The Big Fix (7 page)

This was my eleventh time kicking heroin, and it would be my last.

Dressed in orange pants, orange sweatshirt, orange T-shirt, orange socks, and even orange panties, I appeared in court a month or so later. I was on a no-bail hold for violation of my probation. My only deviation from the standard uniform worn by the other prisoners was a piece of glove that I had torn and used to tie my slicked-back hair into a ponytail, which I hoped made me look more respectable, appealing, and worthy of a break.

“Ms. Helton, do you understand and agree to this sentence?”

I nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.” This was the only time I spoke.

The prosecuting attorney stood up, and all I heard was, “I object.” What the fuck. My probation officer had recommended that I get a nine-month sentence that included a drug treatment program. With time for good behavior, I would be released in five months. This objection could destroy my chances of going to rehab at all.

I'm sure the prosecutor looked at a piece of paper and saw that I was a repeat offender who had been caught in possession of a half ounce of heroin. She probably thought she was doing society a favor by protecting it from someone like me. In reality, I was putting a good portion of those drugs up my own arm on a daily basis. My life had been reduced to finding fulfillment wrapped in plastic bags. Now this—going to a program—was all I had left to live for.
Bitch, sit down!
All the poor decisions I had ever made in my life flashed before my eyes before the judge shut her down.

He agreed to send me to treatment instead of prison. If I did not complete the program, I would automatically be sentenced to three and a half years in state prison. It was a risk, but one I was willing to take. I finally started to breathe. I had never left jail and stayed clean. In fact, I had never stayed clean while in jail. The cravings had always overtaken my desire to try something different. A person in the know like myself would have access to a wide array of substances even behind bars. I had requested to be put in the “treatment” section of the jail this time. I was finally committed to something besides getting high. As the judge
pointed out, this was “the first intelligent decision” I had made in a decade.

I was put into a residential treatment program for criminal offenders, meaning we all came from jail or prison. This made the place both sexually charged and dangerous. There were roughly ten men for every female in the facility. When I got off the bus from jail, a pack of men were waiting to greet us. I felt like a bloody steak in front of a bunch of lions looking for their next meal. I learned later that on smoke breaks the men would place bets on who was going to have sex with which of the incoming females.

When women walk into rehab they find the same type of men, if not the very same man, they are trying to escape, making it truly difficult for them to reset their lives. It didn't take long before many of my peers were having quickies in stairwells or on the Dumpster behind the building. Those twelve-step meetings ended in a few pregnancies.

Whenever I had imagined rehab before I got there, I suppose I thought of it as some sort of well-lit health spa, with time to relax to ease back into society. The treatment facility was the exact opposite of what I had expected. In fact, the place was just one step up from jail. It was in a large brick former warehouse with beds on three floors. Women were placed on the first floors where there were twenty bunks in two rooms. The beds were never full. Many women I met felt pressured by family responsibilities to immediately return home. Time and time again, I would see a woman crying on a pay phone in the hall and see her bed empty the next day. The women tended to fight on a daily basis—anything to distract them from the knowledge that their
children were sitting in foster care while they were watching TV in the women's lounge. The stories I heard there made me uncomfortable. They were
The Jerry Springer Show
crossed with the worst horror movie, except these stories were real. As if on cue, the women would sit in a circle and tell stories of the children they had lost, their rapes, or years of molestation at the hands of someone they had trusted. I felt the impact of their stories, but I couldn't make the tears flow, not even for myself.

On the Sunday after I arrived, everyone was required to be in the “house” for a group meeting. I was excited to see everyone at one time. Eighty of us crammed ourselves into the cafeteria, each with his or her own story. Some used crack, others meth; some were alcoholics on parole for their fourth DUI. A few had jobs and children, and there were those who were there just to get off “paperwork.”

The man who facilitated the meeting was well dressed, with a gold chain around his neck and sunglasses on his head. He drove an old Porsche and sported new braces, paid for with his brand new dental insurance. He spoke about having one year clean, which seemed impossible to me.

A hush fell as he said, “Look around the room. To your right and left.” He paused for effect. “Of everyone here, only two of you are going to make it.”

Under the fluorescent lights, I felt people all around me lose confidence. Each of us was wondering,
How am I ever going to make it?
Instead of uplifting broken people, the pep talk planted the seed of doubt. It turned out the facilitator himself did not make it. A few years later, he died of a crack-induced heart attack.

I knew I would have to fight to keep from becoming a statistic. I later learned that in rehab made-up statements about recovery were often passed off as facts. More than once I heard people throw around the “statistic” that only 1 percent of heroin addicts get clean and stay clean. This was not very comforting to a person trying to stay clean. On top of that, my options were limited. If I failed to complete the program, I was going to prison for three and a half years. More than that, I was motivated by the fact that if I failed, I would die with a needle hanging out of my arm.

I told myself:
Of the eighty people in this room, seventy-nine will be fighting for that last spot, because I am going to be one who stayed clean.
Period. I was not returning to alleyways. I was not going back to pushing my belongings in a shopping cart. I was not returning to injecting myself ten times a day. In my mind, I almost felt lucky that I had hit such a low bottom. It made it that much easier to commit to a program. I was willing to try anything not to use drugs: meetings, groups, keeping a journal, talking about my feelings. I was tired and I was done with that life. DONE. I ran that car until the wheels fell off. Drugs held no more illusions for me.

In early recovery, life was an effort. One second I felt happy. The next I wanted to scream at someone for accidentally brushing against me. Then I would feel the need to apologize not only to that person but also to every single person I had ever wronged. I had no idea how to live. I felt like crying, but the tears did not come. I didn't feel like using. In fact, on many days I didn't feel anything at all. My life was gray and overcast.

