The Big Fix

Copyright 2016 Tracey Helton Mitchell

Seal Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

1700 Fourth Street

Berkeley, California

sealpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

The author has changed the names and personal details of some individuals mentioned in this book to protect their privacy.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mitchell, Tracey Helton

ISBN 9781580056045

Mitchell, Tracey Helton. | Women drug addicts--United States--Biography. | Drug addicts—Rehabilitation—United States--Biography. | Heroin abuse-—United States.

LCC HV5805.M57 A3 2015

DDC 362.29/3092--dc23

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover design by Tim Green, Faceout Studio

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

Dedicated to the memory of my mother

CONTENTS

PART ONE:
        
My Story

        
Chapter 1: The Other Side

        
Chapter 2: Let's Get this Out of the Way: Life Before Recovery

        
Chapter 3: Clean and Sober Sucks

        
Chapter 4: Walk a Day in My Shoes

        
Chapter 5: The Quick Fix

        
Chapter 6: A New Sense of Self

        
Chapter 7: From Mr. Right Now to Mr. Right

        
Chapter 8: I Don't Deserve Happiness

        
Chapter 9: Crisis in a Minivan

        
Chapter 10: The Best Present

        
Chapter 11: A Good Day

PART TWO:
      
Beyond the War on Drugs

PART THREE:
    
Heroin Addiction & Recovery: What You Need to Know

References

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PART ONE

MY STORY

L
ike many Americans, my road to addiction started with a trip to a medical professional. At seventeen, I got my first taste of opioids after my wisdom teeth were extracted. I was a talkative yet very shy teenager, so my exposure to drugs had been limited to the small world around me, mainly my older siblings. Witnessing them in their experimentation phases had made me keenly aware of how silly a person on weed or alcohol could act. I had tried both of those substances a few times myself. I found neither to be all that appealing. But those white pills—they seemed like magic. I remember all the troubles of the world slowly melting away into a pool of euphoria. Little did I know, I would spend eight years of my life chasing that feeling on a daily basis.

Fast forward to a few years later. I had been imagining a way to return to that feeling. How could I get access to
those magical pills? I wondered about acquiring some as I entered the hurried world of university life. It didn't take long until I found a solution through friends. Their parents had pills on hand—from injuries, from surgeries, and from medical procedures that had healed long ago. They had forgotten about those bottles in their medicine cabinets. When you moved aside the cough medicine and the Q-tips, these glorious substances appeared from behind the hair gel as a beacon of hope. There they were! The picture showing the droopy eyes and the words M
AY CAUSE DROWSINESS
and D
O NOT OPERATE MACHINERY
signaled a good time was in our future.

The pills seemed the perfect enhancement to any night out. A few drinks, some pills, I was a happy woman. Sure, I lost some friends. That hardly mattered to me. I made new ones! I made better ones! I made friends who were not only accepting of my changing lifestyle, they encouraged it. They asked me if I wanted to try the needle. Injecting the pills would be the best use of my limited resources, they told me, after they worked some magic to separate out the binders and lick off the coating, and I held out my arm. I barely felt a thing. The first time wasn't much, nor the second. What was I missing? But after trying a few more times, I began to see the appeal. Pins and needles in my extremities. A numbness in my core. My appetite only increased with time until, finally, I graduated to Lady H.

Heroin was supposed to be the ultimate drug experience. I was completely unaware of the nature of the diminishing returns. No time is like the first time—it felt like the best orgasm, the best hug, and the warmest blanket all
wrapped up into a pile of
ahh yes!
I spent many years trying to recapture that feeling that soon slipped away from me. My drug-induced confidence was quickly replaced with anxiety. My painless days were followed by sleepless nights. I lost everything that I hadn't already sold or traded for this drug, until I was brought into my new life in handcuffs.

It would be misleading to imply that my recovery was a linear process. It is true that once I made the decision to stop using and enter recovery, I never relapsed. However, there were many failures before there were many successes. I would be remiss if I excluded the ten other times I had kicked heroin, only to return to it. Let me outline my major attempts. I quit drinking and drugs for six months at nineteen years old. This was with just my “willpower.” I had one painful detox at home on my couch in Cincinnati. There were a few months at a time when I swore off drugs before I moved to San Francisco. I lived in a national park in Colorado for almost a month in an attempt to quit hard drugs. There was a twenty-one-day methadone detox. There were three different times I kicked on my own—once while I was living on the sidewalk, twitching and puking into the gutter. There were two different times I was forced to kick heroin in jail, only to return to drugs within hours of my release. Finally, there were two weeks on methadone maintenance a month before my final arrest.

I was also a polysubstance user who switched from drug to drug, complicating my recovery. During the last few years, I was using them all together, like a cocktail to celebrate my destruction. Between extended periods of heavy drinking, cocaine use, and methamphetamine-fueled binges, heroin was
the thread that tied up my dysfunction into a not-so-pretty package. It wasn't “just” the heroin. The heroin was just my first and last crutch. I gave up all substances, including alcohol, to be free. That is my personal story.

I may not have stayed sober every time I tried, but I learned something from each attempt to get clean. By the time I went to jail for the last time on that foggy night in late February 1998, I was ready to put all my hard-earned knowledge into practice. With each passing minute, with each passing hour, with each passing day I got stronger for my attempts. No matter how many times you have tried in the past, you only need to get it right
one
time. I tell people seeking my assistance: Make NOW that time.

The process of getting clean was a road with many twists and turns. The brief summary of my recovery goes like this: jail, detox, rehab, sober living, twelve steps, support groups, and therapy. Those were the things that worked for me.

I didn't start my recovery thinking I would become an advocate for addicts; at first my focus was just on staying clean myself. But I have seen people change before my eyes when they hear my story and begin to believe recovery is possible. Many addicts say to me, “Tracey, you are such a role model.” What do I say to them? Do I take the credit for the little bit of luck and the big portion of fear that have motivated me to stay clear of active addiction? Do I give advice when I feel as if I don't even have mastery of my own life and my own emotions? Generally, I am so humbled by the opportunity to help someone that it leaves me speechless, so all I can say is, “Thank you.” Thank you for caring enough to take time out of your life to talk to me. I gain strength knowing that I can
still contribute to a world when I spent so much time taking from everyone around me.

To some, my story, my journey to recovery, is a cautionary tale. To others, it is a light in the dark world known as addiction. When I look at the life I have built for myself, it is hard for even me to believe that I was ever a homeless drug addict. To this day, when I reflect on how I went from college student to junkie, I have more questions than answers. Could something have changed the trajectory of my life? I am not sure. Was I hooked from the very start? It is hard to say. These questions are impossible to answer. What I do know is when I hold my child's hand or help a person in need, all of the pain I suffered becomes transformative. I have learned from my journey that I am strong. I am capable of great things. Not despite my past, but because of it. To honor all those who have been lost to drugs and to avoid losing more, we must demand changes to our current policies. Don't be left wondering whether you could have done something to help the user in your life. We can all do something that will make a difference. I am the proof.