Some of you may be wondering where the hell I’ve been…or why I haven’t written anything since ONE YEAR LATER. Well…keep wondering…cause I’m on vacation!! LOL…I kid I kid!
Sadly, I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m still very much down here lampin’ (or should I say sweating my balls off) at good ol’ Ft. Dix Federal Correctional Institution–finishing up payment of my debt to society. I’m almost paid in full. Too bad this place doesn’t accept checks or credit cards instead of time…PFFFFF!
With this nearly unbearable heat and humidity situation that I’ve had to endure down here with no fans or a/c over the past month, I’ve honestly had no drive or motivation to write. I know, I know…I’m sorry! Hey…relax over there Gary! If you’re that mad call any Federal official and tell them to install some air conditioners down here…then we’ll be in business. I’m sure the other 5,200 inmates here would really appreciate it!! The natives are definitely getting restless down here with this heat and no relief in sight. Shit…I’m fucking sweating as I type this…lol.
Every time I sat down with my iced beverage in hand, headphones in my ears tuned in to my favorite station, in the frame of mind to write, I would immediately get hot, start sweating and then I’d get aggravated…which in turn caused me to put my pen and pad away until the next day. Rinse. Recycle. Repeat. Finally after multiple failed attempts at writing due to inclimate weather conditions and lack of interest in sweating my balls off more than necessary, I got to the point where I was like fuck this shit. I needed a break…so I decided to take one month off and come back fresh and motivated….so here I am. I’m still definitely hot as balls, but I’m fresh and ready to make miracles happen…LOL. So I’m all yours…at least until the next heat wave. Now… where the hell was I again? Oh yeah………
Some time between the early hours of three and four in the morning, I woke up from a coma-like sleep in a groggy haze…confused as to where the hell I was exactly. I was laying on a seemingly familiar and comfortable bed, engulfed in a plethora of sheets and down comforters, and I was ass naked. I glanced over and noticed that there was a woman sleeping soundly beside me, facing the opposite direction. Still confused, I partially sat up…quietly as to not wake her…and curiously looked around the dark room. As I slowly began to gather my bearings, it all came back to me in an instant. I was home…I was in my bed…I was out of rehab.
Even though I was still half asleep, I smiled to myself. I carefully sank back into my bed under the covers, rolled over, closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep. The only problem was…I couldn’t…and believe me when I say I tried. It’s not that I wasn’t tired, because I was still very much so. It’s just that something didn’t feel right….not with the situation of me being back home in the comforts of my apartment, in my bed, with my lady no less….no…it was something else. It was me. I felt kind of shitty…and as the minutes passed, while trying to get comfortable enough to fall back asleep, I noticed it more and more.
For starters, despite the air conditioning clearly being on, it felt like the heat in my apartment was set to South Africa. I was sweating a little and laying in a large area of wetness….which might have also been sweat…presumably my own…or so I had hoped. Unless of course the woman sleeping ever so soundly next to me was dreaming of toilet bowls and oceans LOL…and in that case I was literally swimming in whatever the hell she had going on. Nope…thank God…lol…the wetness came from me. I was perspiring lightly all over. The sweat was just enough to make it really sticky and uncomfortable under the covers, making it impossible to fall back asleep.
Naturally, I removed the covers from my body to try and cool off–and did I ever. It felt as if I flipped a switch. The cool air felt really nice at first, almost refreshing. Then it got a little too cold for my liking, so I slid back under the covers to warm up a little, in yet another attempt to fall back asleep. Only thing is it didn’t work. Despite the abundance of covers I was swimming in, I still felt slight chills all over. I had goosebumps everywhere…and I’m talking everywhere. Places I didn’t think were possible to get them had goosebumps. Laying in the small area of wetness wasn’t helping my situation either. If anything, it only made me feel more cold and uncomfortable. I didn’t like where this was heading.
After a few minutes of tossing and turning, going from slightly hot to cold, I decided to get out of bed, towel off the sweat and put on some clothes to get my body temperature back to normal. That’s when I noticed how shitty I really felt. My body had mild aches all over…not sharp pain per se…but achy. I also noticed that I felt kind of drained. At first I chalked it up to lack of sleep, but dismissed that idea quickly since I had experienced all these symptoms together before. I was beginning to get a sense of deja vu. My body felt like it was going through a very mild version of what I went through before I had gone to rehab…. opiate withdrawals. Pffffffff! Fuck my life!
Yes…the withdrawals were back….the only thing is I had no idea how or why. I was really confused as to what the fuck was going on. I even went as far as pinching myself because I thought I was stuck in some sort of twisted dream–a nightmare even. I wasn’t. Sadly, it was real. Now all I had to do was find out how to fix my problem.
I realize this whole opiate withdrawals bullshit sounds rather redundant. It seems like every other blog I’m talking about hot flashes, chills and feeling like shit. Well…that’s because every time I looked…it felt like opiate withdrawals kept creeping back into my life somehow. So imagine how the fuck I must have felt. You have to sit through reading it over and over in my blogs, and here I was going through them over and over in real life….pffffff.
I mean, I went to rehab–dealt with all the nonsense there for however long–cleaned up my act and checked out. I thought I was well past the point of physical withdrawals. I definitely wasn’t expecting to go through them ever again. I guess I thought wrong.
