Addicts Got Left Behind in the Pandemic

Please note: all my fellow addicts I have mentioned in this article gave explicit permission to be included and read over the article and gave consent for the details shared. Nothing in this article was shared without explicit permission.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Drugs, addiction, mentions of overdose, death, overdose deaths, myths on addicts that may be disconcerting or potentially triggering to fellow addicts, talk about drug use, mocking of addicts

I’m writing this article wrapped up in a blanket on my couch, seething with anger, fiddling with my one day sober chip as I grit my teeth against the desperate urge to relapse. Right now, I’m sitting on a Zoom call, educating a group of office workers on the dangers of drugs. My support group was asked if we could spare anyone to speak to them, worried that some people are getting high during office hours. I applaud the company for doing this; instead of criminalising their workers and punishing them, they did what they could to give them support. I don’t see this often and it’s a great step. If they have any employees that are addicts sitting in this conference room, then they won’t be subjected to the constant cycle of abuse that this world subjects addicts to — the constant shoved in jail, released with no support, for their addiction to rise up again, to go back to jail, and so on. For now, at least, and with luck, it’ll remain that way for them.

Their manager who set this up seems to think they’re all listening to every word me and my fellow addict are saying but we know better. We can see the way people are eyeing each other, a look in their eyes as if to say can you believe this, silently laughing with the slightest of smirks on their lips. Some people are listening, and they seem honestly amazed and scared of what we’re telling them, recounting safe for work stories of what we did when off our faces and how traumatic recovery has been for us.

But you can tell some of them really don’t care. If one of us dropped dead right now on this Zoom call due to our drug usage, they’d laugh. They wouldn’t give one single shit.

It’s a really common experience in these talks, it happens at least every one in two. But this is the last straw on my back that’s making me think back, over think, analyse everything that’s happened this pandemic.

And there’s one thing, sat flashing neon, staring me directly in the face.

We talk about how people with mental health issues got left behind in the pandemic. We talk about how disabled people, elderly people were left to suffer. The homeless population was thrown to the side. Marginalised communities, people with illness, everything; we all have been vocal about how they were left out and left behind and fight so they aren’t forgotten about.

But we did forget about a group: drug addicts were left behind, left to allow our addiction to claim us. No one is fighting for drug addicts, using or recovering, during this pandemic and it’s just slapped me in the face harder than someone trying to wake me out of a drug induced sleep.

I have been on and off drug recovery for two years now. Probably more; I only remember the times I was 7 months and 6 months before relapses; I know I’ve been recovering for more than 14 months but couldn’t tell you how long it actually has been.

I was around four months clean when I first relapsed at the start of March, as COVID locked down everywhere, took control away from everything. I spent days holed up in my closet, paranoid, hyped up off my face. When I fought my ass back out the corner and came back to recovery, gripping by the very skin of my teeth to not go back to where I used to be, I noticed a lot of my friends were off put by me. Less of them talked to me, isolating me already more than lockdown made me feel. Some of them admitted, they didn’t want to be friends with a “junkie”, others just blocked me in disgust, others were very audible about “lmaoooo druggies” on my Twitter timeline.

When my friends with eating disorders, severe depression, suicidal ideation, anything of the like, relapsed, the same friends ran to them. The same friends who demonised me helped them, lifted them up, wouldn’t let go of their hand, refusing to let them fall down the black hole that would consume them and cause them to lose their friend.

But when it was my relapse, when I fell down that black hole, they threw a lid on top and told me not to come out again. When I needed support more than ever — and I don’t mean people acting as a therapist, I mean, just for someone to send me photo sets of celebrities I like, people like “oh hey I watched that show you spoke about” or just “hey I found this tv show on google and it sounds like a show you’d like” — at the time I needed to not be alone, I watched the people who swore they’d always help me turn their back on me whilst very obviously being in a mind set where they could help people.

My addiction was already gripping onto me, digging its claws into my skin, making new holes to thread string through and make me its puppet again, and that threw me even worse. I was barely five days sober before I had another relapse. It took me every fucking inch of strength I could find, every inch of willpower, clawing my own skin open to get rid of those strings to manage to get clean again. It felt like I had to break my own neck in an emotional sense to get back out of there with no help, with no one to even throw me a rope to use, nothing. There was no one to just shine a light down that hole so I could see the holds for my hands, there was no one there to cut just one string that addiction was gripping me by.

