No, it’s not the hard stuff; so anybody addicted to hard stuff, just don’t even bother laughing.
I am very good at kicking the caffeine habit. I’ve done it dozens of times.
But caffeine’s cheap, super-available, is still a drug, has effects on the body, you damn well pay for it in suffering when you try to come off it. And the longer you’re off it, the easier it gets to be without it.
Feeling That Way for That One Person...?
Chemicals your body produces and jam into your brain are much like chemicals you jam into your body. They still get to your brain.
Been getting my communications with That One Person. Pretty much always want more. If I couldn’t communicate in words, would happily communicate by lying there with them, holding them. Or, y’know, getting them a cup of coffee.
... of course, that would be a communication that would only happen if they knew and accepted and wanted how I feel. And for that matter, lived closer.
I know they still like Someone Else.
(Someone Else, frankly, who isn’t even worthy of being smacked into a bloody pulp by that Hammer, let alone holding it.)
And in spite of all I wish I could do for them, That Other Person doesn’t know or understand that I’d happily be/do everything the Someone Else wouldn’t, couldn’t, doesn’t even understand to do. Lacks even the capacity to do or be.
... I had pictures of That One Person on my phone. Not just pictures from Facepingram. Also pictures I’d taken when I last visited.
And those photos were my methadone for the conversations.
Which were my methadone for being actually physically there with That One Person.
Which was my methadone for telling That One Person how I felt and actually being theirs.
(... well. I am theirs. That One Person just don’t realise that. So, I guess I mean that being reciprocated.)
So. Those photos were what, three? Three Inception Levels of substitute for the real thing. So, in one of my saner moments...
... I had to force myself to wipe those photos off the phone.
Is it like wanting to be on coke or speed? But not having it, so instead you take huge doses of caffeine? Like, way above the FDA-recommended maximum daily amount?
And you almost, just under the skin, in the guts, almost in the brain realise how much you really adore That One Person but can’t tell them. You substitute with photos of That One Person. And when you put the phone away, you’re even more keenly aware there’s an unfillable That One Person-shaped hole in your life.
And while you were trying to fill the hole with your That One Person Photo Substitutes, all the photos did in the end while they masked the pain was dig that That One Person-shaped hole even deeper.
... that’s how addiction works, innit?
And in that moment... just after having gotten your fix, just as you come back into your head and can think more than four words in a row and you’re okay to deal with the world again...
... but just as that need just begins its slow emptying, devouring growth again, starting its quiet pulling at you, back down that path, which for just that one clear-eyed moment, you look down that path and what you see is -
- that That One Person-shaped hole -
- bigger and deeper than it was before...
... that’s when you realise: you are a junkie. And for your own sake, if you want to survive, you must dial down that habit.
Or you’ll get the pounding headaches, you’ll get the stress. At your worst you’ll feel like a sweating, shaking, wound-up, strung-out, desperate, half-coherent, sobbing empty half-person with aches in your muscles, throbbing pain throughout your skull, a realisation there must be something that for lack of a better word people call a “soul” just because yours feels so empty and sore and you curl up into a ball on the floor because it’s the only way left for you to make that Hole feel smaller.
If you’re not sure if I’m talking about caffeine, harder illegal drugs or love, then you’re getting the point.