In Retaliation

It’s the forms that tipped me off, you know the ones in the doctor’s office they make you fill out every single goddamn time you go in.  I just assumed we all lied, everyone in the whole world lies on those forms.  Maybe not the people who don’t do anything bad, but then I think they probably lie on some part of it right…like maybe how many days a month they think of self harm.  If we all lie the doctors must be onto us. They are supposed to be smarter than us, although they could think “why would anyone lie to their caretaker? It would make their care ineffective”.  If everyone lies there have probably been studies on the range of lying and then they can average out what is actually the truth.  So if you say on the form you only drink one drink a day and you only smoke a pack every three days, and you only partake of one recreational drug very occasionally, they know you’re lying right and they just apply a margin of error and that’s why they look at you like they know the truth and are disappointed in you. So I started thinking it was a waste of time to lie on the form, but I couldn’t write down the truth.  When you write it down like that it looks worse than it actually is and you want to use all the time in the appointment explaining how much of an addict you are not.  They recently began this new well child thing where they ask your kids all these questions about you also.  Shiver. I do not want my kids to feel shame about me. If you don’t have kids don’t worry they still ask the kids if anyone they are acquainted with does, you know, DARE stuff.

It seems as if I have always known about addiction. I am sure it helped that I grew up in the Regan era, thank you war on drugs for making them even cooler.  Do you guys remember that fried egg commercial? Brilliant.  Anyway that isn’t why I knew, I have the distinction of coming from a family of addicts.  Don’t picture trainspotting or the inner city.  My family’s drug of choice was meth.  Meth seems to be the poor white rural person’s drug, I am not trying to be exclusive here, drugs do not discriminate, they leave that to the doers. I grew up in a mill town. The mill was the biggest job provider with the county being a close second.  Our mill was running 24 hours a day like most mills.  This is before the whole tree sitting thing gained traction. There was a culture inside the mill and meth was prevalent in that culture.  Actually I would like to back up a second. I am pretty sure my grandma did meth and she wasn’t anywhere near a mill until much later in her life. Forget about me trying to explain the goddamn mill.  People are social creatures they like to experience what their fellow man is experiencing. It’s why abstinence has not and will not ever work in mass numbers. It’s not like I was toddling around the house and I found pipes or little baggies or anything.  It was one of those things you just knew.  Adults can be dumb sometimes and they forget how knowledge seems to beam itself into a kid.  Kids don’t have to see or be told it just appears in their consciousness. Although there was this one time my sister and I were in our dad’s friend’s house, they were probably a tax bracket above us, and I was snooping around and opened the cabinet under the coffee table.  There was a mirror with a razor and a can full of white powder.  Again I am not sure I was old enough to know that it was cocaine, but I definitely knew I shouldn’t be anywhere near it.