Now don’t get me wrong at all. I understand people can’t help, or don’t know how and such. But I was actively seeing people who swore they would help me help others in relapse and make a mockery of me during my own. That’s different to being in the wrong mindset to help people or having trauma and not being able to help.

And I’m not talking about people with trauma or other recovering addicts. I’m talking about people who sat mocking their supposed friend at one of their lowest points, making jokes at their expense and acting as if they were less than human in a time they needed help to feel human.

And I’m not asking for people to save me. That’s only something I can do myself. All I’m asking is for people to loosen the chains gripping me slightly so I have the power to rip myself free from them.

After my relapse I pulled myself back. It was one of the worst times in my recovery that a relapse has been so bad; my relapses are usually pretty easy to bounce back from, one hit and I realise what I’m doing. But this was my worst yet; I still don’t know how I got out of it alone. I forced myself, I ran against the wall again and again till I started bouncing back, until I could get out of that stupid well filling with water and could get oxygen into my lungs instead of this murky, thick water that filled my lungs but had just enough oxygen in them that my lungs could pull the O2 out. It was never enough to really drown me, but enough to have my gasping every single breath. I did it. I got myself out even with people who I saw as best friends abandon me because I’m just some fucking junkie.

I went back to normal life. I attended my now on Zoom support groups. I sobbed my triggers out, screamed about how so many people abandoned me, how it hurt, how I didn’t even know how to handle this pandemic with my issues. I got support but no answers.

I started dying my hair again — hair dying has always been a very big thing for me. My hair colour and style are as much of a part of my personality as everything else. It’s something I never do in relapse, it’s another mark of recovery, shedding the old me that ruined that colour, bringing my confidence up. It makes me stronger, gives me a shield and spear. I brushed it off; I can’t rely on others to save me, of course, this shit is my own battle. If people are just going to stand there and watch me burn, I’m going to put on a hell of a show and charge ticketing prices.

I did fine for the rest of the pandemic from the middle of March to September. I started smoking probably more than I should in a time of a respiratory pandemic but it kept me sane. I forced myself to drink litres of diet coke, getting the addiction to wrap its acrid, slimy hands around bottle after bottle of cheap corner store pop and not the drugs.

On the 17th of September, I had another relapse. It wasn’t anything big; it was just one of those times I have a slip up and scramble over the edge of that hole before I fall back in, like Samara crawling over the edge of that damn well. It’s a dance I know pretty well, and it’s not the end of the world. I was coming down, I was lucid enough to understand stuff. I got a phone call from a friend in my support group; the friend who had never given up on me, who had literally slapped sense into me, dragged me to meeting after meeting and refused to let me slip away, who ripped bags of shit out my hand, who did everything to keep me clean or at least using as safely as I could do, had died.

He had seventeen years clean and it was his first ever relapse. He forgot about tolerance and took too much, overdosed on his girlfriend’s couch.

I remember my first thought was “how did he of all people forget about tolerance? He hammered into me again and again every relapse to limit what I took, be careful, my body isn’t used to the same amounts as when I was using”.

I spent the day just thinking, living through the emotions, cried on and off. I listened to his favourite songs about drug usage and recovery — one he adored was Toy Soldiers by Martika. I went to bed and got up the next day. I made myself breakfast because he always lectured me, always told me I needed to eat breakfast even if it made me feel ill. I had my toast, I had my morning smoke and coffee and watched the sun rise. I remember thinking how weird grief is. I remember feeling guilty. He’d texted me that day, just asking if I was alright, but I was too tired to be social and marked it as to reply to later when I’d had a nap. I forgot to reply. Next thing I know he was dead. I remember feeling guilty, wondering if I had replied would he have opened up? Was he in a bad place and just needed someone to talk to? Did he need to talk but didn’t want to accidentally trigger me and my tentative on and off recovery, and thus worded it more casually? If I’d replied would he still be alive?

The next thing I knew, it was the twenty first of September and I was convulsing on my living room floor, losing my mind. I only just managed to get to the bathroom to empty my stomach of whatever the hell needed to come out; can’t mess up mom’s expensive rug with my bullshit, right?

I look through my tweets from that time, right now, writing this and it’s obvious I needed support. I was essentially screaming for someone to talk to me, about anything. It was so obvious I was losing my mind. There’s one conversation in particular with a close friend about me waking up in some stranger’s apartment and having no idea what was going on. Turned out, I’d picked up a man who had good, non-laced drugs and we’d just banded together.

