Confessions of a Chemfiend: Trauma and Addiction in New Vegas

Confessions of a Chemfiend: Trauma and Addiction of New Vegas

 Pip Boy #234373

Recovery Journal #17

                 It's day forty seven of my stay at the Follower's safe house. I begin this entry with my typical disclaimer: I dislike doing these journals, all the same, they are required for my stay at the safe house and the doctor thinks they are healthy for me. The doctor recommends that I write out my story now that I have taken the time to get more emotionally stable and learn coping skills. He says if I begin to feel too triggered and feel the need to harm myself, others, or use chems that I can stop. The fact is that I have been putting it off too long, I know that I can get by with that excuse for a while, but the doctor will never entirely stop nagging me about the issue until I get it done. And, as the doc says, it's safer to get triggered in here than out there. So as long as I don't flip out, I should try to disarm the volatile bomb that I have become.

                  So I'll start from the beginning. I grew up outside of Primm during the beginnings of the nuclear holocaust. In many ways my family was better prepared for the fallout than the average person. We had a ranch so we naturally we had stockpile of food, gas, firearms, and water. On the other hand, this painted a big target on us for scavengers and raiders. Fortunately we didn't fare as poorly as many other ranches, since we were fairly secluded. Nevertheless, I saw my father and uncle shoot a few men when I was just a boy. A group of scavengers shot one of our cattle and were trying to butcher it and drag it off before we caught up to them. My father was going to try to negotiate with them and persuade them to give up their weapons in return, but they open fired with automatic weapons. We didn't own any fancy military guns, but my family had been shooting competitively for years. My father and uncle took them down with their lever action hunting rifles. One of the men was still alive when we walked up to him, though he was gurgling blood with every breath. My uncle handed me a revolver and told me to finish the job, that it was time to toughen up. I remember shaking as I cocked the hammer, and pointed the gun. My father, however, caught up to us and took the gun from my hand, and punched my uncle in the face for the suggestion.

"He's got to learn eventually if he's going to survive," my uncle said.

"Those who live by the sword, die by the sword," my father replied.

                     Now I know that's mild compared with the trauma many people have faced living city limits of New Vegas or really anywhere in the Mojave wastelands, but I'm told that's considered an exceptional event by pre- fallout standards. It would have been considered a major trauma, a loss of innocence, a formative event, and so on and so forth.

                  Though my life would've been a lot worse if my father hadn't intervened, or if I was raised by someone mean and cynical like my uncle. My father was strong as an ox and courageous, yet just and merciful. Many times my uncle criticized him for taking in people from the community and sharing resources. My uncle pulled me aside one day and told me swindlers were taking advantage of my father by conning him with their canned sob stories. I don't care what my uncle said, my father convinced me that there are still good people in this world and I should aim to be one of them.

                  Probably the real formative event in my life happened when I was 15 when my father got sick with radiation poisoning. I had already lost my mother to cancer. I thought if there were any justice in the universe, why wasn't it my uncle, or raiders, or fiends that got sick with radiation? It was a childish thought, for I shortly learned that radiation falls on the just and the unjust. Somehow I just expected that bad things shouldn't happen to good people.

"Rusty," my father said, beckoning me to his bedside, "I may not be long for this world, but whatever happens, I want you to keep a good head on your shoulders and a kind heart. Life is not fair, but hardships allow the righteous to show their true colours. I know you have a true heart, just like your pa."