Tweaked over "Tweak"

I'm trekking through an audio book called "Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines" by Nic Sheff.  I dug it up on the READS online library program for literary listening.  All through the day, starting the moment my husband walked out the door for work this morning until this evening after dark when the battery monitor on my iPhone registered in the 10% RED-alert mode, my ears have burned with the bleakly barren story that was this guy's life from the age of 17 up into his early 20's.  Though the book is not over yet -- but I guarantee by tomorrow afternoon it will be -- I know he makes it because he a) wrote the book, and b) had a blogsite up and running until November of 2008.  I've not had time enough to research to discover what has happened with him since.

When I checked at Amazon.com to see what the book would cost to send to my brother, Gary, I was surprised to realize that I knew of this young man, Nic, in a roundabout way because his father wrote the same story about Nic's addiction but from the perspective of the family member trapped on the other side of meth's vicious grip.  Somewhere, whether it was "The Today Show" or some such television vehicle, I caught an interview with this David Sheff and thought I'd like to read his take on what his son went through.  And I will . . . as soon as I'm finished hearing what his son has to say.

"Tweak" is not a light read.  Nor is it for children.  Though if the child is 15 or older, I'd say he or she should have a listen or turn the pages.  Nic does not embellish, nor does he downplay.  Just the raw unvarnished facts which show how brutally quick a life can be changed by the very first encounter with illicit drugs.  Though as a teen I feared drugs enough to keep me from trying them, outside of alcohol and cigarettes -- nope, not even a toke -- a significant number of my peers were adventurous, or foolhardy, enough to 'experiment' as they liked to put it.  But for Nic, experimentation was NOT an option; crystal meth was, and is, an equal-opportunity destroyer of mind and body.

I realize that my exposure to his descent has made me irritable today.  (The unending sinus headache and twinging joints of my gardening/typing fingers played minor roles, undoubtedly.)  Because try as I might, I couldn't keep him in his own skin.  Every deal he made; every vein he hit; every mishap and misstep along the twisting wretched path of his increasing dependency on the cycles of heroine and crystal meth: it wasn't Nic Sheff that I saw but my own brother.  It didn't matter that Nic's privileged life of comfort, travel, and fatherly attention contrasted so greatly with Gary's history of an unstable childhood and an absentee father -- an addict is an addict is an addict.  The sway of these drugs takes a hold of the individual and transmogrifies him or her into a zombie held captive by base urges and primal needs.

It wasn't difficult to imagine my brother wandering unsafe streets at night, unable to sleep, penniless, just waiting until his body allowed him to crash after his fix.  Whenever and wherever that might be.  Inserting himself into ridiculous, sometimes downright dangerous, situations because he wasn't capable of rational thought.  I could see him trying to put together a deal, saying too much, caring too little for himself, making the choices he would later regret with equal parts shame and disgust.  Stealing from loved ones just to make the next score.  Lying about the severity of his condition.  Casting stones to divert attention from the truth of his actions.  Hating himself for it.  Understanding that blame and distrust and heartbreak was the wake he left behind.  But powerless to bring it all to a halt.

I consider my exposure to this book a part of my ongoing research for the story my brother and I are putting together.  I also consider my exposure to this book a part of my ongoing therapy.  Though I knew in what I thought was large part about Gary's addiction issues, I've come to realize over the course of months from April 2010 to now -- when he entered the state hospital after leaving the prison system -- that a voluminous amount of information was not made privy to me.  And I understand why.  That ironclad hope that I'm known for may have surrendered to the seemingly hopeless nature of his life if I had been in possession of the certain knowledge concerning his daily ongoing activities that filled the days, weeks, months, and years of his youth and adult life up until now.

Within this past week, my brother has made a huge step in his therapeutic process by admitting that he has been lying to himself, and to me, about the severe nature of his drug addiction.  Yes, he has a problem, and it has been living in him and feeding on him.  He's tried to downplay it.  He's accused the hospital ward hierarchy of spending too much time focused on addictions and not enough on mental illness.  He's bucked the dual diagnosis of bi-polar AND drug dependent.  He was protesting TOO much.  When he copped to that and gave voice to what me and my family have always known is true for him, that he is, indeed, a drug addict, there was a huge internal shift for me, too.  It was no longer just stories told and lived by a user of near-suicide and joy rides and botched parole.  It was, and is, now a matter of a grown man struggling to accept the truth of his entire 34 years of pained and strained life.  It was, and is, a matter of a compassionate and caring sister eager to stay as far away from the role of co-dependent as possible.