No one spoke to me, just that one friend. No one really asked me anything; no one just asked if I was okay, no one really interacted with me at all, only to use me as a source of educational tweets to retweet. My biggest interaction was someone asking me when I’d have a story finished, a conversation of about five messages. No one gave a shit that I was falling apart right there, no one cared I was essentially killing myself right in front of them. Again, I was left alone, floating along a river of death in one of the most isolating times the world has faced in my time alive, and with a mental illness that thrives off me being alone.

You know, I tweeted and told people I’d be on and off because a friend died and I wasn’t okay. When it was apparent that it was a fellow addict, no one said anything, no one liked the tweet, no one checked in on me. I see the same people who ignored me then give support to other friends when they’re faced with death. When my dog died in February, the same people gave me support and some found me articles on how to cope with it since it was my first ever pet death.

The only difference, the only difference there has been these times is that I’m an addict. That’s been the only difference every time. I could tweet right now in my online community, I’m having a panic attack could someone help or send pictures? Or I’m feeling depressed more so than usual, and the support rolls in. It’s only ever when it’s my drug addiction that shit goes silent, that people snicker, or tweet “lol again? [eye rolling emoji]”.

And this time, I’m not shaking it the fuck off. I’m angry. I’m rightfully angry because I see this so often. The same friends congratulate me every month I stay sober, but never want to help when I’m struggling. The same friends would hear the news of me dying from drug usage and it would be “we lost such a kind soul, we need to support addicts more” but when I need the support now, they have jack shit to say.

They can’t even find a cute picture of the celebrity they know I’m hyper fixated on and would make me smile. Is that so much to ask? Hey I’m having a rough time could you just send me a picture? It doesn’t sound like it but apparently, hey, it really is because people are too busy being disgusted.

Before my relapse on the seventeenth, I knew I was going to relapse. I could feel the strings tightening in my muscles, jerking me around and I tried to speak to my therapist about it. She informed me if I was using again then she’d have to contact the police for the “safety of myself and others”. I was backed into a corner. I’m an autistic, mentally and physically disabled, trans gay addict. Cops are not safe for me, and that’s not the only issue that the police would pose for me. I’d be forced into that constant fucking cycle of jail, no support, jail, no support, till something finally gave — probably an overdose — and broke the cycle. I couldn’t say shit to her without risking my safety and dropped it, robotically promising to talk to my sponsor, to do better, to not use again.

But the fact is even that is fucking prileged to be granted just the cycle when Black addicts are facing much worse. When they have to deal with so much more. Listen to Black addicts, using or recovering, on these topics. My experiences as a white addict are horrid but my experience is not universal and it can and is very much worse for non-white addicts.

And this is only my story as an addict in the pandemic.

My support group has seen so many people join — fourteen new people — over the course of March to now. We usually see around six new people a year. We’ve had a thirteen year old — yes, 13 — join us due to weed dependency to deal with the new schooling in the pandemic, all because someone told her she couldn’t get addicted and it was fun but no one warned her she can become dependent on the effects of it. We have two people joining us because no one warned them weed can and is laced with other drugs. All because they couldn’t get support during the pandemic and people not thinking.

I’m watching numerous of my Black recovering friends go through living hell because they aren’t comfortable to go to all white/mostly white support groups — and very understandably at that. We can’t find anywhere for them where they’re comfortable and don’t feel like a minority.

In the space of March to September, one of my recovery groups has seen 8 relapse deaths. In my first year, and from what they’ve told me before, we usually see 2–4 a year. We’ve seen eight in the space of six months. And none of us have had to get a chance to properly mourn; all we’ve gotten to do is force ourselves to regulate our emotions and wonder if we’re strong enough to not be the next one in the fucking coffin. Can you imagine what it feels like to see someone close to you die and you don’t get to sit and cry everything out because if you let those feelings dip too low without the proper support, you could be the next one in the coffin?

I won’t get to mourn for the friend who got me sober because when I tried, I went on a bender that left me with withdrawals so bad I thought this time the withdrawals were going to kill me. I survived it somehow, but I know that relapse would have been it for me if it went on longer.

And where am I, are we, supposed to go?

We can’t go to our therapists, if we’re lucky enough to have them, they’re threatening to call the cops on us. I only just got out of mine calling the cops on me because I can pretend. How many can’t pretend? Or would just get the cops called on them anyway because “just incase”?

An addict in our group almost got arrested going out during the lockdown to get her medical replacement to quell her addiction; they threatened to arrest her in her own front yard for dealing and going out in the lockdown — she’s only not locked up right now because her mother came out to explain after hearing the commotion.

