We spend all of our lives on a ledge. As life thrusts things at us, sometimes we’re pushed off.

I got the bottle of valium the mental health center had prescribed me and poured them out onto the kitchen table. Then I started crushing them. When I was finished, I put the bottle of valium, and a gun, into my jacket pocket.

It was raining as I got on my motorcycle. The rain mixed with my tears as I drove.

When I got to the pediatric intensive care unit, I sat with Joy, holding her and singing softly to her for 2 hours, and then I opened her feeding tube, poured the bottle of crushed valium into it, and recapped the tube. I walked up to the first nurse I saw, I pulled out my gun and I told her ‘You are going to help me end Joy’s suffering or I will kill you.

And at that moment I would have.

She went and stood with me at Joy’s bedside as I waited for my daughter to die. I asked her if there was a God. She told me she didn’t know. I told the nurse to go and call the police.

As she walked away I told my little girl, “I love you so much. It won’t hurt any more, it’s over.”

I killed my daughter.

I remember it.

I remember a guy running over with a crash cart and I was up. “Don’t touch her, leave her alone! Your not going to cut on her anymore. LEAVE HER ALONE!” I screamed. I might have been crazy. I was hysterical.

A nurse, The nurse from Joy’s bed? was there and told him to leave us alone.

I remember it, the way he looked at her.

She told him “There are other children here, leave them alone.’ And he did.

A security guard came running up. I knew him, I’d have coffee and talked with him through many nights. He put his arms out and I fell into them. My legs gave out again, and we both started crying. A policeman came and I was put in a police car.

I’m at the homicide office. I remember all this in flashes. Like a strobe light going off in my mind.

I wish I could turn it off.

When I was at home and saw children playing or a toy commercial on t.v. I would start crying. It hurt so bad. I finally went to the Miami Beach community mental health center, told them what I was going through and that I thought I was going crazy. The doctor told me it was a terrible situation and gave me a prescription for valium.

When Joy had been in the hospital almost 9 months I got a call at home (Becky and I had separate visiting hours at this point) telling me that Joy’s shoulder had been broken. A nurse turned her too hard, or too quickly (she had to be turned every hour or so to prevent bedsores – but she was so stiff from her body fighting the erratic signals from her brain stem that turning her was sometimes unwieldy). I thanked the person, hung up, and sat there.

I thought of Joy going through the night in pain, screaming that it hurt, but only in her head, as she was turned off and on that broken shoulder for an hour at a time.

I sat there.

Thinking of Joy laying like that for 30 or 40 yrs. Never seeing. Never moving. Never laughing.

Thinking of Joy struggling to breathe as she was suctioned.

Thinking of unseen hands suddenly turning her without warning, scaring her because she couldn’t see or hear them coming.

And I thought of her lying alone in a large, empty room. Alone and afraid.

As the guitar wailed like electric wolves in the night, we made our way towards the stage and into the pit. We were small and out numbered, so we chose to stay on the fringes; something we’d do for the next several years of our lives as we entered deeper and deeper into the underworld of drug abuse and crime.

Standing on the edge of the pit with the slews of onlookers, Santos noticed a guy with a Mexico soccer jersey on, and they struck up a convo: “chingalo buey!,” “no mames, buey,” “Oye! Que estas fumando…” They’d struck a common chord, much like Billy Corrigan and the other band members that broken into, “Who want’s candy? Long as there’s some money…” And so the deal went down.

Next thing I knew, we were dashing through the crowd, bumping people over as we made our way to were my brother and his friends were. Santos had his hand cupped, but I knew by his wide-eyed gestures that we had just capped some weed and were headed to get our first taste. Although we had lied about it to other people a 100 times, we were actually about to enter into a new class of cool…In our minds. We were about to be initiated into the drug sub-culture of the hippies in the 60’s, the disco fever attics of the 70’s, the hip-hop underground of the 80’s and now the “too cool” grunge kids of the 90’s.

We finally caught up to that same friend of my brother’s, only this time we were garnishing a hand full of REAL weed. As we asked him to roll a joint for us, he just started again: “Dude, don’t waist my time with your little kid bullshit weed, man.” We assured him, showing him what we possessed and there was automatic respect: “Dude, let me see that…man, where’d you get this from? Bro, you think you can get me some…”

Funny enough, we were initiated into the world of crime before we entered into the world of drugs because we ended up selling him half for roughly a little more than what we paid for it. The trend of selling drugs to feed our addiction would be a common practice in years to come. Anyway, he rolled it up for us and we went and sat far from the crowd, on a hill with all the other shady characters below some giant Banyan trees.

We lit it up. And as the smoke seeped from our noses, we would cough and laugh, and pass the joint. I just remember lying down in the grass with my hands tucked behind my head…looking up at the stars…listening to Smashing Pumpkins playing a melody: “Today is, today is, the greatest…day I’ve ever known…” Some how in my mind I felt the same, lost in the illusion of euphoria. I’d caught my first glimpse of a drug induced escape and it was love at first sight…

Ernesto Here — Read all the Addiction Testimonials from our categories section:
http://recoveryarts.com/category/addiction-testimonials/

We spent the next few weeks searching relentlessly like a man, lost in a dessert, does for water. We looked between the grains of sand, under rocks, behind the clouds and came up short just the same.

