Crystal Clean (27 page)

Chapter
28

Playgrounds and playmates. You won’t stay sober if you go back to the same environment and associate with the same people as you did when you were using. The concept is stressed in A.A. and in rehab, and it’s been the most important factor in my recovery. If I had to name the number one thing that helped me get and remain sober, it’s changing playgrounds and playmates. There’s no doubt in my mind.

  I knew the pipe was there, loaded and ready to go. I tried to tell myself I forgot about it, that I was shocked to find it, but the truth is, I never forgot about it or the two rocks I’d stashed away.

Seeing the pipe again, holding the crystalline rocks of meth in my hand, I was overwhelmed with guilt. I sat there for what seemed like an agonizing stretch of time wrestling with a decision I’d already made. I thought about all I’d accomplished in rehab. I thought about my parents and how proud they were of me. I considered flushing the drugs down the toilet but I knew I wasn’t going to do that. I thought about Andy, and I loathed myself for what I was about to do.
It will just be this once. I’ll just finish what’s here and that will be the end of it. No one will ever know, except me, what a weak person I am
. I’d only been home for twenty minutes and I was right back where I started: alone with the horror of being me.

In retrospect, it was the worst thing I could have done. I walked right back into what I left: filthy, cluttered bedroom in the house that made me miserable, and the only thing to welcome me home was my meth.

If I were serious about recovery, I would have moved in with my parents, but I think I knew I wasn’t ready to quit. I saw rehab as a thirty-day break. What I wanted, when I started looking for help online that day, and even before that, was for someone to take care of me. The thought of being locked away in a mental hospital appealed to me because I just wanted to be done. I didn’t want to have to make decisions, I didn’t want to have to do anything, and I only wanted to be taken care of. Rehab was the closest I could get to that.

My parents have said since then that they considered moving all my things into storage while I was gone and bringing me home with them. They talked it over, they said, and decided against
it because I’m an adult and should make my own decisions. Allan said later that he considered going through my room to make sure everything was gone, but decided not to invade my privacy.

I cried as I smoked, shaking so badly it was difficult to keep the flame on the bowl. I thought about what I’d heard so many times at A.A. meetings:  going to rehab will fuck up your high. I quit crying, and continued smoking until it was time to meet with Sarah, my therapist and relapse prevention facilitator. I smoked what was in the bowl and one of the rocks. I decided to save the other one for when I got back from my meeting.

I was high again and the feeling completed me, pushing aside the guilt. Meth made me feel like I’d found what I’d been searching for all my life. It was as if I were made of brittle coral, and the smoke from this drug billowed down my porous shell filling in all the nooks, crannies, and holes I thought I was born with. Doing meth made me a complete person.

That’s how it felt. That’s how seductive meth is. Meth tells you it loves you. It says you don’t need anyone or anything else in the world, because it loves you unconditionally. Eventually, though, you start to come down, and after a while, when you’ve fucked up every relationship in your life, meth
is
all you have.

Sarah’s office was downtown just a few blocks from where my office was. I was right on time and for some reason that made me feel better about showing up high. Her office was small with barely enough room for her desk, a little couch and a chair. We sat down and I looked around. There were little trinkets here and there that told me she was new-agey:  a glass ball in a pedestal with water running over it, little angels here and there on the bookcase and Tarot cards on an end table. Burgundy satin hung as drapes and covered throw pillows. There were accents of gold. I tried to act like I wasn’t high on meth. I was careful about keeping my mouth still and not jiggling my legs or wringing my hands the way I do when I’m nervous or wired. I was very conscious of sitting still and speaking slowly, trying not to come across as chatty as I felt.

Sarah and I talked about my time at the Walker Center and my upcoming sentencing. She asked me a few questions about my drug use and if I accept that I’m an addict. We talked about my past.

“It sounds like you had an important position when you
were dealing drugs,” she said. “Do you think you were a successful dealer?”

“I know what you want me to say,” I told her, draping an arm across the back of the couch. “You want me to say that, of course I wasn’t successful because look where it got me.”

“What do you really think?”

“I
was
successful. I supported myself, my son and Allan for a long time. I got arrested, that’s all. It’s an occupational hazard.” The meth made me cocky.