What I needed was a distraction, and for that I went to the second and third floors, where the men lived. Walking down the hallway, I slowed down for a good look. After two and a half months in jail, I craved the presence of men, even if they brought out things I didn't like about myself. I admit my view of men was warped. For example, there was something so sweet about a man escorting you back to your apartment after you have taken too many drugs. He would get bonus points if he didn't press for sex. That to me was romance. But when a boyfriend brought me flowers, I threw them on the ground. “I wanted to do something special,” one boyfriend had said. I was homeless at the time. What the fuck was I going to do with flowers? He should have brought me some tissues instead, since he had given me a bloody nose and a black eye.

On the way to breakfast one morning, I caught a man looking at me as I crossed the cafeteria. I quickly looked away but when I saw him later in the hallway, I didn't flinch. Women and men sat together at mealtimes on the third floor. The management there tried to make it a family atmosphere, but with the “brothers” trying to sleep with the “sisters,” it was more like every man for himself.

When I finally earned enough trust for an afternoon away from the program, I quickly abused it. The man I had spotted and I both knew the rules: no sex between residents. Yet my first pass involved forty-five minutes in a hotel room with him. Never mind that he spoke almost no English and I spoke only halting Spanish. I had fooled myself into believing he cared for me. My first sober kiss since high school led to hurried sex. As I pulled my clothes from the floor, I saw the moment
for what it was: two people using each other for an escape. When I returned to the treatment center, they were surprised to see me back so soon. With no explanation, I went to the women's floor and took a long shower. Instead of tamping down my feelings as I would normally do, I let my emotions flow as I put my head against the tiles, water running down the back of my neck, trying to wash away my regret.

Getting off drugs was just a small part of staying clean. After the chemicals left my body, I was flooded with a lifetime of memories I had tried to stuff down. Underneath my hard exterior was a person drowning in fear. Thinking about my childhood, I realized I had been hooked all along. I remembered getting my wisdom teeth pulled and the warm fuzzy bubble of the Vicodin I was given. I had vowed not to become an alcoholic like my father, but this seemed okay because a doctor had prescribed it. The Vicodin relieved me of the burden of my thoughts. Everything I needed was in one place. I did not need food, I did not need to worry, and I did not need anything but the feeling of the drug. I felt totally comfortable with the numbness. Life seemed like a breeze while I was on Vicodin. I was so naïve that I truly believed I could control any drug I took, unlike “weak” people. I quickly learned that drugs do not discriminate. They prey on your weakest instincts and insecurities, of which I had plenty.

Listening to the other people talk during “share” time at the rehab center, I realized much of what people said was lies and half-truths for the benefit of attracting the opposite sex. Being in the program was a lot like being back in high school. People would stand up to “confess” to the things they
missed from their addiction—the apartment, women, money, fame—rather than the reasons they were really here. No one said, “I'm a loser,” “I hate myself,” or any of the things that were really in their heads. I felt as if no one there understood me, as if I was unique among addicts. In reality, I think I was leaving myself room for the chance of relapse by staying isolated. When Mike sent a message through one of the residents to meet him to play video games, I jumped at the chance. I needed a break. While I was in jail, I learned Mike had started using heavily again. But the last time I saw him I was being hauled away by the police. I wanted to reconnect.

As I walked up the hill to Mike's apartment, I heard a voice in my mind:
No.
I felt it as concretely as the hard bed I slept in each night. Was I really going to just sit there while he got high? Maybe I was developing a sense of right and wrong choices, because my inner compass pointed me in a different direction. Or maybe I was just scared. I tucked my tail between my legs and ran back to the center.

I called Mike that night from the pay phone in the hallway.

“I'm sorry,” I told him.

He was pissed. “We can't hang out, Tracey.”

“Maybe I can try to get away next week,” I said half-heartedly.

“No, you won't,” he said. “Because I am doing this and you are doing that.”

He was right. I needed to stay on the sobriety path with no distractions. The question was whether I could stay the course. When I emerged from the program later, I would feel like an alien who had been dropped onto a different planet. Not only did I have no contact with the outside world for
the ninety days of my court-ordered rehab, but I had lost years to my addiction. The world had moved on to email, pagers, and mobile phones while I still carried crumpled phone numbers and dimes for the phone booth.

I finally got up the nerve to call home after the foolish sex incident. I wanted my mother to believe that everything was going well in treatment. How could I explain that I had fucked up again? She would know something was wrong in my voice. I used the phone right outside the women's lounge. The receiver was stained with sweat and tears. In general, this phone only seemed to deliver bad advice and bad news from home. I was determined to reach my mother. I had called her from the holding cell the night I was arrested to tell her I was going to get into a program, and from that moment she had been my staunchest supporter. Unfortunately, this time my father answered the phone. This was the man who, when he was a teenager and the family horse died, was hooked up to the plow in its stead. This was the man who brought his prom date home to meet his parents, and she asked to use the bathroom, walked out, and never came back. I didn't expect my father to talk about his feelings on the phone, but I braced myself for the disappointment that I knew he must have felt. We had become estranged since I left Ohio, and I had rarely spoken to him in the past few years. I am sure he received progress reports from my mother. I had spent all those years judging him for his drinking. Now here I was, a twenty-eight-year-old heroin addict who had achieved nothing in life.

It wasn't so long before then that I had been telling him I wanted to apply to Princeton. I'd had stellar grades and started
out my freshman year at the University of Cincinnati almost a year ahead of my peers. The admissions counselor had told me in my interview, “You're a one-of-a-kind student.” Little did she know how true that would turn out to be.

On the phone, my dad characteristically did not provide me with comfort. Nevertheless, he told me what I needed to hear. “All your friends are in the cemetery or penitentiary,” he said. I am sure he told me that because he loved me. He had some insight into my struggle.