The only support we have right now is nearly all white-majority or all-white using/recovering addicts. Where are non-white addicts supposed to go for support? We have online chat rooms, sure, anonymous and everything, but they’re overloading and a lot of us can’t access them because of it. Who gets first call at the support rooms and lines? People realising just now they have an addiction and need help, recovering addicts who are on the brink of relapse? A father calling because he doesn’t know how to stop his kid getting addicted when he found drugs in their room? Who do we prioritise in our circles?

In-home treatments! The closest to me is a four and a half hour drive and even then, again, who gets priority? The using addict who needs that room and me relapsing every few months are at an equal risk for death. Who gets the room? A using addict can use for years without one relapse, or die whenever. A recovering addict can recover for years and one relapse out of nowhere could take them out. Could you choose who gets the room?

But the sad thing is — this isn’t just a pandemic problem.

Our support circles are exhausted and burning low because of the strain the pandemic has put on us, but it’s always been this way.

Drug usage is a choice. Drug addiction is a mental health problem.

And every time, the past two years, I’ve seen so many fellow mentally ill people help demonise us. I remember one prominent time, I was in a therapy group for my depression and personality disorder. We were talking about artists who inspire us, and help us out of tough times. Someone mentioned a racist artist and said that they knew the artist was heavily problematic but it was the only music that really made them think and stop letting themselves fall down too far the depression whole. Someone else had a transphobic and homophobic idol; didn’t idolise them but their music helped. I spoke up and mentioned Eminem. Said I know he’s done some fucked up shit- and didn’t get to finish. I was immediately verbally dog piled on.

And it just makes me laugh, it makes me laugh so bitterly and pained and makes me fucking scream.

Because at the end of the day, Eminem is an addict. He said and rapped a lot of fucked up shit when he was using and the public watched it. They watched him go from that fucked up mindset, to getting clean (which is so much harder in public) and getting sober, and as he goes longer in sobriety, his lyrics have gotten cleaner. He makes reparations when he has to, calls out his own lyrics from that time, is visibly disgusted with himself but it’s never going to be enough, is it? Until the day he dies, it’s going to be he said fucked up shit up until 2007. No one cares what he does; it wouldn’t matter if he found a way to combat everything he used to sing about and make it all better, make it all disappear — he’s still going to be that 2007 hyped up junkie.

I see it all the time; people are allowed to like problematic artists as long as they respect their problematic issues if it helps them. As soon as it’s an addict finding solace in another addict’s music, we’re trash, scum of the earth. Eminem publicised to millions, maybe even billions, what addiction looks like, getting clean, struggling, coming to terms with the shit you did off your face, and becoming better. And I’m not saying his old music is something to idolise in any way — I’m saying a lot of addicts relate to it. Eminem’s I’m Not Afraid, back from when he first started battling addiction, was the only thing that kept me curled in a corner during my withdrawal, refusing to use again and take the feeling like my skin was fucking decomposing with every breath. It’s the only thing that kept me from not using anymore — it makes me want to strive for better. I want to be clean, I want to reach 12 years clean like he has. He makes me feel like it can be done. His music from recovery and onwards, like Monster scream my thoughts back at me, it keeps me sane.

And it happens with a lot of other addict rappers and celebrities. They fuck up, bad, publicly. Is it fucked up? Yeah it is. There’s no denying a lot of the stuff they promote when creating whilst using is damaging and I’m not going to pretend like it isn’t. Do they still mess up today and perpetuate harm? Yeah, some of them do. Some of them are still unlearning things or just don’t care and I’m not going to sit and say that’s okay in any form — but it doesn’t change how one song by them can help some addicts.

I see it all the time. People are allowed to follow transphobes, homophobes, racists, anti-semetics and so many more other horrid people because it brings them solace. They get frowned at but no one jumps on them. I’ve had my own times where I listen to a phobic artist and people have just “as long as you’re aware of the problems and you don’t give them a platform”.

But when it comes down to addicts finding solace in other addicts, even if we state “I illegally download the music so I don’t give them any money because they’ve abused their platform and said horrid shit and I don’t want to give further to that platform should they go back to that abuse”, we get jumped. Why are we not allowed the same solace as other mentally ill people?

