18/10/2010

Wake up call - John's story

'John', a 38-year-old addict from Leicester, is the first person in the UK accept money to have a vasectomy after being involved in drugs since he was 12-years-old.

This is his story...

"It was confusing to say the least, perhaps disorientating would be a better word to describe how it felt to suddenly awaken, on my back, on the bathroom floor, stark naked and soaking wet, and surrounded by strangers who were leaning over me and peering intensely into my face.
 
For a second or two I lay there struggling to grasp the situation I was in. Then I was struggling to gain my feet, but being prevented by strong and assertive hands. There were unfamiliar voices telling me to relax, that everything was okay, though in their unfamiliar faces was obvious fear that contradicted that statement adding to my rising sense of panic. Then the penny dropped as an overwhelming sense of shame swept over me, and filled me with the wretched realization that I had done it again, I had “gone over”. That is to say I had overdosed, and these strong, assertive folk around me were members of a paramedic crew who were busy trying to asses and increase my chances of survival. It dawned on me at roughly the same moment that somewhere in this befuddled scene would be Angela, and for that matter her daughter Natasha, who were most likely both under the firm impression that I was dying, right there on their bathroom floor.
 
"Oh nooo!" I wailed out loud, "Not again, NO!" Then, as I became more lucid by the second, the Naloxone they had pumped into my system beginning to flush out the heroin, clearing my brains receptors along with my thoughts, "Where's Angela? Is she okay? Where is she?"
 
"She's fine, she's in her bedroom, someone's with her," was the reply. I could hear Angela’s voice as she was talking to somebody, they were saying something along the reassuring lines of "He’s okay; he's asking for you, he's going to be fine." Or words to that effect.
 
I had indeed done it again. I had committed the indiscretion, of nearly killing myself, accidentally, by injecting an amount of street heroin that was clearly much stronger than I had anticipated. I had taken the liberty of choosing to do this whilst enjoying a bath in my new girlfriend's home while her teenage daughter was in the next room. It was clear that this dose had been more powerful than my recently re-awakened tolerance levels could cope with. It was becoming equally clear that the decisive intervention of these two women had saved my life.

All of these facts came banging down onto my consciousness simultaneously as I lay there on the bathroom floor, not yet fully awake enough to be embarrassed by the inappropriate aspect of my status, being nude, wet, shivering and surrounded by strangers, or by the growing realisation that it must have been Angela and her teenage daughter, Natasha, who had between them hauled my unconscious body out of the bath, avoiding standing on the sharps and other paraphernalia I had left laying on the floor nearby.
 
"Not again!" I repeated loudly as the enormity of my faux-pas, and what consequences could result from it, hit my conscious mind like a relentless attack of uncomfortable truths. As it turned out, not all the consequences were bad ones after all. This overdose (or indiscretion as I prefer to call them) was the last in a long list of close calls, but for many reasons this one proved to be my "wake up call" that did more to get me truly on the road to recovery than any previous troublesome event in my rather troubled life.
 
They kept me in the hospital for 24 hours. The first 12 or so not letting Angela leave my side and why? Because these experienced doctors, who had seen this whole drama played out many times with many people, didn't think I was going to make it through the night, and they didn't want me to die alone. My arrogance insisted they had it all wrong of course, that I just needed to go home and sleep it off and I would be fine; what a fool! I was dying right there in front of my lover’s eyes and all I could think about was getting all my stash and kit out of the house in case somebody had called the old bill, more concerned with ending up in jail, than ending up in the morgue! Typical junkie.
 
Like I said, this "indiscretion" was one of many during my 15 or so years’ long career as an opiate addict. Why was this one so special? Because I realised something after the drama had settled and I was released from hospital, not just that I nearly died that day, that is something I've realised many times in my somewhat charmed existence, but rather I realised something I hadn't felt those other times, not felt during much of my life beyond childhood to be honest; I realised I didn't want to die yet.

I cared. I cared that my death, there and then in that manner, would have devastated so many lives, my family, and my genuine friends, not to mention the two women who had just saved my life.

There was also the realisation that I wasn't done with life yet. I'd still got stuff I wanted to achieve, or at least make a serious effort at achieving, there was stuff I needed to prove still too, to myself sure, but also to those folk, few and far between though they may be, whose opinion of me mattered, and to all the judgemental people over the years who'd assumed a certainty about my destiny they had no right to assume, the knockers and 'put you downers', the  cynics and sceptics who mocked and sneered and laughed at the notion of me ever being anything other than a worthless, hopeless addict.

Then there were all the folk like me, the downcast, downtrodden, browbeaten ones out there who, like me, had written themselves off, believing the lie they'd been told so many times, the accusation that they deserved everything they got. I had to try to show them, to be an example to them, give them hope! It can be beaten, this unfair, in-just and uncaring world, this place called Earth that is hell for so many, when it should be Eden for all. That thing, whatever it is that keeps you down, holds you back, fences you in and stops you being the real you, the best you you can possibly be. Yes it can be beaten.
 
For me that thing is chemical dependence, and it's a fight I haven't quite won yet, not entirely. But that horrible day, when everyone around me thought I was on my way out, was the turning point for me. It wasn't the day I started fighting it, I've been fighting this thing for my whole adult life, but it was the day I started believing I could win.

That was the day I found the better me, the stronger me, I might even call it the heroic me inside, that had the will to fight it, and enough self belief to beat it.
 
People say drugs are evil, but they are not. Drugs don't have morals; they are inanimate, beyond any moral identity, just a force of the natural world. Drugs can be used positively or negatively.

What is evil and destructive is our relationship with drugs, our exploitation of them for profit, our wilful use of them as a moral scapegoat, a way of denying the evil in ourselves. It is people who are evil, when we embrace that which destroys all that's noble in ourselves, that which causes suffering and thrives on misery. When we do that which dismisses or denies the sacred nature, the inviolate value, of life.

When we refuse to believe our life, or indeed any life, has value and when we do, or say, or encourage or condone either by action or in-action, that which hinders the transcendence of others, denies the human spirit's capacity to reach beyond the limits of our perceived natures and become something better than we were before.
 
So I battle still with my vulnerability to addiction. I battle still with many flaws in my character, and in my community, my society, my world. However, if this fight has taught me one thing it's this. Never give up, never write anyone off, for truly have I learned that "every man and every woman is a star, waiting to be born."