Detroit Hyena

Since Blake's death, I've tested out hundreds of ways to cope. The most controversial of which has been befriending a heroin addict in Detroit. Five months ago, in a strange mixture of compulsive interest and morbid curiosity, I looked up "#heroin" on Instagram. What I found shocked, terrified, and intrigued me all at the same time. With one simple search I was given unlimited access into a private world. From the safety of my bedroom I got an intimate look into the lives of people who share their drug use through pictures. It was all there: everything I read about, but had never been exposed to.

There was one person's profile that I kept coming back to. She seemed to take pride in her drug use and the scars it left on her body and life. She was so open, honest, and unashamed. But as much as it scared me to see her photos, I could sense a goodness in her. While looking through her profile I felt a magnetic connection to her that can only be explained by fate. 

A week or two into my secret fascination with her account, I finally decided to make contact. What started out as a simple question turned into several comments back and fourth. Then emails. Then texts. I explained how my boyfriend died from a heroin addiction I knew nothing about and she detailed her 15 year-long battle with the same drug. We listened to each other, cried together, helped each other reach a new level of understanding. We made an unspoken commitment to leave judgment at the door and support each other unconditionally.

In the five months since we became friends, Hyena has committed to sobriety and relapsed several times. And on a night I'll never forget, she talked to me during her suicide attempt as I desperately tried to remind her how much she had left to teach the world. And to teach me. Her story was far from pretty, but I've always been convinced that she deserved a happy ending. Through it all, I held the hope that deep down she believed she deserved one too.

  

Detroit Hyena is now 27 days sober. Although her other attempts at sobriety have ended in using again, I know it's different this time. I know this because everything about her is different this time. 

I feel different too. In an unexplainable way, from across the country and with completely different life struggles, I feel like she and I have made this journey together. When I look at her only one word comes to mind: metamorphosis. It's been an incredibly gruesome past few months, but through the turmoil I believe there's been somewhat of a rebirth, for her and for me. 

Through Hyena, an unknown junkie from Detroit posting pictures on the internet, I learned that kind questions grounded in a desire to understand are the passageway to greater awareness. An awareness about those who are different than you and, more importantly, about yourself. I am forever grateful for the day that the strange mixture of compulsive interest and morbid curiosity lead me to her. I told her before, "I don't always support your choices, but I will always support you." And now, with incredible pride and love, I can finally say I support both.

Congratulations on your 27 days, Detroit Hyena. Here's to 27 and forever more.

Here's the link to her blog. She's an incredible writer: http://detroithyena.blogspot.com/

Suicide Attempt

Last night, the friend I described in this post and this post put up a picture on her Instagram account that was meant as a suicide note to her followers. It was a picture of a syringe full of heroin and a caption that said this:

She and I recently started using the messenger Kik to communicate, so when I saw the picture I immediately tried to see if she was online. I looked at the time stamp on her picture... 47 minutes ago. Was I too late? Please answer, please respond. 

I sent a frenzy of messages. I saw the "D" pop up next to the check mark, indicating that the message was delivered to her phone. Please turn into an "R"! If it turned into an R I would know she read it, she was alive, and that I had a way to talk to her.

After what seemed like hours of staring at the messages, willing them to change to "R"s, they finally did. I responded excitedly that I knew she was there, she was still alive, and that she read what I sent her. She told me that she was alive, for the moment, but to please not try to talk her out of her decision. That nothing I could say would change her mind. She had enough pills and heroin to make sure that she wouldn't make it and could die in a painless and blissful way. So I didn't try to talk her out of it. Instead, I just listened.

She went on to explain to me that after 15 years of using heroin, she didn't want it to come to this, but she had accepted that at this point the only thing keeping her alive was sick and disgusting. She needed heroin to live. Her life consisted of using every day or trying to stop using, getting so sick that her life was hell, and being reminded over again that heroin controlled her, that she couldn't escape her body's toxic and unyielding need for it.

She asked for my email address so she could send me the final goodbye letter she wrote for me (which was going to be the last entry of the blog I encouraged her to start writing). She never got a chance to finish it because she wasn't able to stay sober long enough to get her thoughts out correctly. 

Here it is:
"I've learned quite a bit in fifteen years of living older than my age. The most important, which I carry close at hand always? Never judge a person by their appearance, by first impressions, or by a singular piece of information about them without giving them a chance to let their true selves be known. 

