Jason Smith | Author » Narrative

That Time a Gypsy Told Me My Future

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 17:04:10 +0000

“You must listen me,” he said, his refusal to use prepositions starting to bug me. “Please?”

“Look man, I told you. I-DON’T-HAVE-MONEY-FOR-YOU. Niente. Nada. Nichts or nix or however the fuck you say that,” I told him, annoyed, trying to walk quickly enough to give him a hint. “Nothing.”

“You must listen me. Please? Sir, please?”

Sir? Who the fuck are you calling sir? I’m 19 years old.

This guy tracked me down in a park in Bern, Switzerland, and I found myself unable to lose him. Making matters worse, I found myself unable to adequately explain what I was doing in Bern in the first place.

“Look man, I don’t have anything for you. I have to go…”

“Listen, please,” he begged.

I wasn’t having it, trying my best to lose him between a pair of junkies in the park.

“Jason,” he blurted out.

“I told you, I don’t have ti — wait, what did you say?” I stared in his direction while he just looked on. “How do you know my name?”

That morning began like every other morning, with me taking the bus from my apartment near Florence, Italy, to the Santa Maria Novella train station. These were the Sex on Wednesdays days. Between my bouts of sexual ineptitude with Lorena and life’s other lessons with Professor Firch, I was on a mission to find myself.

Getting off at my stop, I decided to take a detour to class through the station, past the departing trains. They possessed an appeal that I didn’t quite understand, an almost-envy, of all the people getting onto the train, into the cars, and going somewhere. Anywhere. Leaving. Going. Moving. Where? It didn’t really matter. The destination? Irrelevant. It wasn’t about that.

I found myself on a train to Milan, for no reason other than the fact that it was the next to depart.

Arriving in Milan I still felt itchy, as if it was too close, culturally speaking, to Florence. I wanted different. Different culture. Different language. Just… just fucking different, ya know? Different for no other reason than the fact different felt better than the alternative.

I looked again at the big board of departures. A train was about to leave for some place called Bern. Now, I didn’t even know what country Bern was in, but that served more as a persuasion than anything else. An attraction. I boarded the train and gazed into the distance, head leaned up against the window, OK Computer keeping me company for the duration of the four hour journey.

Exiting the train once we got to wherever the hell Bern was, I followed the small mass of people out of the station, around to the right, where I tried to figure out which country I was in.

I drifted, but with propulsion. It wasn’t aimless, despite the fact I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular. Not consciously, anyway. The city-center was off to my left, but I stayed right, eventually finding myself in a place called “Kocherpark.”

The first thing that struck me was the number of junkies standing around. Orange needle-caps littered the ground, used syringes, dealers being anything but discreet in their dealings.

It was chaotic depravity, but in an overly-controlled, organized setting.

Ahh. I must be in Switzerland.

I’m not sure what it says about me, that with an entire beautiful city just a few streets down, I chose to walk through this park instead. Truth is, I felt like I had more in common with them than anyone else, despite the fact that I’d yet to disappear into my own addiction by this point. That was still a few years away.

Perhaps the person I’d become was just below the surface the entire time, waiting for the appropriate time to emerge. Or perhaps I became that person because I was constantly drawn to the types that occupied this park. Maybe they made me who I was, or perhaps I was always them.

Uncertain of what I was doing in Bern, I knew there was a reason. There had to be. I just didn’t know what it was. You know that sensation of feeling like you’re forgetting something? When you leave the house but know there’s something you’re not remembering? It felt like that, a certainty of the uncertain.

Roaming the park, a gypsy entered into my life.

“Uhh hello, can I talk you?”

This guy wouldn’t leave me alone. I spotted him from across the park when I first got there, watching him when he made the decision to walk my direction. I tried to ignore him but it wasn’t working. He was nothing if not persistent.

He had the heroin eyes, those black circles, pin-pointed pupils, totally disconnected from humanity and completely ok with it. His arms were covered in track marks, his right arm with bruises from times he missed the vein, a righty shooting up lefty. For a moment I wondered how he got here. I wondered what choices he made in his life that wound up leading him right here, right now. It made me wonder if I looked like I fit in amongst this crowd. I didn’t see too many people doing double-takes in my direction.

“Can I talk with you,” he asked.

Again.

“Hello? Can we speak?”

“Nah, man,” I told him, showing him my open palms, the international sign of ‘I don’t have shit for you.’ “I’m good.”

“I don’t want money,” he explained. “Only talk.”

I looked him in the eyes with an expression that begged him to just get this over with.

“It’s your future,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and began walking away, completely unimpressed. Living in Italy I’d grown accustomed to most of these scams. The one where the woman with 15 kids distracts you with a newspaper while her little ones pick your pockets. The one where a guy “gives” you a gift, only to come at you for money once you touch it. The one where an attractive female tries to get you to follow them down an alley or into an apartment. I knew this guy’s scam. He’d tell me my future in bad English for free, only to ask for a sizable tip when he finished.

“Nah, man, look, I told you. I-DON’T-HAVE-MONEY-FOR-YOU. Nothing.”

“Jason, listen me.”

“I said I don’t ha- wait, what the fuck did you just say?” I looked directly at him, head cocked sideways. “What did you say?”

“You must listen me.”

“No, you said my name.”

“Yes, I can talk?”

I looked down at my chest, just in case someone had mysteriously attached a name-tag to my shirt, a preposterous concept, but no more preposterous than what was actually happening.

Mouth open, not sure of what to say, he took my silence as permission to continue.

“Jason… it be ok.”

“Wha- How do you know my name?”

He paused, looking at me to make sure the words sank in.

“Jason… it is ok. Always, ok.”

“Wait, what? What be ok? What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, looking around the park.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Everything.”

“Huh?”

“You ask what be ok?” he said, waiting for my nod to continue. “Everything. Everything will be ok.”

I just stared at him, not really sure if there existed an appropriate response to any of this.

“You don’t believe in me,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“No, what? No. Believe in you?” I asked. “No. No I don’t believe you,” I told him, not really sure if I meant it. “Or in you, whatever that means.”

“Your father. He have…” his voice drifted upward, as if he was struggling with his English. “He have pigeons?”

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. There’s no way he could have guessed that. He did not just say that.

Growing up, my father took up the hobby of racing pigeons. Seriously, such a thing really exists. The bane of my mother’s existence, my dad had a collection of about 100 pigeons, who, once a week, would be dropped off miles from our house, and find their way home, while racing other pigeons who found their own way home.

And this fucking guy, in a random park, in a random city, in a random country, on the other side of the globe, just told me all about it.

Seeing the look — I suppose it was fear mixed with surprise mixed in with a little anxiety — on my face, he set out to once again reassure me.

“Jason,” he said, “it’s ok. It will be, everything, ok.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” I asked, confusion mixed with frustration. “Why do you keep saying that?”

“You must remember, in your life, at the bottom, when it’s very bad… everything will be ok.”

“Bottom? What? Is shit going to get bad for me? Is that what you’re you’re trying to say?” I asked, tip-toeing into the realm of suspension of disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Hard how?”

“Jason, it will be, everything, ok.”

“Will I ever get married?” I had no idea why I asked that question, but I did. Perhaps there was a fear somewhere inside of me that I’d never find someone.

“Yes. Twice. One time in first half, one time in other half.”

“Half?”

“Yes,” he explained. “Your life have two halves.”

“When will I die?” I asked in a tone that was a total facade. I wanted to inquire while feigning an air of amusement.

He looked at me, reading something. “You don’t want this answer.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right.

“But you will be old man. Not young man.”

I felt sick to my stomach, sharp, stabbing pains. The only thing I could think to do was walk away, back toward the train station, back, whichever way was away from Bern.

