TREATMENT COMPLETED!
I got back from treatment Friday afternoon. Graduated and everything. I’ve been to a few meetings this weekend. It’s been really great. I missed the NA program. The indescribable happiness you feel from being in a meeting is impossible to explain to anyone who is not into the program.
Treatment was a wonderful experience. I just decided to open my mind and my heart to all the avenues of healing that were available to me. Listened to all the counsellors and elders, did all the exercises, listened to all of the programming, bared my soul. It was the only way I could do it. Sometime soon, I will talk specifically about what elements of the programming helped me. But for now, all I want to say is that with the people who chose to just go through the motions, or to lose focus; those were the people who slipped Friday night.
I’ll do more reminiscing some other time. I’ll just share some of the more noteworthy events.
Firstly, the withdrawals from my cocaine use (hard [crack] and soft [powder]) were severe to say the least. My dreams were fucked-up and mostly winter-related. I’d dream about being lost on a large frozen sea with nothing on but my pajamas, and the ice would break, and I would fall in; and I’d wake up in my bed in the middle of the night to this unreal feeling of incredible coldness. The worst imaginable coldness you could feel. I’d get up, shivering immensely; throw on two pairs of jeans and all of my dress shirts, and put my hands into my arm pits. For four days, this was my nightly cycle. Cold places, pairs of jeans. Almost like a fever, minus the heat part. During the day, the aches and pains in my muscles were unbearable; I struggled to not give up and die. I also had this nagging chest pain. The worst part about this is that when you go to treatment, people are constantly trying to crack each other up; the humour that was present in the beginning was both a blessing and a curse. Because while it was such an easy atmosphere to be in, it fucking hurt to laugh; it hurt to get up from my seat, it hurt to cough, and it even hurt to hiccup. This is not something I want to go through ever again. It was far, far worse than my last treatment cycle in January, because that was just for alcohol. This time it was different: crack, cocaine, molly, and alcohol. A smorgasbord of chemicals, really. But after a few weeks, I really started to feel so much better. I stopped taking the sleep medication (Trazodone). I started to get that sleepy “trazzed-out” feeling in the morning. I think that’s when it’s good to stop, for me at least. I stopped needing Ibuprofen for the aches and pains. I started walking with more pep in my step, started being more playful (locking my fellow smoking clients out of the treatment centre, etc.), started playing more sports. I really got into croquet, becoming easily the best and most ruthless player, smacking people’s balls into the woods. I played the villain part so well; it became a cause for celebration whenever I was beaten. I was able to come out of my shell and become really close with a lot of people.
Secondly, I truly believe that I connected with my spirituality. Something I don’t think that I really did the last time. It happened mid-way through; a Native healer named Tony and his wife, Sandra, did these one-one-one counselling sessions with most of the clients. It was in a dimly-lit room at the main Dilico main offices (not the treatment facility); with sage burning in a bowl. He is a very intelligent man and a very skilled communicator; communication is something that I believe a lot of elders struggle with. Really getting their point across. They often have a big point in mind (drugs hurt your spirit), but get distracted by other little points (I killed a deer once or I really enjoy a good morning coffee, mmm, morning coffee is good), and then struggle in a real winding way to get back to their big point. Tony will get to his point across incisively, and then move across to the next: everything he says, has purpose. It’s magically skilled, how he communicates. One more interesting thing about them is that his wife has such a radically different background. Firstly, she is non-Native. Secondly, she is Christian. She encouraged us to pray to angels. One bit of advice she gave to everyone was that if they needed to pray for a specific purpose, but didn’t know what angel to use, to pray to the Saint Michael the Archangel because he is like a liaison man of sorts: he will recruit whatever angel it is that you need. It was illuminating, I’ll say that. They are just so interesting: they’ve only been married for a few years, despite being in their later years, but seem like they have been together forever. I love them. The thing about one-on-one counselling sessions with them is that it is actually more like two-on-one: because if you have a question for them, the other one knows intuitively which of the other is more equipped to answer it. I had no questions for them: only my story. One in which my stepmother Donna was taken from me in May. I lost hope; lost my connection to her. I told them that I didn’t believe in anything. When I’m using (or well into late-withdrawals even), my nihilistic thinking really