It’s past the midnight hour. My friend arrived around at 7:25 this evening with yellow eyes and false enthusiasm. He performed quite the show to prove his state of sobriety by walking around the lake with me and chatting about strategies to get rid of muskrats and water the plants in the greenhouse more efficiently. His mother dropped him off, proud of the sobriety she perceived him to have and happy to leave him someplace she believes is safe.
Fast forward five hours later to the current time and my friend, the junkie, is standing with knees crumpled on my deck swaying back and forth like a large tree in light wind. He’s dropped his cellphone onto the ground below around 10-15 times while falling asleep on his feet, or rather what passes as sleep for a junkie.
Being surrounded by drugs and those who use them has trained me as well as any expert to immediately spot someone who is high and using. The two are not synonymous, since tolerance can get so high that even large doses just produce normality, rather than nirvana. I knew he was high when he arrived, but I pretended that I was proud he had been clean for “five days now.” I’ve told him many times that rather he used or not that he was my friend, but I do not believe I can no longer say this and mean it, especially after tonight.
The first sign of real trouble was around 8 pm when he announced he had to use the restroom and was in there for around 45 minutes while my wife naively kept asking, “What is ___ doing?” Of course, like a good enabler, I made excuses for him, although I knew more likely than not, he was injecting heroin into his veins; this act being followed up by ‘nodding’ for the remaining 40 minutes of time he was in there. My wife suggested I go ask if he was alright, which I did, to the response of, “Fine, bro! Got a new toothbrush anywhere?”
After my wife went to bed is when things went from bad to really fubar. A car pulled up and he ran outside. He came back with a hoodie claiming someone dropped it off to him for work tomorrow. I knew he was lying and that he’d just sold to them, at my house and in my driveway, because he could have gotten a hoodie from me. By the third car, I called a stop to it, angry at myself for allowing it to happen and angry at him to use my house rather than his parents or some addicts to sell dope to support his habit.
I’m angry that I spoke to him every Wednesday and Saturday for the last two years on a prison phone. I’m angry that after being released on December 14th, 2012 he was released from prison and less than 18 days later was fully active in his addiction. I’m angry that his sister and his parents think that because he’s with me, he’s not using.
But, the straw that broke the camels back just happened. I walked into my bathroom, still under the impression that he just ‘snorted’ heroin, rather than shot it up, which is exponentially more dangerous. He knows that he is not allowed to use here, but I’m spineless when it comes to my friends and I give them the benefit of the doubt to my detriment as well as theirs. After pissing and staring at the wall blankly thinking I have failed as a friend I walked to the sink to wash my hands and saw it: A needle. I just spent the last 30 minutes calming myself down and fighting off a sickening feeling I haven’t had since I heard a close friend died. I just fought off an anxiety attack and sat down here to write this and share it with someone else because I have no one else to share it with. I’m angry that the needle is sitting here next to me wrapped in a wash cloth.
He has no idea this has happened or that I’m even writing this or have found the needle. I think I should just go put it back and let him find it, but I’d hate for my wife to for some reason use the guest bathroom and get stuck by it. So, here it will sit, until he quits swaying in the wind and comes back in. Then I’ll give it to him or maybe…I don’t know what.
This is it though. No longer will he be welcomed at my house. This has been my friend since we were 5 years old, we just took different paths, but still remained close. I don’t know what to fucking do anymore. :smack::mad:
