Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict Page 28

  I left him in there and went back to my room, stewing inside. I stretched out on my bed and examined my license, which now had a small, crumpled dent in it, just under my photograph. I bent it back and forth. It was too floppy for a firmer office lock. I needed a credit card. But I didn’t want to risk mangling mine, since I was essentially trapped in Minnesota. I looked in my wallet, and discovered my old Condé Nast Aetna dental and health insurance cards. I had been paying for Condé Nast’s COBRA coverage ever since Jane folded. It was the only reason I’d been able to afford rehab, since it was covered under my continued-benefits program.

  The cards were white and made out of a thick, firm, yet pliable plastic. Even better than a credit card. I picked up the dental card and headed back upstairs. Richard was still reading and I motioned to him from the doorway.

  “Round two,” I whispered. “I can’t give this up, now that I’ve started.”

  He took his position again and I went to work. The door still wouldn’t budge. I maneuvered the card in and out, back and forth, trying to get it to slide just enough down the sloping curve of the lock to pop it in, but it wasn’t working. I felt the card buckling in resistance, I was mangling it as I shoved harder and harder and just as I was about to give up, the door popped open.

  Richard must have heard the sound because I looked up fast at him and his eyes widened. I mouthed Be right back and stepped inside the office, shutting the door quietly behind me. I crossed the darkened room, fishing out the two paper clips in my pocket to get at the locked file cabinet, but was relieved to see that the key was still sticking out of it.

  I dropped to my knees, opened the bottom file where I’d last placed my envelope, and slipped my BlackBerry and charger inside the sleeve of my hoodie. I could hear the muffled voices of the therapists through one wall of the office. I shut the cabinet door, making sure the key was in the same position as before. I opened the office door an inch, then another, before daring myself to stick my head out and look at Richard. He saw me and motioned me out with a thumbs-up sign. “I can’t believe that worked,” Richard said, laughing.

  “I’m a very determined person,” I said.

  The following Monday I had to present my chemical-use history to my small group. I thought I’d just be reading my lists out loud, but they sat me down in front of a large easel with a massive drawing pad on it.

  “Whatever you do, don’t look behind you,” one of the patients said.

  It was a gorgeous day, so we were having small group outside. I leaned back in my chair, shielded my eyes from the sun, and started reading off my list. I started strong, listing the first time I’d gotten drunk, the first time I’d smoked pot, and then averaging out the frequency with which I’d continued those drugs and others through high school. By the time I’d gotten to my college years I was hunched over in my chair, mumbling out the names of drugs, the cost, the frequency. The list never ended. I kept talking and talking and talking as the sun beat down on me, baking my thighs inside my black jeans, making the crooks of my arms sweat.

  My voice was trembling by the time I finished up.

  “Are you ready to look behind you?” the therapist asked, when I’d finally wrapped it all up.

  “Okay,” I said. I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was, but felt a sense of dread creeping up on me. I turned slowly in my seat.

  The huge piece of paper was almost entirely black with ink. Years and lists of drugs and dollar amounts were crammed together so tightly that barely any white space was left on the paper. This is what the inside of my brain has become, I thought to myself. It used to be a clean slate.

  “Not so confident now, are you?” one of the other patients cackled.

  Had I been acting overly confident? I was growing more and more upset. Group was over, and I stood up and walked over to the easel, trying to make out the words listed on it. The writing was so tiny that the words flowed together in one continuous river of ink.

  “Can I keep this?” I asked the group leader.

  “Sure,” she said. “You can burn it at the bonfire tonight if you want. Sometimes that helps people.”

  So lame, I thought to myself, but suddenly I wanted nothing more than to see this receipt of my past go up in flames. I ripped the giant piece of paper off and rolled it into a poster-sized tube, tucked it under my arm, and headed back into the building.

