My name is Lorraine and I am an addict.
These simple words, and a hell of a lot of hard work, have saved my life--hell, given me a life, a life that was lost to me for several years while I struggled with the effects of a debilitating neck injury that caused incessant pain. In part one of this diary, I want to talk about personal addiction. In part ii, I want to talk about the politics of addiction.
I remember what the pain felt like, because I wrote about it one night, while in its toxic embrace:
On a bad pain day, she felt locked in Spock's Vulcan grip, only for her there was no relief of unconsciousness, just a throbbing at the top of her shoulder that was relentless.
But that wasn't the worst of it. The pain leaked forward, down her arms, as if someone had poured molten steel along the nerve paths, down her biceps, through her elbow, and then, like a train at a switching yard, changing path, and following the ulnar nerve along the edge of her arm. Where her wrist met her palm, that knob of bone directly below her pinkie, someone had stationed a big, beefy construction worker with a jackhammer, and he rat-a-tatted his drill so that her hand burned. And finally, at the end of the road, the tips of her pinkie and ring finger, a buzz of electricity constantly arced--as if between two diodes in a mad scientist's laboratory.
The injury was simple, really. A severely ruptured disc in my cervical spine. It was complicated by a pregnancy that made surgery impossible, and so, for months, I lived with crushed nerves in my neck, which eventually led to nerve damage.
The first course of treatment was medication. Here is what the early days of meds were like:
Different pain medications had different effects and she sought to match pain intensity to analgesic, and then to titrate the dose, so that the buzzing yellow of her pain could become a gentle green, changed by the soporific blue of the narcotic capsules.
On days that weren't too bad, she took tylenol with codeine-- 30 to 60 mg as she needed it. Codeine's effects were like that of a doily on an old coffee table--it covered the stain but couldn't remove it. When she took codeine, she was smoke wafting through her house.
On days that were slightly worse, she turned to Vicodin. She secretly admitted to herself that Vicodin could become a vice if she let it. Stronger than codeine, one of the lovely side-effects was the euphoria that accompanied it. The sense of well being that made the world a vivid, inviting, invigorating place where she had visions of herself as victor of the world--a Valkyrie swooping down from the heavens. But Vicodin was a selfish master, needing her flesh more and more. It was the one she rationed to protect herself from addiction.
The final option, which she did not like to take except on those occasions when pain had brought her to her knees, was morphine. Morphine replaced the blood in her veins with pudding, making her heart beat sluggishly against her ribs, suffusing her with an unpleasant heat and rendering her helpless. It frequently made her throw up, so she only took it when there was no alternative to pain.
Pain had held her in its toxic embrace for three years now. It was a cruel lover, but battered and hurting, she had no place to go. She was pain's prisoner on some days, but occasionally, on rare mornings, she awoke to find herself pain-free and she reveled in those days like a kid at a carnival--eager to do everything at once before all the prizes had been given away on the midway.
What followed was labor and delivery, major spinal surgery, more pain, more drugs, acupuncture, chiropractics, hypnotism, more epidural steroid injections, counseling, applied kinesiology, more drugs, surgery to implant a dorsal column stimulator, and more drugs. By the time I realized that I was in trouble (okay. strike that. By the time I accepted that I was in trouble) I was on Fentanyl patches and was taking enough supplemental OxyIR and Vicodin to supply an opium den.
I went into detox. On February 19, 2001, I emerged for the first time in several years, drug-free. Should have been gravy from there, right? Nope. Ask any addict or alcoholic. Recovery is damn hard work.
I started hanging out with other people who were trying to stay clean and sober. I started intensive therapy. I got a divorce. I made a new life for myself.
My pain was real. But my pain was exacerbated by the fact that my life was out of control. I took drugs to kill the pain in my body, but a fair portion of that physical pain was caused by the pain in my life. By my unmanageable feelings. By my sense of worthlessness. By my inability to connect to the things that were really important. By my feelings of inadequacy. But mostly, my life was ruled by fear. Fear of everything, that despite my big mouth, turned me into a person who was deathly afraid to stand up for herself. Afraid she would get hurt. And this is my segue into American politics. If you're still reading, I thank you for your patience.
Part II
The politics of addiction.
Hello. My name is America, and I am sitting in this meeting because my friend Lorraine suggested I should come.
I'm not sure really when my addiction began. I look back over the past two-hundred odd years of my history and I see all sorts of psychic wounds. I had a tyrannical father, and I rebelled against him. Took up arms against him, and drove him out. I thought that would take care of my problems, but I wasn't done hurting myself. Even when I had the chance, I chose to cut myself off from parts of my body--Africans, women, those without property--told myself that those parts of me were less important, and that I didn't need to pay attention to the discomfort those parts of me caused.
Since then, those parts of me keep getting hurt, but I don't want to go back to that original wound and deal with it. That would require feeling some things that I'd prefer not to feel. I'm in pain now, but I've developed a whole host of ways of dealing with my pain. I know some of you think that qualifies as addiction. But I'm not ready to admit I have a problem yet.
I've got ways of dealing with my pain, however. They're called distractions. There's war, which is always good for taking my mind off whatever's bothering me. If I focus my attention on getting control over other people's lands and cultures, I don't have to think about the unmanageablility of my own culture. I've got plenty of women and poor people and racism, but I don't to focus on that right now. That would hurt.
If I can't shoot someone, maybe I can buy something. I like to spend money. Buying things makes me think I can be happy. I'll go out and buy a new gas-guzzling car that lets me sit high up on the road, or I'll buy the newest gadget or the newest pair of shoes from Nike. I know people suffer who make those products, but I don't want to think about those things. That would make me uncomfortable.
I'm not very comfortable with my sexuality, either. Too many feelings attached to that, too. But if I tell homosexuals and women how to conduct their private lives, then maybe I can exert some control over this stuff that makes me feel bad. I think about my body and it makes me feel icky. But if I make someone else feel icky about their body, perhaps they'll shut up. And I won't have to deal.
I'm really not comfortable with what's happening to the color of my skin, either. It used to be pale white, but now, it's starting to darken up; parts of me are speaking a language I can't understand. Makes me feel out of control. I think I'll tell everyone they have to keep to their own kind. Speak English, damnit. I can't stand feeling uncomfortable.
The hallmark of addiction is an inability to deal with one's feelings. I could go on and on about why I think we're a nation of addicts. I think we need a major intervention, but I'm not sure we've hit bottom yet. The only problem I have is that until we collectively hit bottom, some of us are going to wind up falling a hell of a lot farther than others.