“Jason,” he said as I turned back toward him, “always remember — it is ok.”

Standing there, I wanted him to ask me for money. I wanted him to hit me up for a donation, just like the scams I’d seen countless times, so that I could chalk the whole situation up to a mind-fuck scheme magic trick. I wanted him to put his hand out, and give me that uncomfortable laugh. I wanted him to try and negotiate a fee for this experience.

But he did none of these things.

I didn’t thank him. I didn’t say goodbye to him. I simply turned away, walked past the junkies in the park, stepped over used syringes, kicked the little orange needle caps, and got back on a train toward Italy, away from Bern, a city whose center I never actually saw, and that I spent less than an hour actually visiting.

It could have been on the train from Bern to Milan, or perhaps it was on the ride from Milan to Florence, but at some point along the journey, I rationalized what had just happened. Mentally, I forced myself to come to the realization that what just happened, didn’t in fact happen at all. I got scammed. Not a financial scam, but a mental scam. Somebody was fucking with me. There was no other explanation.

By the time I got off the train in Florence and caught the bus back home, it was dark. Taking the elevator up, I entered my empty apartment. I had no idea where my roommates were, but I guessed Brian was at his girlfriend’s for the night, meaning I’d have the room to myself. Laying down, I stared at the ceiling and laughed to myself at what had happened that day. How I randomly decided to visit Bern, how I didn’t ever actually see the city, just the park, and how for a second I allowed myself to believe this gypsy told me my future.

I rolled over on my side to set my alarm for the following morning. It was one of those analog alarm clocks, where you position the little, red third hand to the time where you want to wake up. It was old school, all I could really afford at the time.

As sure as I’m sitting here today, and I swear on the life of my children, the clock was ticking backward.

Swear. To. God.

I’m not certain what exactly happened that day, or who the guy was, or what the purpose was. I’m not sure at what point a prophecy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, feeding upon itself, creating an alternate future and bypassing whatever fate was originally in store for me. Seriously, I have no idea.

My life went to shit immediately following my trip to Bern. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Wrong went wronger, bad got badder, and I just accepted whatever twisted fate fell into my lap. Friendships deteriorated as I became more withdrawn, isolating myself from the relationships I’d spent the year in Florence cultivating. Did my life go to shit and enter a period of great difficulty, as the gypsy predicted? Or did my life go to shit because I believed the stranger in the park said that’s what would happen?

Years later, be it sleeping in train stations or sitting in jail in Tijuana or staring at the ceiling in rehab, I remember thinking to myself what the gypsy told me that day in Bern. “It be ok, Jason. Everything. It be ok.” My world couldn’t have been much darker in those moments, but I specifically remember thinking the words in my head as every cell in my body felt like it was imploding, biology turning against itself. At those moments, where hope was but a rumor, it gave me a sense of calm. Peace in the most un-peaceful of places.

So was that the reason I met him?

Because, if that’s the reason, the whole thing makes even less sense. Prior to being in jail in Mexico, or being homeless in France, or checking into rehab — again — I remember getting hooked on a very large amount of Fentanyl, a drug whose potency has claimed lives far more important than my own, and thinking, “I’m not an old man.” Of course, this was my addict-brain rationalizing the abyss into which I was about to descend, but his words made the whole thing a whole lot easier. His prediction gave me a sense of indestructability, a belief that I could do as I pleased and still survive. “Everything will be ok,” I told myself. “It is always ok.”

And I have indeed been married twice. When shit got tough during the first marriage, I thought, “Well, might as well get this one out of the way.”

I don’t know if that guy told me my future, or if he told me a future that I chose to climb into.

Today, I tend to believe the whole thing was some elaborate, cosmic hoax. It’s the only thing to me that is logical; nothing else makes sense. I don’t know, maybe the fuckin’ guy spent his entire life approaching strangers in the park, calling out the name Jason, talking about racing pigeons, and finally hit the lottery when he found me. I have no idea.

And despite using what he told me throughout my life to either get myself out of holes or dig myself into them deeper, maybe it was my own belief in what he said that gave his predictions credence. My faith, perhaps, gave his words a power and strength they would’ve otherwise not had.

Because what’s the alternative? That some junkie-gypsy in a park in Switzerland told me my future?

That couldn’t have actually happened… right?

The post That Time a Gypsy Told Me My Future appeared first on Jason Smith | Author .

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My Doctor the Murderer

Thu, 28 May 2015 23:39:19 +0000

I didn’t know Gina Micali.

But I knew her.

Gina was 38 years old. She was a jet skier, wakeboarder, snowboarder. She was an athlete who got hooked on the pills after an injury and found herself unable to stop. It was that simple.

And now she was dead.

Standing before a judge, her doctor — our doctor — was defiant to the end. Dr. Harriston Bass— the first doctor in Nevada’s history to be convicted of murder after illegally supplying drugs to a patient who overdosed—was stoic in his defense, his legal team dismissing the dead Gina Micali as an addict who abused the system, who destroyed her own life with her own bad decisions.

I didn’t know Gina Micali. But I knew her .

It was the summer of the 2000s. Texting while driving was legal, thong underwear had its own theme song, and Rx drug abuse was just hitting its stride.

With the OxyContin tablet reformulation still years away, pills were paving the way for a 21st century American heroin epidemic that had yet to show its face. Tiny tablets found their way from pharmaceutical reps who knew better, to doctors who should have known better, onto the streets to addicts like me who didn’t really give a shit who knew what, so long as we got our drugs.

Everyone involved in the genesis of the epidemic, from the producer down to the user, believed that their version of responsibility’s burden was the true one, dismissive and defensive in a truly American-capitalist sense, blaming everything but a mirror.

“Truth.” That’s a very relative term when drugs are involved.

I started using after an injury from a car accident. Now I couldn’t stop. It was that simple.

A few years into my addiction, I was having a hard time obtaining the amount of pills and Fentanyl patches that my body was suddenly demanding of me. In the beginning I could use until I was out. I’d feel a little achy, a bit flu-ish, but be fine after a few days. The longer I used, however, the more difficult just stopping became. At some point my use went from a want to a need, and wherever the universe drew that arbitrary line — once I crossed, it was game over. Or game on. Whatever.

I began abusing drugs in angry, violent bursts, holding it together for a few weeks before going off the deep end, doing whatever I could get my hands on until there were no more. The drugs would run out and I’d spend the next few weeks drying out, cleaning up whatever disaster I caused during my last run, before doing the whole thing all over again, a fucked up vicious cycle of insanity and redundancy.

It was a twisted, malicious, sick love affair, saturated in passionate self-destruction, layered in self-loathing and coated in a refusal to take accountability for anything the slightest bit uncomfortable.

Enter into my life: Soon-to-be-convicted-of-second-degree-murder, Dr. Harriston Bass.

Dr. Bass was found by chance, dumb luck, fate, what-the-fuck-ever. I found him — that’s all that really matters.

On a weekend trip to Las Vegas I ran out of drugs — shocking— so I did what any addict would do to keep from coming down on a Sunday morning: I went to the phone book and called around. Only one doctor’s “office” answered the phone that day: Docs 24/7, a mobile-doctor who would come to me at my room at the New York, New York Hotel & Casino.

Dr. Harriston Bass emerged from a wrapped PT Cruiser carrying a black doctor’s bag, wearing a white coat. Short and stocky, Dr. Bass was built like a wrestler, in great shape for his age. He spoke in the cadence of a southern black preacher, which was exactly what he looked like. His voice was calm but forceful, gentle yet strong.

“Cash, Mr. Smith,” he said, shaking his head. “I only take cash.”

After examining me, he put his stethoscope and blood pressure thingy away, and looked at me.

“So how much would you like, Mr. Smith?” he asked, catching me off guard. I was used to a much more delicate dance of manipulation. There was typically a procession, like a swap-meet, me starting high with, say, OxyContin, the doctor starting low with, say, Ibuprofen, and the two of us eventually meeting in the middle at Norco or Percocet 10–325. Dr. Bass was breaking protocol, his bluntness throwing me off.

“…would I like?” I asked, eyebrows raised, trying to feel him out, seated on the edge of my hotel bed.

“Yes, Mr. Smith. That’s what I asked. How much would you like?”

“…umm… how… much… can… you… give… me?”

“Well,” he said, reaching into his little black bag, “I have eight bottles of Norco 10s, a hundred in each bottle, and I can write you a prescription for #360 of the Norco with two refills, but you have to fill them in Nevada, not California.” He paused. “I prefer my patients use the Saddleback Pharmacy here in Las Vegas. They don’t ask questions.”

My brain raced. Was this a set up ? No, it couldn’t be. He offered the drugs to me. I didn’t ask for them. I’d been to jail enough times to know what entrapment was. Was I on some sort of drug addict hidden camera show? America’s Most Pathetic Home Video? It sounded too good to be true.

I felt like a narcotic-Cinderella, afraid this fucking doctor was going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight and lose his powers to prescribe.

“…you can give me all of that?” I asked, my head falling forward, eyes opened wide in utter disbelief at the luck I was experiencing. I found this guy in a fucking phone book.

“Yes, Mr. Smith. That’ll be $600.”

Reaching into my wallet, I pulled out a Mastercard that had a ridiculously high limit for someone my age, the foundation of a financial crisis still a decade away.

“Cash, Mr. Smith,” he said, shaking his head. “I only take cash.”

“Can you follow me to the lobby, and I’ll just pull it out on a credit card advance?” I asked, hurrying, afraid that this insane luck I was experiencing had a time limit that was ticking its way back toward the hustle I’d been forced to endure before Dr. Bass entered my life, involving medical clinic after medical clinic after medical clinic, scoring drugs in small quantities. I felt like a narcotic-Cinderella, afraid this fucking doctor was going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight and lose his powers to prescribe.

“Mr. Smith,” he said calmly, “I’d prefer our transaction not take place on camera. I’ll wait here while you get the money.”

My shirt still off from my doctor’s exam, I ran to the elevators, pushing the button with anticipation and excitement. As if me pushing the button made the thing move any faster. In the meantime, normal people crowded into the elevator with the maniac with his shirt off who looked like he really wanted to get to the first floor.

“L-I-E: Living Inside of Evil. Never let lies creep into your life, Mr. Smith.”

I pulled out $600 that would years later be but one of many numbers on a court-ordered debt collection, ran back upstairs, where Dr. Bass was watching church on T.V., volume up loud. As I opened the door, I could hear a preacher with a Southern accent speak on the book of Psalms.

“ Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.”

Standing up, Dr. Bass looked at me and began speaking in acronyms, adding to the surrealism of the situation.

“Mr. Smith, never forget — TRUTH. T-R-U-T-H: Truth and Righteousness Under The Heavens.”

Huh?

I looked on, trying to understand what exactly the fuck was going on here, nodding my head as if I followed, hoping he’d just hurry up and give me the drugs I was ruining my credit for.

“LIE, Mr. Smith,” he continued, “L-I-E: Living Inside of Evil. Never let lies creep into your life, Mr. Smith.”

With that, Dr. Bass took my wad of hundred dollar bills, handed me eight bottles of pills and a written prescription, and left my hotel room without saying another word.

I didn’t know Gina Micali. But I knew her .

Every few months I’d go to Vegas on a Friday, arrive on Saturday, meet Dr. Bass, who’d sell me bottles of pills and boxes of Fentanyl patches, along with written scripts for more of the same — filled in Nevada, per his instructions, at the Saddleback Pharmacy.

Six hundred dollars. Cash. Always cash.

