I Was Never "Normal": What It's Like to Be a Drug Addict Who Hasn't Started Using Yet

In the Program, people talk about alcoholics who haven't started drinking yet. They're referring not just to the genetic nature of alcoholism, but to a cluster of psychological and behavioral traits that addicts share, which manifest long before active addiction begins. These are my reflections on the early signs that I was destined for addiction.

Me with a group of my cousins and their friends. I'm second from the left wearing that horrifying hat-without-the-headpiece thing (aka a vizor).

I wasn't the kind of kid to have friends over or to go to other kids' houses to hang out - I think I only did that twice in all of middle school and junior high - but my brothers and cousins often tacked me on to whatever they were doing.

***

I was never "normal."

From my middle school memories onward, I recall an Edge™.

My body didn't seem quite the right size. It felt like my arms and legs were too lanky, my hands too large on wrists too small, my head oversized and my neck elongated.

These distortions imparted a jerky, imbalanced quality to my movements because my brain was always moving the body that it thought should have been there rather than the body that was actually there.

I was terrible at sports.

My voice, too, was tremulous and tentative.

A cloud of minor dissociative symptoms followed me from the age of 10 or so onward.

There was a voice inside my head that narrated nearly everything that I was doing, particularly when I was nervous or being observed by other people.

"Okay, so you're going to walk in, go right up to the counter, and say 'Can I have a Big Mac, please?' Then, you're going to..."

That same internal voice would correct me, encourage me, urge me, rebuke me.

It's hard to describe, but there was quite a bit of meta activity going on in the mind of the young Brian, as well. A lot of examination of my own thought processes, wondering if they were normal, considering how my internal state compared to others'.

Some of this is typical - a sign of intelligence, even. It's when it becomes distracting or obsessive that it's a problem (one of the great ironies of mental illness is that too much perseveration over whether you're mentally ill can make you mentally ill).

In addition to being preoccupied, I was highly reactive: I had a nervous little nervous system.

I remember my kindergarten teacher getting frustrated with me because every time she pulled out this big rain stick and flipped it upside down, which was the class' cue to run to our seats, I would scream.

I couldn't help it. It was too much stimulation for me.

When I look back now, I sometimes wonder if I'd fit the clinical picture of a low-key autism.

In addition, I had some OCD tendencies when it came to hygiene, food, and other routines.

I was more emotional than most boys are allowed to be. Partly because of that, I was the only boy who sat at the girls' table during 5th and 6th grade.

I knew that I was very feminine relative to other boys, which was something that I was occasionally mocked for by my peers. I recognized that it made the adults around me uncomfortable / disdainful, as well.

I became ashamed of my voice and mannerisms very early on in my life.

One of my earliest memories is of a presexual experience with a handsome teenage boy named Dom, who was at one of the summer parties that my mom's law partner held at his cottage (read: mansion) on a lake Upstate.

Dom "kidnapped" me and carried me out into deeper water, where he held me as the other kids tried to "rescue" me. I remember the feeling of Dom and I bobbing up and over the waves together, of him holding my body against his.

I was happier than I had ever been on the ride home that day.

I realized early on that I was gay, and by middle school I was praying fervently that God would change that.

(God helps those who help themselves, so at one point in junior high, I forced myself to masturbate to a picture of Carmen Electra, which was sort of a do-it-yourself conversion therapy, I guess; I figured that, if Carmen Electra didn't do it for you, you were hopeless).

Worst of all, I was fairly skilled at masking my discomfiture about all of the above, which meant that I appeared happier and more functional than I was.

***

From an early age, fantasy and deception came easily to me. There was always something in my nature that was pulled toward the darker side of life.

I remember being in second grade and telling my older brother about the hamsters that our parents were getting us. There was a nine-story cage that we were getting, I explained, in which the warrior hamsters were holding things down on the bottom rung, the sleeping barracks were on levels two and three, the food was stored on level four, and so on.

My brother knew that it wasn't true, but it was so interesting to hear me spin the yarn that he listened for an hour.

I lied a lot. Sometimes as a game, often to benefit myself when dealing with my parents or peers, and sometimes just to invent a better, more interesting reality that I could invite someone else into.