dominates my worldview. But then Sandra, she gave me a task: to demand from the creator a sign that Donna was well and watching over me. Demand it, she said. Even if I don’t believe. Then Tony reminded me to put down tobacco in the woods before I did so, otherwise I would not be connected to the spirits. So I nodded politely to all of this, not really receptive to this magical mode of ritual. But later I really thought about it. Why not do it, I thought? There really is no reason to not do it. Right after that, Tony told me to get up, he hugged me, and told me that he would be there for my graduation; to give me a gift from Minnesota, where he was going to do some ceremonies. I felt like crying. My voice cracked, and I said that would be so nice of him. So we parted ways and that night, I did all of this: I demanded a sign. And the next night, I saw a little bunny on the back patio area where all the smokers go. It was so cute and innocuous at first, but then I slowly felt moved somehow. In a real way. I almost teared up. I just stared at it: that little bunny. And then I began to really think about it. I immediately thought about the past. I remembered that when I was little, and Donna was our mother, she used to have pet names for me and my brothers. She used to call my younger brother her little “dust-mite” and she called my second youngest brother her little “dust-devil” and she called me her little “dust-bunny”. We often used to play with wooden guns in the sand behind our childhood house. We were rambunctiously dusty little kids. She was the one who always made sure that we were clean before bed. She really loved doing it. Taking care of us. She loved us so much. Next, I started to think about me and Donna’s last visit. It was over two years ago. She came to visit me and my ex in Ottawa. Her and my dad were long split, but we’d still managed to stay close friends over the years. It was a six hour drive for her. We played board games all afternoon and then she took us out for dinner that evening. Then she dropped us off at home. The last words she ever told me have taken on such a greater amount of importance since I met Tony and his wife. Those last words echo still. Because when I saw that bunny on the patio, it felt slightly inconsequential at first. But then I started to really see the meaning in it. Maybe she was out there somewhere, watching over me. And I think, now, that I really believe that her spirit is out there somewhere, watching over over me. My guardian. Those haunting last words. Before she left our driveway in her Jeep, the last time we’d ever see each other again. The last words she told me in person before she would a few years later die in her motorcycle accident. You’ll always be my little dust-bunny, Freddy.
On graduation day, before the festivities really began, I told Tony and Sandra about this experience. How after it, my spirit felt stronger; the weight upon me felt lighter. I cried to them a little. They noted how much better I looked physically. Later, during the graduation ceremony, at the very end, he gave me a bundle of sage that was skillfully wrapped in tape. The weird part about that is that I was burning a lot of sage after Donna died. Somehow, sage will always remind me of her. He hugged me. He said he hadn’t stopped thinking about me in the two weeks since we’ve met. I told him that he changed my life, my way of thinking. He said that I can call him on the telephone whenever I want.
That is what I want to do someday: to help people in a meaningful way.
Is that too ambitious? To be a man like him. Someday.
Fuck that, I know I can fucking do it. I know it.
So tomorrow morning, I make my way from Thunder Bay to Ottawa. I currently don’t have a place lined up yet. My dad is driving me though; I hope it isn’t too hard to expect that I could find a place on the same day we arrive there. And then, on Thursday … I will officially be a student at Carleton University, where I eventually plan to take Social Work. To use my experiences to help others. It’s been such a roller-coaster ride of holy fuck. From Donna dying, to relapsing, to drinking socially, to drinking every other day, to getting my buddy to score cocaine for me, to making friends with a molly dealer, to drinking a lot still, to learning how to score crack and cocaine on my own, to losing all of my drinking friends because of my otherworldly abilities to get really fucked up, to going to the dealer’s house, to smoking crack alone in an alley, to going back to the dealer’s house again, to going back into the alley, and to the dealer’s house again, to I can’t even remember how many times and nights I did this, to holy shit I can barely walk because my ankles have blisters, to spending all of my tax money and disposable income on getting fucked-up, to getting fired from my job, to eventually I am fucking broke, to pawning all of my shit, to stealing from my family, to going to treatment, to finding a spiritual connection, to feeling Donna’s spirit, to moving 1400+ kilometres to go to university, still homeless. All in three months. Being alone to my utter devices. Is it too much, too fast? I guess we shall see.
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