#64 The end?

I don’t think I spoke to B for about a month after the last episode. I was clean – he wasn’t.

I moved into a swanky little flat with a mezzanine floor converted from an old mill. It looked beautiful but was so expensive that I never paid the council tax (that bit me on the arse a few years later – government agecnies are not as inefficient as you might think).

B and I split up, then we got back together and he came to live with me.

I think it lasted a few months but was always slightly chaotic. We did the normal stuff like making meals and cooking over a glass of wine, then we’d take it to the extreme and have 3 bottles of wine and smoke weed. We were almost there in living this ‘normal lifestyle’ to outsiders but we were nowhere near.

The final straw was when I’d cooked a romantic pasta dish but had run out of milk whilst making the white sauce. B was adamant that he needed some for the morning’s cuppa char before work so he said he’d go to the shop across the road. The pasta dish was sat under the grill, cheese browning. The clock was ticking. I knew before he even left the house that he wasn’t going to come back. It’s that psychic connection that you share sometimes with your partners. Maybe it was due to body language or tone of voice or perhaps just because I knew him well. The clock continued to tick.

I sat eating my pasta and drinking the wine on my own, absolutely livid and disappointed that he’d spoilt this romantic evening I’d had planned.

He returned two days later, no phone calls (I’d tried numerous times), no nothing.

He was swiftly ejected.

…..We eventually became friends again. I was lonely and skint, he was lonely and flush, so he used to come down to the house and we would occasionally score. Old habits die hard.

I came completely off subutex right before Christmas 2006 and felt like I was laughing for the first time in years. All the emotions that have been covered with this invisible emotional veil just come right to the surface. My face was constantly flushed and red and, if I wasn’t laughing at something, there’d be tears and I’d be crying. It was good to ‘feel’ again. Luckily those highs and lows have levelled out and I can now pass of as a perfectly normal human-being (if not a little crazy).

And old friends?

Well, B and I lost touch some years ago. I often miss him – he was a larger than life character. Is a larger than life character …wherever he may be.

I know that he got off drugs and moved to another part of the Country where he met a good woman, an older woman from what I gather, one who could reign him in and keep him on the right path. He went travelling around the World before returning to set up his own successful business. I have no doubt that he is now happy and at peace with life. He was my first love and they do say there’s nothing quite like a first love plus we had the added adventure of being addicts; soul-mates. In it ’till the end. That’s a powerful emotion.  I sometimes wonder if he ever thinks of me.

Many have got off drugs, and many haven’t. Some are in prison for drug and repeat petty crime offences. Some are like me and have managed to turn their lives around. Some committed suicide when it all became too much.

Now, I have retrained. I’m at Uni and have just got a job in the career that I want. I’m with a solid, loving man who doesn’t like me talking about this blog; prefers not to know about the gory details. Who can blame him? My son is growing before my very eyes, unaware that I was anything other than his Mummy. I have lots of positive friendships that don’t revolve around drugs. It took a while to get my head around that and I do tend to get bored quickly but instead of immersing myself in a destructive behaviour, I find a new hobby or a new place to visit. Don’t get me wrong – when the going get’s tough, my mind has turned to scoring. Sometimes I’d love to just have that one bag of gear again… to smell her evil smell and to let her take over my body. But I don’t.  And I won’t.

I haven’t touched gear for 6 years and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Good night and god bless.

Thanks for listening.

 

#61 Need & Greed

Our drug worker, Stuart, was a top geezer. Unlike a lot of the drug workers who used to be more off their heads than we were. He was a drummer in a band in his spare time, lived near the Pennines, just on the right side… Well, he’d be on to B for a while about applying for funding to get him into this residential rehab centre. One of the only ones in this area. Funding was very competitive and places were normally only for those on licence from jail or as part of bail conditions.Very few were up for grabs for ordinary Joe Public.. Anyway, B had always been reluctant. ‘I’m not as bad as that’ and ‘I know I can stop myself when I want to’. Until one awful winter night when I walked round to his house in the blustering gale and horizontal rain to be met by a B on a mission. He was dead agitated, I could see that straight away. I think by us moving back to our parent’s houses it was causing the same tensions and frictions as it did befoe we moved out. He’d already sunk 4 fosters and his foot was tapping his bedroom floorboards whilst making a poor attempt at being interested at the programme on the TV we were watching in his bedroom. He had no money. He wanted some stone. Perhaps he’d even had some earlier on that day and the effects were so raw that it was twisting his melon (man) not having any more.

He went downstairs and his mum refused to lend him some money. Rightly so. I was trying to talk him out of it. For the last few months of being back at our parents, we’d followed the usual sham of us being clean to them but dabbling in reality. Well, B had and I’d pretty much abstained. Except B had been putting in that many hours using stone (crack), that it could probably be classed as a full time 37.5 hours per week-job. This night he was that wild with greed and the need to score that he was blatant what it was for. The charade of asking for money for a few extra beers had been removed, B’s mum knew what it was for and stood her ground. I stood side by side with her (I’d not been using for a few months if you remember) so took the slightly higher ground on the top half of the kitchen along with his mum, blocking the door from B and his bike. He was adamant that he needed to score and was going to go with or without money, on this wintry night, outside on his bike. We continued to stay there, arms folded, obstinate. We were doing the right thing. Things had gone too far, the truth was out and it was time to make a stand.

Except just at that moment his 6ft 2″ dad walked in from work… never very good at reading a situation (or just past caring, not sharing the unbreakable maternal feelings of his wife) and asked B what the problem was and why there seemed to be a stand off in his kitchen when all he wanted to do was to come home from work and make a cup of tea in his own house without feeling threatened. This, if you’d known B and his Dad (who were like 2 peas in a pod) was a red rag to a bull and culminated in B tackling his Dad to the kitchen wall and holding him up by his throat as me and his mum screamed in horror and we all went slightly hysterical. B put him down quickly, grabbed his expensive bike and disappeared into the windy night.

B returned home the following day, minus his bike which he’d weighed in, yet again in return for a few hundred pounds of crack. His mum, scarred from battle but knowing she might win the war, gave him the money to pay off the dealer – on the basis that he accepted the rehab place.

A very sorry and remorseful B facing the stark realities of his addiction in the cold light of day, dutifully agreed.

The battle was over. The war of addiction continued.

#56 News of my World

Needless to say, it all ended disastorously in our land of spare room (next to War-drobe). I shall break it down into two separate posts as there is a lot to get through. OR, perhaps it feels such a lot from my end, due to the heartache involved.

Firstly I shall tell you what happened to our kind and considerate friends putting us up temporarily until the house was finished that we were going to move into.

B__F and B continued to smoke lots of stone. I had begun to feel very uneasy doing it and the techtonic plates of logic and reason had shifted, so apart from the first few times when I joined them, I managed to abstain from everything whilst I lived under their roof. I think it was partly due to this lovely girl Lindsay, who had no idea what B_F was getting up to under her nose. She had set up home with him, her first love, believing he was a flawed but changed character and she was assisting him with continuing to stay clean, on a very straight path with no junctions. Except, he’d got stuck in a lay-by about 50 miles back, figuratively speaking.

I really felt for her and I knew that B and I being there was just making  B_F worse as he had his partner in crime (also figuratively speaking) to collude with on his drug adventures. Seen as I had been living that life for the previous however many years, I was used to spotting lies and knew all the signs for drug taking. Yet B would even begin to lie to me that he’d not (whilst missing from the house for 2 hours with no explanation) been off with B_F smoking lots of stone. I could spot straight away in their actions and their fake laughter – the jitters, if they’d failed to score any or the deal hadn’t quite been pulled off. And of course, I could tell when they’d had some by their eyes and actions. It changes your whole persona and for the first time I was on the outside looking in, hating every second of it.

Enough was enough and I was applying pressure to B to stop his drug use (I had, so he could – simple). Occasionally we’d have quite a lucid conversation about how us being there was damaging us all beyond repair. By this point it was way beyond saving and the two B’s were completely out of control and reckless. Turning up late all the time with rubbish excuses when Lindsay had cooked dinner or caught whispering in the kitchen or winking across the sofa’s at each other and signalling to their mobile phones to phone the dealer.

Fast forward to the end of their particular story.

I had moved out by this point. A few weeks later, B followed. (More in the next post) Leaving the Marantz stereo and a few electricals like a sandwich maker and a vac that my gran had bought us a few years previous. We never saw the stereo and our possessions again. By this point the story from B is very murky and I now know that either B-F sold our gear or B did – or perhaps they both did. Probably for a few bags of stone to smoke.

B-F proceeded to get really paranoid, as soon as we’d moved out and accused Lindsay of having an affair with the next door neighbour and landlord (a round middle-aged farmer with 3 kids). This happened for a few weeks, with B_F accusing Lindsay and Lindsay just being so upset and incredulous. This man that she’d supported, in sickness and in health had had a complete labotomy. He began to follow her around after work, convinced she was seeing someone else and trying to catch her at it. Eyebrows furrowed and forehead creased, sweat glistening from his brow as he furtively sucked on the crack pipe in a darkened car on a street with no street lights waiting for his beau to come out of her friends house or somewhere else that he followed her to. His thought processes at the time, layered with paranoia, loathing and obsession so that this explanation (probably to make sense of his own chaotic life and gain some control in some way) made perfect sense to him.

The final straw for her was when she came home one day to find the floorboards in the bedroom had been taken up by B_F on a complete paranoid moment, thinking that Lindsay and the landlord who lived next door had created a secret tunnel to meet each other that nobody knew about.

‘Time to get out of here’ she realised quickly, as she watched the man she’d loved in a violent frenzy, trying to make a hole in the wall to next door with a hammer. Not first without calling the Police, who got in touch with the mental health team by all accounts (and rightly so). A drug induced frenzy or so you hear in the Sun or did do in the News of the World.

Well….that was the news of my World, back then – and good riddance to both.

I heard that B_F was last heard of up North, no-one knew where he was for a few years. I have no idea if he’s okay or not. I suspect not. He had a lot to lose, one of which included a child from a previous relationship whom he was in touch with via Social Workers , with Lindsay’s steadfast support up until his complete breakdown. I’m pretty certain once the full story came out that he wasn’t able to have contact with an already vulnerable child. Who knows? Not me. I’m just reminiscing over the good ol’ days.

Or not.

 

#55 Houses on the Prairie

When we moved out of our little rented house (I keep trying to get up to date with the story and then remember something that happened before the sequence of events you know about!) I cleaned the house all night, after we’d moved our stuff in a van to our temporary home that our friends were letting us share with them (in their spare room) (near the land of War-drobe)  We never paid the last rent as we were sure we’d never get the bond back anyway. Our landlord was notorious for holding bonds back over small things so we just figured, no bond, no rent. It’s a good job we did that really as all those sessions of having cigs and roll ups burning just to get ash for the crack pipe were showing. Our non-smoking tenancy had gone up in smoke – literally.

The skirting boards and light fittings I could deal with. Bleach and hot water to make them less yellow. It was the curtains and the wallpaper I was struggling with. The smell of smoke was strong everywhere. Not to mention the 2 or 3 small burns in the carpet. We managed to ingeniously scrape some fresh carpet witha  stanley knife blade and glue it to cover the black scorched burns. Simples. I shall rename this blog – “Diary of a carpet fitter.”

So this brings me to leaving the little  house on the prarie to move in with B_F (Heroin and crack addiction) and his gorgeous straight down the line girlfriend Lindsay. She thought his addictions were all behind him. We knew better. They’d been living ina  rented house for a few months and were doing it up with the landlords agreeement. She was gorgeous and naive. He was entrenched in it and hid it well. It was a sight to behold and I hated living there with them, leading a double life. We’d all get home and as soon as Lindsay was in the bath or getting ready from work, we’d go down to the cellar to smoke gear or crack. Then run back up the stone steps in time to cook dinner for everyone (the three of us pushing our dinner around our plates trying to make it look like we’d eaten but pushing it to the outside and making a hole in the middle).

This happened for quite a few weeks before I decided enough was enough.(More later on this) This lovely girl was out in the garden planting flowers and coming back from the shops with new wallpaper and colour schemes, whilst we were sleeping on a mattress in her spare bedroom, sneaking around whilst she was out and trying to not get caught carrying out our ‘adventures’ AND It had all started on the very day that we’d moved out and into theirs.

