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R. Burrow
R. Burrow
Amazon
Category:
Memoir
Publisher: Amazon
ISBN-10: 1977080464
Type: Fiction
Pages: 223
Copyright: 02-03-18
ISBN-13: 9781977080462
Price: $2.95 (eBook)
Inside the Methadone Clinic. Addiction to heroin, methadone, and other opiates. Destruction. The primal addiction" of the child, power and control over your own life, the institutions and the characters, the love between a mother and son. This book is a sequel to "The Tree Outside the Window." It answers the question, "What happens to Jill next?"
The methadone clinic and opiates. Heroin. The primal addiction and sex. Power, control over your own life, the love between mother and son, the way we are treated and how we survive.
Excerpt
The cat was out of the bag, as the saying goes.
Jill’s sisters, Anne and Layla, were in town for the Thanksgiving holiday that terrible year of 2002. It was the year Eddie left and the year Grandma Marlene had died. Jill was not only penniless, but months behind in her bills, on the verge of having the utilities shut off, and living hand to mouth to buy the opiates she needed each day to avoid getting sick. Her younger sister, Layla, had her own story about painkiller addiction.
Jill, the middle child, recalled Thanksgiving the previous year. She remembered feeling like her aching eyeballs might drip right out of her skull, following the endless rainstorm of infinite tears – like the 40 days and nights of torrential rain in Noah’s tale. A person like Jill could cry and not stop her whole lifetime, as if God’s wrath was upon her, too. What would happen to her eyes after 40 days or 40 years? Would they pop out of her head from all that pressure? Jill was certain that if a god did exist at all – he hated her. And she had no idea why, or if she could even understand such reasons, and it was not of much importance to her anyway. Playing guessing games with images in her mind was the last thing she needed to do. Having had a mental illness made her even more skeptical about religious beliefs, and anything coming from “God.” Jill knew that a person’s own mind could be his or her worst enemy.
She sat on the front steps of her mother’s house that November of 2001, her head buried in her folded arms, trying to cope with the insufferable discomfort, and hating Eddie for his abusive and disrespectful treatment. Eddie had a way about him, not to mention an ugly tone of voice that made her want to kill him. Anne had come out to help. She hugged Jill, and told her that she loved her, and didn’t want to lose her in any way possible; but nothing could make the extreme, restless agitation subside: not even sisterly love.
Layla came out shortly after Anne went back into the house. Jill confided her current marital problems, explained what a bastard Eddie was, and why, (which she’d also done with Anne), but with Layla, she also admitted to going through codeine withdrawal.
Jill knew from some of Layla’s past remarks and bits of talk here and there, that her younger sister had also had a problem with “hard drugs,” so Jill felt safer telling her about it than anyone else.
“That sucks,” Laya said. “Codeine withdrawal sucks.”
Statements of empathy didn’t lessen the pain she was feeling. That was the nature of the beast: only an opiate fix could solve her problem.
But Jill had gained Layla’s trust, and her younger sister began telling her about her own problems with opiates, specifically heroin.
Jill was envious that her sister had “home delivery” in NYC. But her heroin connection suddenly, inexplicably disappeared. She never found out what happened to the guy. But she’d gone through withdrawal on her own, and somehow survived. The one thing she was grateful for during her ordeal, was finding a fat little bag of dope between the books in her bookcase, where she hid her cache. On a number of occasions, Layla spoke excitedly about finding it; it was a virtual miracle. Jill fantasized about a similar stroke of luck. But searching every nook and cranny in the house was no fun, ultimately unproductive and disappointing, not to mention frustrating. Like Jill, Layla hadn’t used intravenously.
Despite the weeks of snakes, bugs, insects and arachnids crawling through the cracks in the walls and ceilings, shivering in three nightgowns and a quilt in 90-degree heat, and having to move into the bathroom of her NYC apartment, Layla continued to flirt with painkillers, but in a somewhat wiser, more controlled way. She still encountered problems and suffered the consequences. Opiates had no mercy. Still, somehow it seemed as though withdrawal was easier to tolerate for Layla, and she’d gone through it many more times than Jill had. Jill simply could not cut it.
