Junkie

My fingers shake.
Pull back the plunger and poke around until I find purchase.
Watch the blood fill the syringe as time comes to a stop.
This is it.
My reason for waking up in the morning and wading through the pools of shit my life has accumulated.
The purpose for my sad excuse of an existence.
There is nothing else like this feeling.
Anticipation oozing from my pores as I slowly push down the plunger.
You cannot hurt me right now.
Nothing can touch me.
Life is beautiful the second I pull the needle from my arm and watch the little blood drops come to the surface.
Count down from ten and it hits me like a freight train at six.
I can't describe it to you.
There is nothing like it in the world.
I will never be able to feel this whole again.
I won't ever find this feeling except at the top of a short-tip 30 gauge insulin syringe.
The rush is a high unlike any other.
It's the sole reason for main lining toxic chemicals into your body.
It starts at the base of your skull and spreads like a wildfire through every nerve in your body.
Try and imagine the best orgasm of your life and multiply it by a thousand and you won't even come close to the way heroin fucks you.
Heroin isn't what you think it is.
Addiction doesn't sit on the surface of your flesh like a neon sign indicating that yes this one is a fuck up.
It lies under your tongue and swims through your blood stream.
Not all addicts live under the 32nd street bridge, most are actually able to pretend they can actually function.
Functionality becomes entirely dependent on your drug of choice of course but this doesn't happen for a while.
At first it's just chasing a feeling.
You just want that nodding off barely alive slow breathing itchy warmth that spreads beneath your skin and touches the parts of you that you thought shriveled up and died a long time ago.
When she wraps her arms around you it feels like you've finally come alive again.
You will realize that this feeling is more important than anything else in your life.
In the beginning this was an innocent need to feel something but soon becomes a need to escape your reality.
I used to be able to say no; I had principles.
But as I wandered deeper into my addiction and explored the high I forgot that this was initially a search for something real.
Now it's just a way for me to disappear.
I cannot get away from it.
To leave my room sober feels impossible.
Doing anything while not under the influence of mind altering substances is ludicrous.
I live in the bottom of a dirty spoon.
Waiting for the next time I get that rush.
None of the consequences could ever convince you this feeling isn't worth it.
Hopeless empty shells wander in and out of the halls of hospitals and treatment centers and anonymous rooms looking for a reason to stop.
Help me they want to scream but they lost their voice in the small metallic tip of their rigs.
Because while you're high you feel like you're touching heaven but as soon as you come down you experience the fires of hell.
Shaking sweating hot and cold pleading with any deity that will listen to clean you up or put you out of your goddamn misery.
Every time you stick it in your skin you hope that this time you will nod off and won't find your consciousness again.
When people would liken the act of shooting up to putting a loaded gun to their head you didn't understand.
You weren't trying to die this isn't suicide it's the opposite, you'd cry.
I want to live!!
But you don't realize that you've been walking half dead the moment you tasted the bitter vinegar sting of the needle.
And now all you wish for is death.
You can't find anything in your life worth anything more than that white brown powder.
So what's the point?
Why keep going?
If everything you're ever going to amount to can fit into 50ccs then why bother?
People don't even see you anymore.
You look in the mirror and find the embodiment of your addiction; you're face has long since decayed.
You aren't anything anymore.
A washed up pathetic little junkie.
I'm nothing but a junkie.

Hi my name is Rachael; I'm an addict.

I started doing heroin in August.
Since then my whole life fell apart.
I got a job but had to go on a leave of absence because I literally couldn't stop using.
I'm currently dry.
I used on Monday but now all I want is more.
Back in June I thought my life was in tatters but I guess I never really realized how bad it could get.
My boyfriend Nate is in jail and has been since October and will continue to rot in a cell until April.
At first heroin was all I could do to keep myself from realizing the gravity of the situation.
At one point it was what gave me a stronger connection with Nate and now it's what has torn us apart.
He's in jail for theft and the details aren't important really.
I've been able to stay clean for a week or so every once in a while.
But now it's getting hard to find a reason to keep going if heroin isn't involved.
If Nate were getting out sooner maybe it would be a different story but he isn't.
He used to tell me that this was only going to make us stronger; the separation.
But now he tells me that he can't see us together without using.
Now I'm basically a trigger for him?
It's comical considering he was the one that stuck the needle in my arm the first time.
He gave me hep c.
He introduced me to the dope boys and taught me how to make up a shot.
But I'm the trigger.
I don't know what to do anymore.
My life has been completely derailed.
Art school isn't even on the map anymore.
I'm going to my mom's for Christmas and I have no clue how I'll manage to get through the holidays.
My biggest issue used to be that I couldn't manage food.
Now every day there's a chance I could accidentally overdose.
Or "accidentally" overdose if you know what I mean.
I look at my life now and it seems like it belongs to someone else.
Like these stories aren't mine.
I pity the girl I see in the mirror and she obviously doesn't resemble me.
It's so scary how everything can change in three months.
At one point I thought that I could get my life back in order.
There seemed to be a clear goal and a perfectly paved path to get there.
Instead of following it I stuck a needle in my arm and sat and watched it get over grown with weeds.
Along the way I watched friends stumble down the path and drop dead while they failed to get clean.
Now their rotting corpses decorate the floors of my 'recovery'.
I've been to treatment again but it obviously did nothing.
I'm going to try again.
I plan to go to Hazelden in Minnesota for a month but who knows where I'll be in a month.
I start work again in February so hopefully I can get this shit done and sorted before then.
I have little faith in myself though to be perfectly honest.

