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Addicts in Wonderland
By John Shelton Ron LaJeunesse
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 John Shelton & Ron LaJeunesse
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-0181-0
Chapter One
Madhatter Insanity "How do you know I'm mad? You must be or you wouldn't have come here." Alice in Wonderland
In spite of my active addiction I believed I could help other people get well. I don't know if I thought that by helping others I could learn to help myself, or if it was that I wanted to be superior to other addicts by helping, or if I could be a "good guy" while really being a "bad guy." Or maybe I was simply attracted to some of the people who lived in the chaos that went with addiction. I believed of course that I was as yet immune to the disasters that I knew followed long term use of drugs.
The most likely scenario was that it helped me identify with the person I believed myself to be and not the person that my wife Mary described when she was angry.
"The infamous Roy Laing, a sixty something drug user hiding out on the fringes of society pretending to be better than everyone else."
Whatever the reason, I did think I could mend these people and I went about trying. I told myself that I could still be a fixer because I was more resilient than others; less damaged. I was sure that I could continue to have the cocaine high without the ravages of addiction and that I could experience the excitement and chaos of addictive life without having to live in it. If I had really sat back and looked at what I was doing, I would have realized if anyone was wearing the Mad Hatters lethal lead filled hat, it was I.
Mad Roy thought he could influence anyone. One of those people was Alan, a thirty something former farm-boy from Idaho who moved to the city, became attracted to the excitement of the drug scene and after a few short months, left his job and abandoned his wife and child. Alan had a beautiful new girl-friend and a new career dealing drugs.
I couldn't explain why, but when I first met Alan I was attracted to his energy. He was a friendly country boy with a big smile and a great sense of humor. He also had good dope, sold you a consistent and fair quantity and probably most importantly, was careful and on-time for appointments. Every other dealer I had known was precise with stating time - "I'll be there in 16 minutes" - and about as punctual as my family doctor.
Initially Alan drove several different vehicles, always met in different locations, frequently in a building and he would give me last minute instructions as to the precise spot. As time went on, Alan seemed to become more complacent; less cautious. I received fewer last minute instructions and he would sometimes sell right from the removable panel in the bed of his pickup truck. I suspected this was a typical lessening of vigilance and perhaps the reason most street level dealers get "busted" in fairly short order.
It was a Friday morning and I arranged to meet Alan for a quick "buy." He was staying in a local hotel and I was invited up to his room. I arrived to find Alan and his girlfriend Roxanne lying on their bed chatting and "lighting up." Alan frequently offered me a "freebie" and this morning was no exception.
"Want a blast?" he asked.
"Really good stuff this time!" exclaimed Roxanne.
She seemed a bit more relaxed and receptive than usual. I wasn't her favorite person because she knew I encouraged Alan to stop selling and to return to his wife and kid. I knew what was in store for him if he stayed in this lifestyle.
Although Alan's product was pretty consistent, you never really knew what you were getting. Street cocaine was probably "cut" or "bumped" at every level of the distribution chain and "buffered" with a dozen different products from baking soda to amphetamine. I was told that the average street sale might contain 10% cocaine.
"Do you have a pipe? Alan asked.
"Nope," I didn't like to travel with paraphernalia.
"Want to use mine?"
He then replaced the end of a long plastic hose with a short tip that he apparently used for guests who shared his pipe without having to share a mouth piece. Alan liked to smoke from a four foot length of plastic tubing attached to a small brass bowl – all available from a plumbing shop. He broke off a piece of "white rock" about half the size of a corn kernel and placed it in the bowl.
"Big enough?" he asked.
"Big enough."
In fact it was bigger than I normally did. He handed me the hose and asked if I had ever used one that long? I told him I hadn't. He said that you got a much better "blast" with less dope – and it had a bonus use; it was easy to use while traveling. You just ran the tube up your clothing to your neck line and then lit the rock out of sight, or better yet, your passenger lit up below the dash, away from the curious eyes of passing drivers.
Alan then instructed me to exhale, place the tube in my mouth, draw slowly until the smoke was near my lips, plug the tube, exhale again, and then draw the smoke deep into my lungs. I watched Alan as he melted the little rock with his torch and then carefully flipped the brass bowl over so that the liquid cocaine would slide slowly toward the open flame.
"Never touch the flame to the coke," he advised.
"Just use heat or you waste too much. Flame is the enemy of cocaine."
