I didn’t have much sleep last night. I wasn't going to due to court this morning, but I got even less than I had thought I would. Because I got a call around midnight, and again around 1:30am and again around 3:30am. Reports of intruders trying to break into the Liahona Home.
Let's pause.
Meth damages your brain, and the effects last years afterwards. And I don’t mean the way PSA commercials and after school specials and your guidance counselor blathered on about. Not the faked and trumped up “damage” of “just one toke” turning you into a jazz playing ne’er do well or violent sexual maniac. Those well meaning people do more harm than good because by lying about the supposed damage of that stuff, they condition kids - who are later adults - not to believe the real dangers of the other drugs.
Meth does an awful lot of damage, and it’s damage that is a long time - if ever - in healing. Yes, we all know of the tooth problem. But there’s also the problem of the pleasure center being nearly completely destroyed, so that it can take a year or two after quitting meth before it heals enough so that the person can feel anything approaching pleasure again.
Pleasure from flowers, a child’s laugh, a loved one’s smile, a good book, an inspiring sermon - regular people who’ve never done meth can get a lot of pleasure from such things, the recovering meth addict, not so much. In fact, it’s that lack of pleasure in that first year or two that usually drives them back to meth.
Pleasure from flowers, a child’s laugh, a loved one’s smile, a good book, an inspiring sermon - regular people who’ve never done meth can get a lot of pleasure from such things, the recovering meth addict, not so much. In fact, it’s that lack of pleasure in that first year or two that usually drives them back to meth.
They’re physically not addicted, but they desperately wish to feel something again, and there’s only one thing that’s going to activate their much abused pleasure center - more meth.
Past that, meth makes one intensely paranoid. It can make you out and out delusional. In the TV show “Breaking Bad”, a show that improperly glorified meth and at times made it seem remarkably easy to come off of, they did have a scene that I had to ruefully chuckle over.
It was where Jesse, a twenty something smoking a lot of meth, was looking out the window nervously, fearful in advance of he knew not what, when he saw his worst nightmare coming down the road. Two big, bad bikers, riding their hogs right up to his house, and decked out in leather, dirty jackets and assorted weaponry.
They got off their hogs and started strolling up to Jesse’s door, one holding a big machete and the other tossing a hand grenade up in the air and catching it, up in the air and catching it. You just knew they were going to mess up Jesse bad, if they even let him live.
Jesse didn’t waste any time. He ducked out of sight, scooted across the living room, and was out the back door. Jumping over fences and running down the street as fast as he could go.
Then the camera flashes back to what he saw, and you see two bicycles leaning against a tree and two Mormon missionary teens knocking on his door, one holding scriptures, the other some tracts!
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| "Would you like to hear about our Lord and Savior?" |
So at the Liahona Home we're down a guest, and of the other three still there, one was visiting family and one was working late shift.
Leaving one poor guest there all by himself. Except that while he looks like he's really tough - and he is - and he looks like he could break you in half - and he could - he can't stand being alone at night.
He thinks he hears things. And so he turns on all the lights and the TV. Which I don't mind. But then it gets worse and he calls me, sure that someone is trying to get in.
I go over and check all around the outside of the house with him, feeling odd, as I'm probably only 1/5th of his fighting ability, if that. Then I go in with him and make sure all the windows and doors are secure.
Then I check the basement. And then the bedrooms again. Then chat a bit, discussing the odds of any return visitors, while knowing there were none. But like most, he can know he has this affliction and still not know it. A kind of, “Yeah, yeah, I know I can hear things, but this wasn’t that, this time it really was someone trying to break in.”
You cannot know, if you’ve not met him, how unlikely it would be for anyone to be dumb enough to risk breaking into this man’s home. He’s an ex-con, and looks like an ex-con. If any were to try to disturb his fretful sleep, it would be well for them to bring many friends. Many.
Having then assured him that I'd be sleeping in my clothes - I did - and so could get over there fast if anything goes wrong, I left him in the living room with the TV on and came back over here. And repeated this three times.