Finally, something happened in our favor. An eighth grader, to whom I will only refer to as Jay, told us he could get us some. We were ecstatic. We scraped up $20.00 (we had no idea how much it cost) and we met Jay in a parking lot at the Falls shopping mall. It was dim and the only sound was the buzz of the fluorescent lights.

Jay handed us a small plastic bag, and we gave him several wadded-up bills. However, upon examining what we’d bought, even without having ever previously possessed weed, we were almost positive that we were duped and sold something else.

The contents of the bag were mostly red, gold, and brown and smelled like some half empty jar from my mother’s spice cabinet. Of course, we confronted Jay about this. He told us, “no worries,” that it probably wasn’t the highest quality stuff but that it would get us high. We, somehow, were satisfied by his response.

We spent the next few days examining the contents as forensic scientist do a hair from a crime scene. We smelled it, tasted it, conservatively stuffed a little into the end of a cigarette and smoked it. NOTHING.

We knew what we had purchased wasn’t weed but the final confirmation came when we asked one of my brother’s friends to roll us a joint with the stuff and he laughed at us, saying, “Sorry dudes, but you guys got gypped…” We had failed our mission, but Smashing Pumpkins was about to come on stage, and we were still on the prowl at the concert…

Hey all, Ernesto here with the weekly “Addiction Testimonials” column. Sorry I didn’t post it last week. Anyway, for anyone interested in reading the previous few week’s installments, just click on any of the following links: Addiction Testimonials 1, Addiction Testimonials 2, and Addiction Testimonials 3, Addiction Testimonials 4. Until next week…Enjoy…E

Pt. 5 Addiction Testimonials: The Hell of Christian School

To say I didn’t fit in was an understatement; a lion would have seemed to fit better in Alaska.  Still, I had no choice.  I was at that perfectly awful age were you’re old enough to have opinions but not yet in possession of enough power to do anything about it.  I loathed uniforms.  At every chance, I untucked my maroon polo from my perma-creased navy pants.  I made sure to pimp out my shoes as they were my only means of expression.  I went with a Halloween theme—black Chuck Allstars with thick orange laces, strung in the unconventional straight-across pattern, rather than crossed.

To this day, one incident still stands out very clearly in my mind.  I was in my 7th grade physical science class, and my teacher was knocking archeologist and their life-long endeavors of cataloging dinosaurs’ bones for the sake of academia, as trickery.  I pressed him to explain further.  Immediately, he became agitated.  Nonetheless, he replied: “You see, its not that they don’t find bones.  The bones are there.  It’s just that they’re not real.  You see, the Devil plants those bones in the ground to create doubt in men’s hearts.  They read the findings and believe that the bones are millions of years old.  And if the bones are millions of years old, than the Earth is millions of years old.  And if the Earth is millions of years old…Well, that just doesn’t fit into God’s design according to the Bible.”

I was profoundly confused at his logic and replied: “Well how old is the Earth then, according to the Bible?”  He answered without a pause, “Six thousand years-old, of course, silly.”  I just smirked at his answer and told him that that was impossible.  I asked him if he had ever heard of carbon dating—the measure by which archeologist could use advanced technology to analyze the carbon found in all living matter to determine its age, exactly.  His face flushed instantly until it was indiscernible from a stop sign, had one been placed next to his perfectly parted hair combed head.  He then screamed at the top of his lungs: “I will have none of this in my class room” and proceed to kick me out.  This was just one of a long stream of events that occurred in that Christian school.

Nonetheless, what happened in that school was that for the first time in my life, I was interacting with the sons of rich, disillusioned, miserable drunks that coped with their mundane lives by getting wasted.  Of course that meant for me that alcohol and cigarettes were readily available for sneaking and using.  By 13-years-old, I was drinking at least once a week and smoking cigarettes 2 or 3 times.  However, that was just the beginning and soon wouldn’t be enough.

It was around that time that I made friends with the only other middle-class outcast of the school.  He would eventually become life long using buddy.  I will only refer to him as Santos.  Anyway, we had just bought the Dr. DRE album, “The Chronic,” which was all about pimping hoes and smoking out and decided it was time for the next level.  We had to find some way to use marijuana—it was on par with losing virginity to us—and sure enough one of our classmates was about to help us with our conquest…

Hey all, Ernesto here with the weekly installment of my Addiction Testimonials. If you’re interested in reading the previous few parts click on the following links: Addiction Testimonials 1, Addiction Testimonials 2, and Addiction Testimonials 3 . Otherwise, without further ado, I present the fourth segment. Until next week…Enjoy…E

Pt.4 Addiction Testimonials: The Culmination

After that event in the ball park, there were many more like it throughout my elementary school years. For example, I remember that by 11 years-old, I could make a “Cuba Libre” (Rum & Coke), because my father had taught me, so when we went to gatherings, like New Year’s Eve parties with family and friends, he could sit on the couch wasted and have his own personal butler prepare him his drinks, ME. Around that time, booze seemed the trend that dominated the family’s consummation history. Coke had lost its allure, other drugs were much too risky to dabble with for young professionals like my parents that were climbing the limbs of the ever-shrinking, middle-class tree; so, naturally, booze seemed the most suitable, as it was still socially acceptable, due to its legality, up to a certain point.