I was surprised to hear that cocaine had any enemies in this room. I then watched in anticipation as the white puffy smoke curled around the coiled tube. As it neared my lips, I exhaled the displaced air from the tube and then drew long and slowly on the white rocket ride to Wonderland. The rush was indeed a "blast" as promised. My brain didn't seem to know quite what had hit it; I felt high, very high - and dizzy, all at once. I exhaled a large amount of white smoke and I began to immediately drool uncontrollably. I wiped off my lips and tried to apologize to Roxanne, but I had trouble forming my words.
"You ok?" Alan asked. Even Roxanne seemed concerned.
"I'm more than ok! I babbled. "Wow."
I stumbled back to a chair and sat down slowly, afraid to interrupt the feeling. I could hear Roxanne in the background.
"He's fine; leave him with his high. My turn."
By the time I started to come down enough to concentrate, Roxanne was buzzing and I could see Alan beginning to light a rock the size of a peanut.
"Christ" I thought, "how can he do that much?"
I watched Alan as he carefully melted the crack and then as he inhaled the white smoke. And inhaled, and inhaled. It seemed like minutes. I couldn't imagine lungs being able to absorb that much, yet when he started to exhale there was much less smoke than what I had blown.
Alan's face turned a crimson red almost immediately. I could almost hear his heart pounding as his eyes rolled slowly back into his head – but only momentarily. As he refocused, he mumbled something incoherent to Roxanne, walked over to me and handed me a dozen pills from his pocket. He then stepped out through the patio doors. Roxanne and I looked at each other with concern, a fact that led me to believe that maybe this "blast" was a bit out of the ordinary.
I was quite sure it was when I watched Alan leap across a long spans of air to the neighboring deck. I rushed through the doors in time to see him pick up an empty vodka bottle by the neck and smash its base against the steel railing. He then walked through the neighbor's patio doors with his new weapon in hand. I rushed back into the room where Roxanne was crying hysterically. I then ran through the room's entry door into the hall-way. As I banged on the neighbors room door, I could hear a woman scream.
Moments later I could hear the movement of the dead bolt and the door opened to a beautiful, nude and panicked young woman, with Alan threatening the jagged glass in front of a balding skinny middle -age man backed into a corner.
"Alan," I yelled, "stop it, you have the wrong man, the wrong room." I had no idea of what I was talking about, but I wanted to divert his attention and get him out of there. Even in my impaired state, I knew we were in very dangerous territory now. My judgment said that I should just get the hell out of there, but I couldn't just leave him.
As the cocaine began to wear off, Alan's aggressive look changed to confusion. I walked over to him, repeated my message about being in the wrong place and took the glass bottle from his hand. I then led Alan toward the entry door where I noticed Roxanne standing in tears. I also noticed a syringe and drugs on the bedside table – good news for Alan - this guy wasn't likely to call police too quickly. Nonetheless I wanted out of there. With help from Roxanne we ushered Alan back into his own room and closed the door quickly. I watched the neighbor slam his door and I heard the deadbolt turn - just as the elevator opened and a security officer burst into the hallway.
"What's going on up here?" he demanded.
"Just a misunderstanding between a couple of your guests," I responded calmly.
"They have gone to their rooms; it's over."
I grabbed the elevator door before it closed and quickly punched 'Lobby.'
The security guard stood there with a dumfounded look on his face as the elevator closed and then began its descent. And I was out of there! The next day I phoned to see how Alan was doing and to make arrangements to return his pills. Alan hadn't remembered giving them to me and he was quite surprised that I would return them.
"I could use a couple of friends like you," Alan said.
Alan needed more than friends. When I phoned two weeks later the voice was different - this was not Alan.
"Hello." Alan had always answered his own phone and I suspected what that meant.
"Is this not Walmart? I asked?"
"Nope, who are you looking for?"
"Walmart, sorry, wrong number."
The police monitor incoming calls following a drug bust and I had a feeling that the voice on the phone was not friendly to me. I was now suspicious that Alan and his phone were in police custody. And they were.
It's hard to make friends on the "dark side" and even harder to try and "help" when your entire message is suspect. Who is going to take you seriously about chasing recovery when you are lighting up with them. Nonetheless I took the helping approach with almost everyone I encountered in active use or in recovery. I must have been an unbearable companion with my double standard, but people did seek me out - sometimes from crack houses and sometimes from Fellowship meetings. And I was always quick to try and help.
I met a lot of people from the streets, but I probably worked harder and grew closer to a guy named Darcy that anyone else. I met him when he delivered some crack for a dealer I had called. There was some kind of instant connection again. What is the energy that does that and is it always good I often wondered? Darcy was in his mid forties; tall, well built and ruggedly handsome with thick curly hair. He was clean, well groomed, well dressed and he spoke like a well educated man. Not your typical street dealer.
