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We did our first line and then went about getting ready for dinner.

Our second line came just as we left to go to dinner. Now here we were at a five-star resort with exotic, tasty, once-in-a-lifetime cuisine spread before us. And Lola and I craved the one thing that kills your appetite.

I think I lost three pounds the first two days.

The third, and what I considered deadly line, came after dinner. Lola and I slipped back to the room and snorted. We left the bathroom. Within minutes, I knew something was wrong. My heart pounded like a bass drum and my head felt detached, like it floated.

“Lie down,” Lola ordered.

But the racing heartbeat seemed to speed up. “Valium,” I gasped, terrified.

Lola fetched the pill for me and I swallowed it with water, hoping it would calm me down.

Bad mistake. An innocent one.

I didn't realize that I was starting a speedball. Instead of Valium settling me down, it started me on an anxiety roller coaster. For the first time in my life, I was certain that it was the ride of death

Like a replaying video scene, the image of the local hospital rushed through my mind. On our drive in, our driver had pointed it out. A hospital it was
not
. It was a mere shack with dirt floors. One could stand in the open front entrance and see out the back door. Every time I thought of those local medical facilities, I would moan, “
Dear God, I am going to die!”

Lola devoted the next hour to rubbing my back as I lay on the bed. As long as she caressed my back, the anxiety lessened. But she finally had to retreat to her room with her husband. My husband quietly snored on the bed next to me, unaware of what I was going through. Over the next two hours, the Valium overpowered the cocaine, finally, allowing me to drift of into a slumber. I awoke the next morning to an empty bed and an aching head. My husband had quietly slipped out of the room to venture to his next golf course.

Jack, an avid golfer, while not excelling at the game, did outclass others with expensive golf clubs, caddies, beer and anything else that would lend a luxurious hand to the sport.

“You what?” I peered at Jack later that evening as the four of us sat down to dinner at a nearby restaurant.

“We thought we were going to have to eat that golf cart,” he said, laughing uproariously. Seems Jack and Nick had narrowly escaped being forced to buy a golf cart that they'd driven airborne. The golf cart flipped over four times during the flight. Mercifully, no one was killed or even seriously injured. The only reason they didn't have to purchase the cart was the all American threat of lawsuit. Nick and Jack somehow convinced the owners that the cart itself was faulty and had caused the accident.

As I lay in bed that morning, head aching and mind swirling eerily, one sentiment jumped to the forefront: gratitude. I was alive!
Thank you, God, for keeping me here
. I thought of my Mama and Daddy, who'd raised me right. And I thought of how they loved me and wanted the best for me and how, in doing this, I'd let them down.

The guilt popped up and disappeared like a startled raven.

Again, I cringed at the possibility of ending up in that primitive, horror chamber they called a hospital. I was certain Voodoo dolls and twirling witch doctors would dominate its décor.

I made a sober vow (the initial vow was the night before during my frightful speedball) — with all the strength and sincerity of a New Year's resolution — that I would never again touch that vile white stuff. Special occasion or not. I really was thankful just to be alive.

I scrambled to shower and remedy myself for a day at the pool. Standing under a battering hot faucet began to restore me.

I stopped by Lola's room after she didn't answer my call. I assumed I would have to drag her out of bed when to my surprise, she answered the door after the first knock.

“Hello!” she trilled. Tissues, stuffed in her nostrils, hung loose. Her saucer-sized, blinkless dark eyes seemed permanently surprised.

“Faith! I've been up all night. That was the best crap I've ever done.”'

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Lola. We're going to the pool.”

At that point, she would have licked the proverbial frozen flagpole if I'd asked her.

To tell the truth, Lola looked plumb silly. That only fired my own determination to avoid drugs in the future.

I stayed off of cocaine for a few years after that and solely concentrated on my prescription drug habit. Cocaine, however was my introduction and my “gateway” drug.” It introduced me to the drug culture.

I don't know why I'm writing this. Today, I feel like my brain is fried from too much introspection. I've got to take a sabbatical from all this remembering.

More later.

“God never consults our past when planning our future.”

— Ron Heiber

 

 

 

 

 

I dropped Faith's journal onto her cluttered bedside table, where she'd left it for me to read. I wordlessly turned to go. “I don't really know what you want, Mom,” she said lackadaisically then shrugged. She lolled on her bed, still in pajamas at noon, watching a movie.

I turned back. “Honey, I don't want anything except for you to be enlightened. You know, learn something from the journey that may help you in future choices.”
And give me a clue as to who you are. I haven't a clue. There was not, as yet, one shred of the whys and their repercussions on her psyche.

