There’s an old movie. The Jerk, with Steve Martin. And at the very beginning he says, “I was born a poor black child.” And I thought that’s the way someone’s story should always start. At the beginning.
I was born a poor white child. Not as poor as I thought, as it turns out. I learned at a very young age to never to ask for things, or covet anything because we just couldn’t afford it. There was even a time I remember my mother telling me that parents had to pay Santa for the toys, so don’t ask for anything too expensive. I didn’t play sports (my parents said we couldn’t afford the uniforms), or Girl Scouts, I didn’t attend catechism (“You realize that’s just classes on God, right?”). I never attended camp; neither day camp, nor overnight. Simply because, “We couldn’t afford it.” I couldn’t take those guitar lessons, even if it was from my Uncle, because we couldn’t afford the actual guitar. When I was in high school, I struggled with completing the applications to colleges, because they always wanted my parents’ financial information. Why should I give you my parents’ information when neither of them could help pay for it in the first place? It was abundantly clear I was on my own.
Nether of my parents had a trade or a skill, or was educated further than high school. (It was actually an accomplishment that they both finished high school. Even though they were both very bright and good students, they both grew up in families that valued working more than schooling.) They were both very hard workers. My mother worked full time for most of my life. Usually a factory worker, or a warehouse worker, but always worked her way up to a supervisory position. My father worked as a truck driver/delivery man for a wholesale food company. A fairly successful (at the time) wholesale food company. He was a member of the union and fairly well paid. He often came home with frozen foods and fresh meats as the extra “perks” of his job. Before that he was a factory worker in a gun shop, a nighttime security guard, and held a part time job at a photo lab developing/printing photos (before the digital age). We rented a 2 bedroom apartment, on the 3rd floor, in a decent neighborhood. We didn’t own our own home like most of my friends. We always drove a beat up clunker of a car (sometimes two, one for mom, one for dad) until my parents splurged on a new Subaru when I was 15. Income was freely coming in. There was only one time whereas my father was laid off from his full time job, but it was a very short brief time, and he made up for it by working two part time gigs. With that in mind, and knowing the society and economy that existed when I was growing up, they worked very hard, but chances are they were paid well for it. Then why did we never have any money? Why was I cursed to wear those god awful blue canvas sneakers with the white stripes off of the clearance shelf in K-Mart, when my friends had Adidas or Nike? Or my ever coveted Converse All-stars? Why did my friends have shirts with alligators on it, when mine had nothing, and shrunk in the dryer? Why didn’t we have a dang clothes dryer? Why didn’t we stay in hotels when we went on vacations, but rather camp out or stay at a friends? Why couldn’t I see a movie in an actual theater, and not wait for it to come on TV? Why couldn’t I go to the mall with my friends, even if I promised to only buy a soda and some fries?
Drugs. Period. My parents were drug addicts. Not the kind of drug addicts you see on TV, with bad teeth, sleeping on someone’s couch, stealing from their grandma. No. But drug addicts the same. My father starting using drugs when he was about 14 or 15. My mom, about the same time (which means she was probably about 16 given the age difference between them). I know why he did drugs. It makes perfect sense. He was brought up in a very strict religious household. Jehovah Witnesses. Devout Jehovah Witnesses. My grandfather was an elder in the church – which means he was something like a preacher. A decent, loving, affectionate and fun man. My grandmother was … crazy. I can’t imagine what it was like growing up with her, but I know as an adult dealing with her, she was just insane. Perhaps clinically. But we will never know for sure, because back then you just accepted people as they were, you didn’t have names for behaviors then. There was no Narcissistic Personality Traits, or Bipolar, or Psychotic diagnosises. I do know this, in many of her nonsensical rantings, when she harkened back to the olden days, when things seemed to make sense to her – she spoke about how close she and “her son” were. Best friends, she said. They did everything together, they laughed, they joked. Life was good. And if you asked her when that was, she could tell you it was when he was about 8 or 10. But she spoke of this time as if it were yesterday. As if he suddenly went wrong, and she couldn’t understand what happened to her good boy, her best friend. My father, who was 20 years my senior. My theory, then, is this: my father reached puberty. Reached that time when all children rebel, and he wanted to explore and check out life outside of his Jehovah Witness home life. And he did that. And he never went back. He experimented with drugs and alcohol and realized that it was much better than dealing with his life at home. It was his escape. And he liked it. He liked the way it made him feel. And my mom, went along with him for the ride.