I met Darcy several times over the next few months and he would occasionally share a "hoot" with me. Darcy was on probation for trafficking and I would frequently challenge him to pursue a new career. He tried for a while with the help of a brother who loaned him some "heavy equipment," but construction work was scarce in the winter. I frequently took him groceries and after helping to convince Darcy's probation officer that he was working on recovery, Darcy and I began attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings. The group called itself the "Not Dead Yet" fellowship and they met in a mortuary.
Some nights Darcy and I would skip the meeting and use. On one of those occasions Darcy met an old girlfriend Michelle, who was just out of prison, but back dealing. In a matter of days their relationship was back on. I could see where this was going and I constantly urged Darcy to move away; to join his brother who was still offering him a job in Spokane.
I was leaving town on another business trip and I took Darcy out for coffee in a last ditch effort to try and convince him to move. By the end of the conversation he agreed and I had him phone his brother in order to arrange the details of his move. When I left town I felt good about my "intervention" and hopeful that Darcy would make another attempt at recovery.
When I returned in two weeks I was surprised to see that Darcy was still in town. As I drove up to his old rented apartment I saw his truck parked with a flat tire and the front-end loader was sitting idle. I knocked on the door and when Darcy answered I was ill prepared for what I saw. It was early afternoon and I had obviously awakened him. He stood at the door in his underwear, pale and emaciated with his hair in tuffs. It looked like someone had taken a pair of scissors, pulled up handfuls of hair and cut them off at different lengths.
"Holy crap Darcy, what happened to you? Why aren't you with your brother?" He didn't respond to the questions.
"Come in and lock the door," he commanded as he walked back through a room in total disarray.
We walked to Darcy's bedroom where it was no surprise to see Michelle laying across the bed in a drug induced stuper. She had apparently just fallen asleep, which meant she would probably be there for another 48 hours. I knew her pattern. She would stay awake for several days "shooting" cocaine and then when she started to get "strung out" she would shoot heroin to bring herself down.
"Jesus, Darcy, what the hell happened?" I asked.
"I don't care about anything except getting high and having sex," he responded. "Nothing else matters."
As we talked some more, it became evident that there was at least one other "matter" that he did care about. He and Michelle had been charged with trafficking after police found drugs and equipment in a van they were operating.
"They don't have much of a case though," Darcy said with little conviction.
"The van was borrowed and nothing was in our direct possession. We admitted to nothing and there will be enough 'reasonable doubt' that they will never get a conviction," he said.
"So you really think they have a weak case? Have you talked to a lawyer?" I asked.
"Yep, he agrees," Darcy said, as he took a long drag on the glass pipe.
"Are you still selling?" I asked as I shared Darcy's pipe. I had no intention of smoking, but I just couldn't or wouldn't say no when it was right in front of me.
"It's the only way we have to make money," Darcy said, "Other than the lifting that Michelle does for groceries."
"Darcy, if the cops have a weak case, they will build on it before it gets to court. You know what that means? They will be watching you closely – you have to quit selling. You have to quit." I repeated for emphasis.
As I prepared to leave I couldn't help reflecting on what I saw. This man with so much potential was now a bottom crawler. I was upset about Darcy; but more upset for myself. As I began to close the door to Darcy's house, I looked back into his vacant eyes and saw a mirror of me.
A week later Darcy and Michelle sold to an undercover officer who had moved in next door.
My "therapeutic interventions" now had a zero success rate. Perhaps less than zero. Maybe my ability to use, while seemingly avoiding personal destruction, had sent a wrongful message and encouraged others to try and do the same. At AA meetings they say that trying to give away what we don't have is a symptom of insanity, but I apparently had more than symptoms. The Fellowship defines insanity itself as doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. I was indeed a Mad Hatter.
He must be mad or he wouldn't have gone there.
Chapter Two
Jabberwocky Mind
"Beware the Jabberwock ,my son! The teeth that bite, the claws that catch!"
Through the Looking Glass
It was now over forty-eight hours since I slept and I was fading fast. Another blast of crack cocaine from the small glass pipe and my bleary eyes opened wide. The attractive teenage blond woman slipped quietly from the passenger seat, blew me a kiss and carefully closed the car door. I pulled the black BMW out of the crack- house driveway and sped toward the freeway. As I entered the on-ramp I noticed a voluptuous young woman hitch-hiking. I braked hastily and steered to the shoulder.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Addicts in Wonderland by John Shelton Ron LaJeunesse Copyright © 2011 by John Shelton & Ron LaJeunesse. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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