



I was a simple addict. I use the term addict because it fits me. I don't think everyone who uses drugs are addicts. Many are not even dependent. That, however, was not me. I was addicted to drugs, addicted to that lifestyle. I was addicted to the struggle of being balls deep in the grips of whatever drug motivated me to get up every morning. I wasn't ashamed of the fact that more than once I begged a dealer for a bag. To me, it was part of the game. I wasn't embarrassed to ask the dope man if I could wash his dishes for a hit or clean up his apartment. Why not, I thought to myself. When you are truly, passionately in the obsession to use anything seems reasonable. Rock bottom may not be sex for drugs. Rock bottom may be watching a pet starve or a hole from an infection get larger and larger while you do nothing to help yourself.





In fact, I have been so low, I no longer believe in rock bottom. When you see a woman turning tricks, knowing she has a colostomy bag you might feel the same. I know people believe in "tough love" and I believe in the opposite which is "harm reduction". I don't think you need to let a person stay with you if they are stealing your tv but I also don't believe you need to cut them all the way out of your life. The true bottom is death. I don't wish that for anyone.

I am from a different generation of users. I think we kinda liked being called junkies. While we may or may not have enjoyed the junkie lifestyle, at least it was never boring. I have seen a lifetime of hustles. Everything from the guy who used to steal eggs and sell them to corner stores to the guy who went out on the corner to sell the suit his family bought him for the funeral of one of his relatives to tales of someone wheeling a dead senior citizen into the bank to cash his last social security check before the nursing home found out he has finally passed.