The Hole Within

CHAPTER 32

Dave dumped me. He gotten back together with his old girlfriend. At Diane's urging I decided it was time to get off drugs. I would be entering drug rehab in three days. I still had half a bottle of pills, and certainly I could not waste them. I went on a blowout drug binge. Three days to go through one hundred and twenty pills. I was giddy at the thought. No more rationing them out. I took the task seriously. I was still a perfectionist. Forty pills a day - that I could definitely do. I attended my last session with Diane before rehab so high I was stumbling. My words slurred together, my movements were uncoordinated. She spent four hours with me talking to keep me conscious. 

Though Lysa was drugged and incoherent, the other personalities that came out were perfectly sober. (Side note: Brain scans on persons with multiple personality disorder of show completely different brain activity and chemistry from one personality to another. I had had such a brain scan at UVMC on one of my admissions. It is common for different personalities to be right or left handed, near or far farsighted, know different language than the host personality, or even be male or female. Due to the different brain chemistry, it is possible for the host personality to be intoxicated while the alternate tests dead sober.) By now Kandy was working with Diane to protect me from myself and from the personalities who wanted to die. They worked out a careful pact to keep me safe. While I was waiting to go into rehab, Kandy would carefully monitor the number and frequency of the pills. Such a pact with Kandy was not uncommon. Diane frequently employed her to keep me safe for myself when I became suicidal or had been cutting or burning.

I exhausted what was left of my pills in the parking lot of rehab. Already flying extremely high I swallowed the last six tablets with two Phenergan chasers to keep the pending nausea at bay. Rehab was more like boot camp. Almost all the time had scheduled meeting and therapies. I crashed down off the pills and was miserable. I had not bargained for them taking me off everything including the Xanax and Halcion! I was given a Clonidine patch to help with the withdrawal symptoms. The first phase of narcotic withdrawal is constant yawning and runny nose. Stomach cramps and restless legs came next. My legs would jerk and the muscles would spasm painfully. On top of that I had what they call rebound anxiety from the Xanax withdrawal. I sweated and shook, cramped and jerked and through it all I was expected to participate and all the daily activities. Communal morning meetings, one half hour break followed by two hours of group therapy, one half hour break, lunch, then art therapy, one half hour break, one hour of individual therapy, one half hour break and so on. The only real down time was after dinner except for the nights we attended Narcotics Anonymous, which was a requirement. I had been to a couple in the outside world but these were far more intense. By then I was just struggling to hold myself together. I would smoke cigarette after cigarette trying to relieve the all-consuming anxiety. Sleep was next to impossible. I was never able got to a peaceful place in rehab as my anxiety was always amped up. Sobriety sucked! I had no idea how other people did it. I could not imagine how I could go through life with all these raw feelings and high-tension anxiety.

When I got out I really tried staying clean, though I still drank. When I had my next appointment with Dr. Bevans I told him I did not want the Xanax or the Halcion. It had been way too difficult to get off those. He switched me to something else and I accepted the scripts. I looked at them and noticed that I had a script for my normal two hundred and forty tablets of narcotics. I felt a rush of excitement and fear as I folded the small papers and stuck them in my purse. I could just not fill it. Or maybe I would fill it only take one or two if I really needed them for the headaches they were prescribed for. I would have called Diane but I was afraid she would make me give the script to her and it was too valuable. I struggled with myself as I headed to the pharmacy. I was supposed to go to a meeting when I struggled like this but, I rationalized, I did not know where they might have one. My hands sweated it as I walked to the counter. My head was full of a sound like rushing water. Just in case, I rationalized as I handed over the script. It did not mean I had to take any. I write:

My Friends

Enslave me

So I can be

Free

Capture me

So I can roam

Kill me

So I can

Live.

My sobriety lasted four days before I gave in to the lure of the brown prescription bottle. I was just going to take one but by headache was pretty bad so I took three. The warm narcotic glow enveloped me. I floated away the afternoon, losing count of the pills I took to maintain the high. The next day it was business as usual with the pills. I was home. Once again life was booze, pills, depression, therapy, cutting and burning. Diane began to see me two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. The din from the voices inside was maddening. Most prominent were the voices of personalities who wanted death. Again, I became acutely suicidal. Eventually, with no other choice, Diane instructed me to go to the hospital. She had arranged my stay in the locked unit. I did not want to go but Diane told me she would not continue seeing me unless I did.