She was writing in a notebook, but didn’t comment. We talked about the relapse prevention group, which was every Wednesday at 6:00. We discussed fees and I paid her for eight sessions in advance. The only comment she made about the stack of bills I was holding was something about how nice it would be to have a client pay with cash. The bills were part of what I collected the night before I left for rehab:  three thousand dollars in hundreds, fifties and twenties. She didn’t seem to give a second thought as to why I was carrying so much money. We had just finished talking about me being a dealer, then I whipped out a fat stack of money and started peeling off bills, paying for sessions in advance, and she said nothing. It made me wonder about the woman who would oversee my relapse prevention.

I think about that day now, and it makes me wonder about
me
. I could have brought out only a few bills. I could have simply paid for the current session. What I chose to do, though, was expose over three grand to someone who should have questioned me about it. I remember other things I did, little things, that may have been cries for help. At the Walker Center, Dorothy asked me one day if I had anything stashed at home. I told her about the pipe and the rocks and she said, “We need to come up with a plan to deal with that. It’s important.”

It was never mentioned again. She probably forgot. I didn’t forget, and I specifically didn’t mention it to her again. If I were serious about my recovery, I would have. Then again, as the counselors kept telling us, “You’re not in recovery. You’re in rehab. Recovery starts out
there
.”

There are so many places where I slipped through the cracks in one way or another. All the times I was pulled over and had drugs on me; the alcohol and drug evaluation; Dorothy knowing about my stash; my parents thinking twice about moving me; Sarah and the money. It happens all the time, all the way
through the system addicts slide when the opportunity is there to stop them. A huge factor is because we’re such good liars. It took me a long time to accept the fact that I was a liar. I thought of lies only as outright, spoken untruths. But I lied all the time. I lied by omission and I lied by conning people. I relied on my unassuming demeanor and the fact that I’m well spoken to fool people into thinking I was innocent and harmless. I got off on it.

When I was a teenager, I did the same thing with my friends’ parents. They trusted me. “You keep an eye on her, Kim,” they’d say. “If you’re going with Kim, well then, okay.” Parents loved me. Then my friends and I would go out drinking, taking acid or whatever else we were doing that we shouldn’t have been.

I’ve always seemed trustworthy to authority figures, and I’ve always betrayed that trust. It’s in this way that I’ve been dishonest most of my life.

I don’t think slipping through the cracks is anyone’s fault. I think it happens because the addict isn’t ready to quit, because if I’d been caught any of the times I slipped, it wouldn’t have made a difference. I wasn’t ready.

When I got home after seeing Sarah, I immediately loaded the pipe with the last rock. After two hits, I knew what I was going to do. I called Josh.

“Hey! Welcome back. How you doing?” He was thrilled to hear from me.

“I’m good. I just got back a few hours ago.”

“How was it?”

“Good. It wasn’t bad once I got used to it.”

“So you’re all rested up, huh? Great! I’ve been hurting. People out here are ripping me off and the shit’s bad
-
all cut up and everything. You ready to make some money?” I thought about it briefly. What else was I going to do for money? Jill gave me another month off so I could ease back into things. She was very supportive of me. I’d just gotten out of a mental hospital, after all, just like Mariah Carey. She was being very considerate.

“Sure. I need you to come over, though. I don’t have anything.”

“Yeah! Sure. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Josh came over and we got high, picking through what he had to find the good stuff, leaving the rest for whoever he would
sell to next. We spent the next couple of hours talking and getting high. With every hit off the pipe, my guilt evaporated. Josh wasn’t even irritating me. I was actually having a good time with him, joking about things that happened while I was away.

He left just before five. Allan wouldn’t be home for another hour and I sure as hell didn’t want him know I was using again. I assumed he’d be happy to see me, and I thought he would probably take me to dinner to celebrate my homecoming.

I called Mario while I waited.

“Keem! You back. How are you?”

“I’m good. I missed you. How are you?”

“Okay, okay. You want to see me?”

“Si,” I said.

“How much?”

“Mmmm, un libra.” I always get libra and libro mixed up. One is “book,” the other means “pound.” Mario laughs. He knows I have trouble with this, but he understood what I meant.

“When?”

“Later tonight. I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay, Keem. I miss you, too. Good you are home. No more, right? You don’t use, right?”
Of course, I don’t use anymore, Mario. I’m a good girl now.
That’s what I wanted people to think. I didn’t want them to know how weak I was.

