Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict (28 page)

I knew that I
needed to get back to the guy from
Spin
, and missed being able to text Emily and Steph whenever I wanted. I hated the idea of having to ask for a pass to use a phone that belonged to me, loathed the authority being lorded over me. So I formulated a plan.

I don’t remember how I first learned that I could pick locks—it’s just something I discovered how to do at a very early age. And the locks in this particular facility were the easiest kind of all, the ones that only required a driver’s license to slip into the slit on the inside of the door, find the curve of the lock, and push it back into the door itself, thus releasing it. I examined all the door handles in the building and they seemed to all operate by this same mechanism. One night during our evening group I slipped out, pretending I needed to use the bathroom, and went downstairs to the art room, which I knew had already been locked for the day. I slid my license in and the door popped open with barely any resistance. I popped the lock on the door handle back in from the inside and gently closed it. The lock stayed firm.

The next day was family visiting hours, and even better, the weather had just turned beautiful, so I knew most people would be outside. Those of us who didn’t have visitors were just supposed to use the free time to work on our assignments, but nobody monitored our exact location in the building.

The administrative office was located in a hallway that ended with the cafeteria on one end, and looked directly into the large meeting room on the other. If you turned right at the end that looked into the meeting room, you hit the main entrance and the offices of all the therapists.

My only chance to get in the office was during these visiting hours, when everyone would be outside. Coincidentally, the therapists
had scheduled an internal meeting in their main office, directly around the corner from the room I needed to break into.

I knew I needed a lookout, and Richard was game.

“All you have to do is stand at that corner, pretend to be reading, and knock on my side of the hallway if anyone starts coming,” I told him. “Make the knocking sound like you’re just doing something casual and rhythmic, like you have a song in your head and you’re tapping out the notes.”

“No problem,” he shrugged.

“Do you want me to get yours too?” I offered. But he declined, not wanting to break the rules.
His loss
, I thought, but his will and determination to stick to the program suddenly made me feel uneasy. I buried the thoughts quickly.

The right time finally arrived. I had been pretending to read the bulletin board outside the cafeteria but was secretly waiting for the cook to finish cleaning up and head home. The lights finally went out, and I whistled to Richard, who was sitting in my sightline in the main room. Everyone was outside except for one mother and son who were sitting in the main room, but they were out of sight from the hallway. I could hear the therapists’ distant voices coming from around the corner.

Richard took his place at the end of the hallway, leaning casually in a way that he could see if anyone was coming and easily reach around and knock on my side. I pulled out my driver’s license and went to work. But nothing happened. I tried three, then four times, but each time I could feel my license bending with resistance. It was starting to tear. I kept digging away at it anyway, until I heard a faint rap to my left. I looked up and saw Richard walking back into the main room. I quickly tried to pull my license out of the door but it was stuck. My body flooded with panic as I kept wiggling it around until it finally slipped out. I followed him in and sat next to him on a couch.

“They must use a stronger lock on the offices,” I said under my breath. “I can’t get in. Fuck.”

“That sucks,” he said. “False alarm anyway, she turned the other direction and went into the bathroom.”

I felt like I was disappointing him, especially after I’d bragged about being able to get in and playing secret agent by setting him up as my lookout.

I left him in there and went back to my room, stewing inside. I stretched out on my bed and examined my license, which now had a small, crumpled dent in it, just under my photograph. I bent it back and forth. It was too floppy for a firmer office lock. I needed a credit card. But I didn’t want to risk mangling mine, since I was essentially trapped in Minnesota. I looked in my wallet, and discovered my old Condé Nast Aetna dental and health insurance cards. I had been paying for Condé Nast’s COBRA coverage ever since
Jane
folded. It was the only reason I’d been able to afford rehab, since it was covered under my continued-benefits program.

The cards were white and made out of a thick, firm, yet pliable plastic. Even better than a credit card. I picked up the dental card and headed back upstairs. Richard was still reading and I motioned to him from the doorway.

“Round two,” I whispered. “I can’t give this up, now that I’ve started.”

He took his position again and I went to work. The door still wouldn’t budge. I maneuvered the card in and out, back and forth, trying to get it to slide just enough down the sloping curve of the lock to pop it in, but it wasn’t working. I felt the card buckling in resistance, I was mangling it as I shoved harder and harder and just as I was about to give up, the door popped open.

Richard must have heard the sound because I looked up fast at him and his eyes widened. I mouthed
Be right back
and stepped inside the office, shutting the door quietly behind me. I crossed the darkened room, fishing out the two paper clips in my pocket to get at the locked file cabinet, but was relieved to see that the key was still sticking out of it.