“I'll try to write more later,” she said as I closed her door. Oh, well, some progress at least. She now saw merit in writing down her memoirs.

It was a start. But echoing in my head was
will she follow through?

“By the way, Noni had her heart procedure last week.”

“No.” Her eyes widened with concern. “Is she okay?”

“She is.” I shrugged, still feeling a bit hurt that Mom hadn't informed anyone in the family of her hospital stint until after it was over.

“Seems she only called Jensen to pick her up when all was over and they released her.”

“He didn't say a word.” I could see umbrage building in Faith and didn't want that to happen.

“Noni made Jensen promise not to tell. She wanted to tell us herself. So don't be mad at Jensen.”

“Huh.”

“Promise you'll drop it, honey. Okay?”

She nodded, her eyes bright with tears. “Is Noni truly okay?”

“She says she's good as new.” I smiled, relieved that Mom's report had been so upbeat.

A couple of days later, Faith dropped more journal entries on my bedside table.

 

 

Fast-forward three years and my prescription habit alone has caused me to leave my husband. I was now a single mom with a $500 a week Lortab habit. But I was working to make it work. It was only a matter of time before everything crumbled, but I couldn't see it at the time. I lived in my nice gated co-op, drove my Jaguar, carried
Gucci bags and thought I really had it all together. I can remember counting how long I had been taking Lortabs daily. A year was approaching. That was when I knew it was a problem. A whole year of abusing Lortabs. I ignored it and kept going.

Cocaine was about to rear its ugly head again. I would like to say that I could have kept it together on pills alone, but I wouldn't really know. I was about to juggle two addictions.

Will? Now Will is definitely a chapter in my life. I have to introduce Will before I go any further. Somewhere during this time of being a single Mom and “having it all together,” an old friend of mine decided to look me up. A friend I had not talked to in years. In those years, Will had gotten married, but from what I had heard through the grapevine, the marriage part never took. He was still running around acting single.

Will called under the premise that he wanted to have drinks and talk “business.” I was leery, but we were in businesses that complemented each other so I went. I can remember Will trying to kiss me that night, and I made it very clear that we were on the “friend” track only. Unfortunately, this opened up my life to Will as a friend in his eyes.

He started popping by to use the pool at my co-op and eventually, just kept popping by. We actually became good friends. I enjoyed his eccentricities. Will was a very handsome, charismatic person, as a friend.

Will should have stayed “just a friend.”

Will had a cocaine habit like I had my pill habit. On the weekends when my Maddie was with her father, I would
let Will sit in my living room after I went to bed and enjoy his cocaine. Have you ever heard the saying that if you go the barber shop long enough, you're going to get your hair cut? Well, Will wore me down. He wanted me to use the cocaine with him so he wouldn't have to do it alone.

Later in our relationship, he seemed to be able to find scores of women to share his bed and his habit. Where were they all then? Nope, no other women to be seen. I fell head over heels in love with the idiot snorting cocaine on my couch.

As I stated before, I was about to juggle two addictions. Will was not going to be happy until I partied (using cocaine) as much as he did. Partying with Will took me to a whole different game level. I can recall seeing my first sunrise as a result of staying up all night snorting cocaine. Until this time, I had only partied to the wee hours of the morning. Never an all-nighter. The all nighters turned into two days and eventually three days. I one time stayed up for four days but didn't know my own name. This was when I realized my limit for staying up.

It also became a known fact with my partying friends. “If Faith has been up three days, put her to bed or everyone around will have hell to pay.” In addition to not knowing my own name on the fourth day, I became ten feet tall and bullet proof. I would physically fight with a lamp post if it looked at me wrong. I also knew I had reached my limit with no sleep when I would drive home and I was waving at mailboxes like they were people. The real issue was that the mailboxes waved at me first! I was merely returning the gesture.

Due to the length of time we were partying, at days on end, we had to relocate the party. The most common location was hotels. We usually started the affair at the
nicest hotels in our city. As the time and money disappeared, the hotel stars diminished as well. We found that if we partied at my co-op, someone would come looking for me and/or him and we did not want to be interrupted. We basically would disappear for days on end, inaccessible to our family and friends.

It didn't take long for my family to realize something was not quite right with me. It also didn't take long for me to abandon all responsibilities (my child, rent, etc.). Luckily, I had my parents to take care of my daughter when I went missing in action. Had I not, I feel certain Social Services would have intervened earlier and taken her.