Jan 7th, 2023

From Behind The 8 Ball: How A Pen And Paper Saved My Life

A True Tale From The Dimebags To Diapers Series

Life has a funny way of coming full circle, and kicking you in the ass when you least expect it.

It was March 26th, 2022. I was sitting in the hospital room, tired, in writhing pain, and sweating although I was frozen. Actually, to tell you the truth, I was beginning my descent into full blown Fentanyl withdrawal.

But the reason I was at the hospital couldn’t have been more unrelated.

Just hours before, my partner had given birth to a bouncing bundle of joy. Named Tobin after my late father, he was my second biological child, third if you count my step-son (I do).

(Myself, step-son, and baby Tobin the day after we got home from the hospital. Note my eyes)

We knew a week ahead of time the date he was going to come. She was late, and had to be induced.

As an addict, your entire life revolves around whether or not you can get your fix, and how much of it you can get. In what seemed like a breakthrough in my procrastination complex, I had made all the necessary preparations.

All week leading up to that night, I had been in contact with several of the people who supplied me, making sure they would keep a stash for me for that night. I mean, if my girlfriend was getting some serious pain killers to get through it all, why shouldn’t I?

But if you’re an addict, you know that no amount of preparation can get you through a Tuesday, let alone the birth of your child.

The night before we went to the hospital, I made an excuse that I needed to go to the store to grab some last minute things. I made a text, and within 20 minutes I had drained 1000$ from my bank account, and came home with 20 8mg dilaudid tablets, and 9 75mg fentanyl patches. I had 100$ left in my bank account for necessities, and was feeling confident that I had a big enough stash to get me through the impending chaos.

Boy, was I wrong.

We left for the hospital the next morning promptly at 0600, in order to check in and be ready for our 7 o’clock appointment with the stork.

Before we left, I made sure to have the breakfast of champions: 2 8mg dilaudid straight to the veins, and a whole fentanyl patch to wash it down.

In the cab ride to the hospital, I couldn’t have been more confident. If I could prepare myself to get through this birth without my partner finding out I was using again, and without running into withdrawal at any point, then surely I could raise yet another child. I mean, how hard is it to change a diaper when you’ve been to hell and back?

But, when we arrived at the hospital, we found out that the 0700 appointment was just a figure of speech. First and foremost, your turn to get the keys to your new baby depended entirely on the doctor’s opinion. Whomever was in the worst condition medically obviously had to go first.

But that was fine. I had prepared for this, right?

I was ready to rock parenthood for the third time, and better yet, I could do it all while flying high. I would have bet at the time that if the doctor had a medical opinion about me, it would have been that I was part of an elite group of high-functioning opiate addict straight out of the movie “”Limitless”.

We waited our turn, and I excused myself to the washroom. Several times as a matter of fact. By the time the attending nurse informed us they were ready to give my girlfriend the magical baby pill, I had almost the entire 160 mg of dilaudid in my arm and the syringe and associated paraphernalia were floating in a sea of bio hazardous waste in a sharps container on the back of a public washroom door.

You could say at this point, life was good. Or rather maybe, it felt good.

Around lunch time, they gave my girlfriend a concoction of tablets intended to pop baby Tobin out from his hiding spot, and I gave myself a concoction of the last of the dilaudid and another fentanyl patch. I mean hey, it’s only fair.

The thing about Oxytocin ( the baby ejector drug) is, sometimes it just doesn’t work.

So we waited. And we waited. And we waited some more.

Luckily for me, my partner was exhausted from being extremely pregnant, so as the fentanyl began to creep up to my eyelids and weigh them down, she was as ready for a nap as I was. “Perfect!” I thought to myself. “Now I can lay here and enjoy this and not be suspicious”.

We woke up to a nurse coming into the room for the hourly check up. As I tried to shake off the cobwebs from my opiate induced coma, she informed us (quite casually I might add) that my girlfriend was several centimeters dilated. For those of you that don’t know, that means the baby is coming.

They rushed her off to the birthing room, while I rushed off to the washroom at the end of the hall. It was a multi stall arrangement, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I searched through my pockets frantically, and in a moment of realization I can only describe as impending doom, my hand came out of my pocket with my single, last fentanyl patch.