After we’d taken all the last boxes to our new home (the spare room, next to War-drobe) and I’d cleaned the house, I’d sent B and B_f back to empty the shed, which contained a lawnmower that I’d borrowed from my mother to cut the prairie like grasses. They didn’t get back for hours and when they did return, Lindsay and I had eaten and shared some wine, chatting before thinking about bed. The door went and I only had to hear B’s voice or catch a glimpse of him to know what he’d been up to. (Which was namely, smoking too much crack) He was putting on his, pretend voice that he was perfectly normal and jovial. When in actual fact his eyes were massive and he was skittish, wanting to crack a beer open as soon as he got in. I had an inkling what they’d be doing but hadn’t realised with what means.

B told me he’d forgotten the lawnmower after all as they’d got caught up dumping some rubbish of some sorts.

Needless to say, my mum soon lived on a house on the Prairie, with antelope and other wild animals sometimes spotted amongst the very tall grasses of the garden.

#51 Make pipes not love

By this point the crack use had got way out of hand and our house was like the black sheep in the surburban neighbourhood. Instead of boys and girls playing near our house on their bikes in the close, they were getting warned not to go within 20 feet of our house. The grass had grown so high that you could almost believe that you were amongst the tall grasses of the wetlands in Africa or some other beautiful vast continient. Perhaps that was the reason I liked the tall grass. I could pretend I wasn’t in this life, that I was a hunter in some far away land. Except… the only thing we were hunting was money for more stone.

I think the last straw on living at that house, for me, had been the time that one of our associates had brought the police knocking at our door. The shame and embarrassment of it. (Yes, smackheads do feel shame and embarrassment – albeit only briefly whilst the drugs wear off).  I was sick of ‘unsavouries’ turning up and knocking at the door at all hours to continue the party. Our neighbours next door who had a young family, who we were quite close to due to them constantly inviting us round for tales of their far away travels and shots of sambuca ,once saw us on the driveway and seemed stunned. “You look like a ghost” he said to me – “haven’t you been getting out and seeing the sun?” he said jovially. It was true. We were both skinny and white – almost translucent. It was roundabout the end of summer and we hadn’t seen a bit of it. We were too busy in the house with the curtains closed, soaking up the smoke and the drugs and the hangovers.

An opportunity came up to move into another rented house, if we did the decorating. The house belonged to a one time work colleague / friend and it had been her Father’s and her former family home but he had passed away quite suddenly. She was wanting to rent it out but it needed redecorating completely (he was colour blind: Think orange and blue mixed with pinks) and we accepted her offer to move in if we helped do it up. Which we did on the basis of a gentlewomans agreement.

B and I were spending a lot of time at this house, decorating each room to make it livable. We even gave up the notice on our rented house. It was during this period of us being on neutral ground and spending time at our soon to be new home that we decided to call it a day with drugs. We spoke at length and had a heart to heart about our relationship whilst steaming off the 5 layers of wallpaper in, what was going to be our new bedroom. Where we discussed our drug use and the risks it posed to our relationship. My love for him was still massive and, as we hugged to confirm our plans to go on to a drug free lifestyle, I could feel the love flowing between us, interlinking our hearts forever.

I’m not sure B did by this point. His only plan seemed to be to score some stone for one last time to say goodbye to it. One final time. I should have spotted the fact that he’d bought a can of coke earlier – he never bought cans, unless to make pipes. His intention was always to score, no matter what words came tumbling out of his mouth. How much he loved me and how much he wanted our life together to move forwards, to have children one day and to build the foundations for our careers. I always believed him and then was always disappointed.

As we returned to the empty, half decorated, half-lit house at dusk to sit in the corner of the room with floor boards and bits of paint splashed everywhere, out of view of the large windows that had no curtains, to crouch and smoke stone on  a pipe. As I sat there, watching B smoke his stone (for I had refused) I sat, watching and thinking, hoping that the spirit of the house, the dead father, wasn’t walking around in the spirit world, incensed that we were doing this in his home. I knew it would bring bad tidings, being so disrespectful in a dead mans house.

And it did.

We never got to move in there. Just did all the work for weeks and received a solicitors letter telling us to move our things from the house (where they were being stored until a few final bits of plumbing could be done by the home owner whilst we lived back at our parents houses for a week or two).

You live and learn, you live and learn (Rodney, my Son)

Thats the last time I disrespect the spirit world.