"I'm sure that's objectively true, but would you like me to create a convincing-sounding alternate reality for the two of us to exist in?"

Reading was my first drug. From elementary school onward, I devoured upwards of 10 novels a week.

When I was immersed in these tales, I was literally transported. I wouldn't eat or go to the bathroom until I finished my book. If you pulled me away from it mid-tale, I would seem displaced, distracted; all of my thoughts and emotions would be tied up in that world and those characters.

I'd imagine myself interacting with literary or cinematic characters as though they were real, and I'd make up fake friends (usually handsome guys my age) and daydream emotionally intense relationships with them, as well.

Every candid photo of me from middle school shows me carrying a book. I once brought a novel with me to Yankee Stadium to read "before the game."

I was literally "the kid who reads all the time" to my extended family.

Me at junior prom. I was always a loner, but by the time that I reached this age, I had mastered hiding that fact by bouncing between social cliques. I was considered "popular" and was runner-up for the Best Personality senior superlative (I won "Most Likely to Succeed"... still waiting on it).

"Oh, the hell that awaits you," I think as I look at this picture now. Not to be too dark, but if I had known then what the next 20 years of my life would be like, I would've killed myself. I think that's true for more people than would care to admit it, though.

***

Reality was an ill-tailored suit, and from my very first experiences with psychoactive drugs, I knew that I had found the hack for correcting my physiology.

At some point in treatment, I read about a study in which psychologists gathered volunteers, some of whom were addicts and alcoholics and some of whom were “normies." Using basic, general terms in the prompt, they asked them to write about their first experiences with mind-altering substances.

As the researchers reviewed the responses, it quickly became clear that the addicts / alcoholics gave much longer, more detailed, and more emotionally-oriented answers. They were struck by the extent of the differences between the two sets of responses.

This isn’t surprising, but it rings profoundly true. Mind-altering substances had a different, much stronger impact on me than on those of my peers who used them recreationally. Some of my earliest and most vivid memories involve the first times that I used various substances.

I drank for the first time when I was 11.

My cousin had a couple of shots of the gin that we swiped from a family function. I drank a third of the bottle and was sick for two days.

That didn't stop me, though.

From that first time that I drank, my internal clocked shifted; I began measuring time according to how much longer it was until I could get f*cked up again.

By seventh grade, I was coming home from cross-country practice and sneaking three or four ounces of wine from whatever bottle my mom had open before showering and starting my homework.

There was never a time when I used substances non-addictively. Those blessed one- or two-hour vacations from my natural brain chemistry were the only times when I felt comfortable in my own skin.

I never had a best friend during middle school or high school. Substances were my safe place.

I sought out opportunities to get messed up obsessively during these years. What substances were on offer at a particular social event was much more important to me than who would be there or what we would be doing.

Even when I wasn't actually getting f*cked up, I spent hours upon hours reading trip reports on Erowid; psychonaut fiction and nonfiction by Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, and the other greats; and technical materials from biological and chemical journals.

When I bought three five-milligram, instant-release oxycodone pills for the first time during 10th grade, they cost me a total of $15.

By then, I had tried weed, mushrooms, acid, cocaine, Ecstasy (MDMA), MDA, phenobarbital, alprazolam (Xanax), and clonazepam (Klonopin), so I wasn't exactly chemically naive.

But my God: From the start, I knew that opioids were different.

If there were a soundtrack to the sh*tshow that is my life, then the track for that first opioid experience would be Berlin's "Take My Breath Away." I fell in love. I really did.

The nod: I'd drift downward into velvety unconsciousness, which felt like the plushest, most soul-fitting duvet imaginable; then, as my forehead approached my knees, angels would arrive, gently take my hands, and pull me back toward the light, all the while whispering to me about the Pulitzers I'd win, what it would feel like to hear ten thousand people clap for me at once.

My eyes would flutter open. I'd smile goofily, and then it would begin again...

Opioids ushered me through the gates of paradise.

I was home. I was free.

I was fine.

For those of you who became addicted, does the above ring true? What were some of the early signs that were going to become an addict / alcoholic (both before you tried substances and in your early experiences with them)?

For more about the science / nature of addiction, check out my piece on Johann Hari's "Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong."