Regent Place (Brooklyn)
Note: no names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Well, my roommate was Antonio, a 450 pound 26 year old kid who never left the apartment for anything, even ordering grub hub from the dunkin donuts that was visible from the front door of our building. He didn't even go to the bathroom to urinate, using jars in his room.
When we moved in during the spring, I was mentally in a pretty good place, about a year sober. I was into self improvement and self care. It was hard to be paired up with this young man who had no drive to do anything but play fortnite and collect disability checks.
I thought at first that I could be helpful to him, but he started talking to me like some employee who's job it was to go brave the outside world for his cheeseburgers. I am not the one.
I blame no one but myself for the way the situation ended up, and how I got back on drugs. I will say that the close proximity to my roommate's untreated mental illness was one of the most difficult challenges of my life.
Eventually he freaked out and attacked me with a cheap steak knife but that's not what I'm getting into now.
The stabbing story is here:
https://link.medium.com/zWZPpi2sfpb
In the summer of 2021 i turned an Adderall prescription into a full blown crysral meth habit. That wasn't my roommate's fault, that was the disease of addiction doing its job, sneaky little cunt that it is. By the fall I was in one of the worst mental states of my entire life, light speed mania.... wildly unhinged. I had to go to treatment for about a month.
I went to a rehab for October, and did what was supposed to be done. While I was away my roommate somehow allowed one local junkie (Chase) steal all my valuable electronics, and allowed another one to take over our living room where he smoked Crack and heroin 24 hours a day. The living room guy was exploiting my roommate's loneliness and mental illness to manipulate his way into a place he could get high. So this is what I can home from rehab to.
both of us actual residents were afraid of the possibility of violent confrontation in getting rid of the living room junkie. In Flatbush, Brooklyn one doesn't call police on anyone, it's just a major taboo. I wasn't prepared to be walking around the hood as a known white boy snitch. The ramifications would have been severe.
So picture me: attending AA meetings every night and regular outpatient addiction treatment, and hiding in my room from the crack and dope being used in my own living room. I got a sponsor, talked to other recovering people regularly and did my best. I wasn't strong enough, I simply wasn't strong enough. I regret not calling police or doing something to try to make my home safe to recover in.
When Thanksgiving rolled around I really got into to a whole "miss all my loved ones" self pity trip. I rode it into a 12 pack of Guiness, and rode the drunkenness into the reliable drug connection on my couch. I asked him to procure me some crack cocaine, and he obliged.
After all there was a Crack spot Bodega and a Crack spot apartment building on my street, so sliding into Crack use was pretty intuitively easy. When it came time to take the edge off of the Crack, Chase introduced me to smoking heroin (which was just fentynyl) off of a square of tin foil. He claimed it was impossible to overdose that way, which I don't think is scientifically sound.
Just like that I was using the heaviest of drugs every day. I figured since I was already a mess I might as well go to target and get some air duster to huff.
I ended up kicked out of my apartment, even getting arrested when I tried to return to get high in my room. By January I was back on the street. If you're interested in the chronicle of how that was:
https://medium.com/@evr0ck17/list/eea6c866d390
I am not telling the story to blame anyone else for my drug use, I'm just saying I didn't really have a fighting chance from day one. There's a saying among 12 steppers "you could get sober in a Crack houee", not me, I can't.
The past winter is the darkest period of my entire life, even when I was still in apartment A7. I stopped taking my walks around the city, I stopped going anywhere but the crack shop, I wasn't even writing anymore.
That darkness is the reason I decided to go to long term treatment again, I'm scared to die. Yes it sucks to be here, but now I have given myself a chance to get free from the daily need to get high. I may still have housing back in the city, it's unclear at this point, it'll be months before I have to figure all that out.
I don't believe that any place Is responsible for me getting high, if I am working on my recovery there's no place that I can't set foot.
After all the times I went to bars to see Dead cover bands, and all the times I entered drug orgies to see Phish in sobriety... I think staying sober is an inside job. I can go back to NYC if my head is right, and that's what I'm working on up here in the woods.
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