Are you ready for the fallout?

This time last year I was finishing up with highschool.
I was 20lbs heavier and in a long term long distance committed relationship.
I was working on art monthly and getting ready to visit my best friend.
Since last year I've:
Gotten stitches for my self harm
Overdosed
Developed a serious drug addiction
Been hospitalized
Been on the verge of homelessness twice
Gone to the ER on six separate occasions
Signed up for school and quit without even attending a single day
Been to six funerals
Experienced my first blackout drunk
Had my first experience with dopesickness
Stolen over $700 from my Dad
Used over $30,000 worth of drugs
Lost at least 4 friends
Relapsed 30+ times
Mad friends and lost pretty much all of them within three months of meeting them
Got in touch with old friends and fell back out of touch with them
Fell out* for the first time
Was turned down from six different inpatient treatment centers for my risk level
Told my family about my eating disorder and drug abuse
Had my first family intervention
Lost hope found it and had it completely crushed again
Almost saw my boyfriend die
Spent more time in and out of treatment centers and rehabs than I've ever spent in my life

I'm currently on the verge of homelessness again. Relapse with self harm, my disordered eating habits, my lack of sleep, alcoholism and my drug use. I'm currently withdrawaling. I had a minor melt down at my boyfriend's house and basically got kicked out. I might be having a pregnancy scare. I've got mysterious heart problems that seem to be getting worse. I have unaddressed disordered behaviors and my suicidal ideations are back full force. I haven't worked on art in over two months. My best friend and I haven't had a conversation lasting over three minutes in over a month (the same best friend who I used to sit on skype with for 12 hours: the one whose been my friend for 17 years). I watched my boyfriend get arrested. I've been poked prodded fed emptied fucked beaten bruised used and almost restrained. I'm tired and lonely and I hate my life.

*when you almost overdose?? Basically your vitals drop into danger zone and you can get very close to death I technically experienced it during intentional overdoses but this wasn't intentional and I didn't get hospitalized for it

confused

I need to lose weight and it's pretty much all I can think about.
Relapsed last night.
Everything was fine and I was binging all the time but I tried hard not to care??
Last night I had eaten a lot and then Dad came home with ice cream and I ate it.
I didn't even know I was going to purge until I was standing in my bathroom removing my ring.
I hadn't even purged in over a month?
And now all I want to do is go back to how things where in January when I was snorting oxy everyday and sleeping and not eating.
I don't even know how to tell my boyfriend about this.

Fuck you I'm going to live.

I'm finally getting better.
I never realized how rewarding and wonderful recovery could feel but here I am.
I overdosed again and went into inpatient.
Had to get 14 stitches because of my self harm and I pulled them out while I was on suicide watch.
Finally I'm getting stable enough to realize exactly how sick I was/am and I'm so ready to change.
Bring on happiness I am beyond done with this misery.
Fuck being sick.
Fuck being incompetent and codependent.
I'm going to have my own life with all kinds of ups and downs.
Recovery will be the hardest thing I've ever had to experience but it's so so worth it.
For once I'm not going to sit by and let my life pass me by.
I'm going to live a full life and I'm going to be okay.
I'm going to learn how to love myself.

I have never felt so insignificant in my life.

I'm still debating on trying to kill myself tomorrow.
Everyone would be angry considering my IOP therapist tried to have me evaluated for inpatient today.
For about four hours I sat in the ER telling everyone I was fine no they didn't have to worry nothing is wrong.
All I really want to do is overdose on oxy or percocets.
I would even take heroin at this point but I'm pretty sure the only person I could get it from would flip his fucking shit if I told him that.
My Dad is fed up with me and is searching for mental health residential inpatient treatment centers.
He doesn't want me here anymore and it's gotten to the point that he wants to kick me out.
Mom isn't really too happy with me either.
Not that I blame them I've been quite fucking awful as of late.
I'm just getting worse.
My weight is somewhere between 126-138 but I haven't weighed myself in a while.
I don't really want to I'm afraid I'm just going to get more upset with myself.
Everything just kind of went to shit and I don't have the energy to try anymore.
Tired and fucked up.
Don't want to be me anymore.

The only things I want in life right now are a thigh gap and a life time supply of oxy.
So far I have neither.