I was even with Mario. I paid him before I left. I would give him fifteen hundred and he’d float me the rest.

I was in my room listening to Neil Young and unpacking. I hadn’t heard music, other than Enya and recordings of the sounds of nature, for a month. I smoked another bowl, blowing it out the window on that crisp December day, just before Allan got home. I was excited to see him, but I couldn’t let him know I was using again already. I brushed my teeth, used mouthwash and was still unpacking when I head his truck pull into the driveway.
Any minute now he’ll come back to my room and welcome me home. Any minute now
.

My bedroom door was open and I heard the TV click on.
Any minute now
.

He had to know I was home. He knew when I was getting back and he could definitely hear my music.
Any minute now
.

An hour passed before I realized he wasn’t coming. I felt stupid, foolish and embarrassed thinking he’d be happy to see me and maybe take me to dinner. I turned off my music so I could hear better. Maybe he was in the shower. I heard nothing but the drone
of the TV. I didn’t want to be the one to go to him, but I felt like a jackass sitting there in my quiet room listening for him.

I really was right back where I started. I wanted to cry but I didn’t want him to hear me so I fought back the tears and waited. All I heard was the sound of the television. Slowly, I walked down the hall and peeked around the corner. Allan was asleep on the couch. I walked past him to the kitchen to get something to drink thinking the noise would wake him, but he was still asleep when I went back to my room. I was devastated and pissed off that I still had hope for us.

Playgrounds and playmates. The definition of insanity is doing something the same way over and over, expecting different results. I walked right back into what I left when I went to rehab. Of course nothing changed, but in my addict fantasy world, I’d convinced myself that if I quit using, things between Allan and I would be different. But the truth was, Allan didn’t love me. He never did. There was no reason for me to have expected anything other than what happened that night

I sat by my bedroom door all evening, waiting. Finally, I heard him turn off the TV and go to the bathroom. The next thing I heard was his bedroom door close. I went out to the living room and found all the lights were off and the front door locked. He’d gone to bed.

I couldn’t help crying. I felt so stupid for hoping things would be different. Back in my room, I closed my door, pulled out my pipe and got high before calling Mario to arrange our meeting. I changed clothes, still listening for any sign of Allan. Finally, I left the house, slamming the front door behind me. It was a childish thing to do, I know, but I was furious. And hurt.

Chapter 2
9

“Shadoe, what the hell? Are you kidding me?” He was my first stop after seeing Mario.

“I’m not kidding. It’s fine, though. Don’t worry about me. I’ve always said I don’t care about dying.”

“When did you find the tumor?”

“A couple of weeks ago. I was in the shower and washing down there and something didn’t feel right. By the time I went to the doctor it was the size of a grapefruit.”

I felt sick and tried not to envision the scenario. “So now what?”

“They took a biopsy and it’s cancerous. The doctor wants to remove it, but I said no way. I’m not going to a hospital. You know I don’t trust doctors. All they want is my money.”

I couldn’t believe he was so stubborn. “Shadoe, you don’t just walk around with a fucking grapefruit sized tumor in your testicles. How the hell do you even sit?”

He chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. If I die, I die.” He was so cavalier about the whole thing and it made me want to slap him on his stupid face. I felt dirty just being in the same room with him knowing that, over there in that damn patio chair, between his legs, there was a monster growing. I needed to get high.

“Well, I just want to go on record as saying you’re a complete idiot,” I said, loading my pipe. “You don’t take care of your diabetes. You never did what the doctors told you about your foot and it damn near fell off. Now this.” I shook my head. I weighed and packaged the crystal and tossed it to him.

“Thanks. Looks good,” he said, loading a bowl himself. “So what’s going on with the house?”

“Nothing. Allan didn’t do shit while I was gone. Well, that’s not exactly right. He finalized his plans for moving to Twin Falls. He’ll be leaving the end of January.”

“What if the house doesn’t sell by then?”

“Oh, he’s still leaving. He’s got a new life to start, you know.”

“Are you and Andy going to stay there?”

“No. That’s not the plan, anyway. I guess it’s up to me to sell it. I don’t know what I’ll do if it doesn’t sell in six weeks. I hate the stupid thing.” I could feel myself getting angry. I didn’t want to
talk about this anymore.

“I’m sorry, Kim. Is there anything I can do?”

