When I became a junkie

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:48:00 +0000

When I checked into Promises in 2005, I had been doing so much cocaine that my nose bled onto the intake papers as I filled them out. I was so high I don’t remember what I signed but I was quickly escorted to a bed where I promptly slept for three days. A month later, I was released into the world. And then, after my father paid a staggering $7,000 for outpatient treatment, I dropped out after three days and started using again.

I remember being in my apartment, doing coke alone to a soundtrack of the Twilight Singers, wondering whom I could get high with. I cracked open my rehab-given Big Book. In the front, just like in my high school yearbook, were sweet inscriptions from fellow clients along with their phone numbers. I used my deductive reasoning to decide who among them would have already dropped the ball and be down to party. I picked a handsome rich kid junkie who was a chronic relapser that I’d been semi-friendly with. I called. Bingo. Within a few hours, he was at my house with cocaine, heroin and syringes. As he shot up speedballs, I snorted thick long lines off my enormous mirrored coffee table.

Salon.com > Amy Dresner

When I became a junkie