A story from a New Yorker who was addicted to heroin at the time of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
Like anyone who writes about addiction, I find that words sometimes fall short of the mark. It's possible to describe severe addiction in stark, grievous detail, but in terms of really allowing people to access that state for a moment, it's tough.
I hit the topic from every angle - biological, psychological, social / familial, professional, political - hoping that one of these will break through the communication barriers. I try to be creative and analogical as well as precise and methodological.
My first go-to is comparing addiction to a very severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder involving the compulsion to use drugs to relieve unbearable anxiety, which creates a "stuck in a loop" behavioral pattern that can be nigh on impossible to break.
I also liken addiction to the action of certain parasites that affect insects, which hijack their hosts' central nervous systems and force them to enact bizarre behavior that makes them more likely to be eaten by the predators that function as the parasites' next hosts.
I try to give weight to the sensory horror of addiction - for example, when addicts continue to inject into gangrenous limbs despite the fact that they are rotting off, which ultimately causes them to lose arms and legs (this isn't a Requiem for a Dream meme; it's a reality).
The problem with these modes of explanation is that they dehumanize in the same stroke as they describe. When I use them, I'm likening addicts to automatons, to bugs, to zombies with decaying parts. The emotional impact is blunted by the implication that there is less than a whole human being left.
The subtle, complete horror of addiction is just how much of the "original person" stays awake for the show.
***
There was a woman who I was in treatment with at Palms Partners' facility in Delray, Florida ("the rehab mecca of the U.S. and the relapse capital of the universe," the joke went).
I don't remember her name, but I remember very vividly what she looked like.
She was a mid-30's to early-40's black woman with a short haircut and a professional wardrobe that seemed out-of-place in the sweltering south. She had a broad, sensitive face; she looked like a paralegal or an accountant.
The only memory that I have of her is when she spoke up in process group one morning.
"I haven't told most of you that I'm here on federal probation for heroin distribution," she began.
She explained that she had lived in Brooklyn her entire life, and that - like many other members of her family - she had fallen into dealing heroin and cocaine and eventually succumbed to heroin addiction herself.
"I remember my brother calling me right after the first plane hit, saying 'sis, we're under attack, everybody's gotta get to somewhere safe,'" she recounted, "and the only thing I could think about was: I've gotta get across the City to re-up today; how am I gonna do that if they shut everything down?"
She described flipping on the news and taking notes - actually writing down - which transportation routes were being closed, whether there were more sites being targeted, etc.
She didn't think once about staying home with her mom and daughter.
Her story was one of those that really stayed with me. Can you imagine being a New Yorker on that history-making, paradigm-shifting day, discovering that your city is being attacked (possibly invaded), and thinking only about how you're still going to get to your supplier?
Every human impulse - to hide, to survive, to protect family and country, to help strangers - extinguished by a need so intense that it brooks no argument.
Like I said, her story stayed with me.
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