“No. Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out. I always do. Take care of yourself, though, as much as you can anyway.”

I checked into a hotel that night and stayed there for two days getting high and trying to figure out what to do. I couldn’t bear being in the house with Allan ignoring me. Andy was still with Mom and Dad. They wanted to keep him until after my court date. They were convinced I was going to prison and didn’t want to uproot him just to have him move back in with them when the guards hauled me out of the courtroom in shackles.

The Saturday after I got home from rehab, I was playing pool with Mitt, another of Kilo’s cousins.

“I need to go home, Mitt. I haven’t even been horizontal in, what?” I counted on my fingers “In five days! How the hell did that happen?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’ll happen when you quit for a while.” I vowed to sleep. As soon as I’d met with Josh and then Mario again. I was a hamster in a cage running in my little wheel again.

In the early hours of Monday morning, I finally quit running and lay down in my bed. Sentencing was Tuesday morning at ten, so I figured I should sleep some before then. I curled up in my fluffy down comforter, creating a cocoon around me. I watched
The Deer Hunter
. I love falling asleep with a movie playing. The background noise is like a lullaby. When my sleep is fitful, as it is after I’ve been awake for a long time, it’s comforting to hear voices when I drift between dream and reality. It soothes me and makes me feel not so alone.

I’d been home from the Walker Center just over a week on December 13, my sentencing date. I’d been high every day since I got home and I was high in the courtroom that day. My parents and lawyer were so proud of me for getting clean and staying sober and even as they congratulated me, I was high on meth.

I let everyone down but no one knew. How could I tell anyone? Even if I wanted to stop, there was no one I could turn to. No one I could admit to throwing thirty days away in less than half an hour.
I
didn’t understand it. I didn’t want anyone to know what a shitty person I was.

Before I left for rehab, my attorney told me I’d probably get
probation. I was a little nervous, but mostly I was depressed. Allan hadn’t done anything about the house while I been gone so I had that to deal with by myself.

Three days after I got home, Allan finally acknowledged my presence as if nothing had happened. As if he didn’t know I’d been home for three days. I’d been moving from hotel to hotel at night, working harder than ever. All my boys were back, except Johnny who was in jail on multiple felony drug charges, so things were just clicking along. Everything except me. I was a robot going through the motions and the meth wasn’t even getting me high anymore. After years of daily use, meth had become a maintenance drug. I needed it to get through the day. I couldn’t function without it.

They told me in rehab that when you relapse, it’s not like starting over. Almost immediately, you’re right back at your tolerance level. I’m told that this is the case for years after quitting.

The judge sentenced me to three to five years, but gave me a withheld judgment with seven years’ felony probation. The prosecution had no problem with the decision considering my immaculate record, the fact that I’ve always been gainfully employed (on paper anyway), and the two and a half years I’d spent as a foster mother for the state of Idaho.

Mom and Dad wanted to take me to lunch to celebrate, but I begged off saying something about meeting Jill. I hugged and kissed them both and went straight home to get high. I was numb. I didn’t feel happy about the sentencing, nor did I feel sad. I didn’t feel anything anymore.

The judge ordered me to go to orientation at the Probation and Parole office and said they would assign a P.O. to me soon. I was late for orientation because I had to make a delivery to Shadoe and meet Josh on the way. I was sitting at probation and parole with five grand in my purse, a trunk full of evidence in the parking lot and I was going to meet Mario right after the meeting. The orientation was brief but I was impatient.
Let’s wrap this up, guys
, I’m thinking.
I have things to do, places to go and people to see
. I signed a piece of paper to show I’d been there, took the packet the facilitator gave me
-
sort of a “How to be on Felony Probation 101,”
-
threw it in the backseat of my car and headed to Canyon County to meet Mario.

The packet was mostly a list of Thou Shalt’s and Thou Shalt Not’s: thou shalt not use drugs or alcohol, thou shalt submit to
search and seizure at the request of any law officer, thou shalt not leave the area without permission, thou shalt attend all classes as specified by thou’s p.o., thou shalt not fail UA’s or thou shalt go to jail, thou shalt not be in possession of firearms, thou shalt not be a pain in the ass...

The whole thing pissed me off, because most things at that time, especially authority, pissed me off. I was a sad, angry meth addict on the loose and things would only get worse before they finally got better.