Part 8 'roommates - right step'

Current mood:blah

i had a friend who was working in new orleans and was relocated here for the clean-up phase of katrina. he was renting pumps for a company here in town and i offered him a place to stay if he wanted it. this guy also had a problem just not to the degree of mine, yet. he could do an 8 ball of cocaine and be alright without it the next day, but he'd need pain pills. he said he could take it or leave it, but come on, people who experiment do it with weed in their first years of college, not with cocaine and prescriptions at 25. thats just my opinion. anyways, when he was staying over we did cocaine or pills everynight, and he treated me so i wasnt complaining. he did have more self control than i did and it became evident when he left for new orleans. i had developed a strong addiction to cocaine again and it wasnt long before i was doing a quarter ounce every 3 or 4 days by myself. i had it stashed in board games in the spare bedroom and would need it to get out of bed in the mornings. i was working an a/c job with a friend of mine and was getting loaded on cocaine throughout the day without him knowing. one morning on my way out to work, i locked my keys in the house and thought it was a good idea to jump onto the balcony from a trash can, i fell from the can, onto my ankle and was hurt pretty bad. then i did what anyone in that situation would do, i stood the can back up and tried again, alcoholics are a determined bunch even when hurt. so i made it up on the second try and got in through the window. weeks later i got my ankle checked out and found out it was a torn ligament and i needed reconstructive surgery. shortly after recieving this news, a friend had wrecked a car and broken his neck. he needed a place to stay and we helped out. i remember him having the nerve to tell me how bad my actions were. he was right, but i was too busy finding his faults. i ended up shooting some cocaine soon after he moved in and had my wife tell the surgery office that i had a family emergency and couldn't go that week. i didn't want them to see the marks on my arms from the 21 gauge needle i used. so we re-scheduled and i had the surgery. over the next two months things went from bad to worse, as my cocaine addiction spun out of control. i knew my wife was miserable, but couldn't stop, so i moved out. i didn't know what else to do, it was killing her. it wasn't long before i asked to come home and she allowed it. then i got worse again and removed myself once more, this time i stayed out for like a week and decided that i had enough. i needed help. i asked a friend one night to bring me to a treatment center 1st thing the next morning, he did. zack got me to the tau center, where i was told that i didnt need to detox and i could go to a residential treatment center the next day. i walked from the lake to copelands, where my wife was working. i asked her if i could stay at home that night and check in the next morning, she agreed. i woke up crying my eyes out that morning, i was mourning the loss of my coping mechanism of the last 10 years of my life and it wasn't easy. to spite all of the sorrow and displeasure i knew that it was time. i checked into the right step treatment center on may 1st 2006.