I was floored. All thoughts of the imminent birth went out of the window in an instant. How had I managed to screw up so badly, and not leave even a crumb to celebrate and relieve the tension after the baby was born.

What kind of self-sabotaging cretin would put themselves in that position?

The answer to that, as you may have guessed, is an opioid addict.

To an addict so deeply immersed in that lifestyle, that they cannot attend the birth of their child without fresh tracks on their skin, the “ceremonial” last fix is almost worse than the sickness that follows. The feeling of despair was almost so overwhelming, that regardless that I was banging back fentanyl patches meant for terminally ill cancer patients, there was no euphoria. No warmth. No “high” so to speak. Just fear and self loathing.

I grabbed a piece of foil from my pocket and smoked the patch as quickly as possible, and made my way to the birthing room. My mind was as clouded as the bathroom stall had been just moments before. How was I ever going to do this?

Looking back, it is almost disgusting that none of my thoughts at that moment were of my partner who was in undoubtedly more pain than I was, scared, and alone due to my addiction. But, let’s face it, we’re here to Be Open.

I entered the room to find nurses gathering equipment, and a doctor administering an epidural to my girlfriend. She asked what had taken me so long, and of course I lied, stating I couldn’t remember where the bathroom was on this floor and had to go down to the lobby. Normally, she would have questioned this, but thankfully the stress of the situation and the epidural had diminished her critical thinking.

I grabbed ahold of her hand, and so it began. 45 minutes later, we were holding our son.

I wept the first time I saw him. But they were not tears of joy. The thoughts of how despicable I had become overwhelmed me. That I had to spend such an enormous amount of money so that I could maintain my emotions throughout that day, when it could have been better spent on necessities for him, was the most prevalent in my mind.

It should be noted at this time, we did not even have a car seat to take him home from the hospital. It is not something I’m proud to say.

She began the ritual of every young millennial mother, taking pictures and writing the mandatory Facebook and Instagram posts. She asked if I wanted to hold him, and though I truly did, I said no. I was too afraid that the fentanyl might travel through my pores and cause him to overdose.

So while the nurses took the baby to bathe him, I made another text, and spent the last 100$ we had to our name on 5 4mg dilaudid tablets. Not enough to get me high, but it would keep the sickness away until the morning at least.

I made the transaction right in the hospital lobby, with security guards present and patients both elderly and young waiting to be seen.

We were in the hospital for three days as a precaution. The end of the third day is where this tale started, and as I mentioned, I had spent every cent we had. I begged a relative to loan me 100$, and against their better judgment, they did. I walked up the road and bought the cheapest car seat Walmart had to offer, and a bottle of over the counter Tylenol with codeine to take the edge off.

I downed the whole bottle and started the walk back to the hospital.

At this point, I was so deep in my own self hatred, that the bottle of codeine was in lieu of getting a taxi home, and my girlfriend who had just given birth, and myself, carried a car seat for a 45 minute walk in the snow to our apartment.

I’ve never cried so hard as I did when we got to the apartment.

I was college educated, making 100 000+ CAD per year, with a loving family, and I couldn’t even provide a taxi to bring the newest addition home from the hospital.

I was abhorred with this Dr Jekyll – Mr Hyde life I had built for myself. I didn’t know where to even start rebuilding. How could I raise a child if I couldn’t take care of myself?

I had gone to several 12 step groups in the past. I had been through intervention after intervention. But nothing had ever stuck. But then again, I had never been honest.

I used to smoke crack outside of the meetings. I’d go inside and take a white chip (white is for newcomers), talk about all my good intentions, then walk outside and fill my crack pipe again before I even left the parking lot.

For me, as long as I didn’t get caught, well then no one could tell me I wasn’t sober.

But here I was, with a five day old baby and five hundred newcomers NA chips, laying on the couch in massive withdrawal, wishing I was dead.

So, I did the one thing I’d maintained I’d never do. I called my mother, and told her I needed help.

The initial conversation was met with a variety of emotions. Anger and animosity sure, but equal parts relief and empathy as well.