#32 A Mothers Love

Mum’s and their Son’s supposedly have a different relationship to Mum’s and Daughter’s. I believe this to be true – and that’s based on me only having a boy and my own relationship with my Mum. I pander to his every whim, try to be authoritative when needs be but ultimately the boy comes to me for loves and cuddles over his Daddy. A Mother’s love is something that can’t be described on paper, without losing the complete essence of it. It’s all encompassing. Constantly worrying. In the early days it’s ‘have they had enough milk?’ ‘Have they eaten enough green veg and had the recommended daily allownance of Iron?’, ‘Do they share their toys enough?’ ‘Do they stand up for themselves without being a bully?’ ‘Have they watched too much TV?’ Then when they get older it’s ‘ Have they done enough to get through their course work?’ ‘Will they be in on Friday night before the pub closes so they avoid the fights?’ and later it turns to ‘Will I get a phone call from the Police today?’ ‘Will I get a phone call from the Hospital today?’ ‘Will my Son come home tonight?’ ‘Will we hear him rustling foil in his bedroom again tonight?’ and ultimately ‘How can I help him…..?.

Take B and his mum for example. They were extremely close. She was his friend as well as just his mum. He held her in such high regard (of course) that she stood on this great big pedestal that no-one even came close to (not even me…… phew! the mother in me say’s).

M was a gorgeous lady. A really special person. Wise, funny and intelligent. She was a Deputy Head (and still is) and was a workaholic. Constantly on the go and doing things- like a busy bee, with a  really strong work ethic and strong family values which, coming from a broken home, I always admired and aspired to.

Due to always wanting the best for her King Bee (My B) she would always pander to his request for money. B, for all his amazing points was very selfish (god – we all were) and used to play his Mum all the time. She regularly gave him (which ultimately became us) £20 a night when times were rough for us due to one of us being out of work or having spent up. He would always say it was for a drink and a few beers or some food of course. However, she quickly learnt that it wasn’t when she came down with a shopping bag full of beer and microwave dinners for us (and a bottle of wine for me…) after B was unusually unappreciative and told her he actually needed the cash just until payday (with a slightly giveaway desperate tone).

M knew the drill. She’d been here many a time before, nursing him through rattle after rattle. Getting excited for a clean future for him, for it all to be dashed and thrown back in her face when he disappeared with money from the sideboard and came home all pinned eyed and itchy. Or didn’t come home at all.

A Mothers love know’s no bounds and there is one particular story (before I had met B) where she was driving him to score as he’d done a detox and was climbing the walls. He’d talked to his mum and said he couldn’t face doing it and after a good few hours he’d talked her into giving him some money and driving him to meet his dealer. Unfortunately the Police were carrying out survelliance on this exact dealer and saw M’s car drive into the pub car park, saw the transaction take place and pounced on B and his mum. They got B violently on the floor and had their hands around his throat so he couldn’t swallow the gear (swallowing the gear – A common tactic used in the fight against drug busts). Well, his mum jumped out of the car and caused a scene, nearly hitting one officer with her handbag, hysterical at how her baby (who was also a grown man of 19 by this point) was being treated. Needless to say, M got arrested along with her Son and spent time in the Police cells before they eventually let her out with no charges. Trust me, she made her feelings known to the whole of the City Police Station. She was a very proud woman and would never ever tell anyone outside of the family (or even in the family come to that matter) of her Son’s problem but this day she made it loud and clear that the officers had bullied her and her Son just becuase of his addiction. “Fascists!” She cried as B took her screaming from the Police Station when he was eventually released on a possession charge.

Needless to say she took him to score straight away. Assuming that this was the best way forward for him at this moment in time. I’m sure it was too but I’m also sure that the longer it goes on being paid for, the easier it is to stay using gear and the harder it makes it to eventually give it up.

This charade of pretending everything was normal and providing money to B for the pretend beers and food happened for a long while. Possibly on and off for the whole length of our relationship or a large part of it. It’s something I’ve always been ashamed off. I’m sure it went into thousands of pounds, which I usually helped smoke or inject. I’ve vowed that if I ever have a win on the lottery or get my dream job and wage, I’m going to go back up to where they live and post a few thousand through the letter box and walk away with a spring in my step and a little bit of weight off my shoulders.