And while we’re always to take full measure of personal responsibility, I know another factor in his issues. Prison. Prison given for drugs, prison given for too much for too little, prison gave out like candy so that we've more of us in prison than the People's Republic of China, the former USSR or the current North Korean Hermit Kingdom.
And the solitary confinement that is used indiscriminately as a tool. Solitary that breaks men's spirits and minds. It's not about being tough, it does that to varying degrees to all who have to suffer it. If you doubt it, lock yourself in the bathroom on a weekend at 6am (without watch, book, phone, tv or radio) and see how long you can stay.
And if you want to tell me you stayed past noon, don’t bother, I won’t believe you. Not without an unusual resolve.
Solitary - not the sodomy that our country remarkably finds so funny to laugh at in movies and on TV - is the real problem in prison. Because it is the institutional “problem”, the problem that poses as a solution.
He’s been to prison. And where the meth abuse then leaves off and the State torture picks up, who can say? Either by itself would give a man paranoia for years afterward. Both? I guess it doesn’t matter. But as a side note, as a society we need to recognize solitary for the 8th amendment violation it is and get rid of it.
Now, oddly - or not so odd, because these problems are just the result of previous meth abuse and prison - he’s a great guy otherwise. Kind. He volunteers on various projects to make the sober living home better. Gentle. He deliberately did not fight a guest we had who one night tried to pick fights with every other guest. That guest succeeded in getting the others to fight him, but not this man.
This paranoid guest works all day, then goes to an AA meeting, then some TV and dinner, and then to bed. Which when the other guests are there - or even just one is there - is fine. But when it's just him...then I'll get a call. Usually about someone breaking in. Or about suggestions for projects he could help me with.
It's just him not wanting to be alone. And it saddens me that this is what meth really does to a man, more so than the loss of teeth good for a laugh on a TV show. It saddens me that this is what our State’s “rehabilitative” and “correctional” centers do to a man, more so than the “who dropped the soap” nonsense good for a laugh on a TV show.
And it saddens me that there's not more I can do for him. I wish I could convey to those who’ve not experienced any of this just how hard it can be for some to recover, even when they are 100% committed to recovery. Sometimes...sometimes it is possible to do too much to yourself.
No, I don’t believe that it is ever impossible to come back from the precipice. I believe that redemption is possible for everyone, so long as they shall draw breath. I firmly believe in the truth of Romans 10:13 that says, “For whomsoever shall call upon the name of the Lord they God, shall be saved.”
It’s true. But...sometimes, an addict or alcoholic can put himself so far down that it’s awfully hard to climb up when the first mile of the climb is only going to get you a bit nearer to where one day you might be able to see a glimmer of light far above you. And where it’ll be years more of climbing just to achieve the level that we’d expect of an uneducated hillbilly in a trailer.
They say that an addict has to be “sick and tired of being sick and tired” before finally giving up and getting help for real. True. But it’s a crying shame how much endurance some of us alcoholics and addicts can have before we’re sick and tired of that. Before we stop digging a burial hole for ourselves so deep that we’re speaking Mandarin towards the end.
Some guests I look at and think, “He can get back on track. Young, time to recoup losses, good basic upbringing, reasonable education.” Others? I fear greatly, for I know that it will take an enormity of effort and the “success” at the end will be the least society has to offer in terms of housing and status.
Which is especially sad, as the effort expended to get even that will exceed in some cases the effort of a normal person to achieve a house with a three car garage and jacuzzi in back.
Which is especially sad, as the effort expended to get even that will exceed in some cases the effort of a normal person to achieve a house with a three car garage and jacuzzi in back.
If only teachers and parents would describe this to their kids. If only the real dangers of drugs and alcohol were teached and preached. If only it could be conveyed to kids what a bleak and hellish time killer, dream killer and life killer these “pleasures” are.
Ahh, well. I must go to court again now. The City of Springfield, ever the business and opportunity and hope killer needs to play with me again on a matter long resolved. I’ll try not to be as feisty with them as my lack of sleep is encouraging me to be! (You see, that check I mailed them - and can prove I mailed - they lost. Idiots. But guess who will pay for their mistake? Uh huh.)