Throughout the decade, I’d wake up many times surrounded by family and friends, just-past overdose, not-quite dead, with my family holding up bottles from Dr. Bass, looking me dead in the eyes, begging me, “Jason, who the fuck is this Dr. Bass and WHY IS HE PRESCRIBING YOU SO MANY PILLS ?”

Total drug addict thinking. Maybe — just maybe — a drug dealer won’t notice a hundred dollars missing.

“I bought them on the street,” I’d lie. “I’ve never met him.”

Sometimes a lie just sounds better.

I never ratted him out. No way. He was my lifeline, my savior, the one I went to in a pinch, my salvation. I spent many days watching the clock and awaiting Dr. Bass’s arrival, anxious in anticipation, for the man with the drugs.

“ Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.”

I once made the mistake of crossing Dr. Bass, a bad move in hindsight. Shit got real, real quick.

Dr. Bass never counted the cash after I gave it to him. He just stuck it into the bag he pulled the pills from, and walked out of my life until the next time I invited him in. Once, I shorted him a hundred bucks, thinking he wouldn’t notice. Total drug addict thinking. Maybe — just maybe — a drug dealer won’t notice a hundred dollars missing. About a half hour after he left my sketchy-ass motel room, my phone rang.

I will FUCK you so bad, that you won’t get out of the state of Nevada. You DO NOT want to FUCK with me, Mr. Smith. Do you understand me?

“Hello?” I answered, trying to hear him over the tweakers doing who-the-fuck-knows what in the next room. Long-gone were the days of the New York, New York Hotel & Casino. There seemed to be an inverse correlation between the amount of time I knew Dr. Bass and the quality of hotel room I could afford. I was shacked up in a place called the Gold Spike.

Seriously — that’s what it was called.

“Hello, Mr. Smith?” he said, in the same cool, calm, collected voice that he used with me in person.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, trying to play it cool, as if I didn’t do shit wrong. “This is Jason.”

“Hello Mr. Smith,” he said, the preacher giving a sermon, falling into cadence. “I was calling to let you know that if you try and FUCK me, I will FUCK you,” he told me, accentuating both “fucks” in a tone reminiscent of a civil rights leader speaking to a crowd. “I will FUCK you so bad, that you won’t get out of the state of Nevada. You DO NOT want to FUCK with me, Mr. Smith. Do you understand me? Do you hear me, Mr. Smith? DO NOT TRY AND FUCK ME.”

I paused on the end of the line, trying to think of what to say. I couldn’t think of anything, so a feeble “Yes, sir” fell out of my mouth. I felt like a kid being scolded by his principal, but in a setting where the principal might bury the body somewhere in the Nevada desert.

“Good, I’m glad we understand each other,” he said, falling back into his cool, calm, collected voice. “I will be in your area at 3:15, and I’d like to collect what’s mine.”

“… Umm, yeah, I mean, yes, sir. I’m sorry, I uhh…, it was an accid-”

“Thank you,” he stated flatly and matter-of-factly, cutting me off. “LIE. L-I-E: Living In Evil. Be careful, Mr. Smith.”

Click.

Her name was Gina Micali, and she was 38 years old. She was a jet skier, wakeboarder, snowboarder. She was an athlete who got hooked on the pills after an injury and found herself unable to stop.

I didn’t know Gina Micali, but I knew her.

She was found by her family, dead of a drug overdose, surrounded by pills supplied by Dr. Bass, who could only wonder, I imagine, “Who is Dr. Bass and WHY IN THE FUCK DID HE GIVE HER SO MANY PILLS?” She was buying pills like I was buying pills, except she was dead and I was not.

I hated a dead girl for having the nerve to die on ME. For putting MY doctor in prison.