I dropped to my knees, opened the bottom file where I’d last placed my envelope, and slipped my BlackBerry and charger inside the sleeve of my hoodie. I could hear the muffled voices of the therapists through one wall of the office. I shut the cabinet door, making sure the key was in the same position as before. I opened the office
door an inch, then another, before daring myself to stick my head out and look at Richard. He saw me and motioned me out with a thumbs-up sign. “I can’t believe that worked,” Richard said, laughing.

“I’m a very determined person,” I said.

The following Monday I
had to present my chemical-use history to my small group. I thought I’d just be reading my lists out loud, but they sat me down in front of a large easel with a massive drawing pad on it.

“Whatever you do, don’t look behind you,” one of the patients said.

It was a gorgeous day, so we were having small group outside. I leaned back in my chair, shielded my eyes from the sun, and started reading off my list. I started strong, listing the first time I’d gotten drunk, the first time I’d smoked pot, and then averaging out the frequency with which I’d continued those drugs and others through high school. By the time I’d gotten to my college years I was hunched over in my chair, mumbling out the names of drugs, the cost, the frequency. The list never ended. I kept talking and talking and talking as the sun beat down on me, baking my thighs inside my black jeans, making the crooks of my arms sweat.

My voice was trembling by the time I finished up.

“Are you ready to look behind you?” the therapist asked, when I’d finally wrapped it all up.

“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was, but felt a sense of dread creeping up on me. I turned slowly in my seat.

The huge piece of paper was almost entirely black with ink. Years and lists of drugs and dollar amounts were crammed together so tightly that barely any white space was left on the paper.
This is what the inside of my brain has become,
I thought to myself.
It used to be a clean slate
.

“Not so confident now, are you?” one of the other patients cackled.

Had I been acting overly confident? I was growing more and more upset. Group was over, and I stood up and walked over to the
easel, trying to make out the words listed on it. The writing was so tiny that the words flowed together in one continuous river of ink.

“Can I keep this?” I asked the group leader.

“Sure,” she said. “You can burn it at the bonfire tonight if you want. Sometimes that helps people.”

So lame
, I thought to myself, but suddenly I wanted nothing more than to see this receipt of my past go up in flames. I ripped the giant piece of paper off and rolled it into a poster-sized tube, tucked it under my arm, and headed back into the building.

My roommates weren’t in so I pulled my BlackBerry out from its hiding place under the mattress and checked my messages. I hadn’t heard back from the
Spin
editor yet, and the messages I’d been getting from Emily and Stephanie were brief and terse. Neither of them were too happy that I’d broken into the office. “Rather counterproductive, wouldn’t you say?” read one text. I stuck the phone back under the mattress. I tried to get angry at them, but the anger was being overridden by something more complicated. I couldn’t get that black piece of paper out of my head. It sat un-curling on the desk next to my bed and I could see the shadow of darkness inside it. The sum of me: my years of drugs, ripped from my brain and splattered onto a canvas. Everything I’d kept private was now on display in permanent marker. I couldn’t wait to see it burn.

My BlackBerry vibrated underneath me, sending a shiver of something that I was beginning to recognize as guilt through my body. I left it under the mattress. Whatever the message was, it wasn’t meant for me yet.

The fire grew quickly,
its heat and smoke being pushed by the wind directly in my face. My eyes filled with water and ash, but I didn’t budge. Everyone was sitting in a circle around the large burning pit, saying their nightly affirmations, which were essentially the same as morning affirmations—encouraging, happy thoughts only, but you could also say things you were grateful for about anything that had happened that day.

The circle started. Someone said, “I love my mom,” and the whole group shouted back, “You love your mom!”

I am somebody
.
YOU ARE SOMEBODY!

I have a family who loves me
.
YOU HAVE A FAMILY WHO LOVES YOU!

I can work this simple program! YOU CAN WORK THIS SIMPLE PROGRAM!

I’m going to succeed when I get out! YOU’RE GOING TO SUCCEED WHEN YOU GET OUT!

I’m crying, wiping my face with my sleeve. These people want and need help so badly. All of my indiscretions—the rule breaking, laughing at their art projects, the hidden pills, fighting with Susan, breaking and entering and stealing the phone, it flies in the face of everything these people are working so hard for. We are supposed to be a community of people helping each other, and each of my acts so far have been nothing but a slap in the face to their attempted sobriety. And I finally allow myself to accept my own.

It isn’t enough that I want to help them. I need to learn how to want to help myself. I can’t understand why this is an epiphany, when it now seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

The guilt I feel at not having been taking the program seriously is crushing, but for the first time since I’d gone to take care of Bobby in Tennessee, there’s a voice inside me that’s clear. Clearer even than my night alone after surgery. My conscience finally and fully emerges from its slumber and takes over. It’s my turn to speak in the circle.