Within a week, I had completed an out-patient detox program, and was on 300mg of sublocade. Sublocade is a slow-acting monthly injection of a gel called buprenorphine, which acts as an inhibitor to opioid receptors in the brain.

Simply put, now I couldn’t get high. No matter how much fentanyl I jabbed in my arm, it just wasn’t going to reach my brain and allow me to fly away from my problems.

(The same group of people, however I was about 2 weeks into the sublocade regiment and had managed to finally drag myself out of the house to get a haircut for the first time in over a year.)

Little did I know, the hard part was just beginning.

I had gotten sober many times before. I work as an engineer aboard a ship that leaves port and doesn’t return for up to 60 days. Being that my position is one that requires maintaining the integrity of the vessel, I had always refused to take drugs to work. Sure, the first week or so was always rough, but with a little will power it would be just a distant memory soon enough.

But “seatox” as I call it, is almost a cheat code. After you depart, you have a firm understanding that no matter how sick you feel from withdrawal, no matter how much whining you do, there is just no possible way you are going to be able to purchase your drug of choice. Getting clean at sea was always easy for me. But staying sober when I got home was the exact opposite.

As soon as we had a landing date, that is, the day the vessel returns to land, I would be using up my phone minutes, calling my suppliers and informing them I’d be home on a certain day, flush with cash and ready to spend it. They almost certainly would accommodate me and have my parcel ready for pick up, no matter the time of day we landed.

Staying sober on shore is a different beast entirely. The access is there. As long as you can get your hands on some cash, you can get your hands on some drugs.

I remember the first day after the initial shot of Sublocade. I paced and I paced and I paced. I swear my footprints are probably still worn into the floor of that apartment.

Boredom overtook me. What was it that normal people did all day? Of course, I occupied the children and did some chores around the house but the thought lingered in the back of my mind like a pesky mosquito buzzing in a dark room:

Was this what the rest of my life would be like?

Mundane. Monotonous. Tedious. Just plain boring. I would be relegated to drudging through a life of changing diapers, stepping on Lego, and the occasional trip to sea.

The thought was terrifying, but I was committed.

I began going to the 12 step meeting consistently. For the first time, I actually paid attention to what was being said. Although everyone had come from different backgrounds, different drugs, and different routes on the way to hell, one common theme was evident:

The drugs had taken over our lives. We had forfeited control over our addictions, and some unfortunate series of events in our lives had led us to the realization that we had lost our way.

I found a sponsor, a man named Tom, whose story was eerily parallel to my own. A family man, Tom had been a rough and tumble cat out on skid row in Vancouver, British Columbia. His ex-wife was also a member of the group, and together they were the glue that held the group together.

Within the first few months of dedicating myself to being sober and the Living Clean movement, I had acquired quite a bit of literature, but I had not actually opened the covers of any of the books.

As the old saying goes, “you can’t shit a shitter”, and Tom, in his wisdom, could always see right through my shit.

“Have you started the steps?” he would ask. And I would give some spiel about how I was browsing through everything, trying to find the right place to start.

Eventually though, he got through to me. The program in itself was not some magical wand you could wave to get clean. You had to put in the work. And honestly, it’s a full time job.

Tom had the bright idea to host a “Topic Meeting”, in which the meeting was themed around one central topic for everyone to discuss, rather than sharing off the cuff.

On that Thursday, one by one, all the people I was sharing my journey with entered the hall. I could see they had binders and books under their arms.

I was about to get a dose of reality.

By the end of the meeting, I have to say, while I wasn’t completely sold, I realized that the people around me had been putting in so much work to maintain their sobriety, I almost felt like a fraud. I was just riding the wave of sublocade, an artificial tool in the belt.

Sublocade had saved my life, but it couldn’t help me to build a new one.

I went home and grabbed the NA bible, The Basic Text. I read through it on the first night. Parts religion, parts self-help, The Basic Text was my stepping stone into step work.

The next morning, I woke up, got a cup of coffee, and grabbed the NA Guide to Stepwork. I went out and bought a binder and some paper and a nice ballpoint pen, and immediately got to work.