Nonetheless, the reckless style of parenting continued. I recall that before Florida passed laws requiring kids to be constrained by seatbelts in the backseat (ONLY), my dad used to sit me on his lap during a Sunday afternoon stroll in the Honda station wagon and have me change the gears of the shift stick while he steered, or sometimes just applied the gas and brake. I also remember the lack of parental presence as me and my brother shot compound drawn arrows at each other from our bow and arrow sets, or played on the rusted ruins of our ten-year-old swing set that surely threatened to contaminate us with tetanus every time we gashed ourselves on it. Oh, the reckless memories…my college-aged uncle throwing us into the shallow pool from the overhang of the roof, or the way we would wrestle by the pools edge, our heads missing the sharp concrete edge by centimeters every time we’d fall in. Yeah, our parents were too busy, working steady on 12-packs of Coors light and watching the ceremonial weekly sporting event; in those days, the young studly Dan Marino.

Well, the culmination of my reckless youth exploded one summer afternoon when me and my friends were brought home by the police, when we were only 12-years-old, for burning down the nearby woods. To this day, I don’t know why we did it. Perhaps it was a form of some chest-beating rites of passage that boys felt when empowered by the control of fire’s the mythical power, or maybe we were just bored and had way too many illegal firecrackers in our possession. I can still remember how quickly the flames spread, the columns of thick grey smoke covering the sun—the abysmal feeling as control melted away somewhere in that chaos and heat. I had crossed a threshold I wouldn’t be able to come back from, and I knew it.

Well, my parents freaked out and subsequently took a 180 degree approach to their lackadaisical parenting, deciding to lock me in the tower I would come to know as private school. Mind you, the first six years of my school experience were spent in public school. This was a tragedy for me and probably the single event that would fill my sails and direct me on the course towards my future addiction…

Hey all, Ernesto here. As part of sharing of my own story of addiction and recovery, I will be running a weekly segment called Addiction Testimonials that will eventually lead up to my Recovery Testimonials. They will appear in chronological order and hopefully serve to reach others and help them in their struggles. For those interested in following the series, to the right side of the main page is a section titled “Addiction Testimonials” where all can be read. To anyone interested in this kind of story-telling, feel free to send anything you may want to share to my email ernestosthompson@gmail.com, and from there, we’ll figure out how to post it to your liking. Anyway, part two of my story is below. Click the following link to read Part I of Addiction Testimonials first.

Pt.2 of Addiction Testimonials: – Buried Signs of Addiction in a Child’s Mind

For obvious reasons, the first five years of my childhood remain vague in my mind. Nonetheless, accounts of these years in my home are still very present and animate in my older brother’s mind. With vivid detail, he describes shouting matches and brawls that often sparked between family members in our kitchen, after noticing that they were acting strange and had been drinking a lot. They would often show up late, or early in the morning, with sunglasses on and blank faces; most times, little was said between them.

He also recalls, the excessive partying, where dozens of people would gather to play loud music, drink and converse until the early hours of the morning. And although, I can still recall some of the details and situations, they pail in comparison with those of my older brother, who still distinctly remembers occurrences like the selling and use of cocaine and other drugs in my home even through the memories of a child three years my elder. I would say that it probably wasn’t until I had reached grade school that certain events really stuck out in my mind. One such event happened when I was about ten-years-old…

Hey all, Ernesto here. I wanted to start sharing my own story of addiction and recovery with the hope that it can reach others and help them in their struggles. The series will be in chronological order and will be comprised of my Addiction Testimonials that will eventually lead up to my Recovery Testimonials.

Also, please keep in mind that all testimonials, essays, poetry, art, music, etc is welcomed to the site with the hope of being an outlet of expression. Feel free to send anything you may want to share to my email ernestosthompson@gmail.com, and from there, we’ll figure out how to post it to your liking. Anyway, here’s part one of my story.

Pt.1 of Addiction Testimonials: Destined for Addiction

My story of addiction has its root in the home I was to be born into. See, before I ever stepped foot in this world, almost everyone that I’d eventually come to know as my family circle was abusing drugs and alcohol. The year was 1980, but by then there was already a history of marijuana, cocaine, LSD and alcohol abuse in my own parents, my uncles and aunts and my grandparents; basically, two solid generations of abuse, not counting the third generation that I would eventually form.

The place was Miami, Fl., and as I already mentioned it was the 80’s. Cocaine was invading every street of the city whether in powder form, present in high-rise penthouses on Brickell, or crack rock form, in the forgotten gutters of Liberty City. It seemed no family, home, or community was secure from the disease that was taking hold. My family seemed like the textbook scenario: Fatherless men coping with their fears and painful childhoods by turning to inebriation; several generations of co-dependent women making excuse for their husbands, rationalizing at least he doesn’t touch the kids or beat me. Then I show up…Read Part II of Addiction Testimonials