A Junkie Named June Bug (16)

In the last few weeks of the last year of my active addiction at twenty three into twenty four, things got the worst they've ever been, just when I didn't think it possible to get any worse. Things not only got worse, but they got substantially worse every day than the previous hell on earth before it. It's utterly impossible to express the depth of despair that I have now sank into, but even worse is the knowledge that despite the depths of hell where I live on a daily basis, every single day is now undoubtedly more torturous than the last.

The methadone clinic implemented a new rule in which you cannot be on benzos in addition to your daily methadone dose. They gave me a choice to either go off the xanax or go off the methadone. I wasn't abusing the xanax, and actually took them as prescribed, but I'd never tried to go more than a couple days in a few years without taking them, due to my crippling anxiety. I assumed since it was the one medication I hadn't been abusing in fourteen years, that it wouldn't be too difficult to stop taking them, in terms of withdrawal. Oh my fucking God, was I wrong. I told the clinic I would go off the xanax, and I intended to, because surely nothing was worse than going off the methadone and it's unfathomable, horrid hell of withdrawal precipitated by discontinuance. I found a worthy adversary in xanax to prove me wrong.

I didn't miss the xanax much myself, but my body sure as fuck did. I started to reach a point where Aaron stopped calling the paramedics every night for me altogether, because it got to the point that they just told him there was nothing to be done for me. When I stopped taking the xanax, my body began to seize so regularly, that Aaron moved out of our apartment saying he couldn't bare to watch me die anymore with nothing to be done. Selfish? Maybe, but I didn't blame him. Hell, if I could escape my life, and this junk body and mind I've been relegated to rot inside like he had the choice to do, I would. I can't though, and this is where I find myself. Because my body couldn't sustain going off the xanax cold turkey, the methadone clinic started tapering my previous dose down from two hundred milligrams, the most the clinic was allowed to administer. I couldn't go off either of them cold turkey, so I was forced to go off both of them at a drastically reduced rate until my body was in near complete failure altogether. Aaron would watch me seize uncontrollably every night, and he'd get so scared after a couple hours in and out of consciousness seizing that he'd call the paramedics. They should have taken me to the hospital and had anti seizure medication administered like they would have for anyone else. Once they found out I was just a junkie by their definition, they didn't treat me at all, and even told Aaron he could stop calling because the next time they wouldn't be able to do anything either. If you remember, junkies don't get special treatment. We don't get any treatment.

I was at a point where I was so sick and for all intents and purposes nearly dead, that I barely had the strength to put on clothing to go to the methadone clinic, and then sit in the car for the drive to get heroin. I had to though, or my body that felt as though it couldn't possibly sustain any more trauma, would be forced to do so. I still couldn't enter treatment without healthcare. I was already being forced every day to sustain more till I felt anything, absolutely anything, would be better than this. Not only was every day even worse than the previous one, but I already knew I would be even sicker and more hopeless tomorrow, every day while they tapered me off, than I was today. I often still have nightmares of this time. Aaron would tell me later that he used to pray I'd only have one seizure on the fifteen minute drive to the clinic, than the several he could barely bare to watch when he only picked me up for the clinic and our dope run now after moving out of our apartment.

The day June Bug saved me, a second time, I had a horrific injury the night before. I wasn't answering the door when Aaron arrived for our methadone clinic ride, and so he used his old key to open the door. He found me still seizing on a bed of shattered, stained red glass that was a result of falling into the mirror while seizing. He found me seizing in a pool of my own blood, some dried and some wet, indicating I'd been there for quite awhile and that the first many cuts on my face weren't the only wounds. He picked me up mid seize to avoid me crushing my already bloodied and cut face into the stained glass mirror fragments and the existing puncture wounds. The worst one, was the gaping two inch diagonal cut over the arch of my left eyebrow that still exists as a brutal scar this many years later. There were cuts over my entire face, and also a bloodbath to show for it. There was so much in fact, that Aaron was initially concerned that I may have been dead from choking on my own blood puddle. He was utterly horrified, and still shook on the ride to get heroin, and I just figured this was it for me, so I may as well put myself out of my misery and do all the dope we bought in one dose, instead of incrementally.

This is where I found myself when June Bug saved my life, a second time. The second time was almost a replica of the first, minus the previous night's accident, and she saved my life as much this time as the last time. At least there'd be literally no one, besides maybe Aaron, that would see me in a casket in this condition, and that was somehow a comforting thought as much as could qualify as a comforting thought in my present life. No one cared about me, I had no family anymore, and I knew no one would attend my funeral. The realm of what I started considering comforting, based on the hell that was my life, obviously became drastically skewed in comparison to comfort's real and true definition that I hadn't known maybe ever, but certainly less now than ever before if I did.

As soon as I pressed the plunger of the syringe into my vein, everything went black. Everyone in the house cleared out, everyone but June Bug. They all took off running, because the last place you want to be is in a drug den when a dead girl is called in. She brought me back to life, but the person I knew as Andrea was dead. I was so far down, and so much less than a person anymore that I resigned to die. I filled another shot, and I pressed the plunger down into my vein again. I didn't die that time, but for all intents and purposes I was already dead.

Shortly after that day on my twenty fourth birthday, I got the call that changed everything. I was accepted into treatment, and I was so beyond broken that I just kept telling the representative that I felt buried and lost down a dark hole that I didn't feel it possible to claw my way out of it. I'll never forget what he said probably because it was the first time in my entire life since I was nine years old that I'd been treated like a human being when it came to my disease. He said, I'm going to throw you a light right now. He didn't know it then and neither did I, but that meager bit of hope and the knowledge that hope could exist, was the real light I needed. This ray of hope would be enough to transform my survival into life, and illuminate an entire world that I didn't know could exist.