HOW TO SPOT A RELAPSE
1. The doormat can't be seen for letters.
2. The washing-up's begun to smell.
3. The game-show channel has been on all day, and the last episode of Family Fortunes seemed too familiar.
4. You're playing incessant Pac-Man online, and actually putting your name in the high-score chart.
5. You haven't seen anyone for a few days, even though you could easily have met a friend.
6. You may get up, but you don't eat until your ravenous, maybe late afternoon, probably at the fridge door.
7. You're entertaining the possibility that a bath with Radox may change your life.
8. You're eyeing up the hoover, wondering how much it might be worth.
9. You're reading the twelve-step book for the first time, in search of loopholes.
9 (a) You find many loopholes.
10. Yes, you definitely saw that episode of Family Fortunes last night, or was it this morning, maybe at dawn?
11. In a bout of virtue, you make it to the shops, but you're walking slowly and obviously, in the hopes you'll be spotted by someone you've used with, which, if it happens, won't be your fault.
11 (a) All you buy is milk, but rather than going home, you start weaving through streets to a place you're sure you once used.
12. You're dialling variations of a number that you think belongs to someone you once used with.
13. You dredge up a grudge that hasn't bothered you for weeks, and dwell on it, from the victim's perspective.
14. You study passers-by to see if they look dishevelled enough to hook up with.
15. You turn down a street you vaguely remember using on, and look for that door, it was red, number seventeen?
16. You're thinking it's as good as fate now, so you may as well just get it over with - upping your game, you go loiter around that tower-block you know is no good.
17. And my final way to spot a relapse is if none of the above applies to you, ever.
Well there's a few thoughts on what I was like before a relapse, and it's a grim place, torn between wanting to use, but knowing it's wrong, dangerous and damaging. Many's the hollow afternoon I'd lie there, craving a life, but too impatient to do anything about it. If I'm honest, I knew as soon as I woke up if I was going to use, but I'd tell myself that it wasn't a forgone conclusion at all, and that a new trajectory might present itself, a life-changing tangent I could fly off on, to love, luck, a new life. Then, a few hours later, I'd be tortured and torn again, so alone it felt like my head was full of setting clay and, by then, it was like I had to use, just to assuage the desire to use, and all the sorrow it was causing me.
It was like being in a strong current - yes, it was hard to swim against, but that didn't mean there was no point swimming.
Oh, and here is a song of mine, if you'd like a listen... Masochists Anonymous
Anyway, I think that's all for today. Maybe tomorrow?
Are you back out there?
ReplyDeletePs when I stumbled upon your blog earlier in the year.. read it compulsively til there was no more to read! loved it
ReplyDeleteMaybe give na another chance?
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to dissect the dis ease b/s
keep your own focus of choice...
connecting with people trying to do the same thing helps.