Eventually, Layla’s heroin use became limited to special occasions, which tended to be three or four times a year, at most. She claimed that the drug was turning her into a maniac, a real freak: she began acting crazy, weird, and wild, and not only that, she claimed it shut down all her bodily functions: that she couldn’t eat, piss, shit, come, or menstruate when she used dope.
For Layla, using heroin had reached the point where she had no choice but to stop. There were no longer any pros, just a long list of sickening cons.
She had a doctor in NYC who was aware of her habit, and prescribed Darvon and Valium. When she did have to endure withdrawal symptoms, she’d arrange it around her sleeping hours, or take enough Valium to knock herself out for a few days. Jill, having a child at home, had no such options.
Layla continued to use for years before finally giving up opiate drugs. She eventually used only pills, not heroin, and this included Methadone pills that Jill obtained on the street, and stupidly, regrettably, provided for her sister, and caused her a terrible withdrawal ordeal. Jill was angry with herself for having done that to her sister, even though she was only giving Layla what she wanted. Jill believed her actions were wrong.
But in the end, Layla was taking only antidepressants, and claimed that those helped her feel better, as much as all the other shit had. Jill wasn’t sure if Layla was being completely honest. Jill’s antidepressants never made her feel any better. Was Layla telling the truth? Jill recalled getting lots of lengthy explanations from Layla about why she stopped, and this made her older sister suspicious: Jill knew from the past that Layla was often lying when she tended to over-explain.
Perhaps her little sister just didn’t want any more involvement with Jill (especially after the Meth), when it came to “alternative music,” their code word. Layla might have had several reasons to lie. Perhaps she was afraid of their mother finding out, since Eddie had a big mouth, and had ratted Layla out to Eve, as well as Jill, on a few occasions, since Eddie was such a mean old bastard.
Eddie always had something against Layla - he thought of her as Eve’s Little Princess, who got all the affection and love from the mother, while Jill was starved for attention. That’s the way Eddie saw it. He liked Anne, but not Layla.
According to Philip, giving up opiates was extremely difficult, and the prognosis for anyone was poor. Philip suggested that Layla wasn’t entirely honest, and Philip knew lots and lots of cases, thought at Methadone clinics, that’s where the failures generally are. Jill didn’t know what to think.
In Buffalo, there was no doctor anywhere, outside of the Methadone clinics, where you could have opiate drugs prescribed on an outpatient basis, for the intention of helping regulate a drug problem. If you didn’t have a broken back, spine, or other injury causing chronic, severe pain, the alternatives were few and far between. According to Stanley, Carmine had been in numerous car accidents, and had hip and knee replacements. If so, he was taking full advantage of it. It seemed that Carmine had doctor’s appointments almost every day and spent a lot of time in pharmacies.
Opiates could be purchased via the internet, but when Jill compared the prices to the cost of the same pills locally on the street, it was ridiculous. She wasn’t willing, or even capable of paying three times the street value, as well as risking an un-trustworthy seller, getting ripped-off, having a customs seizure, or possible arrest, and her name on record somewhere as having bought drugs online.
She actually did buy Xanax on the internet twice - pills from India that were fairly priced and securely packaged, but thanks to Eddie, it turned into charity work for Stan and Jack, so Jill didn’t benefit much from her purchases.
Jill had provided Layla with a web site where she could buy codeine pills, and her sister had used it quite often for a long time.
Eve knew little about Layla’s drug history. But now their mother had plenty of knowledge about Jill. She didn’t commend her middle daughter for being the pillar of strength she once did, now that her “crutch” was exposed. No more marveling about how powerful she was, how she’d crushed her spouse in the marital war. Even though Jill did.
Even though she “won,” it was hard to see it that way. She didn’t feel like a winner. She was hurt and didn’t think the wound would ever heal. One thing was for certain: the situation could never return to what it once had been. Her mind, or heart, was scarred. At first it seemed like there was the “old Eddie” and the “new Eddie.”
Later she realized that she simply would never have the same love for the man again. That was an impossibility. And that’s what she lost - her love for him. The “old Eddie” never was.
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