The irony is that despite the myriad insane adventures which seem to accompany the stuporous life of a user, they find real everyday life a fearful unsure bag of tricks.  Yes, they can OD multiple times and narrowly escape death, but no, they can't hold down a job every day for the next few years.  Yes, they'll risk personal safety handing over their money to perfect strangers who might mug them or run off with the cash instead of reciprocating with a baggie of instant nirvana, but they're not so very sure about regularly doling out a paycheck to gas, groceries, and toothpaste.  None of it is logical.  All of it is riddled with fear and paranoia and the obstinate belief that getting high is far better than any of us squares can possibly comprehend.  It is a seduction -- slow, serious, scandalous.  Though the addict tries to look away, his or her gaze is continually pulled back to lock eyes with the upper or downer, all the while hearing the siren call of instant serenity or escape, riding the high wave of 'everything is okay right now' or 'I can do anything,' and feeling the wash of opiates, or whatever else, as it flushes reality from veins, limbs, organs, and spirit.

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I fell asleep at the wheel writing this entry.  This line denotes a new day.  A fairly warm afternoon in Middle Tennessee.  I've continued my journey through Nic's dereliction from responsibility and self awareness.  And I realize I'm far from all right.  I thought I understood what my brother has thus far endured.  I don't.  I didn't.  That scares me.  At this very moment, with fingers poised over my keyboard in the comfort of my pretty yellow kitchen, it frightens me into tears and threatens to halt my progress in this entry.  But since the opening lines of this book ran through the earbuds of my iPhone and hit my mind, I knew I had to see this through.  And, I'll have to see it through, with the abundant grace of Christ as my companion, to whatever ending there is.  Because with Gary's huge declaration regarding his issues with heroin and meth specifically, any addictive substance in general, this is out of my hands.  Not only does he have to deal with his mental illness and reprogram to operate safely and peacefully within its parameters, he must, must, must surrender, down to the last kernel and seed within him, his perceived need and deep-seated desire for the suffocating screaming cocoon he has allowed to form around him courtesy of the needle.  All he has done is to trade in the pain of real life for the agony of an illusory existence.

My life has been nothing short of a testimony to the power of Christ: He has been the omniscient aid in powering through and overcoming the barrage of arrows and stones this earthly life has inflicted upon people whom I love more than the air I breathe.  And, yes, a few have been hurled my way, but I consider their damage to me less penetrating than the wounds of others.  What good is the air if there is no one around on the exhale?  I was not put here to exist in solitude, therefore when one I love is in pain, I, too, experience that pain in some discomfiting measure.  Having stated all of that, I put my faith in the basket labelled 'Gary's successful recovery and rehabilitation.'  And I believe in the enormous possibility of that future.  However, I also believe Gary must come willingly and do the work of his own accord so that his life may, indeed, be his own. 

The God I have studied in scripture, heard about in church and from those who speak of such things, and who has been a presence in my life, does not force our hand.  He does present consequences.  He does not guarantee joy and peace in the physical realm -- just look at the state of our world and its nations throughout history -- but offers a very valid calm in the eye of the storm if we choose to partake.  No one can make that choice for any other.  And THAT is what I continue to accept at my core in regards to Gary.  It all reads so well and easy but man! oh man! is it ever hard to put down.

For the here and now, I'll soldier on.  Nic Sheff will continue to pull me along, back through time, so that I might walk with my brother through the life I did not fully comprehend he was leading while I was busy picking and choosing my own successes and failures in high school, and as a young mother and newlywed.  Forge ahead with my research and writing.  Dial up those two pay phones in Gary's ward at Napa State Hospital and await his familiar voice, vacillating between full-on clarity and prescriptively doped-down lethargy, and fill his ears with encouragement, truth, reality checks, and, yes, lots and lots of love.  Regardless of what comes down the pike.