Xanax Memories

If you’re struggling, reach out to someone. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and be helped.

medication medicine pills drugsYears of accumulated change in shoe box. Susan B. Anthony Dollars. Fifty-cent pieces. My first-day desire chip taken from “John G.” sobbing, powerless, and broken. My one and five-year sobriety chips. Worn, corroded pennies, nickels, and dimes.

A box of memories. Memories of bouncing a basketball while I stole quarters from my father’s change jar as a teen so he would not hear me. Memories of pouring water into the whisky bottles so he wouldn’t know I was siphoning his liquor cabinet. Memories of hiding my cocaine and black-market Xanax in this very box buried beneath the loose change. An almost nightly combination punctuated by the once sickening, 6 a.m. sounds of the blue-bird’s and robin’s wake up songs after being up all night.  Fragmented memories and dreams.

I also see foreign coins. Drunken trips to Mexico. Signs on every bathroom stall that cocaine is illegal and you will go to jail. Didn’t care. Never saw one of those signs on the countless United States bathroom stalls I utilized to snort my cocaine. Would it have mattered? Nope.

Slot machine tokens and left over casino chips from various casinos in Vegas. My favorite place to do cocaine. Unused chips from The Palms and the Hard Rock Casinos. Meeting places with my drug connections. Chips from the Flamingo Hilton. Used to go there with my family. I fought with my mom when we went. We fought over multiple failed marriages (mine). We fought over our unresolved guilt, past and present. We fought over what was in my mind, a lost childhood. Lost teen and adult years I subconsciously blamed her for. Eating disorders, alcohol, drugs. There is always someone to blame instead of taking that first step of recovery.

Something white, hidden deep in the loose change. I dig down. It’s a 3mg Xanax bar. Where the hell did that come from?  I feel my heart rate quicken. I talk about triggers all the time and how to deal with them. Now here it is. It’s me. It’s now. A decision. I could pop it and no one would ever know. Is it about that? A new cycle of guilt. A new cycle of sobriety. Staring at that tiny white oblong object that had the ability to stir up so many intense memories and emotions within seconds. Frantic calls to my dealer for baggies of Xanax to bring me down from the cocaine binge the night before. When I could not get it, the next call for my black-market Ambien. Lying to my psychiatrist to get it.

Party all night. Sleep all day. Call in sick. After losing all my legal clients, I worked for family so I know I will be enabled. The ever-shifting grey area between love, enablement, and recovery that every family with an addict deals with. That little white pill knew all about me. It asked me what I intended to do. I walked into the bathroom. A bathroom where I had embraced bulimia. Where I had done cocaine on the granite counter top. Where I had secretly worshipped that white pill on my knees in front of the “porcelain goddess,” sick from the night before.

I dropped to both knee as I had done so many times before, wishing for someone or some power to take away my pain. I dropped the pill into the water. I flushed. Recovery for me is every day and every moment often not knowing what is around the corner. Sometimes pure chance has a way of reminding us. In recovery, life is full of loose change.

Sponsored

May Is Mental Health Awareness Month.  If you’re struggling, reach out to someone. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and be helped.  If you know someone struggling, let them know you care. Let them know they are not alone. That may be all it takes for them to take that first step towards recovery.


Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

Sponsored