Meth takes ahold for awhile....and then a new beginning

I have thought a lot over the last year plus, and, for sure over the last few days after putting my dog Cheba down after having her in my life for 12 of her 13.5 years she was alive.....I am fortunate. While you have read about my crazy childhood, and, what became a wild ride of an adulthood with so much in it, I did manage to turn a corner and find healing. I found a life in recovery from addiction and I get healing for depression and anxiety.  With that life, and I know this is true for many who have had a similar path, we can walk through life's struggles in a different way.  A struggle that might seem insurmountable to some, well, it's just not for me.  Trust me when I say, the loss of my dog Cheba, it is hard, it truly is. I have cried so much since Friday. I have wept over the loss of the first dog I have had in my life for that long. I have also been ok with it too.  It's a loss that I can overcome knowing I have the tools and support to walk through the pain.  That ability truly has come from my life as a whole. I have lived a life where I was at the bottom rung of what life could hand a person, and I have climbed back up.  I am grateful for my life as a whole really.

Yesterday we left off with me beginning use of meth.  This drug, much like when I first used crack cocaine, was unlike anything I had experienced before.  The first time I used meth I felt invincible. My feelings of depression and anxiety; gone.  My issue with massively low self-esteem; gone. This was a drug, similar with it's effects of crack cocaine, but, much more powerful and longer lasting. Literally, one good hit could last all day. For the same $20 that would get you one rock of crack cocaine that would last you an hour, well, with meth, it would last you 2-3 days at first. When I first used meth and had no tolerance it was a game changer.  

Now, just like crack cocaine, this initial euphoric experience was short lived. One massive drawback with meth was the crash.  With meth you stay wide awake, you are on the move, you expend massive amounts of energy.......and than, you crash. I don't know exact days I stayed up on a run during this time, but, easily a week or more. Yes, up, the entire time. After so long you would just fall out....pass out....your body after a period of time says enough.....and you sleep for days. When you wake......it is what is termed being 'dope sick'.  It was the polar opposite of the initial euphoric high....polar opposite times ten. 

I was back to staying at Gerry Emmerson's again during this time and I remember well coming to on that couch and the overwhelming feeling of emotional and physical sickness.  Now, here's the rub, the only thing that could life me out of it, or so I believed, was more meth. That is, in a nut shell, how the next two years went for me. This cycle repeated itself several times from the time I started using meth until I started trying to quit in late '95.  The quitting was incredibly hard, much harder than the starting.  

I consider these to be some of the darkest days of my life. I did things I never would have believed I would do, spent time in places I wouldn't want anyone to ever spend time in, and I behaved in ways I shudder to think about now. At the end of one run I found myself now a convicted felon.  That moniker was something I never in my life thought would come true for me. Yet, there I was, now a convicted felon.

During the run with meth I, thinking about it now, turned the tables a bit on Lyn Gilmore. He always flaunted his money and I, during this incredibly high period of my life, stole his credit cards.  I am not saying this to say I am proud of this in anyway, I am not. It just is what it was. He had this massive sleeve of credit cards that he always liked showing me and when I was high on meth I took two of them and started using them. My first felony arrest came inside a Nordstrom in Tacoma Mall. I remember the day and the feelings I felt. Complete embarrassment as I was handcuffed and taken to jail. Interestingly enough he never pressed charges and I only ended up with a felony conviction for possession of meth. I remember glimpses of being in court and having no experience with anything other than traffic court for multiple fines and such, it was a whirlwind.  I just remember being told all that goes with  being a convicted felon. I wish I could say it stopped there and I decided to turn things around, but, it didn't. It took more time.

I will never forget an experience that was a moment in time where I knew if I didn't get out of the meth world I was likely going to be dead. I had been dating a girl who's house was a dope house in Tacoma.  In this house, and I will spare you the details of how disgusting a place it was in all ways, for whatever weird reason we always did our drugs upstairs; it's just how it was.  One fateful night, around Christmas of '95, we had decided to be downstairs and try to be normal. We were even watching tv and had put up a Christmas tree. I will never forget the sound of the car pulling up.  It had a loud exhaust and it rings in my mind as I type this. It was normal for people to show up all the time so at first it wasn't a big issue.  Yet, no one came to the door. Shots rang out.....bang, bang, bang!!!   Massive chaos followed.  Screaming came from the girl I was seeing, and something hit my brain enough to grab the phone and hit the floor calling 911.  The two kids in the bedroom on the same floor started screaming when their mom did. There was one other person there with us who also was on the floor by now. 

I could still hear the car outside.....this was the most scared I had been in my entire life. The 911 operator kept me on the phone while officers were dispatched. She said to stay on the phone until police arrived.  I was frozen......I could still hear the car and was just waiting for more gunfire.  The dispatcher, after what seemed like forever said police were in front of the house......I could still hear the car........she said the police were coming to the door, stay on the phone with her until I opened the door for the officers.  I heard the knocks and was still scared to death because I could still hear the car......the dispatcher said it was the officers I could open the door...I heard them identify themselves right outside.....I opened the door.