  My roommates weren’t in so I pulled my BlackBerry out from its hiding place under the mattress and checked my messages. I hadn’t heard back from the Spin editor yet, and the messages I’d been getting from Emily and Stephanie were brief and terse. Neither of them were too happy that I’d broken into the office. “Rather counterproductive, wouldn’t you say?” read one text. I stuck the phone back under the mattress. I tried to get angry at them, but the anger was being overridden by something more complicated. I couldn’t get that black piece of paper out of my head. It sat un-curling on the desk next to my bed and I could see the shadow of darkness inside it. The sum of me: my years of drugs, ripped from my brain and splattered onto a canvas. Everything I’d kept private was now on display in permanent marker. I couldn’t wait to see it burn.

  My BlackBerry vibrated underneath me, sending a shiver of something that I was beginning to recognize as guilt through my body. I left it under the mattress. Whatever the message was, it wasn’t meant for me yet.

  The fire grew quickly, its heat and smoke being pushed by the wind directly in my face. My eyes filled with water and ash, but I didn’t budge. Everyone was sitting in a circle around the large burning pit, saying their nightly affirmations, which were essentially the same as morning affirmations—encouraging, happy thoughts only, but you could also say things you were grateful for about anything that had happened that day.

  The circle started. Someone said, “I love my mom,” and the whole group shouted back, “You love your mom!”

  I am somebody. YOU ARE SOMEBODY!

  I have a family who loves me. YOU HAVE A FAMILY WHO LOVES YOU!

  I can work this simple program! YOU CAN WORK THIS SIMPLE PROGRAM!

  I’m going to succeed when I get out! YOU’RE GOING TO SUCCEED WHEN YOU GET OUT!

  I’m crying, wiping my face with my sleeve. These people want and need help so badly. All of my indiscretions—the rule breaking, laughing at their art projects, the hidden pills, fighting with Susan, breaking and entering and stealing the phone, it flies in the face of everything these people are working so hard for. We are supposed to be a community of people helping each other, and each of my acts so far have been nothing but a slap in the face to their attempted sobriety. And I finally allow myself to accept my own.

  It isn’t enough that I want to help them. I need to learn how to want to help myself. I can’t understand why this is an epiphany, when it now seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

  The guilt I feel at not having been taking the program seriously is crushing, but for the first time since I’d gone to take care of Bobby in Tennessee, there’s a voice inside me that’s clear. Clearer even than my night alone after surgery. My conscience finally and fully emerges from its slumber and takes over. It’s my turn to speak in the circle.

  “I…regret,” I say.

  “YOU Regrehh…wha?”

  I sense accusatory eyes facing me. These are supposed to be affirmative remarks only, and patients take this sort of deviance seriously. It messes with their warm feelings of camaraderie. I’m staring into the fire, watching embers glow. When I look up to face everyone, all I see are orange spots before my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s all I feel right now,” I say.

  There’s a slight pause and some disapproving murmuring, but the circle of voices move on to the person sitting to my right and the affirmations continue.

  I take the rolled-up piece of poster paper that’s tucked under my arm and feed it to the fire. I slide it in underneath the logs, into the cave of embers, and watch the ends immediately begin to curl and smoke. It takes
longer to ignite than I expect since there are so many layers in the cylinder, but soon, twenty years of drug use begin to disperse into smoke and rise out of the fire and into the sky. I take a stick and prod gently at the poster. There’s a flash as the whole thing finally catches fire and then the entire archive burns quickly. Soon there’s nothing left but a tube-shaped mound of ash that, using the stick, I blend in with the rest of the kindling, embers, and dirt until nothing of my history remains.

  I look back up and the circle of voices has almost made it back to the beginning. The last woman to speak is someone from my small group, an extremely large woman, with sad eyes and stringy hair. She had lost custody of her child right before entering this facility because of her crack habit. She had come into the program straight from a shelter with no clothing except what was on her back. On one of our outings three of us from the small group had pooled our money and bought her some new clothes at Target.

  “I am loved,” she says, softly and unsure.

  “You are loved,” I answer back, my voice rising above the others, cautiously hopeful; hungry to believe the words are meant for me as well.

  Epilogue

  DESPITE MY FLAGRANT ABUSE of Suboxone while I was in rehab, I don’t want anyone to be scared of this drug if it’s offered up as part of a rehabilitation program. The way Suboxone works is that with steady, continued use, the high quickly dissipates and replaces the craving for opiates. I don’t believe it should be a long-term option, though. The quicker you can be weaned off, the better.

