Amanda was never expecting to amount to much in her life. She did her best to get by day-to-day, which is all anyone can really do. She dealt with problems as they appeared, and regularly forgot others, until they came back to her. She was a spry young 24 year old girl who had failed out of high school and recently learned some of the reasons behind her difficulties. She had been diagnosed with ADHD (combined type of course. Of course she of all people couldn’t have more specificity) and OCD recently. These were new to her, and helped her make a little more sense of herself and life, and yet it also wasn’t as helpful as she had hoped. Although this was new information to her, one of her biggest difficulties was nearly as old as she was. She was an opioid addict - she had been one since the age of 11, and this was something that was a daily struggle for her.
Her decade-long career started like it does for most addicts; she got in a car accident with her mom that day. Her mom died, and of course, due to all of her wounds, she had needed analgesia so she got the gold standard – morphine; it wasn’t love at first try, like most people believe. That doesn’t really happen often – only ~30% at most of people who try heroin or other opioids ever develop a problem. But she noticed just how well it not only killed her physical pain, but the emotional pain. In fact, if you didn’t know, she would tell you something most addicts would. Opioids are the gold standard for physical pain; they are even better for those deep emotional pains that hurt the deepest.
She was not physically dependent on them for some time, but ever since she felt her hurts melt away, and her body relax, she noted to herself how effective this drug was, and the rest was a long and painful history.
“That’s the thing most people don’t understand about addicts,” she had always thought. “It’s that we aren’t in search of euphoria or pleasure. We are only in search of relief, and you cannot understand what it means to be an addict without experiencing it yourself.” Similarly, when she failed out of high school, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to do the work, or that she didn’t want to succeed. Her brain and mind just got in the way, and to those who didn’t experience it as well, she only ever looked lazy and uncaring.
“You just need to stop being so lazy,” most everyone would tell her. “Just focus and stop playing around!” She heard it most from her parents and family, in particular her mom – at least, until she was no more. There was nothing that hurt her more.
“Of course I care!” she would respond. “You just don’t understand!”
“You’re damn right I don’t understand. Because I, unlike some people here, am not fucking lazy!”
She spent countless nights feeling depressed or suicidal even. This was where the opioids came in handy. Dilaudid was her favorite, but she wasn’t very picky. Whatever would keep the pesky withdrawals away. This is the other thing about opioid addiction many do not understand, or choose not to. The majority of addicts are good people, just like anyone else, who would never wish to hurt a single soul. But even addicts like Amanda, know how dangerous an addict in withdrawal was. To those who do not know, if you think you’ve experienced hell, just wait, if you ever are unlucky enough to find yourself in the middle of opioid withdrawal. Opioid withdrawal isn’t like alcohol or benzodiazepine withdrawal – those ones are deadly without medical support. But opioid withdrawal will make you wish you were dead, and even a mild case still feels damn awful.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
How many countless addicts and innocents have lost their lives due to overdose from dirty drugs? How many lives have been lost from suicide – all because some people were more terrified of their own shadow than emphatic? At least, that is what Amanda understood to be true. After nearly a decade of living the life, she understood very well that despite the best efforts and thoughts of drug prohibitionists, that they were the cause of this suffering. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. After all, if people could just get their regulated medicine or drugs, they could use them safely. ‘Harm reduction’ is usually what this is known as, and Amanda knew this was the only way to help. As did all her fellow addicts. Without the demand for potent, easy to smuggle drugs in the illicit market, Fentanyl would not have become so prevalent. And, as logic follows, without such potent unregulated drugs, less people would be dropping like flies.
Amanda worked a regular simple 9-to-5 at her local grocery, and was attempting to get an art business started and growing. Despite all of her struggles, she considered herself lucky. She joined a local methadone clinic, and things were beginning to look up. She was poor, and all of her money went towards food, rent, and after getting into a methadone program, on healthcare. This is where our tale begins, and although, I, the author, have digressed quite a bit, I will try to refrain from doing so too often.
To give you some help imagining what Amanda might have looked like and begin our tale, she considered herself fairly smart, but you wouldn’t think it seeing her on the street. Most days she preferred to wear a baggy hoody with pajama pants; she dressed for comfort, not style. She believed she had earned herself at least that, with all of her suffering. Her hair was a dark, dirty blonde, with small streaks of lilac, and if you did ever see her, you’d think to yourself, “What a stereotype!” She was lucky enough to take care of her looks, and looked beautiful despite her years of use, stress and, and suffering. She aged and rapidly matured emotionally and mentally, but was alright physically.
As the person telling her story, I will be following her wishes, and trying to help spread awareness of addiction, and mental health issues in general. Most believe addicts age from the drugs. This is prejudicial misinformation. It is the lifestyle, and the stress of such lifestyles that tends to do it. Not methamphetamine or any others would do it directly if you take care of your health and hygiene; this is yet another thing exasserbated by prohibition, adding stress to the lifestyle of illicit use. Speaking of which, if any of you happen to have used anything recently, or you are on ADHD meds, this is your reminder to hydrate, and make a smoothie if you can’t eat yet. Nutrition and hydration work wonders, she had always told me.