Relapse
Phil was intelligent, capable and driven. After college he went to law school and passed the bar. But instead of becoming a lawyer he became a heroin addict. After years of horror and struggle he was finally able to get sober.
By his mid thirties he had almost four years sober. He had done all the tedious work to get his legal troubles expunged and his law license reinstated. He met a girl in AA and they were engaged to be married, and about to embark on a family. Life, as they say, was good.
He worked in a law office downtown. He was on the second floor and had his own office with a window. One day around lunchtime, he was gazing out his office window at the street below and saw two men exchanging money for balloons. Phil knew what was in those balloons.
He thought about how easy it would be to run downstairs and buy a ten dollar balloon. He would just smoke it. No needles. Nothing crazy. Just a couple of toots off the foil and he would go right back to his normal daily routine of meetings and work and love and sobriety.
He tried to get the thought out of his head. But he couldn’t. The more he tried to not think of it the more he did. He finally gave up and made the decision to use.
He went downstairs and up to the man he saw outside his window, gave him ten bucks and got a balloon. His heart was pounding with excitement. He then heard a booming voice…
“HEY!”
He turned around and saw two cops on bikes half a block away telling him not to move.
Phil ran. He ran into his office building, past the elevators to the stairwell. He bolted up to the second floor, into his office and locked the door behind him. The heroin was still in his pocket. He didn’t move and tried to remain quiet and still. An excruciating 10 minutes later he heard the elevator doors open, walkie talkies beeping and two sets of footsteps come to his door. They wrapped at it with night sticks and commanded him to open the door.
He panicked. He looked to the window. He ran to it, opened it, took a breath, and lept.
He said he knew he snapped his leg the second he hit the pavement. He lay there in excruciating pain and waited for the police…
Phil would get arrested, lose his job, break his leg, destroy his career, his relationship, and his future… and he never ingested a single substance or took a single sip of alcohol.
He only made the decision to relapse.
And a half hour later his entire life had turned to shit.
Thank you for such a well-written story. There are countless stories like that one. For an addict like me, I am reminded to re-read today´s "Daily Reflection". Peace and love.
Thank you for sharing this devastating story. This cautionary piece is heartbreaking in its unflinching honesty and accuracy. I’m sorry for the man who made a terrible mistake to head towards relapse and lost everything. I hope that he has found a way towards treatment and living. Your stories from the world of addiction and recovery take my breath away; it’s powerful writing that confronts the inherent human hurt at the heart of addiction. I don’t think any kid ever dreams of growing up to be an addict. A broken (often lethal) combination of random chance, circumstances, upbringing, environment, luck, and so on converge to create a perfect storm that can lead decent people to turn towards addiction in an attempt to numb out, hide, or escape pain (tragically often the faster people run from life, the more life seems to catch up.) Thank you for your careful and achingly truthful tales about the life or death struggle of addiction and recovery. Your heroic writing is a vital lifeline for people who have survived and who miss the people they lost.