middle class family of college graduates. My mother is a retired high school counselor and my dad is a retired chief of police. So not only was I hurting them, but I was bringing shame to them.”
“Wow! So this recovery isn’t just for you. It’s for your parents too.”
“Yep, it sure is,” she agreed.
Denise and I continued to chat about our lives and how heroin stripped us of everything that we’d once claimed was ours. After about an hour into our conversation my body started aching really bad. And then the aching pains in my back and stomach made me want to regurgitate the food I’d eaten just a short while ago.
When I felt my stomach muscles rupturing, I jumped up from my bed and ran straight for the trash can near Denise’s TV. Without hesitating, I buried my head into the trashcan and regurgitated every single food particle I had inside my stomach. Denise saw how pitiful I looked and rushed over to help me. The only thing she could do for me was massage my back. There was absolutely nothing else she could do. This was the first faze of my heroin withdrawal, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get through.
After ten minutes of constant vomiting, I had nothing left in my stomach to regurgitate, so Denise escorted me back to my bed and helped me lie down. Not even an hour later I started experiencing hot flashes and heavy perspiration. The sweat from my glands started filtering from my body very rapidly. Denise stayed up with me part of the night as I rocked my body back and forth. I tried to get out of bed to leave the facility over a dozen times, but Denise wouldn’t let me go. “I gotta’ get out of here. I can’t go another minute feeling like this.” I cried as I pushed my way by Denise. Denise wouldn’t budge. She pressed all of her body weight against me. I tried to fight her, but she blocked ever blow I threw her way. It finally sunk in my head that all my escape efforts were useless. Denise had no intentions of letting me out of her sight. She knew what it felt like to go through a heroin withdrawal. So, if she’d allowed me to quit then I had defeated the purpose of being there.
It seemed like forever but it took me almost seventy-two hours to detox, and I owed it all to Denise. She was the one who talked me into staying. I knew I could not have gone through that ordeal without her. She was a gem in her own right, and I would forever be indebted to her.
Once my detox was complete, I was ready to start the program. We had a morning NA group meeting, an afternoon one-on-one session with our drug counselor, and an AA group meeting with outside volunteers. This was our schedule three days out of the week. The other two days we had to attend substance abuse classes where we talked about drug addictions, took random tests, and watched movies. When we watched one movie I learned that drug addiction not only affect the drug user, but it affect family and friends. Coming to this place was the best thing I could have ever done.