Most would say that my parents weren’t addicts. They would say that they never did, quote, “hard” drugs. They only “smoked a little pot”. That they could stop at any time. So therefore they were not addicts. I know differently, however.
WIKIPEDIA defines Addiction as: “Addiction is the continued use of a mood altering substance or behavior despite adverse dependency consequences or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors. Addictions can include, but are not limited to, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, exercise abuse, pornography and gambling. Classic hallmarks of addiction include: impaired control over substances/behavior, preoccupation with substance/behavior, continued use despite consequences, and denial. Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward), coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long-term costs). Physiological dependence occurs when the body has to adjust to the substance by incorporating the substance into its 'normal' functioning. This state creates the conditions of tolerance and withdrawal. Tolerance is the process by which the body continually adapts to the substance and requires increasingly larger amounts to achieve the original effects. Withdrawal refers to physical and psychological symptoms experienced when reducing or discontinuing a substance that the body has become dependent on. Symptoms of withdrawal generally include but are not limited to anxiety, irritability, intense cravings for the substance, nausea, hallucinations, headaches, cold sweats, and tremors.”
Or WebMD: “Drug dependence or addiction occurs when you develop a physical or emotional "need" for a drug. You are unable to control your use of a drug despite the negative impact it has on your life. You may not be aware that you have become dependent on a drug until you try to stop taking it. Drug withdrawal can cause uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous symptoms.”
Let’s tackle the more obvious response: They only “smoked a little pot”. You mean to say that you cannot be addicted to Pot? Of course you can. My parents smoked pot every day. And most days, all day long. My father in particular. Yes, while he was on the job, driving a truck from stop to stop – smoking the entire way. My mother was more of a social pot smoker. She didn’t smoke much by herself, but after her work day was over, dinner was served and cleaned up, she would sit back with Dad and imbibe, and the day would fade away.
But it is not that simple. They didn’t only “smoke a little pot”. They did all sorts of things. They tried all sorts of drugs. Not “hard” drugs you say? How’s cocaine for you? Is that hard enough? How about Crack? Yep, they did that too. True, as far as I know they only “tried” crack once. But I remember it extremely (perhaps traumatically) vividly. My uncles brought it over, like it was a new adventure, a new toy to try. “Every one was talking about this; we have got to try it.” And then I remember one of my uncles saying, as I watched them prepare the pipe, “Some say you can die just from one time.” So I watched in horror as they passed that crack pipe from one to another, to my parents and back, wondering, and watching, if this was going to be that “one time”. It was not.
And the cocaine. My father at one point discovered how to etch an image into the back of a small mirror, and designed a pretty cool looking Spiderman coke mirror. Yes. My father had his own little coke mirror. But yet, you say, he only “smoked a little pot”. My mother enjoyed cocaine too – and I learned to recognize it pretty quickly in her. Her voice would change. It would be immediately nasally and constricted. She claims that’s why she decided to stop using it, because I told her I didn’t like the way it made her voice sound.
Now, pills. Pills are another thing! My parents liked their pills. Almost as much as pot, I think. There was always an assortment of types of pills in the house. Not a lot, mind you. Just a few. A couple pink ones, or white ones, blue or whatever. A single pill stored in the bottom of a jewelry box, or maybe in the back of the kitchen cupboard. “Uppers” and “Downers” as they were called back then. There was many a night that my mother would take one pill or another, and stay up all night cleaning the house. Who could blame her really? She was working two jobs, and the house had to get cleaned. So, take this magic pill, stay up all night and get it done.
And then there is the ever present, “I can stop anytime.” This happened to be true of my mother. She stopped many times. She was very much a recreational user. She used drugs when she was around other people who were doing drugs. But on her own, she couldn’t care less. After she died, I did find some paraphernalia that might have proved otherwise. And we were surprised to find it; we thought she had left her pot smoking days long in the past. But I have a feeling she just had the items around just in case, and maybe dipped in every so often – but I also know she believed there were better things to spend your money on, especially when you didn’t have it – like food. Or cigarettes. My father, however, could not and would not stop. He insisted that he didn’t WANT to stop. So why should he try?