  When I returned home from rehab after being thrown out early due to insurance complications, I had an immediate, but thankfully brief, relapse. After my head cleared, I sought help from the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center and went on a normal Suboxone program, one that I didn’t abuse. It helped immensely. But during my relapse, I had noticed that single doses of Suboxone were now available on Candyman’s menu, which speaks volumes about the drug’s potential for abuse. What started out as a hopefully safer alternative to methadone should probably be looked at a bit more closely by those who administer and manufacture it. And I hope by now it goes without saying that if you’re a parent or friend who is helping someone go through opiate withdrawal and he has been prescribed Suboxone, you will consider being the one to administer the dose and sit with that person while the entire pill dissolves in his mouth. It’s not like the user can hide it under his tongue, since that is exactly where it dissipates.

  I have to admit, it’s still, even now, difficult for me to write these words about telling people to get help. Because there will always be a massive part of my brain that wants opiates, and feels like I’m betraying users out there by spilling so many secrets about the topic. I dread the idea of becoming some sort of go-to person on how to get clean, of being some sort of “expert” on the topic of addiction. I don’t consider myself an expert on anything except my own life. And many times, I doubt even that.

  One story in particular keeps me going, though. During my research for this book, one of the experts who has been studying opiate abuse for a long time now told me a story off the record. This particular expert had become so wrapped up in his own research on the topic that he completely failed to notice that his own spouse had become utterly addicted to opiates, after discovering a ring of elderly military vets who were selling their medications to pay for other pressing life necessities. The spouse was able to hide it because so many people can easily conceal this type of addiction. It allows you to function normally on so many other levels. The idea that one of the nation’s leading experts in the field of opiate abuse had not been able to see that it had infiltrated his own home speaks volumes.

  The problem is, we can’t treat pill addiction or dependence like any other type of drug addiction. These are medicines that help people and must be made available to those in need, so simply going after the drug manufacturers won’t work, unless it’s to strengthen security measures. I don’t have the answers. My only hope is that this book will make the questions clearer and a little louder. As far as the personal details of my life that I’ve revealed, I could go that whole route that so many memoirists take, and say “I did it just to be able to help that one lonely kid in Iowa who thought he was the only one out there feeling the same way.” I’ve always thought that was kind of a bullshit answer. And frankly, it’s culturally irrelevant these days. That “lonely kid” in Iowa doesn’t exist anymore. He probably has 678 Facebook friends and a YouTube following that rivals the ratings of most satellite radio shows. I wrote this book to help myself understand what happened to my life.

  That said, I will be pretty psyched if it helps anyone else along the way.

  Joshua Kennedy Lyon

  January 29, 2009

  Sources

  BOOKS

  Pain Killer: A “Wonder” Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death, Barry Meier, Rodale, 2003

  Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2005: National Estimates of Drug-Related Emergency Department Visits, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

  Generation RX: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds and Bodies, Greg Critser, Houghton Mifflin, 2005

  Results From the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

  High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Public Affairs, 2007

  The Science of Addiction, National Institute of Health, 2007

  Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation, Charles Barber, Pantheon Books, 2008

  Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years, David Owen, Methuen, 2008

  NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES

  Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology: “Buprenorphine Treatment of Refractory Depression,” J. Alexander Bodkin, M.D., Gwen L. Zornberg, M.D., Scott E. Lukas, Ph.D., and Jonathan O. Cole, M.D., Volume 15, No. 1, 1995

  Journal of Clinical Psychiatry: “Combining Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and Bupronion in Partial Responders to Antidepressant Monotherapy,” J. Alexander Bodkin, M.D., Robert A. Lasser, M.D., James D. Wines, Jr., M.D., David M. Gardner, B.Sc. Pharm., and Ross J. Balessarini, M.D., April, 1997

  The New York Times: “Sales of Painkiller Grew Rapidly, But Success Brought a High Cost,” Barry Meier and Melody Petersen, March 5, 2001

