Vicodin & Crutches (or, the treachery of the human heart)

About 10 years ago, I shattered my right wrist just above my hand. I was pretending to be a carpenter and fell about 18 feet off of a roof, woke up laying on the ground with my right hand on my right elbow…. Not one of my better moments. Eventually, after a surgery and some pretty intensive rehab I got my hand back, but before that, I learned what the term “vicodin vacation” means. Pill in, Pain gone; and not just the physical pain either. I can’t remember about 5 weeks of that autumn.

For me, dropping the vicodin was pretty easy. Took a couple days, and I weaned myself off. If the other painkillers I am addicted to were as simple life would indeed be an easy place.

But they aren’t.

We all have them in life, some more than others... Our heart knows what we need, acceptance, peace... love. Honesty. If we deny ourselves that, lying to ourselves to get by, it is only a matter of time until our hearts take over, looking for something, anything to fill the gap…Once it finds it, we are like junkies… disregarding the warnings in our heads, our heart latches onto it, and it gets us through.... trading a small piece of our soul for some peace that we know can’t last. With any luck it all falls apart before the real damage happens, when eventually we wake up and see we have traded too much; the numbness itself feels normal... We try and pull up; to go back, to somehow forget... and so the cycle repeats itself as we search for something to numb the carnage of the last painkiller…. to quote Thom Yorke, “all your insides torn to pieces, you just sit there wishing you could still make love.”

I suppose that this would be the part of the post where I give the eloquent solution, if I had one. All I can really say is that if you are early on in the journey, Try and listen to that small voice that says “maybe I shouldn’t do this”. Skip the memory, avoid the grief. If you are like me, it’s a bit late for that… all that is left is to either stare down your hypocrisy and force a correction, or maintain the cycle. Still unsure which path I am on.