Up From Rock Bottom

It wasn't one moment, any one thing that I could point to and say, yeah, that's when I knew I needed to get sober. There were a lot of moments. It was one long moment. Crying so hard that I'd wake up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. Maxing out my mother's credit cards to buy stereo equipment, then selling it on the streets. Driving getaway cars to help my friends pull large scale shoplifting heists. Losing forty pounds because I'd be too busy getting high to eat for days. But mostly it was the shame, the shame and the pain. And the emptiness inside me.

All I really wanted to do was belong. I came to Wilmington fresh out of college, I went to Bowman College, this little school in rural Pennsylvania. Amish country. Right over the Delaware border, two counties away from where Andrew Wyeth lives. In the same town where I went to school, there was a big cemetery located on the site of a Civil War battlefield. And before that, it had been a Revolutionary War battlefield! That's the only place I've ever seen ghosts. Or thought I did. It was late one night, and who's to say what we really saw, because we were all so high. But if there's anyplace you'd be likely to spot some ghosts, it'd be there.

Nobody I went to college with was cool. And neither was I. Same thing with high school. Not that's it's easy to be cool at a Catholic girl's school in West Virginia. I was a nerd, big time. That's why I liked chemistry so much. In college, there were people who were sort of cool, in their own way, because they had the guts to do things they wanted to do, and not care about what other people thought of them. But there was nobody at Bowman quite like the Wilmington scenesters.

When I first came down here, it was to go to graduate school for chemistry at UD. That lasted all of four months, until I actually flunked out. I didn't think you could really flunk out of graduate school. I know plenty of people who have been in graduate school for like, ten years or more. They let those jokers stay, why couldn't they let me? But I guess it requires some bare minimum of participation, instead of not going to class and not doing your work. It's hard to think about going to class when you're spending $400 a night on crack cocaine. You might stop doing drugs for 5 or 6 days, then turn around and spend another $600 on crack, just to get caught up. When you lose track of time so you can't put 30 days together, that's when you know you've got a problem.

So I had heard all about Wilmington's music scene, and how there were lots of cool bands around here. The first time I went out, it was to see a cover band play at the Hideaway. I was, like, hello? Where's this famous music scene? Somebody heard me bitching and said I should go check out Lucky's, "y'know, the punk rock pizza parlor." I walked through the door, saw the cute guy behind the counter with the long green dreadlocks throwing pies, and I was hooked. The people there just seemed so cool. They were hip without trying, and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to feel like I belonged. For a long time, I thought I had made it, that I was one of them. But in the end, I realized I wasn't. And it wasn't such a bad thing.

But all the same, I was the one who got shit from people for supposedly turning my boyfriend into a crack head! He worked at Lucky's, in fact, I met him the first day I walked in there. He was a bottom dweller, the kind of person who can exist in a perpetually wasted state and still function, make it to work the next day, do just enough to somehow get by. I couldn't do that. I would be floating in and out of daily life right next to him, feeling myself going under and unable to scream, unable to stop myself from sinking deeper into a black hole of despair. I mean, this guy was doing cocaine for ten years before he ever met me! He was partying when I was still in middle school! And somehow I'm the negative influence.

I admit, when things got really bad, I took it to further extremes than he did. He'd tell me he was going to bed, and I'd say, okay, I'm going to go score another $200 worth of blow! And then I'd wake up the next morning in a crack house somewhere near West 4th Street. He'd be out of his mind, calling the police, telling them his girlfriend had been kidnapped, silly shit like that. I was never in danger, although I did so some things in those houses for coke I'm not particularly proud of, like trading blow jobs. But I never turned tricks to earn money for drugs, like some of my friends. I used to drive a couple of my girlfriends to meet their tricks, and we'd split the money after they were done.

Or we'd get into these huge arguments in Mitch's Tavern, because he'd refuse to give me any more money. The funny thing was, he'd give me money if he knew I was going to buy drugs for the both of us. He just didn't like me getting high without him.

Eventually we broke up. I had to get away from everything about my old life here, my dealers, my so-called friends, all the people, all the places, everything that made me want to get high. For a long time, I thought that meant I had to give up music, too, because I didn't think I'd be able to enjoy it without the drugs. "How am I ever going to reach that state of mind where everything sounds so exquisite?" I'd ask myself. Plus I associated the music with the drugs, because that's what the whole scene was based on. Everyone was in a band, or worked in a bar, or went out to see shows three times a week, because that's where you'd see your dealer and get to go to the afterparty where you could do your coke and still feel like you were living above ground, even though it was four or five in the morning.

For me, things got so bad I wasn't even going out to see shows anymore. I'd hear a cool band was coming to town, and get all excited, and it'd be a excuse to score a whole shitload of drugs. Then we'd sit around the apartment getting high the night of the show, and I'd end up too wasted to go see the band! Pretty funny. But a few months ago, I realized you can listen to music sober, and it sounds just as good, maybe even better.

I'm not trying to see anyone right now, because I just want to start over. I feel like I've wiped my slate clean, and it's important for me to spend some time putting my life back together before I let somebody else inside. Right now I'm living in what they call a three-quarters house. Usually, the way it works with someone in recovery is first you go to the hospital, then you hit a detox program, then they send you to a real halfway house, and then you go to a three-quarters house, which is the final step before they'll let you back into the real world.

Even now, after a year of being sober, it's hard to explain why I kept doing drugs even though I felt miserable for so long. I think it's got to do with denial. Most people don't really understand the power of denial. It's like, if you were abused as a child, you block out any knowledge of what happened to you, sometimes even as it's occurring. It's the most powerful self-defense mechanism we have. You literally lose the ability to feel what's happening to you, because to do anything else is unthinkable. So even when you're locked deep into your addiction, your natural tendency is to deny that it's happening.

It's ironic, because usually the drugs allow you to be in denial about something else troubling you. I used them because I felt an emptiness in my life, a hole I now realize was my inability to accept myself for who I am and love myself. I've been going to AA and NA meetings, and it's been really good for me. Beyond the spiritual component of the twelve steps, which keeps me focused on staying sober, it's been my therapy.

The whole thing seems so typical, so hugs not drugs. Upper middle class white girl succumbs to coke, falls off the track of the respectable American dream. Chooses instead to slum with scenesters in the dingy inner city apartments of Wilmington, until she can't even hold down a restaurant job and hits rock bottom, trading blow jobs for rock cocaine in the crackhouses of lower West 4th Street. Sobers up and becomes a poster child for NA meetings. But it's my story. And I'm a lot better now, because finally, after feeling ashamed and crummy for a long, long time, I feel good about myself. I love myself for who I am, and I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. I'm not telling you all this because I want to warn anybody that it can happen to them, I just want people to know that you can go through tough times but still come out on the other side.