Had I not learned that lesson, this blog would not exist. I never would've started writing again after years of silence. But because I didn't shy away from a person on Instagram who initially inspired nothing but the desire to backpedal and run and hide for fear of adding more pain to her already heavy load, I write now. I let it out. I don't duck into shadows or bottle this up anymore. I still keep it away from the light of my now defunct professional life, which I discussed in vague terms in my last post, but I don't hide away anymore. And I do it because someone of the most unlikely to speak to a junkie background did just that. 

Briana spoke to me. She asked questions, seeking understanding and self education about heroin addiction. She encouraged me. Other than the other addicts and recovering addicts on Instagram, she has been my only true follower. And also one of the people that through commenting back and forth, plus reading her blog, I feel I've grown closest to. She also gave me a gentle and needed push to start writing. She also writes a blog, found at www.xamountoftime.blogspot.com Incredibly powerful and so raw and eloquently written, I don't think there's a person on earth who wouldn't grow at least a smidgen after reading X Amount of Time. 

But that singular, solitary piece of information about Briana that made me want to backpedal and hide again at first? Before I forced myself to stand and follow what I've learned about judging? That is the basis of her blog. Her boyfriend, Blake, overdosed and left this realm less than three months ago. Her blog is one of her healing tools. Same as this blog is my outlet for what I kept hidden so long. 

Briana chose to educate herself and perhaps answer some of her own questions one day and on Instagram, typed in the hash tag "heroin." It must've been the second or third day my Instagram was in existence because it wasn't private and was graphic. I don't sugarcoat. I don't lie. Don't minimize. I'm honest to a fault (what now lost me my professional capacity) and don't hide if I don't have to. I just simply cant stand to keep it all inside anymore, where it is eating me alive. So I let it all hang out on Instagram (now private for various reasons.) 

Briana, rather than do what I'd found many Instagram users like to do to junkies- poke fun, call names, try to beat a soul already injured- asked me questions. She wanted to learn. Wanted to know more about the drug that took her soulmate. I'd never in my life encountered someone like her before. Someone who was a "normie" having never been addicted who not only didn't judge me, but treated me like and absolute equal. Briana never once talked down to me. She respected me and where I was at in a long battle and didn't try to reason or rationalize me out of my disease. She"

I was at the Orange County Fair when I read this message and immediately fell into those silent tears I talked about. Why were they silent tears and not angry or confused tears? How could I keep this quiet to a point where the people I was with had no idea part of my heart just got ripped out of me?

I have no idea why, but I felt Blake's presence as I finished reading and went back to my conversation with Detroit Hyena. For whatever reason, as ridiculous as it seemed at the time, I knew in the back of my mind that she wasn't going to be successful at her suicide attempt. I knew she wasn't going to be able to die. She had unfinished business- with me, her family, her best friend Lepurd, and the rest of her followers who have grown to find a twisted sense of hope through learning about her life and struggle.

I told her she wasn't going to be able to die tonight, no matter how much heroin or pills she took. I told her she needed to finish my note, and write notes to her mom and sister. I don't know why I knew this, but I just knew it with all of my heart in a way that I've never felt before.

My messages to her stopped showing "R"s and returned back to those infuriating and confusing "D"s. Did she die? Did she get a chance to really hear what I was saying before she started nodding off? I was a mess, but there was nothing more I could do. 

This morning I woke up and sent her a hopeful "Good morning! Today is a new day."

Check mark "D"

10 minutes later...

Check mark "D"

10 minutes later...

CHECK MARK "R"!

"A new day, but not a good one though"

As I fumbled to reiterate to her all of the things I said the night before, she told me she couldn't talk because she needed to find somewhere where she could charge her phone.

She's alive. Today is a new day. 

Addiction Isn't Always a Choice

After connecting with the new friend I made on Instagram that I described in my last post,  I suggested that she start a blog. Seeing her pictures, reading her beautiful captions, and commenting back and fourth showed me that she had an important story to tell and possessed an incredible tallent in writing. I explained what a release it's been for me to have this space to put all of my thoughts, and encouraged her to create one so she could do the same.

And she did.

In her post that I just finished reading entitled "Weight on my Shoulders and Memories Everlasting,"she describes the pain she's endured in her life and why she continued to use heroin to escape a reality she considered worse than that of her addiction. 

Reading her post, it was hard to blame her for looking to drugs as a way to escape emotional pain she didn't know how to process as a child. Although there are definitely better ways to cope, when you're young, feel like there's no one to turn to, and no way out of a life you can't deal with alone, drugs seem like a valid option. 