  Newsweek: “Playing With Painkillers,” Claudia Kalb with Joan Raymond, Ellise Pierce, Sam Smith, Jay P. Wagner, Jeanne Gordon-Thomas, and Alan Wirzbicki, April 9, 2001

  Associated Press: “Maker of OxyContin Faces at Least 13 Lawsuits Over Often-Abused Painkiller,” July 27, 2001

  The New York Times: “The Alchemy of OxyContin,” Paul Tough, July 29, 2001

  The New York Times: “At Painkiller Trouble Spot, Signs Seen as Alarming Didn’t Alarm Drug’s Maker,” Barry Meier, December 10, 2001

  USA Today: “Painkiller Thieves Get More Creative,” Donna Leinwand, December 1, 2003

  The New York Times: “Drug-Fighters Turn to Rising Tide of Prescription Abuse,” Michael Janofsky, March 18, 2004

  WCPO News: “Father Gets Jail Time for Son’s OxyContin Death,” Liz Foreman, April 7, 2004

  Time: “Prescription For Crime; Illegal Pills Have Sparked a Wave of Thefts and Criminality that Rural Towns Just Can’t Handle,” Rex Bowman/Tazewell, March 28, 2005

  USA Today: “Ecstasy’s Lost ‘Its Panache’ Among Teens,” Donna Leinwand, April 22, 2005

  Time: “An Inside Look at a ‘Pharming Party,’ the Newest Venue for Teenage Prescription-Drug Abuse,” Carolyn Banta, August 1, 2005

  The New York Sun: “Dr. Feelgood, Past and Present,” September 20, 2005

  The New York Times: “Drug Survey of Students Finds Picture Very Mixed,” Kate Zernike, December 20, 2005

  The New York Times: “When Teenagers Abuse Prescription Drugs, the Fault May Be the Doctor’s,” Howard Markel, M.D., December 27, 2005

  USA Today: “P
rescription Drugs Find Place in Teen Culture,” Donna Leinwand, June 13, 2006

  The New York Times: “Illegal Drug Use by Teenagers Is on Decline, U.S. Study Finds,” Micah Cohen, December 22, 2006

  USA Today: “Teen Drug Use Drops, with Exceptions; Survey Finds Abuse of Pharmaceuticals Relatively Steady,” Donna Leinwand, December 22, 2006

  Vogue: “Trouble in Mind,” Eva Marar, December 2006

  USA Today: “Deadly Abuse of Methadone Tops Other Prescription Drugs; Only Cocaine Kills More by Overdose,” Donna Lein-wand, February 13, 2007

  USA Today: “Painkiller More Available for Abuse,” Donna Lein-wand, February 13, 2007

  Albany Times-Union: “A Disgraced but Popular Doctor,” Brendan J. Lyons, February 28, 2007

  Associated Press: “Prescription Drug Abuse Soaring,” March 1, 2007

  Associated Press: “Binge Drinking, Pill Abuse Intensify at Colleges,” March 15, 2007

  Newsweek: “The Changing Science of Pain,” Mary Carmichael, with Samantha Henig, Dan Ephron, and Julie Scelfo, June 4, 2007

  New York Post: “‘Oxy’ Kids Crisis,” Larry Celona and Leonard Greene, June 18, 2007

  Elle: “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” Lauren Slater, July 2007 The New York Times: “Japanese Slowly Shedding Their Misgivings about the Use of Painkilling Drugs,” Donald G. McNeil, September 10, 2007

  The New York Times: “Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain,” Donald G. McNeil Jr., September 10, 2007

  The New York Times: “In India, a Quest to Ease the Pain of the Dying,” Donald G. McNeil Jr., September 11, 2007

  The New York Times: “Experts Debate the Meaning of Addiction,” Donald McNeil, September 14, 2007

  Los Angeles Times: “Drug Use Down, but Teens Still Abusing Painkillers,” Theo Milonopoulos, December 12, 2007

  Vogue: “The Quick Fix,” Judith Newman, March 2008 Newsweek: “The Hunt for an Addiction Vaccine,” Jeneen Interlandi, March 3, 2008