“I…regret,” I say.

“YOU Regrehh…wha?”

I sense accusatory eyes facing me. These are supposed to be affirmative remarks only, and patients take this sort of deviance seriously. It messes with their warm feelings of camaraderie. I’m staring into the fire, watching embers glow. When I look up to face everyone, all I see are orange spots before my eyes.

“I’m sorry, but that’s all I feel right now,” I say.

There’s a slight pause and some disapproving murmuring, but the circle of voices move on to the person sitting to my right and the affirmations continue.

I take the rolled-up piece of poster paper that’s tucked under my arm and feed it to the fire. I slide it in underneath the logs, into the cave of embers, and watch the ends immediately begin to curl and smoke. It takes longer to ignite than I expect since there are so many layers in the cylinder, but soon, twenty years of drug use begin to disperse into smoke and rise out of the fire and into the sky. I take a stick and prod gently at the poster. There’s a flash as the whole thing finally catches fire and then the entire archive burns quickly. Soon there’s nothing left but a tube-shaped mound of ash that, using the stick, I blend in with the rest of the kindling, embers, and dirt until nothing of my history remains.

I look back up and the circle of voices has almost made it back to the beginning. The last woman to speak is someone from my small group, an extremely large woman, with sad eyes and stringy hair. She had lost custody of her child right before entering this facility because of her crack habit. She had come into the program straight from a shelter with no clothing except what was on her back. On one of our outings three of us from the small group had pooled our money and bought her some new clothes at Target.

“I am loved,” she says, softly and unsure.

“You are loved,” I answer back, my voice rising above the others, cautiously hopeful; hungry to believe the words are meant for me as well.

DESPITE MY FLAGRANT ABUSE
of Suboxone while I was in rehab, I don’t want anyone to be scared of this drug if it’s offered up as part of a rehabilitation program. The way Suboxone works is that with steady, continued use, the high quickly dissipates and replaces the craving for opiates. I don’t believe it should be a long-term option, though. The quicker you can be weaned off, the better.

When I returned home from rehab after being thrown out early due to insurance complications, I had an immediate, but thankfully brief, relapse. After my head cleared, I sought help from the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center and went on a normal Suboxone program, one that I didn’t abuse. It helped immensely. But during my relapse, I had noticed that single doses of Suboxone were now available on Candyman’s menu, which speaks volumes about the drug’s potential for abuse. What started out as a hopefully safer alternative to methadone should probably be looked at a bit more closely by those who administer and manufacture it. And I hope by now it goes without saying that if you’re a parent or friend who is helping someone go through opiate withdrawal and he has been prescribed Suboxone, you will consider being the one to administer the dose and sit with that person while the entire pill dissolves in his
mouth. It’s not like the user can hide it under his tongue, since that is exactly where it dissipates.

I have to admit, it’s still, even now, difficult for me to write these words about telling people to get help. Because there will always be a massive part of my brain that wants opiates, and feels like I’m betraying users out there by spilling so many secrets about the topic. I dread the idea of becoming some sort of go-to person on how to get clean, of being some sort of “expert” on the topic of addiction. I don’t consider myself an expert on anything except my own life. And many times, I doubt even that.

One story in particular keeps me going, though. During my research for this book, one of the experts who has been studying opiate abuse for a long time now told me a story off the record. This particular expert had become so wrapped up in his own research on the topic that he completely failed to notice that his own spouse had become utterly addicted to opiates, after discovering a ring of elderly military vets who were selling their medications to pay for other pressing life necessities. The spouse was able to hide it because
so many
people can easily conceal this type of addiction. It allows you to function normally on so many other levels. The idea that one of the nation’s leading experts in the field of opiate abuse had not been able to see that it had infiltrated his own home speaks volumes.

The problem is, we can’t treat pill addiction or dependence like any other type of drug addiction. These are medicines that help people and
must
be made available to those in need, so simply going after the drug manufacturers won’t work, unless it’s to strengthen security measures. I don’t have the answers. My only hope is that this book will make the questions clearer and a little louder. As far as the personal details of my life that I’ve revealed, I could go that whole route that so many memoirists take, and say “I did it just to be able to help that one lonely kid in Iowa who thought he was the only one out there feeling the same way.” I’ve always thought that was kind of a bullshit answer. And frankly, it’s culturally irrelevant these days. That “lonely kid” in Iowa doesn’t exist anymore. He probably has 678 Facebook friends and a YouTube following that rivals the
ratings of most satellite radio shows. I wrote this book to help myself understand what happened to my life.

That said, I
will
be pretty psyched if it helps anyone else along the way.

Joshua Kennedy Lyon
January 29, 2009