PuertoNuevo

When I would walk around the streets I began to think that everyone was getting high. I began to feel like getting high and being high – was normal. It wasn't until I had been clean for almost 60 days that reality began to sink in. I wasn't normal. The people whose lives weren’t consumed by sex and drugs were actually the normal ones. I was the freak. I was the scary one that people would see on the street; eyes glazed, worn, haggard, and thin. When I first started using it was just to get high and have intense sex for hours and hours. Slowly though I began to slide into a surrealistic world; a world lacking morals or even a conscience. My life became a cycle of getting high, having sex then recover from getting high and having sex - then repeat. I was lost and floundering in a vast sea. Only occasionally would the swells of life lift my head high enough so I could see the horizon of reality. My delusional life would then pull at my feet making my head go under the water where I would hold my breath and look around at a world I didn't belong in.
I used to be a happy, calm, caring and supportive man. But as my addiction to meth took hold the person that I was began to peel away like a bad onion. I became short with everyone, and impatient with everything. Anger grabbed a hold of me like a tiger whose claws ripped my flesh. Blood containing the anger, despair and sorrow of my life pooled around me. I laid in my own wet, red self-pity. It was like I was looking at a bad movie but I couldn’t leave the theater. I was trapped by my own distorted sense of reality. It was like eating hot peppers; as long as I kept eating it was bearable – it was only when I stopped that the burning became unbearable. I had to keep eating to keep the burning pain away.
My slide into meth addiction started with the death of my soul mate Rolando. It could have just as easily been divorce, the death of a parent, being thrown out of my house because I was gay or any other significant emotional event that left me lost or floundering. Rolando’s death filled me with so much sorrow and despair that I could barely breathe. My heart which was so full of love and happiness stopped beating becoming dark and heavy. The first guy I had sex with when I was able to pull myself out of bed brought a bowl of meth. Being high made it easier to cover my despair. The mask I wore was meth. Behind the mask was the ugly face of the elephant man. For a while, it was enough for the physical pleasure, to dilute my pain. As time went on though, I began to seek the intimacy I missed and craved. The problem was I was looking for a rose in crabgrass. I was searching for the shining city on the hill in a deserted wasteland. And I was crippled with my now, own delusional life. I wanted what I couldn't give and giving what nobody wanted. It would take me four more years before I realized that I could never again have what I had lost if meth still had its talons in me.
I used to say that I was a moral tweaker. Even in the throes of my addiction I held on as tight as I could to my morals. The solidity of my words were important to me until the very end. In fact, more so than anything, the slow eroding of my principals and humanity drove me to defeat my addiction. The high standards I had set for myself as a human being began to wash away with every bowl. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore and say I was a good person. I was scarred, gaunt with loss and my words which I had held so high began to evaporate with every bowl drifting away with the smoke of meth.
I'm on my way to recovery now. It hasn't been easy and I still have a long way to go to climb out of the abyss I had built for myself. Each day though I get a little better and with every day that passes, a little stronger. I used to laugh at but now I understand the terms; “a day at a time” and, “you have to do whatever it takes.” At least now I can look in the mirror and see a glimpse of the person I use to be and that - makes me smile!