I, Addict

I, Addict

“Because you have been down there Neo, you know that road; you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.”

Trinity, The Matrix

I will be honest, when my roommate said she was making cookies for work, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.  I was consumed with making meatloaf and maple butternut squash.  Hell, even, when she was in the kitchen making them, I didn’t think too much about them or what she was doing.  I was busy watching hot women from the 80’s swoon over Magnum and his sweet Stash.  I will go one step further even in the kitchen with her, I never actually thought about reaching out and taking a cookie from baking sheet.  On the other hand did I think about eating some cookie dough as she was making it?  Yes, yes I did.  It was only briefly, after I had put the crockpot in the dish washer and before I retired for the evening on Sunday.  Other, than that, I never paid the cookies any mind.  Even when my roommate said she was partaking in some on Monday, night, I just never thought about the damn cookies.  The last 29 days I have been able to do that.  Walk away from sweets, like I was never able to do before.     However, with every silver lining there is always a touch of grey. 

I had gone to bed satisfied after a long hard Monday in the office.  December is the last month of the fiscal year and we are running fast in the office.  I will be honest, I have been a little stressed, and we have some many things in play right now.  People laugh at me when I tell them I am in sales and I have an important role to play in getting the year closed out quickly.  The mock me when I tell them I am on call during holidays and basically expanded to respond as quickly as possible to anything that comes down the pipeline.  It is what it is, but I do have a stressful job, I am very, very good at it, and I actually take pride in my work.  I have been fighting off a stigma I set for myself as a lazy kid.  I was someone who worked harder to get out of work, than to actually do it.  I am not sure why that is relevant, but I wrote it so it must be?

I feel asleep easily last night.  Some nights I do.  Some nights I don’t.  What is common with every night though is the waking.  I wake up 6 out of 7 nights at least once.  Then 4 out of 7 more than once, it is rare that I sleep a night thru.  It has been easier in the last 29 days. 

So again I was not surprised when I woke up last night at 3:30 a.m. or when I noticed a buzzing signaling an email coming in and I picked up the phone to read it.  No, that is par for the course in my house and my life. 

What did surprise me was the compulsion I felt lying in my bed at 3:30 a.m.  A compulsion I have known all too well over the last thirty-nine years.  The monster that awoke inside of me, the monster that is equal parts need, want, and compulsion, as well as fear, hate, and loathing.  The monster that I have called affectionately the kolache monster, the candy monster, ice sandwich monster, and yes, even the cookie monster. 

Suddenly, out of left field, I wanted those cookies.  I wanted them all.  No that isn’t right, not really, right at all.  It was more than want.  It was need.  I needed those cookies.  I had to have them.  I needed to eat them and I needed to eat them right then and right there. I had to!  There was nothing for it.  I could no more just fall back asleep than Frodo could have willing parted with the ring.  We worship the dirty nasty little hobbit as our hero, but how quickly we forget the ring took him.  He caved like the French did in world war to his addictions and mush like Isildur before him.  I was compelled by my weakness, my hate of leaving the past behind, the need to have a whole in my life, I was compelled and I had to.  I no matter, I just needed one.  Just one and my roommate would never miss it.  I just needed one.  One would not hurt.  Not I, nor she and she would never ever know.  I would be sneaky. I would be stealth.  Because when the monster was awake, he could do things like this, move unnoticed through the dark.  Slip in and take what he wanted and poof like be gone in a flash.

I can’t tell you the fear that I felt rising out of my bed.  I felt out reckless.  I was out of control and worst of all hopeless.  I was completely and totally hopeless.  I was after an addict. 

I covered my half naked body with robe fit for the blackest hearted sith.  I even pulled the hood up to cover my head after I pulled the belt tight above my waist.  See when you are 400+ you don’t really get anything around the waste is above or below.  And with fingers that needed to fill the cookies in my hand I slowly turned the door knob and walked out into the blackness of the hallway. 

I crept.  Yes, I crept.  I slinked and I slunked down the hallway in pitch black.  Feeling my way slowly down a path I had traveled many times.  I navigated the turn into the living room in complete darkness.  I know by the feel of my feet on the cold hardware where to go and just when to turn so I avoided the coffee table.  I traveled the narrow passage of carpet between TV and table with ease.  Once back on the cold hardwood, I quickly crossed from dining room to kitchen.

Once in the kitchen I turned towards the back counter and away from the fridge.  My left hand reached out and with a click I brought darkness into the light.  I looked down and the cabinet and I stared down at my quarry.  My roommate’s cookies that she had baked for work and clients and that were absolutely off limits to me. 

My heart beat quickened as I looked down at the two trays of homemade cookies.    My mouth dripped salvia.  I knew at that moment in time, I would not be stopping at one.  No, we had a full scale binge on hand.  It was going to happen.  I wanted it to happen. I am broken and I deserve to remain this way.

I stared.  I stared and stared at them. My heart pounded in my chest.  My salvia dripped and a little ran out of the corner of my mouth. I can’t tell you what it is like to use.  Only an addict can truly understand the bliss in the moment of usage.  Whether it is a lame addiction like my food, or drink, or heroine it matters little and less, the actual moment is priceless.  I could feel my soft robe pressing against me.  Everything slowed down in time and it was super surreal.  Like a slow motion action sequence ripped from the matrix everything had stopped in time and was felt in the moment. 

What happened next, I can’t explain.  Call it intervention.  Call it a voice of reason.  However, just as the compulsion had come and the need to creep to the kitchen, another voice spoke in my head and its message was simple?  “There are no answers in those cookies; we have been down that road before.  That isn’t where you want to go.  Not this time.  Now this now.  You have been down the road before.”  I never reached for the cookies, because I had been down that road before.  I pulled myself away from looking at the cookies, because I had been down that road before.   I open the fridge not knowing what if anything I had hoped to find.  I open it and looked at the food I had prepared.  I turned back and looked at the cookies.  I turned back to the fridge.  I looked at all the time and effort I, yes me, I had put into changing things forever.  I turned to the cookies and I wanted them.  I wanted them so bad.  I turned back to the fridge and just looked at what I spent my entire weekend doing.  I thought about going to my car and getting a paleo bar.  I turned to the cookies.  I thought about the bananas sitting behind the cookies and the almond butter in the fridge.  I thought about it all.  And all I could do was think “I have been down that road before” and there are no unicorns or pots of gold down there, only pain and only failure because I had been down that road before. 

I turned back towards my bedroom.  I reached out and turned the lights off. I barreled through the dining room and living room, not caring if I was stealth or not.  It didn’t matter, because the world changed right then and there.  I disrobed and hung it up behind the door. 

I crawled into bed.  I clipped my CPAP mask into place.  I pulled the covers up over my head and laid there.  I don’t know for how long.  I laid there and thought long and hard about what had just happened.  I thought about who walked out of the door and who came back into it.  I thought about winning some and losing some and thought that is how life works.  Ups and downs, strikes and gutters are Lebowski used to say.  I didn’t smile as I dozed off to sleep because I knew this was just one battle to be won in a long and winding road to recovery.  As my good buddy told me on my birth, “I’m just an addict!” and I know I am just that: I, Addict.