Reality Bites
addiction, substance abuse, perscription pills, recovery, alcoholics anonymous, fibromyalgia, memoir
Published on:
Feb. 14, 2008, 10:30pmWord Count:
1765Work Description
A memoir piece about the years I was addicted to Perscription Pills as a result of having Fibromyalgia and other chronic diseases. The story also covers the years of recovery and the impact this had on my children.
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of a second chance with her and have been doing my utmost not to
blow it since.
Each day I open my eyes and my consciousness floods in. I remember my aloneness – even my dog is gone. I stumble out of bed and head for the coffee maker. As my thoughts become clearer, it is a fight to rise to the surface, to not sink beneath. Depression has made it’s thumbprint on me as clearly as digital code. I know its intimate allure and ultimate danger. So each day is an acknowledgment that I choose to celebrate life, that I will live it to the best of my ability, that I will take on the challenge and see it out. Depression nibbles at the corners of your consciousness, settles over you in a suffocating blanket, pulls you into the nothingness of its embrace. For the addict, Depression is often a constant companion – it is for me and I suspect it will always be. However, I am learning, albeit slowly, that I can choose to be happy, and grateful, and willing to grow spiritually and emotionally.
There are so many, like me, who live in the folds of life, in those creases where the sides are pressed so tightly against each other there is no room to breathe. They are the ones everyone would like to forget, but can’t. They are the ones who take up too many support services, escalating medical costs. They are the ones the family hates to come home to, would love to escape, desperately want a safe place to put.
That guy stumbling erratically down the side of the road, his shirt on backwards, trying in his confusion to make it to the bar where he knows he can get free drinks? . . . He is one such as me. The Eleanor Rigby type with hair haphazardly pulled into a pony tail, wearing a ratty bathrobe that hasn’t been cleaned in quite awhile, curled up in a corner of her couch, downing more than a half gallon of wine a night? She is my best friend. That one in handcuffs, the police are putting into the back of their car, slurring his words and swearing at the cops? . . .An intimate acquaintance. The woman furtively hunched in her car, outside the package store, waiting for it to open? . .I was almost her. The teenager with the hose to her mouth, the other end attached to the open spicket of a keg?. . .Hell, all my friends in high school were just like her. The woman who traded drugs for motherhood, abandoning her children to fend for themselves?. . . that was me.
How could you, you say? Nobody chooses this path – it chooses you. It is seductive, subtle, insidious, and mysterious. You start off more or less like everyone else, using drinks or drugs as they present themselves. They are recreational, an added pleasure to enhance an experience. For the socially repressed, shy and insecure, it is the ticket to fitting in, for repressing feelings you would rather do without anyway. To those who live in fear, for those few moments, peace comes. The chemicals abate, just a little while, the pain of insecurity and the fears and tortures which fill your life. If you don’t feel like the conquering hero, you at least feel you are like everyone else.
Trust me – when you are an addict, you never, ever feel you are like everyone else. You are a blight on the landscape of life. You fill your days with rancor and your nights with self-hatred. You are an accursed virus maligning all you touch, all you hold dear. All you want is to hide from those feelings for just a little while
And then there are the reactions of your family and friends to your addiction. They try so hard to understand. They think their love and well-meaning will make all the difference, at least for the first hundred times. They pack the addict’s bags and send them to rehab, assuming responsibility for the addict’s life – paying bills, caring for children, making
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Thank you for sharing this story with us. I really enjoyed your imagery. The imagery in the two paragraphs below really stood out to me.
There are so many, like me, who live in the folds of life, in those creases where the sides are pressed so tightly against each other there is no room to breathe. They are the ones everyone would like to forget, but can’t. They are the ones who take up too many support services, escalating medical costs. They are the ones the family hates to come home to, would love to escape, desperately want a safe place to put.
He is one such as me. The Eleanor Rigby type with hair haphazardly pulled into a pony tail, wearing a ratty bathrobe that hasn’t been cleaned in quite awhile, curled up in a corner of her couch, downing more than a half gallon of wine a night? She is my best friend. That one in handcuffs, the police are putting into the back of their car, slurring his words and swearing at the cops? . . .An intimate acquaintance
I would have to agree with Presley it is wonderful that you are so honest with your situation, but there is room for more detail.
Thanks again!
First of all, let me say I am touched by your honesty and sincerity. They flow through the writing and give it emotional power. Thank you very much for sharing.
Before you read my critique, let me say that I feel guilty writing it in that I will never have your experience, so I am not qualified to critique. A work such as this, no matter how it is written (and this is written well, mind you), has truth behind it, and tragedy. I have immense respect for the topic, and the style and form seem secondary to the message, which is important regardless. I hope you will understand my decision to limit myself to a discussion of style and form, and know that the discussion is a world apart from the most important part of the story; my critique is ONLY of these things, not your life.
I don't have a lot of work with confessional pieces, so take my ideas with a grain of salt. As usual, I'll go through the topics one by one and touch on each.
Tone/Structure
I want to tell you that I love the narrator (you!). She is personably and human. Even though I haven't had her problems, I feel like I know her, like she's a relative or a friend, and I understand her troubles. Your conversational style and casualness keep the story light in light(no pun intended) of the heaviness of the topic. On that note, good show!
I did feel, sometimes, though, that this mood was interrupted. The narrator felt like she was holding back, not telling me everything. Lots of little details were skipped; emotions were cut out in favor of description. For such an honest narrator, I wanted to see more of the person. More of the personality. I want to know what made her recover so fast and well (my experience with many folks is often that they struggle through multiple rehabs).
In short, I want to see the richness of detail and description that the truth of this story lends itself too.
Structure
I know this is kind of a stream-of-consciousness piece, but I felt slightly jumped about reading it. I think because it is such an emotional topic, it just spills out onto the page uncontrollably, and it's hard to sort out where to put all the feelings (this is why I can never write about how I feel personally, anyway. Yay projection!). It loosely follows chronological order, but I think a more rigid following would help it.
There are many cutscenes to the author's emotions, feelings, etc. It often switches perspective to the daughter/family. I have two suggestions on how to tie this in:
1) make it a short but emotion-filled piece, trading perspective changes for the author's viewpoint on her family members at the time. Don't let the narrator tell more than she knows at that point in time(ie, about the daughter's reactions) and focus in on her perceptions and feelings.
2) expand it into a much larger story, with scenes and dialog and no description, just happening. Flashes/cutscenes are extremely appropriate, given how disorderly addiction makes you. Remember that if you decide to go this way, there will be a little fiction in your story, because nobody remembers that well. Don't worry about it. If you do this, you can do some really cool stuff with reliability of the narrator and lying narrators, having the reader discover along with you the drug addiction's problems.
I feel privileged to have you read my critique and to have read your work.
Eek, I'm really sorry about the giant wall of text. That's what I get for using a terminal based web browser. Message/write/email me if you need the nice formatted version, I won't repost it because that would be Karma-spoofing.
there is beauty in that honesty
and honestly i find written beautifully
I love the honesty and think you have some great images. I've been trying to write more honestly myself. I think it could move and flow better though. This can help build up and also make it more gripping.
This is the one thing I could get in the box the right way, I just got on here tonight and don't know how to use things yet, but there are a lot of instances like this where it would be cool to see some more detail. Get descriptive of it. Another instance is where you mention family that can't understand. These types of things are great jumping off points and could be worked more.
Thanks for letting me comment.