I didn’t take into consideration that I was on pills for close to two years…along with whatever other party drugs I added to the mix. A few weeks away in a rehab isn’t the end all be all cure all as I thought it was. I guess my body still needed time to fully adjust to not having opiates in my system. They say the biggest reason that most people relapse after their first time getting out of rehab is because you leave there with a false sense of security. You leave there thinking you feel great and it’s all over…like Matty – 1, Blueberries – 0 …all the while not realizing that the medication they put you on to detox off of pills will eventually wear off and you’ll inevitably have to go through feeling like shit for at minimum a couple more days…and at worst several more weeks…depending how bad your habit was. Don’t get me wrong, I felt great compared to withdrawals before I checked into rehab, but it still sucked just enough for me to consider using pills again…as I almost did.
What happens next is a little cloudy in my memory–so bear with me. I’ll try my best to describe what happened the rest of that morning as far as I can remember…
Still feeling like shit, I decided to shrug it off and take action. After getting dressed, slipping into a pair of Jordan shorts and a loose fitting tank top, I prepared myself for a scavenger hunt around my apartment. Operation blueberries (or anything equivalent for that matter) was under way. I went on a fucking mission to make the shitty feeling go away…one way or another. I had several squirrel stash spots all around my apartment…for just such an occasion. Sad…I know…but also very true. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was which spots my girl had cleaned out in my absence.
I started my quest in the bathroom. Yes…the bathroom. I told you I hid shit everywhere…no pun intended…lol. I looked in the three places where I would’ve hidden pills….the linen closet…way back engulfed among old bath towels…nope. The medicine cabinet…mixed in with a bottle of Vitamin E capsules…nope. Finally I checked the box of wet wipes on the shelves next to the toilet. I mean who would look in there…right? Fucking nope. Either she got to all my hiding places while I was away or I sniffed them a while ago and forgot to replenish the stash. Regardless, the bathroom was all clear…no pills.
Next I ransacked my living room…and believe me when I say I looked everywhere…even in places where I normally wouldn’t have hid shit. I tried to convince myself that perhaps in a drugged-up haze, I must have found new hiding places. If I wasn’t sweating and going through mild chills, semi-feeling like death, this would’ve probably been a fun game…like an Easter egg hunt when I was a kid…lol. I looked in pillows, under pillows, in the couch, under the couch, under the coffee table, on shelves, in books, under the book case, in picture frames, on the window sills, in closets, in clothing in closets, in jacket pockets, in jean pockets, in shoes, in the DVD player, under the DVD player….you get the idea.
Shit, I almost wished I had someone there rooting me on saying, you’re getting colder… you’re getting warmer…lol. If you think about it, that part was kind of true. I was getting hotter and colder every few minutes…but like physically…not just in regard to finding my prize…lol. I was on a fucking mission, which as it appeared, I was failing miserably, finding nothing….
After rummaging through the remaining areas of my apartment–all of which while trying to be as quiet as possible–as to not wake up sleeping beauty in my bedroom, I hit up my kitchen…in a last ditch effort to soothe my pain and discomfort.
This took a little time…seeing there were so many fucking places where I could have possibly hid pills in a drugged-up frenzy. I literally emptied my cabinets…looked in glasses, bowls, cups, pots, pans, and all dinnerware was searched thoroughly to no avail. I even went as far as looking in the dishwasher–only to realize how stupid that was because even if I did have something in there at any point in time–it would’ve been ruined by a single wash…lol. I opened up my food closet. I tore open boxes of cereal, cookies, crackers…anything that was already open. I looked in a bottle of whey protein. I searched drawers, in the stove, under the stove, in the sink and under the sink. I even decided to move out my refrigerator to see if perhaps I might have dropped a pill under there at some point. Nothing. Not a fucking pill. I was clearly getting desperate.
Although I did find a few hundred bucks hidden in a box of Kashi GoLean cereal underneath the bag at the bottom that I must have forgotten about….so all was not lost…lol. Seriously though, I looked everywhere and found nothing. I failed miserably. If this were a real Easter egg hunt, all the other little kids would’ve been enjoying their prizes and I’d be off in a corner sulking. Fuck it. It seemed as if I was going to have to tough it out til the withdrawals passed. Who knew how long that was going to be? At least they weren’t that bad.
By this time, I’d say it was roughly four thirty in the morning, perhaps closer to five. This is where it gets cloudy. Feeling defeated, sweating lightly, I decided to look in my fridge for something to drink. I was in no mood to eat. I was drained. I had no energy whatsoever. I was overtired. All I wanted to do was replenish some fluids lost and lay down…not that I could sleep even if I tried. Did I mention that insomnia was a big factor after getting off pills? As I’d later learn, I wouldn’t be sleeping much in the next coming months. I’ll get to all that later down the line.
Upon looking in my refrigerator for a cold beverage, I grabbed a bottle of Simply Orange (no pulp) and cracked it open. Then I got a bright idea. I opened my freezer. What I found there kind of saved the day. Guess who forgot to get the alcohol out of the house? I found a few open bottles of random alcohol…mostly vodka…which is all I really used to drink. I made the executive decision to drink myself into a coma with high hopes of eventually waking up without withdrawals. I figured it may not have been the pills I was so desperately seeking, but it would do the trick. So I did just that…I drank…not even 24 hours out of rehab…and I was getting bombed at five in the morning. Nice…huh? Mom must be real proud…LOL.
After I finished off one bottle, which I’m assuming only gave me two or three glasses of vodka and OJ, I remember stumbling back into my kitchen to retrieve another bottle…figuring this would be the one to put me over the edge. I reached in my freezer for the bottle and I pulled it out…and low and behold…look what I find chilling (literally) behind it…. a mini ziploc baggie (picture one that could fit a nickel) containing five 30mg roxicodone pills. I was drunk. I smiled. This day was getting better by the minute. I won the Easter egg hunt after all! Yippieeeee!
To Be Continued….
mattymcdonald 