You see, step work in NA is basically journaling. The guide has a variety of questions. You can answer as many or as little as you wish, but the fact is, each and every question leads you to a realization about yourself, about what brought you here in the first place, and about what encouraged you to change. You could answer the same question every day for 20 days, and each day the answer would change. Perhaps slightly, perhaps entirely, but one thing was certain, the steps encourage growth.

As I completed the first step, I made arrangements with Tom to meet up. Perhaps I wanted to gloat, perhaps I wanted to thank him, I’m not entirely sure. But what I got was a great big cup of truth and authenticity.

As I flipped through the pages of my binder, showing Tom and reading him excerpts from my writing, he was mostly quiet. Replying with a brief “uh huh”, I could tell something wasn’t quite right.

So when I said the words “see, I’ve got this sober thing by the balls.”, I should have known it would be met with resistance. Tom gave a slight chuckle, and got up from the table. A couple minutes later, he came back with not one, not two, but four binders.

Over seven years of sobriety, Tom had filled all 4 of these binders. Question after question, he went through each of the 12 steps, and when he finished step 12, he’d head right back to step 1.

As I flicked through his notes, it dawned on me. Recovery was not a cure. Unlike cancer, I would never go into remission and be free of disease. Each and every day would be devoted to remaining sober, with my pen and vocabulary as the chemotherapy to keep the cancer of addiction at bay.

So how has journaling helped me in my recovery?

Before recovery, if you’d have told me that journaling would be the key to my continued existence, I would have laughed in your face. I viewed it as a crutch, something for emotionally weak people who couldn’t maintain their feelings.

As it turns out, I was anything but emotionally stable.

Each day begins with a cup of coffee and an entry in my gratitude journal, which is more or less a listing of things I’m grateful for in that exact moment. Sometimes the list remains the same for an extended period. Sometimes, during periods of volatility in my life, it changes drastically, focusing more on the things we take for granted.

While the gratitude journal isn’t exactly groundbreaking material, it keeps me grounded, and provides me with a sense of routine.

I then move on to a ten minute guided meditation, which is an exercise in mindfulness. Then, without fail, I open my stepwork book. Some days, I only answer one question so thought provoking that it has the power to change your entire outlook for the day. Other days, I answer four or five chapters worth of questions, or review and revamp my answers to previous steps.

The point is, every day, my routine is to write. The routine in and of itself is an aid. It encourages stability and commitment, two focal points of recovery.

The journaling process however, I feel, is what not only saved my life, but allowed me to change it for the better.

Journaling is a way to keep benchmarks of your progress. You can look back a day, a week, a month, or a year, and see what you were thinking or feeling on any given day. In fact, simply to scroll the pages and recognize all the dates is encouragement alone. Each time you journal is another day clean, and for some, every 24 hours is a battle for their life.

As I mentioned above, when I was at my worst, I thought emotionally, I was strong. The thought of detox, NA groups, even journaling, it all disgusted me. They were tactics for the weak, those who couldn’t commit. I could commit, I just didn’t want to. Or so I thought.

It truly was not the case. In fact I may have been the most emotionally weak young man on the planet. Journaling has allowed me to process emotions I had hidden inside for so long. Things that would pop up throughout my addiction, that I would push back down with the tremendous weight of opioids.

My father passed away in 2020. I didn’t truly sit down and cry to myself until I got sober. I dealt with childhood issues. I dealt with the sins I committed while in active addiction. For the first time in my life, I was honest, with myself and with another person.

(My oldest son with my father, and his maternal grandfather. Both have passed away, and my sobriety has helped me to process their loss. If I can be half as great as either of these two men, then that’s all I could ever ask for.)

Tom, my sponsor, has been tremendous, and I couldn’t have done it without him. I hope he knows how much he’s helped me along my path, and that his hints along the path to writing are truly what allowed me to change. Tom is a staple in my gratitude journal.

I’m not a doctor. I don’t have a Ph.D. What I do have to offer is experience. I’ve walked the road to hell and back, and one thing I can tell you for sure, is the road going down was a whole lot shorter than the one coming back.

I’m still on that road, but with writing and journaling, the mile markers are coming easier and easier.

Like a lighthouse to a ship, the journal is what saved my life then, and continues to save it now, each and every day.

The best part is, the only toll you have to pay, is Being Open.