But that begged the question, what about Blake? What could he possibly need to escape from? All throughout his life he had an incredibly loving family and more friends than anyone I know. What immense pain was he hiding that he couldn't deal with and needed drugs to numb? Why did he need to run away from us? I just couldn't figure it out. 

Here is the conversation we had on her Instagram post immediately after:

Tonight my new friend helped me realize that not all addictions start as a conscious attempt to escape a rough life. Sure, that's probably why many addicts start experimenting with drugs, but not all of them. For some, like Blake, being prescribed pain killers in the first place without proper monitoring is enough to set it all into motion. It's a deadly combination of access, acceptability by peers, genetics, and the artificial enjoyment that makes the risk seem worth the reward. Before they know it, they are in over their head wondering how (or denying that) these behaviors ended up in an addiction.

As my friend put it, Blake didn't start using as a way to escape his life, but rather, he ended up using as a desperate attempt to stay present in a life the drugs were viciously trying to take him from. 

Blake had an incredible life filled with so many accomplishments, lasting friendships, and love. It would be a dishonor to him if his family, close friends, or I looked at ourselves as having any blame in his addiction. He wasn't trying to escape us. If anything, he was battling everyday to remain part of the amazing world he belonged in. A world so beautiful and filled with the most amazing people a person could ask to be surrounded by. 

I'm resting a little easier tonight knowing this. Addiction was not his choice, it was his disease. Just as you wouldn't blame a person for losing their fight with cancer, I am comforted in the fact that Blake fought bravely every day to overcome a truly terrible affliction. 

Social Media: #Heroin

Obsessive?
I'd prefer to think of myself as constantly on a quest to learn more. That's how I've always been, ever since I can remember. I would find something that interested me and pour myself into learning as much about it as I possibly could. I think that's why I'm so excited to be a student again now that I'm starting graduate school this fall. The way I see it, there is always something I don't know and I have an insatiable hunger to find out.

A week or so ago I looked up the hashtag "heroin" on Instagram. I know, I know, what a morbid thing to do. I couldn't help doing it, honestly. I've never seen heroin before, not even a picture. Actually, I've never seen the vast majority of drugs before. I have absolutely no interest in ever trying any of them, but now more than ever I'm captivated by their power over people.

#Heroin

All I had to do was type that into the search feature and hundreds of photos populated my screen. I felt like I had just been given unlimited access into a secret world. From the safety of my bedroom I got an intimate look into lives of people who openly share their drug use. It was all there- everything I read about, but had never been exposed to.

As the days went on, there was this one profile I kept coming back to. She seemed to almost take pride in her drug use and the scars it had left on her body and in her life. She was so open, honest, and unashamed. As much as it scared me to see her pictures, I could sense a goodness in her. While looking through her profile I felt a strange connection to her that I can't really explain.

The day she put up a picture of Soboxone (a drug used to help people with opiate addiction) I felt compelled to comment on her photo and explain why I have been casually stalking her photos.
I also wrote:
"I've been following your story for a couple days now and I just wanted to thank you for being so open and honest. You've helped me understand the daily struggle of wanting to quit, but being pulled back in. Just know someone in California who has never touched heroin doesn't judge you and is sending you strength and positive thoughts"

She responded beautifully about her battle with heroin, her vision for her life, and how insidious and truly sneaky addiction is. One of my favorite things she wrote in her reply was:
"I personally believe all addicts go to heaven if there is one because we have already been through hell on earth."

I catch myself daily making assumptions about people, just as I used to about people who use heroin. I know now that these assumptions are usually very far off base. All it takes is putting a face to these judgements and suddenly you realize how cruel it is to assume. This small connection I've made with a woman from Detroit has really served as a reminder to me to check myself and be more open minded. You never know when you're keeping yourself from a learning opportunity a person could provide you with.

I am going to end this post with a piece of something truly heart wrenching that my new friend wrote on one of her Instagram pictures. I feel like this helps paint a picture of what life is like for an addict:
"And as the edges blur and the sun becomes reluctant to rise, I grow tired of waiting for the storm to pass and make another attempt to dance in the rain, water rolling off my shoulders, washing away a decade's worth of dried blood and city dust. And though I dance alone these days, my neck is gaining strength, almost powerful enough to lift my head to salute the world as it passes me by, our parades marching opposite directions on the same crowded street. And in these moments, if you tell me the end is near I'll just laugh and live on forever, with flames always lapping at my heels, rain pounding my back, and elusive hope slipping in and out of my grasp."