Regularly Irregular

Vanessa was irrationally cocky when it came to her addiction. Addiction was an understatement. She gave the last year of her life to a vicious cycle of drug use. Her drug of choice was heroin. From the minute she let her then girlfriend stick her with a needle, she was in love. Or so she thought. She thought for certain she knew where her dope came from, and what was in it. So much so she thought this that she even decided to take part of her inheritance from the death of her grandparents, nearly six thousand dollars, and use it to use drugs. So that is exactly what she did. This is the story of three days in a hotel room, where she holed herself in, alone, and nearly died. She should be dead. Vanessa should not have lived through what she did. She should be medically really messed up, i'm talking partially paralyzed from hitting nerves, or overdosing and possibly having a stroke due to three full days of constant heroin and crack use, with absolutely no sleep between. Vanessa was already up for days before going to the hotel, getting the suite, and articulating her plan in her head. Death. Vanessa knew the moment she booked the room that she would die there. Coming to terms with your own suicide is such an odd feeling. When nothing else made sense, ending it all did. No more suffering, no more heartache, no more addiction, shame, pressure. It would all go away. She would get to wake up in paradise, because the God of her understanding would forgive her, and would end her suffering. It made sense to her at that time. She was going to take her own life, and it made her smile a very bittersweet grin.

What is it like to be a heartbroken, former escort (a prettier way of saying prostitute) who has an unforgiving, insatiable addiction to shooting copious amounts of heroin while smoking unheard of amounts of crack cocaine? It is an absolute hellish existence. There is one thing she learned through out all of this- Vanessa is no longer afraid to die, as she has walked right through Hell and was left to burn alone. Let's get one thing straight though, she had a remarkable upbringing give-in the circumstances, and she did not blame anyone but herself for her actions. Though her parents were divorced when she was young and her dad was an alcoholic who died of the disease, she still loved her childhood. She may have blamed her ex-girlfriend for beginning her love affair with heroin, as Vanessa is certain had she never met Kaitlynne, she never in her life would have touched heroin or crack. Love will make you do some crazy things though. Addiction does not discriminate at all, that much she knows. Vanessa watched most of her family and some friends deal with and die from addiction, whether it was alcohol, heroin, crack, suboxone, anything.

Vanessa checked into the hotel on a Saturday afternoon in January. Her goal? Death. Her late father's birthday had just passed, and although she may have told herself it doesn't affect her any longer, nothing could have been further from the truth. Vanessa attempted suicide about two years prior, swallowing 45 1mg klonapin, 16 Ambien, chasing it with a 1.75 bottle of bourbon, wanting to just be with her daddy again. Her marriage failed, the one person she wanted threw her out as a heroin addicted homeless escort, her family could no longer sit idly by and let her kill herself, so she decided to go and kill herself in the hotel room.

She cannot recall much of anything from those three days. She knew she should be dead. She remembers little micro-naps, falling asleep while standing straight up, falling asleep with a needle in her body, falling asleep lighting a crack stem. She recalls also falling asleep while walking across the room. Yes, you read that correctly, she nodded out and fell asleep walking. BOOM! Vanessa awoke suddenly when she crashed into the heater against the wall, the window above it. Had she not walked into that heater, she would have walked right through the window, falling to her death. Through lack of sleep and vigorous drug use, she could not even articulate or speak in full sentences. When your brain has become that "mushed", what comes out of your mouth is not even English. Imagine a baby, babbling to you, body language indicating they know what they're saying, and trying to figure out why you do not understand them. Now imagine an adult doing exactly that. Or google what happens when a stroke victim's speech is affected. That is what she sounded like. What happened to Vanessa was absolute insanity. She recalls hallucinating that her family was there in the room with her, or someone at least. Lord only knows what the hotel staff were thinking was going on in that room during her stay.

Vanessa carried on conversations with no one in the room with her. She recalls pacing the room like a mad person, flailing her arms like she was trying to escape a swarm of bees. All these odd actions went on for days, the pacing at odd hours, the flailing of arms, the micro-napping while walking or bathing. Her body was so messed up and sore from no sleep. She later realized she tore the rotator cuff in her right shoulder, but through self-medication she felt nothing. Vanessa accomplished her goal of feeling nothing. When I say this person should absolutely be dead, I mean it. Once while there, she fell asleep reaching over the hot tub for her drugs, her feet balanced on one edge, her hands on the opposite edge, her body in an upside-down V formation across the actual tub. Waking up from that scared the shit out of her, if she fell, she could have hit her head, she could have drowned, several things could have happened to her. Did that sober her ass right up and make her change her mind?

No.

On the day she was supposed to check out, Vanessa decided she would stay an extra two days, hell bent on accomplishing her "forever sleep". She called down to the front desk, pretending and trying so hard to sound sober, asking if she could come down and pay for the room for two more days. The hotel clerk said yes and gave Vanessa a time that she needed to be down by in order to reserve and pay for the room for two more days. At this time, it was 11 am, she had until 3 pm to get down there. Well, those few hours or so meant that she could get high again and then get ready to go down. So, she slowly scooped her dope into her cap, one scoop, two scoops, three, four, five, six. Six scoops of this death sentence. She sat on the floor beside the bed, dry cereal all around her from spilling it all at some point in her stay. If I recall correctly, she hit the vein in her breast, as it was close to her heart, with a draw up on the plunger, she watched the barrel of the syringe fill with blood.

She was in. This was one of her favorite parts of the entire ritual. Knowing she hit that sucker right on point, she plunged the plunger slowly down, feeling the drugs hit her quickly. The warmth and serene feeling she felt normally was enhanced as she put more than she usually did in her cap that time. Surely, this was it, this was the forever sleep. Was Vanessa afraid that there was Fentanyl in her heroin?

No.

