Deals with Daisy // LN4

23 ~ Renewed Potential

Daisy's POV

I check my purse for the fourteenth time since getting in the cab from the train station, strangely nervous as I look at my bags beside me. I wasn't quite sure how it had all come about but after a day of work on Friday where I was still doing calls at midnight, I came downstairs to find not only Luke and his friends were drinking but also partying harder... harder than Lucy would permit me to be around.

She didn't say anything but she didn't have to as she came to where I was anxiously drumming my nails against the marble countertop of my kitchen while I waited for the takeout we had ordered to help fuel us into another couple of hours work. "He's a dick," she mutters and I shrug, ignoring the shouts as best I can but we both know I'm affected by seeing the addictive substance in my home two days in a row. I can't help it. Lucy was right when she said my trauma had trauma and addiction was one of the added ones, in particular cocaine.

I don't really know how it started - it was before Luke is all I know. It helped me to party and it helped me study. It gave me energy and an ability to get out of my own head for long enough to make friends but the issue with making friends while being high is that most of the time they're high as well. You constantly keep drawing yourself together for sessions and that's how I ended up taking it almost daily until Lucy caught me one day with some of it in my bag at work. I wasn't high and it wasn't uncommon but...

Anything was enough for me to lose my job and my reputation. Something she reminded me of as she pulled me into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet in that instance. The reputation I had worked so hard to build was threatened and that wasn't an option. So, I just quit it on the spot and that was two years ago, I'd had moments since where I'd had it once while out or something but for the most part, I was done. Withdrawal wasn't great but I never relied on it to get through the day, it had only ever just helped with the stress and with the focus... finding alternatives to that was the real issue.

Fortunately, with the therapy that Lucy urged me towards, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Once that was done and some untangling of some of my other issues, my therapist theorised that not only was I using it for the escape but that I had also been using the drugs to self medicate with, to help combat the symptoms and side effects of ADHD. Now I had my adderall and the need was lessened. I could focus more and I was calmer in social situations... I still missed the high though. A way to get out of my own head... a way to stop constantly catastrophising and running through every scenario in my mind to the point of near insanity.

Being with Luke had made the addiction worse, that much was true. It was beyond easy to get my hands on and actually was part of the reason I made the move to America almost permanent after I quit that scene. It was easier to avoid and stay away from because the only people I'd be able to get it from were in the same industry as me... and that wasn't the reputation I was willing to build for myself. The issue was that Luke had quit with me and although he'd also had moments of relapse, neither of us had done it for the last six months, or at least I think he hadn't. He quit doing it around me at the very least but I was gone a lot and honestly who was to say that he quit fully... it sure wasn't me. I wasn't around enough to see him to make that claim.

Anyways, when I woke up on Saturday, Lucy was awake and packing her bags, earlier than expected given she wasn't meant to leave until Sunday morning and that was when she offered the spa trip. Working and facials... it was my favourite thing to do and she knew it so we had headed to Bath - an hour outside of London. I threw in enough clothes to last me a few days as I kept in mind Lando's offer for Glastonbury and we escaped the house without a further look in any of the rooms the party had occurred in. I didn't even check on Luke in our bed, relieved that I'd been smart enough to lock our wardrobe / dressing room when I realised there was a party going on so it was easy for me to pack up.