I pictured her interactions with Dr. Bass, him speaking in acronyms, her pretending to follow along as if she knew what the fuck he was talking about. I envisioned her buying the pills in bulk, her getting that warm feeling in the pit of her stomach when Dr. Bass took the large bottles out of his little black bag. I imagined her scrounging up money any way she could, once every few months or so, to make the purchase she needed to make to stay well. I imagined her in a failing marriage due to her secret life, having a hard time explaining to her spouse why money kept going missing in $600 increments, confused, screaming “Jason, what the fuck are these pills hidden all over the house?”

And now she was dead.

I didn’t care about Gina Micali. Or her death. Or her family. Or her friends. That would have required an element of humanity that I’d long since sacrificed, sold to the first bidder without even so much as glancing at the price. No, what I cared about was MY program that had just gotten derailed. MY PROGRAM. Dr. Bass had an arrangement with ME, a system, that got ME what I needed when I needed it, that kept ME from getting sick.

For years I was able to get all the drugs I needed. Me, Me, motherfucking ME. And now that was all fucked up because this dead girl couldn’t do her drugs right.

I hated a dead girl for having the nerve to die on ME.

Drug addiction at some point requires an incorporation of the soul. Your addiction must at some point become its own entity, leaving you with limited liability for the dirty, conniving, manipulative shit done to maintain it.

For putting MY doctor in prison.

I’m the center of the universe, goddamn it. The sun of reality revolves around ME. I don’t care about you. I can’t. It’s nothing personal, but I simply cannot give a fuck about your feelings or your life or your anything when I’m using. It ain’t about you. This is about ME. I’ve detached myself completely from you and the rest of humanity.

Otherwise, how am I going rob you, pawn your shit, then help you look for it with a clean conscience while high on the drugs I bought with your Mac Book Pro? How else am I going to swear to God that I’m not high, despite nodding out at the dinner table, with a straight face? How else am I going to break promise after promise, let you down time after time, and force you to watch me die slowly, but still have the nerve to hit you up for $20 bucks at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning?

Drug addiction at some point requires an incorporation of the soul. Your addiction must at some point become its own entity, leaving you with limited liability for the dirty, conniving, manipulative shit done to maintain it. Addiction becomes its own life-force, granted it’s own personhood — Citizens United, baby — who does things the real you would never do. But you allow this to happen because the dividends you receive feel that fucking good.

No, I didn’t know Gina Micali, and I didn’t want to. I hated her because I was her.

“Truth.” That’s a very relative word when drugs are involved.

When you live in half-truths, sorta-truths, almost-but-not-quite truths, and flat out bullshit, truth is easily bent, fitting whatever conniving scheme we’re concocting.

Maybe Dr. Bass didn’t know me. But he knew me .

Sometimes truth can be built up for no other reason than the fact there’s a sick, fucked up part of us that likes tearing it down.

Dr. Bass stood stoic and proud in court on the morning of his sentencing, proclaiming:

“Truth — the spirit of truth — will not shut up. It will not let up nor will it give up.”

Perhaps there were threads of truth woven into my entire experience with Dr. Bass. Perhaps the lies he so vehemently implored me to avoid with his acronym sermons — maybe he knew the road I was traveling, because that’s the road he traveled, for a very different addiction.

Maybe Dr. Bass didn’t know me. But he knew me.

Gina Micali never made it out, never got that chance that for reasons that only God or the universe or nature or who-the-fuck-ever knows. Often times, I ask myself why I’m still here. Why me. Why did I survive the onslaught of America’s current opiate epidemic, making it out — barely, but alive — somehow with my liver still functional, my body not broken, not quite healed but at least the blood has clotted.

Truth is, I have no idea. I don’t get to know those things, and I’m ok with that. I have to be; that’s my only way of coping. Truth is, I escaped with my life, while Gina and Dr. Bass did not. Truth is, I’m sitting here writing while they’re sitting there rotting away, one with a pulse, one without. Truth is — I’m not even sure what that means. “Truth.” I’ve learned there’s no rhyme or reason to this shit. At least none that I can find that explains why I’m here and they’re not.

“Truth.” That’s a very relative term when drugs are involved.

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