Sadly, fucking no, she was not afraid.

Vanessa prided herself in the fact that she never "did enough" to nod out, because she liked to know what was happening around her. This was complete bull, at least during this point in time it was, as she didn’t have to save face in front of anyone because she was completely alone. She awoke in a panic, still on the floor, sitting crisscross apple sauce, her head practically in her lap, the needle still in her hand, with paraphernalia scattered around her in a mess.

Vanessa wondered how long she was out. It was near 11 am when she called down and spoke to the receptionist, and now upon glancing at the digital clock on the nightstand, it was 3:15 pm. Holy shit, she was out of it and unconscious for nearly four and a half hours . Lord knows who could have come in and done whatever they wanted to do her while she was out of it. This did frighten her, slightly. She woke up very mad and frustrated. Vanessa was mad that no matter how hard she tried to die, she could not. A normal person who did that much in one shot would surely die. Why? Why the hell couldn't she just get her forever sleep?

               For fuck’s sake, why couldn’t she do even one simple thing like die? She failed at everything else in her life, Vanessa couldn’t even kill herself. Marriage was over a while ago, her rocky relationship with her family was exactly that, rocky, and practically non-existent. A college drop-out, who ended up escorting with who she thought was the love of her life, a soulless woman. Anything that Vanessa touched turned to shit, or so she thought. Being the product of a borderline, bipolar single mom and an alcoholic father, Vanessa was a borderline, bipolar, bisexual, heroin addicted college dropout turned former escort and current drug addict. She was always, as she described herself, regularly irregular. So, what to do now?

She called up her “special friend” whom she had shared sexual relations with for nearly 10 years. After hearing from his own mouth that he had been visiting her ex (still in the escort lifestyle) and exchanging money for sexual acts while Vanessa was in an inpatient rehab, this sent Vanessa over the edge. She was heartbroken all over again, and she could not trust the one person she thought she could. He was her friend for many years, they shared a connection and honest relationship that was one of the most non-judgmental ones she thought she could ever have. Vanessa trusted this man with every one of her secrets.

How could he betray her like this? He even knew how badly Vanessa was treated at the end of that relationship, as he was there the day Vanessa was moving out and he even told Kaitlynne off and let her have it. This broke Vanessa all over again, she was shattered into nothing, she wanted again to die. But she did not give in. Instead she called her mom, she called her sister, she was ready to be done. You would think that this would have pushed her completely over the edge, but it did not. Wanting your mama doesn't change no matter what age you are, so Vanessa called the only person left in her life that she could trust. Her mama. More than likely, it was that very conversation that saved her life.

Go home. Clean up your life. Since Vanessa couldn’t even accomplish suicide, there must have been some reason that she needed to live, there was some reason she was not supposed to die those three days that she was already dead inside. Call it supernatural? Maybe the spirit of her father was there, each step of the way, as well as the spirits of her grandparents, all of whom she adored and missed more than anything. She would soon have her epiphany, her spiritual awakening.

          After leaving the hotel, drying out and withdrawing for a few days in her room at her sister’s house, she still figured out a way to keep a bag of dope even though they took her needles and other drugs. She had a bag hidden. So, she did it, again. She took her bag and shot it. (Vanessa acquired another bag of needles from the local pharmacy) She went to her outpatient treatment center and even shot up in the bathroom right before her meeting with her counselor. Vanessa knew she had a tox screening that day, and she sincerely wanted to know if there was fentanyl in her heroin. Vanessa also prided herself in knowing where to get the “real dope with legs” (meaning it lasts longer and your time intervals between are typically longer) and where to get the fentanyl heroin. Or so she thought. Vanessa and her sister shared the same mother, obviously, but had different fathers. Her sister’s father died of a heroin overdose, specifically fentanyl. That still was not enough to deter her though, not yet at least.

          Vanessa was drug tested at her outpatient facility, waiting the two weeks for her next appointment for the results was painstaking. She thought she already knew the outcome but needed to hear it for herself from a health professional.

          Her tox came back testing positive for Fentanyl. Not only just positive, but at lethal levels.

This scared Vanessa to death. When her counselor confirmed, Vanessa dropped to her knees in a panic and began sobbing uncontrollably, right there in the client bathroom. This news caused Vanessa to face her mortality, to reevaluate her purpose and existence in this life. This made her realize that she wanted nothing more than to live. But not only just live, she wanted to live a completely honest, loving, happy life. Most importantly though, she finally wanted this for herself, and herself only. Not for her family, not for her friends, not for anyone but herself.

This was the spiritual awakening she would hear other addicts talk about in the rooms of narcotics anonymous or alcoholics anonymous. Part of Vanessa did die, the self-hatred part of her. She started to eventually love herself through working the twelve steps. She began to heal, began to be open, to feel again. She no longer minded her past, as she used it burn and light her way to a bright future. They say in the rooms that our secrets keep us sick, so she began to be open, and 100% honest for the first time in her life. Vanessa learned acceptance, and she learned that being regularly irregular was what she was meant to be, because only through being regularly irregular, she could help the next one who was just like her.

Please, if you are suffering from addiction, it is never too late, please reach out and get some help. Believe me, I am the Vanessa in this story, and you are not alone. You are worth every single breath you take, let’s end this pandemic of opiate abuse and overdoses. It is killing everybody, and it will not discriminate. If you suffer just like I did, you’re not the only one. Despite what you have done or what has happened to you, you are worthy of self-love and you can beat this, do not ever doubt that. If I can do it, someone who was sexually abused and robbed of my virginity, among a slew of other negatives, to which you can probably relate, which also means you can do this too. Please, reach out and get help today. Not tomorrow, not after this bag, not after the weekend, please get help today, you too will learn that you and I as well as millions of people have this one thing in common, and in that, you will never feel alone again, that much I can promise.