The next few months were a little touch and go with my mental health, but after some time passed I became more and more sure of myself. I threw myself into work during the day and into hooking up at night. My meth addiction was hitting its full stride. On the up side, my drinking all but ended and I finally started feeling good and I was starting to be able to do things that I never thought I could again. I had blamed a lot of my problems on getting older and my genetics. I blamed my back hurting and my stomach aching all the time on everything but what was actually causing it: my severe addiction to alcohol.
Like I said, I started to feel better and do more things. I had finally gotten away from that nightmare and I thought life was on the upswing. I dove into my work with a drive and a force like I never had before. I lost 100lbs and could finally move and climb and run and do all the things that I thought I had gotten too old for. I started staying late at work and going the extra mile because I was fueled by my new lease on life and, of course, meth.
It wasn’t until a little while later that things started to go downhill again. The problem arose because I was working 6, sometimes 7, days a week and not sleeping at night. A day came when I didn’t wake up in time for work. I was an hour late. I woke up, called my dad (also my boss at the time), and made some excuse. Doing this we had to push work back and it put me behind, I had started working by myself. That of course would have been ok but I continued to do it. I didn’t do it all the time, but it started happening about 2 days a week. I would stay up all night doing drugs and hanging out and then fall asleep an hour before work. It got bad, sometimes I was 3 or 4 hours late. The worst part of all this is I wouldn’t remember falling asleep. I would just pass out and wake up some hours later. I don’t know if it was the drugs or the lack of sleep or the combo of the two but when I would wake up, I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t remember what day it was, what I needed to do that day, where I was (I was always in my room), or even who I was. I couldn’t remember my name, I couldn’t remember what I was suppose to be doing. It would take about 10 to 15 minutes for me to finally remember who I was and what happened, then the absolute panic would set in. I would text my dad and promise that I would be at work in 10 minutes and stay as late as I needed to to get the job done. I would lay out two big lines of meth, heat up my pipe and snort them. This would immediately turn the powder into smoke and I would be off to the races.
All this of course didn’t stop me from doing the same thing the next night. I was doing about $300 a week at this time. I would smoke it or snort it or do what is called “hot rails”, I described that above; the heating of the pipe and snorting it. I was constantly having people over every night and doing drugs all night. I was also having a bunch of stuff stolen from me. That’s just kind of how the game goes. It was neither here nor there, I was making a ton of money from working all the time, so I would just replace it. I usually only invited over other people with my same addiction so that I didn’t have to hide in the bathroom and do it or something along those lines.
Along with being late to work pretty much all the time I started to doing “weird things” is I guess what you would call it. I, one time, had left a candle burning in a glass candle stick. It burned all the way down until it was nothing but a puddle of hot wax and a flame. When I finally realized it, I blew it out and noticed that the candlestick had cracked. I don’t really remember what was going through my mind except that I wondered if it was just cracked or if it broke all the way threw. I poured the hot wax into the garbage can and started to investigate the crack. I pushed it from both sides to see if it would slide apart and it did-it broke in two. This happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to react and the candle stick sliced the inside of my left hand middle finger. It started pouring blood and I wrapped it in a paper towel. I was home alone and I didn’t want to chance passing out and bleeding to death. I’m sure I wouldn’t have bled to death, but that was what went through my head, so I wrapped it in a paper towel and put tape around the paper towel. I changed the paper towel and tape 5 or 6 times without looking at it. I knew I needed stiches, but I thought if I went to the hospital that I would be arrested for being a meth user. I finally called one of my “friends” over and they came, looked at it, said it had stopped bleeding and that I would be fine. I continued on the rest of my night getting high, smoking meth, and going about my business. The next day came and I had some how forgot that I had cut my finger. I was off work that day and I thought I would clean the house a bit. I had an organ that sat in my living room. It had been there for a while so I thought that I would drag it out, vacuum and dust behind it, and then move it back. It weighed too much for me to move it by myself easily, so I squatted down, grabbed a leg of the organ in one hand and the back of the organ in another and proceeded to fall back and pull as hard as I could. When doctors ask you on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad pain is, I can now confidently say that I know what 10 feels like. I saw white flashes of light and my finger burst into so much pain that I thought I was going to go insane from how much it hurt. I screamed bloody murder for what felt like an hour. After that I wrapped my finger in a towel, i glanced down for a second and saw blood and white on the inside, I didn’t know what to do. I laid down on my living room floor and cried like a baby for the better part of three hours, partly out of helplessness and partly out of pain. Some how I managed to get up and go to Walgreens later that day. I bought some antibiotic ointment and some kind of Band-Aid that I had never seen before. I can’t remember exactly how long it said you could leave it on for, I think it was for something like 7 or 14 days. I got home, took a shower, not looking at my hand, just letting the water run down. I got out and dried off, put the ointment on my finger without looking, put the band-aid on it, then went to my room to get high. I changed the band-aid, I think 7 days later, but it may have been 14, and then again in another 7 or 14 days. Finally I took the band-aid off for the last time, my finger han completely healed, except that, to this day, I still can’t bend my middle finger on my left hand.
Another “weird’ thing I did happened a few weeks later. I’m guessing it was the power of suggestion mixed with the drugs and no sleep. There was a guy that I was seeing just about everyday. It was easier than trying to find someone on Grindr all the time. He was cute, willing to drive to my place, and was doing the same drugs I was doing. So at the time, it just made sense to chill with him instead of having different strangers over. Having him over also put an end to the stealing, as he was a pretty honest, nice, hardworking guy. We ended up hanging out for about 3 months everyday before he moved and before I knew it, I had spent over $5,000 dollars on drugs for the two of us. One of the last times I saw him, he came over and had bite marks on his leg from a flea. He did have dogs and lived in the country so I this wasn’t really something that should have shocked me, and it didn’t, but it got my mind to racing. I thought that since this guy was coming over all the time that he had probably brought flees into my house at some point. After he left that day I started to look around and started to notice that sure enough there were weird bugs around. I couldn’t really see or catch them, but I knew that they were there. I would try to take pictures of them in the carpet, I would steam my sheets, pillows, and mattress for hours. I ended up buying a carpet cleaner and a steam mop. I took to cleaning the carpets 2 times a day for the next month. When I wasn’t cleaning the carpet I was running the steam mop over the carpet trying to kill the flees. I could feel them all over me when I would try and lay down to sleep. I could feel them all over me when I would walk through the house. It was starting to really bother me. I bought a bag of diatomaceous earth, which looked like fine powder and ash, and spread it over every surface in my house, leaving it there for days. I called my landlord and told them that my apartment was infested with flees. I bombed the house multiple times. One day I was taking a shower and I stepped out only to see all these thing all over my legs, so I got back in. I tried to get out of the shower a few more times but that didn’t work. I finally called one of my friends to come over and bring me all my towels from the hall so I could cover the floor with them. I also asked him if I could move in with him or at least come over for the night. He said I could come over for the night and I did. The next day I texted my landlords again about the flee infestation and they told me to document it, show them some evidence and that they would take care of it. I walked back into my house the next day after work, that powder was everywhere, I walked in and braced myself for the swarm of flees that were going to attack me, and nothing. I stood there for a while, nothing. I walked around the house, nothing. I texted my landlord and told them that I was mistaken. I then called my friend and asked if when he came and picked me up if he had seen them, I asked him if he believed me. He said, “I believe that YOU believe they were there.” I began to look around at all the powder and towels and vacuums and steam mops and I remember thinking, “huh, I did it, I got rid of the flees.” I cleaned up everything, very proud of myself and of course never realizing until a year or so later that actually it had all been in my mind.