Now, there they stood, Tacoma Police officers, who were responding to a house they had been to many times before.  This time with reports of shots fired.  They were skeptical at first I am sure.  The car I could still hear right before the door opened, it was gone. It was dark and while one officer was talking to us another stepped into the front yard and shined his flashlight across the front of the house......their were bullet holes throughout the second floor. They came in the house to look upstairs. 

This is when my fear of having just got lucky, real lucky, for having been downstairs instead of upstairs, was now worried we were all about to be arrested when the police looked upstairs. There was massive drug paraphernalia all over upstairs. For whatever reason, maybe because they felt a bit of sympathy for us on that night, they didn't.  We had big mirrors up there and they had all been shattered with bullets.  Now, I wish I could tell you what happened on that night was enough and was the catalyst for me to change.  It wasn't, but, I can tell you it was certainly the start. I have that night journaled.  It, and others instances, where I experience craziness along the way, where I did think to myself if I didn't find a way out I would end up dead or in prison.

So, to shift this story, to the beginning of the turn around for my life, I tell the story of when I had been arrested, again, for warrants that were out in my name for burglary. I had truly already started trying to turn things around.  I did want to stop using meth and did want to change my life. I had started seeing a girl who was helping me and I was staying at her place off and on.  She did not use drugs and rarely drank.  My use of meth had lessened dramatically and I was working as a laborer for a guy. My Grandma Turco got a hold of me one day and said detectives had came to Gerry's place looking for me.  I was scared shitless. Even with that fear racking my brain I went down to the Tacoma Police Department and was ready to turn myself in for whatever it was they wanted, but, to no avail.  I couldn't get any answers.  It wasn't until a few months later that I was arrested for what they had been wanting to talk to me about.  I was arrested on a warrant for residential burglary.  I will never forget being in Pierce County Jail and truly believing my gig was up.  Even though I had been trying to turn things around, it was to late. I was going to be in jail for a long time

As I sat in Pierce County Jail it really sank in the mess my life had become. I had my first felony conviction and was likely going to have another. I was completely humiliated. I truly believed I was done. But, you can call it God, or fate, or whatever, I was not done yet. As I was sitting in jail my name was called out... "Douglas, bail has been posted". I was shocked.  Seriously, completely shocked. Why would anyone want to bail me out?  Well, my sister believed I deserved a chance to get things turned around. Her and her husband at the time put their house up to get me out of jail.  I had been staying at their place for a little bit and they decided I deserved to be on the outside trying to do the things needed to face whatever I may end up facing in the courtroom.

I can tell you, from that fateful day in December of 1995, to this very day, is where I truly started my journey as a person who's life was a complete mess to that point, to, what it is today. I have an amazing life today that is full in so many ways. I am kinda excited to continue blogging this journey now that we are coming out of the real dark period of my life. I get to do so many things that are good today, and, really it is because my sister did what she did for me in that time period. 

I want to close with this for this blog. There is always hope. Mine is a story that has many dark periods where I didn't have hope; I just didn't.  I felt that I would never get out of so many situations in my life even before addiction took hold of my life; that I was destined for a life of sadness and constant chaos. But, I can also tell you, it is because of people along my journey who lifted me up when I wasn't able to do it for myself.  My brother Bob, he has always been one of my biggest champions....always giving me the message that I could do great things. Jonny Revell, even with his passing at such an early age and critical juncture in my life, he had such a positive impact on my that is in my life to this very day. Vern Brown and Kevin Ruoff, who, even with my past, gave me a shot in my early years of recovery for a career that was amazing for the 8 plus years I was in it.  The many people within systems that did what I term "they gave a shit".  Social workers, law enforcement officers, probation officers, counselors, and more, all who looked me in the eye along the way and said they believed in me. 

I tell families now, who have family members in active addiction, don't ever give up hope.  You have read to this point my crazy ride, and, I am the first to admit, I am nobody special really.  Sure, I have skills and abilities, but, what I am saying is I am just a kid from the streets of Tacoma who hasn't been handed anything, who has faced massive barriers along the way, and, here I stand. You just don't know when it could turn around for someone; you just don't.  If you look at my before and after below you can clearly see in my before, that I was easily someone who many rightly probably said "he's not gonna make it"......but, here I stand.  

Why?  Because of people along the way that gave a shit. People who set healthy boundaries with me for sure when drug and alcohol use was out of control, but, also didn't completely give up on me.  Systems that provided me, multiple times when needed, with the resources to heal from a substance use and mental health disorders. Employers willing to hire a guy who, in my early days, many might not have hired.  But, they were willing to hear my story and see the changes I was making to live a healthy life. 

Tomorrow I will tell the story of me going from the picture on the left to the picture on the right.