One song, played over and over, was the moment I realized I was going to be successful in my recovery.
My skin is on fire. I swear my skin is on fire. Am I breathing? I don’t think I’m breathing. My veins are trying to break free from underneath my flesh. I can feel them screaming for me to let them escape. My stomach is gnawing at me, trying to gnaw its way through itself so that it can finally swallow me whole. I am defenseless, too weak to lift up my own decaying fingertips. Where are my cigarettes? I need a cigarette. I will trade poison for oxygen just so I can feel anything else but this pain. Anything but this horrendous, godawful pain.
My skin is on fire. I swear my skin is on fire. And I am going to burn alive.
More than 21% of eighth-graders have tried an illegal drug at least once. And 46.6% of teenagers have tried an illegal drug at least once by the time they graduate high school. I was 13 years old when I tried ecstasy for the first time. I would take it every day for the next year, spiraling a little more each time.
After an overdose almost ended my life a year later, I decided it was time to get clean. In a moment of immense struggle, it was a song that saved my life. Music made me realize I was going to be OK.
I can’t sleep. My head is swarming with fog and I am lost in the maze of overbearing memories. I reach for my bottle subconsciously, daring myself to escape into serenity, but it is not there. There are no more rainbows to calm the tidal waves of unbearable misery. I cannot do this. There is simply no way I am going to survive withdrawal. The craving for one more moment of bliss may kill me before I have the chance to. I want to sleep, but everything is so loud. Everything is buzzing; everything is spinning.
And I cry.
I cried out in frustration, angry that I decided to swallow the purple pill for the first time a year earlier, angry that I allowed myself to go this far, angry that I could not see straight because all I could see was the mess that I had created. I remembered my brother’s friend grabbing my hand and placing the pill within my fingertips the first time I used. I remember his alcohol-stained breath whispering into my ear that if I wanted to see what real fun was like, I would take the pill. And I did, effortlessly. But I also remembered one year later waking up in the hospital bed, tubes and IVs connected to all different areas of my body. I remember the doctor telling me I was lucky to be alive because my heart stopped beating for two minutes. I remembered the overdose, my reason for deciding it was time to get clean.
I heard the doctor’s stern voice telling my mother I needed help. I heard my mother’s rigid tone respond, telling him I wasn’t a drug addict, denying that I had even overdosed. I remember thinking my heart might shatter into pieces, but I also wasn’t surprised by my mother’s reaction. She refused to believe her perfect, angel daughter could be a drug addict. In retrospect, I realize now she was terrified to admit her daughter was an addict. To this day, my mother and I have never talked about my addiction. The circumstances of that night have remained unspoken for the past six years. I don’t know if we will ever speak about it.
But what I did know then, as I lay in that hospital bed, was that I was in this alone. That night that changed everything.
A faint knock rattles my bedroom door. I almost do not hear it, but there seems to be a sense of protection radiating the knock through the room. I force myself to lift up my weight, taking step after painstaking step toward my door. The creak of it opening slices my eardrums open, but I am greeted by the cinnamon sugar face of him.
“Hi Manny. I just wanted to see if you wanted to go for a drive,” he says.
My brother was the only one who openly knew that I was an addict. He was the only one who gave me strength, my reason for fighting. His sweet, innocent ocean eyes were riddled with fear. Every time he spoke to me, I could hear his heart breaking inside his chest. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and promise him that I was going to be okay, but the thought of coming in contact with anybody else’s flesh on my own made me want to collapse into the soil below me, never to see the light of day again. So instead, I just stared back at him and nodded.
My brother put the song “505” by Arctic Monkeys on his radio. It’s a song I had heard plenty of times, but this time was different. This time, I let the rhythm vibrate through my bones. Every lyric left its impact on the shattered pieces of my heart, cutting their fingertips on the broken glass and desperately working together to repair the damage. I had been running away from everything, everyone around me. I was tired of running. For the first time since swallowing my first purple pill, I let myself feel this moment. I let myself fall apart.
The beat dropped towards the end of the song, like it always does. Usually, when I hear this part, I smile because I enjoy how it sounds. This time, I closed my eyes the moment the beat dropped and felt my eyes swell with oceans. The salt water streamed from my face effortlessly, and I could not stop them. The song came to an end, but the next song did not play. My brother, without looking at me, replayed “505.” And I cried.
I grabbed my brother’s boney, fragile hand, his warmth transferring into me. He didn’t stop driving, though, he just kept going. And we just kept listening to “505.”
It was in that moment when I knew I was going to recover, when I knew I was never going to touch my happy little purple pills ever again. In that moment, I had never felt more alive.