When did I realize my parents were addicts? I always knew. There wasn’t a sudden epiphany whereas I walked in and caught them. They did not hide it from me. In fact they made me part of their addictive behaviors. I helped “hide” the paraphernalia when company came over, or fetched items from their hiding places when needed. I played along with the dutiful domestic life. I was warned if I told anyone, that I would be “taken” from them. That they would end up in jail. And that would be my fault. We did not have the ‘them against us’ mentality towards the police; but it was clearly explained to me that my parents were doing something illegal, and if the police found out, it would be bad. Very bad. I kept their secrets. I told no one. So much so, that I feared making any waves what so ever. Blend in. Be normal. Don’t do anything to cast any attention on yourself, because the attention could spread to my family, and everything would be ruined. Tell no one. At one point I told my “best friend”, somewhere around 3rd grade. And somehow her parents found out. It stopped there, they didn’t call the police, or tell the school social worker or the like (things were done differently then), but she was not allowed to hang out with me anymore. She could not be my friend. It was many many many years later that I trusted anyone else enough to tell them our “secret”. I was a teenager. And as you can imagine, as a teenager, and having parents who “partied”, it was cool. I had the “cool” parents.
But I never called them, “addicts”. I still struggle with that term. Were they … addicts? They did drugs. Repeatedly. I was an adult when things started to make more sense. When things fell into place, and I began to realize the extent of it all. Yes, drugs were ever present in our lives, but we lived functional lives. My parents both worked – they worked very hard, actually. Long hours. Physical jobs. They weren’t just lying around getting high and desperate for their next fix. My parents got their drugs from a person who was just like them, a blue collar worker, with a wife, two kids, house with a pool and a mini-van. His wife ran a day-care!! We didn’t call him a “dealer”. He was dad’s “guy”, or his “connection”. And as it turns out Dad was also, someone’s “guy” or “connection”. Dad insisted that he was merely a middle man. A “connection”. He connected people to his “guy”, and delivered the goods. Never making money off the situation. That was my father’s definition of a “dealer”. Someone who made money off the drugs. Since he didn’t make money out of the situation, he clearly wasn’t a dealer. It made sense to me at the time. I even have a very fuzzy memory of my mother not allowing him to have certain people over our house, or the slight reminiscence that she had ruled that anything resembling dealing was not allowed in order to protect the family.
But that one day: I was an adult. 22 years old. I had been through some shit for my young age, and was back living in an apartment as a roommate with my dad. I walked out into the living room and the coffee table was completely covered, corner to corner, with pot. Green, sticky, fragrant pot, in large bulbous stalks and buds. I had never seen so much marijuana in my life. My dad was sitting in front of the mountainous amount of marijuana, at his feet some Ziploc bags and a very complicated looking scale. I took the scene in, and tried not to show how shocked I was. The pieces of the puzzle slid into place, and I was livid. “What are you doing?” I asked him, feigning my best doe-eyed innocent stare ever. I can’t remember what his answer was. Something like an impertinent but incredulous ‘what do you think I am doing?’ But the look on his face was that of someone caught. Caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. With that, the façade that Dad was just a “middle man”, a “connection”, detonated abruptly to the more sensible and ,well, realistic, reality that my father was indeed a drug dealer.
A drug dealer. And what does a drug dealer have, more than anything? Drugs. And Money. I’m not saying that this now meant that my father should have been driving a Bentley, or had gold pendants the size of hubcaps hanging from his neck. But he had enough money for all of his toys. His gadgets and his own drugs. And he had always had the money for those things. Especially the drugs. There was always a supply of drugs in my house for my parents. (The only exception being if the local supplies themselves were dry). The money that they said we didn’t have, the money that they couldn’t spend on softball, or Girl Scouts, guitar lessons or Converse-All-star sneakers, was allocated to another budget item, that’s all. Drugs. Drugs had a higher priority than anything else. Drugs came before any other extraneous items. And anything other than the basics that a child needed (clothes, food, medicine) was extraneous.
Not to mention this: I was 22. If the police were to raid our apartment at that very moment, whose pot do you think they would think it was? The 42 year old, hard working, stable academic looking grey haired man? Or his unemployed slightly earthy 22 year old daughter who was dating a musician? He was putting me at risk. Again. Or Still. With this, I came to the realization that it was not only money and activities that my family kept from me, but my mere safety was in a constant state of jeopardy. By safety, I do not mean in the physical sense of the word. I mean: security, wellbeing. The sensation that every child should have, that they are “safe”, that no harm will come to them, that they are protected. Even as a child, I always lived under the fear that someone was going to “take me away”. That the Police were to be feared, because they could take my parents, or me, away. There was no where that I felt safe, secure. Always under the fear of something was going to happen, someone was going to find out, and everything would be ruined.
An addict has “impaired control over substances/behavior, preoccupation with substance/behavior, continued use despite consequences, and denial.” Despite the consequences. “Despite the negative impact it has on their life.” To themselves, or anyone else around them.
No comments:
Post a Comment