1996 part one.

After losing a two year battle with Los Angeles, I found myself back in New Jersey...

It was the summer of 1996, and the lightning bugs were out in full affect. I had come back to the east coast with a full blown intravenous heroin habit, and had eventually landed myself on my Aunt's couch in Hasbrouck Heights. Where there was always a CB scanner flickering red lights, while the muttering of a truck drivers lonely voice would occasionally break through over some static, talking about a cop hiding in the weeds a few miles down the road.
There were bearskin rugs and statues of vikings resting on the greenish/yellow carpet that floored the entire house. It was my very first morning off heroin, and I came to curled up in the fetal position on the small, cold, leather couch in the den. Mtv news was on, and as my eyes focused a little and my gut gave a screaming need for a syringe, I was informed that the keyboard player for The Smashing Pumpkins had overdosed and died, as did the singer for Sublime, and Scott Weland was once again arrested for possession of heroin. This definitely didn't happen all in one day, but it felt like it did that morning.
My Aunt had called her Brother (my Father), who was sober, and pretty much non-existant in my life. All I remember is my Aunt asking me to hobble into the dining room to the big, wooden, viking like table, and my Father sitting there. He had been informed that I was on heroin, and to drive me to a detox. I don't remember the ride to the hospital, I don't remember the feelings involved... I just remember being dropped off at the Newark University Hospital, where the detox was on the AIDS ward. It's funny nowadays to listen to rich little douchebags whine about having to make their beds while staring into a sunset off a coast in Malibu. My first detox experience was much much different..
They didn't have the meds that they do now to control the virus, so there was just transvestite after transvestite, shuffling by my door, pushing a pole on wheels with a pissbag attatched to it, covered from head to toe in open sores, and about to drop dead any day.
I got dropped off on a Friday night, and since it was a county run facility in the murder capitol of the world, there was to be not a Dr. in sight until monday morning. So I laid on that ice cold, plastic bed for 48 hours straight... crying, puking, and shitting myself. I passed the time by snorting a few xanex that a tranny had slipped me, and writing a sexual inventory.
Monday had finally arrived, and since I was still young and spry, I had just about completed the detox, and convinced everyone there that I would be much better off back on that cold leather love seat in my Aunt's den... so my Aunt came and picked me up.

Arnie was my first sponsor. The minutes seemed like hours, as I stood in the parking lot of The Macaroni Grille on Rt.17 after a friday night meeting with my friends, them all telling me to, "just go up and ask him." I felt like I was asking the hottest chick in high school to the prom, I didn't know anything about being clean or sober, I didn't know he basically had to say yes, I didn't know anything except how to get high... and I was obviously even horrible at that. Arnie was exactly like Steve Martin's character in "My Blue Heaven" but with a George Hamilton tan. He even sounded just like him...
I finally got up the nerve to walk over to him, and the other 5 x-junky assholes with 25 years clean he was standing with, who laughed at all us newcomers every time we shared, and told us that they had spilled more out of the spoon then we ever shot into our veins. I asked Arnie in a semi-stutter if he would sponsor me, he just kinda winced at me, gave me his card, and said, "yeah kid, call me in the morning..." I literally felt like the hot chick said she would go to the dance with me, when I walked back over to my friends they all hugged me like I had just been jumped into some weird cult... and in a way I kind of just was.

So I started attending meetings on a regular basis, making friends, and gaining a little weight back. My Aunt was starting to trust me more, and calling my Mother with good reports. I had gotten a job in the deli section of the Pathmark just down the hill from my Aunt's house, and things were finally starting to look like they were going to be alright. I hadn't not been dopesick in a while, and it felt kind of amazing to wake up and not have my teeth be on fire.
At around 28 days or so, I had gotten my first paycheck. I had also run into one of my old drinking buddies from my youth at my deli counter. He was telling me how everyone missed me and wanted to see me, and that I should come hang out that night. It was a friday, and I knew what went on in my old town on a friday... these were the people I went to high school with, who didn't get all strung out on dope. Yeah they were fucked up, but they were all for the most part functioning alcoholics, do a bump on the weekend warrior types. I figured fuck it, I could handle one night of hanging with the old crew right? I mean... there sure as fuck wasn't going to be any dope around, and THAT was my problem... not drinking. I convinced my Aunt to let me go, and also said I would most likely be spending the night. I already knew I was going to get drunk, and I was fucking down for it. I had been strung out on dope for so long, that I missed just being a drunk idiot with my friends. I missed being the life of the party. The only problem, was that it wasn't 1986 anymore... and I had crossed a line I did not know existed.


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