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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Word Play: Medication is not Drugs!!

Have you ever noticed how we will shop around for the right word that describes our situation, because the most graphic word reveals too much about us? there can be a number of words that could fit, and we use the most flexible one that still leaves some room  to conceal our true identity.
I'm going to tell a story that happened a few years ago. honestly,.....  by a few,...... i really mean thirty. that is a prime example of what word play is. we all do it, and sometimes even without realizing that we are, like i just did, until it slapped me in the face. that is a mild form. I'm going to show you an example of what i call extreme word play, and sometimes the words that we choose can be fatal.

by the time that i was sixteen years old i had already become a hellion. the problem with that was that i was a special kind of hellion. i was the sneaky kind. i guess that I've studied folks all my life. even at that age i pretty much knew the time that my mother would be in bed, and i played hard on that card that i was right.
i don't remember what i was out doing that night, but i know that i was up to no good. i had took a few pills, and probably smoked some weed with it. i wouldn't doubt that i had a couple beers just to wash it all down.
i waited until i knew that she was in the bed, and went inside the house. she would always leave the living room light on for me while i was out. that night i slipped inside very quiet like i always had done in the past, but that night i had a surprise waiting on me. mother was still up watching some program on the television.
naturally i knew that i had been busted, so i set down on the couch to try to play it off cool............the next thing that i realized that it had got daylight, and i was sprawled out on the couch. i look around the room, and there sat mother eye-balling me hard. i didn't realize that i was in a world of poop simply because i was a genius. i would say that a mentally handicapped person could have told that i had gone in deep this time!!
from the time that i laid my eyes on her she started to question me about my actions the night before. of coarse i tried to lie, but seeing how i had experienced my first blackout i didn't have ground to stand on. i couldn't remember anything past sitting on the couch, but mom graciously filled the details in for me.
apparently, i just talked a lot of foolishness, and passed out a while later. i started to laugh, and tried to play it off. she didn't care too much for my nonchalant attitude about it, and started to pry hard for answers. she nagged me to no end, and since i had a pill hangover i confess that i was doing Valiums, and nothing more.
she stated that she had a prescription for Valium, and it was just medication. it had never done her like that, and she wanted to know what kind of drugs that i was really doing. i stuck with my story, and she dug deeper. where did you get them?  who gave you those pills?
finally my aching head couldn't take any more of her questions, and i blurted out: " i got them from your bottle sitting on your chest!!" ..................silence fell upon the room, and mom sit there shaking with some emotion running ramped through her. she knew that i was telling the truth, because we had already settled the issue of lying about stuff earlier on in my life with a belt.
i really don't understand what happened at that time, but she stated that her Valium was medication, and it didn't do people like i was last night. she also said that she didn't want to hear another word from me until i got my story straight. then she walked out of the room.
i knew that she was hurt with herself. i also knew that she knew that i was telling the truth. even though i stood six feet tall to her five foot, and i weighed over 200 lbs, which was twice as much as she did. she would have still lit into me with a belt, and tore my ass to shreds for lying to her!!

am i saying that she taught me to use word play, because her pills were medication, and not drugs?          i don't really think so,..............i think that i had figured that one out of my own many years before. even though i was sixteen at the time. i had been dipping, and dabbling with the experimentation of drugs since i was thirteen.
needless to say,.........i was addicted to drugs at the age of thirteen. i held off on the drinking until i hit fifteen. none-the-less,.......alcohol, and drugs filled this gaping hole inside my guts. over the years my addiction problems manifested into something purely evil, and remained that way until a few years ago.

i'm not going to go into the process of what that it took me to get clean. i could write a book on that one. i will keep with the theme that i'm working with now: word play
i had been clean five years when my back got really bad. i spent a lot of time at the hospital with it. it took these modern medical scholars six months to diagnose what the problem was. even then no two could agree on one thing. i was in constant pain,.........excruciating pain at times,........you know the kind of pain where you just refuse to move.
i had been honest up front with my primary care physician about my drug history, and all the things that was wrong prior to coming to him.  the first thing that he did was prescribe me narcotics for the pain. i started to speak up, and then it hit me. " this is not drugs,.......it's medication!!" have you ever noticed that deception starts with ourselves? in seconds i had deceived myself into believing that lie that i was telling myself.
i hadn't done any drugs in the last twelve years, and once i popped that first dose in my mouth it was on again. that same old good feeling started to fill my body, and immediately i started looking for ways to get better and stronger. I've always had a high tolerance for drugs, so i began to take them by the hand fulls. i would take so many that i would become comatose, and that was really good on my back, because i couldn't move. that is the only way that any drugs has ever eased this back pain that i still have today.
i have a great lady friend who has had her issues the same as mine. we often talked about staying clean, and living sober. one day she accused me of being in a relapse, because of the medication that i was taking. even-though i knew from the bottom of my heart that she was right, i did my best to blow her off, as being confused. i knew that she knew the real deal, but i wasn't ready to admit it at that time.
actually,.......this is the first time that i have admitted any of this, and i chose the whole world as my sounding board.        you see,.........a little white lie, or a hidden secret can devastate my life. i might not be the same as the rest of the world, but at least I'm figuring out what works for me. i hope that y'all realize what a nasty sounding words drug addict, and alcoholic are, but there not near as bad when you don't feed that craving!!

i was in as big a mess as i was when i had got clean. with one exception, and that was that i was seriously in pain. i lost everything over this whole deal. job, home, life, and nearly all my personal belongings. i might as well just go ahead and say all, because all was left was a few clothes that i could carry.
i started drinking again, and i justified that with the fact that the alcohol poured on top of the drugs made them work better. it honestly did, but i had a history, and didn't need to fuel it back up.

to make a long story shorter,..........I'm still on that narcotic medication, but i tend to take them like they were prescribed. every now and then i will double up on them, but not often. i no longer pour beer on top of them to make the effects stronger neither. mostly,........i just bare with the pain, and life another day!!

can you see where a simple case of word play nearly totally destroyed my life again?    the good thing is that it didn't, and i have yet,.........another chance to get it right!!

                                               ...............much love

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