Day 5

Leslie / Part 2

This morning Leslie’s eyes looked clear and it appeared she was able to sleep. Yesterday they were red, swollen and tearing from withdrawal. She gets her methadone medications throughout the day so it’s difficult to know her state of being for more than a few hours at a time before she swings in the opposite direction.

            She explained what she thought was the origination of her drug use – separation and abandonment, an absence of love from the time she was born. Her family is English, aristocratically rich, and emotionally disconnected from expressing feelings of any type. She claims she can’t remember her mother ever telling her she loved her. She can’t remember being held. She can’t remember ever seeing her parents hold or show affection toward each other. 

            She has been married for twenty-two years and her husband is a Xerox copy of her father. She has absolutely no idea of his true feelings for her. He has never filed for divorce, yet has thrown her out of the house on more than one occasion and refuses her to have contact with their children. He belittles her, reinforces her uselessness by not allowing her to work. He states her job is to take care of the family and be the chauffer for the kids – that’s not what she wants. She wants to disappear, and does so internally. The drugs are the vehicles, not the destination.

            She can’t deal with more than one child at a time, and sometimes not that. The pharmaceuticals begin at dawn. Speed followed by Valium until she crashes. That takes her to 11:00 am. The cycle repeats itself in the afternoon. The kids are scurried to bed as early as possible. It is then when she begins drinking alcohol – gin is her drink of choice. Her cocaine and heroin use is more recreational and saved for weekends when she allows herself a new high. After awhile the cycle plays on her mind like a bad Dracula movie, uselessness, apathy, misery, helplessness, depression and self-loathing combine to form her shame. Shame is the only constant in her life. After awhile she can’t take it any longer and needs to be punished, so she slashes her wrists. It’s never an attempt to commit suicide, but rather proof that she can feel some sensation from time to time. The scars are what she wants, for the scars are a physical reminder of guilt and punishment. Punishment for not doing the one and only thing expected of her – to be a mother. It is when the scars begin to fade that her cycle becomes worse, and she cuts herself again.

           

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Talking about blood, my lab work came back today. I have no idea how I can possibly be so healthy, but I am. My liver shows minimal chronic damage, about 10-15%. Dr. Succipan says it will repair itself to complete normality within two to three months. It appears in this short week I have come to understand my medical condition including the severity of my back problems. My original concept was to cleanse myself of all toxins, all drugs and determine how much pain I generate subconsciously, acting as my own enabler to self medicate. Unfortunately, the self-medication worked, at least in regard in masking some of the pain. Walking, standing, sitting is far worse now than it was six months ago. The pain is now a shooting burning pain rather than the aching, annoying discomfort I use to have.

            I’m thinking a second fusion on the lumbar 4/5 is in my near future. I’ll work out the details of recovery and rehabilitation another day. I also decided, with the suggestion of Stu, one of the councilors; how I can obtain continuing support without get involved with AA when I return home. I hate AA, and have since my experience in Boulder. The religious connotations along with the recovered alcoholics that still attend after twenty years of sobriety, mainly for social reasons turns me off immensely. I will hire a councilor weekly or bi-weekly for a private session as simple and as straight forward as my Pilates classes. Everyone needs to find his or her own way, and I think I may have found mine.