Now, again, don’t get me wrong. People have every reason to hate Eminem and other addict artists who have used their platform to spread hate — and have every reason to hate every artist who has done this, issues or not. I’m not saying you have to stop hating him, or forgive him for what he’s said, or anything. My point is, where do people have the right to attack addicts for a few songs that help us keep sane? Why do fellow mentally ill people get to jump on us for having artists that help us strive and do better and fight our addiction? Especially when a lot of non-addicts have problematic artists that help them? Surely people should understand that? When someone makes you feel guilty for listening to a problematic artist, you feel guilty and it can spiral your depression. What do you think it does to us? With an issue that latches onto guilt and makes it the perfect opportunity to get high? Why do others get to do it to us as if our problems and solace aren’t as important? Why do we get treated like scum for having the same coping mechanism as others do?

And there’s another thing that comes with this — smoking.

Yeah, smoking is gross, it’s dangerous, and everything else. I have had four friends during the pandemic pressure me, heavily pressure me to stop smoking in the era of a respiratory disease. That’s fair. What’s not fair is that I’ve told them numerous times that I know if I quit smoking, I would be using drugs again, but I smoke whenever my urges to relapse rear their heads. It stops me from taking and, if I’m being frank, I’d rather have to deal with smoking related diseases in thirty or so years, than die in my closet of an overdose in a month. These friends know that, they say they understand, but because I hit a certain amount of months clean, they start pushing me to quit.

Drug recovery isn’t “hey I didn’t snort for a week guess I’m cured”. It’s a constant, life long battle. The only time I will be free of my addiction is when I’m dead. Even if I’m forty-seven years sober, one hit could spiral me back down to the rock bottom I woke up and realised I needed to get sober and needed help. I need to know I am secure in my recovery before I start removing my smoking from the equation. I need to know that stopping smoking won’t cause me to go back on whatever goddamn benders I used to go on. I need to know that, and my friends don’t get that. How is it fair that I get criminalised for smoking in my own garden for something that’s keeping me clean? Especially when half of the people pressuring me would give up on me and be horrendous to me if I relapse again? Why do people think their own personal opinions should come before my own recovery?

How is any of this fair? Why do people not take addiction seriously? And not just now in pandemic, not just laughing at us, or rolling their eyes and all of this shit. Why do we always get left behind?

Why are there not safe spaces for users? Not something to encourage people but somewhere with medical staff, somewhere where they can pass out and not die in the street due to hypothermia in winter? Why do we not have more mental health support? Why are we still treated like criminals when we’re struggling with a mental health problem? Again: drug usage is a choice, drug addiction is a problem that makes us all puppets, doing anything to get to the next high.

Why are we not taught that weed can be for fun and not addictive in its chemical make up but it can be addictive for people with mental health issues and/or an addictive personality? Why are people not warned about the issue of dealers lacing weed? 32% of my own support groups’ addiction issues have stemmed from weed; a lot of them wouldn’t be here if they’d been taught this before they started smoking it.

And why do we have so many myths about addiction perpetrated by non addicts who have no idea what they’re talking about?

I’ve been an addict since I was 15. Maybe 16. I definitely started at fifteen but maybe addiction didn’t really set in until I was sixteen. It’s taken me until twenty-three, just after this relapse to fully accept I’m an addict and I have problems.

I was too young, you can’t be an addict in your early twenties. I tried to break my foot (and only succeed in twisting my ankle and giving myself a limp for a week) to get prescription meds yeah, but I only did it once, so I’m not really an addict if it’s not a constant cycle, right? I didn’t wake up on some rotten mattress surrounded by other addicts sharing a needle, I never had that experience so clearly I’m not that much of an addict. I was addicted to my prescription meds, and my doctor prescribed them so clearly it’s not addictive behaviour since I didn’t get addicted to the hard drugs I did try. My dependency on weed wasn’t a warning sign of addiction because weed isn’t addicting! I’ve never shot up with a needle so it can’t be that bad because only real addicts use a needle; if you just smoke or snort, it’s fine. I fucked people for drugs but only other addicts and never a dealer so I’m not really showing traits of addictive behaviour to drugs. I could quit using for a few weeks when things were okay so clearly I wasn’t a real addict because I had “control”.

All these things were hammered into me by non addicts, By people who had no idea what addiction was. It took a recovering addict all of eighteen minutes to see me and go “you’re an addict and you need help”.

It took me over two years to take the first step and say “I am an addict” and fully believe it because I only just started unlearning these myths that are hammered into us all the time.

I got left behind by the mental health service who could see I was using my meds to get high and kept giving me them. I got left behind when they just cut me off when they said “no more highs for you” and gave me no support to try and deal with my addiction. I got left behind by my own friends when they fed me this bullshit about it’s only prescriptions. I got left behind in the system that saw me as some evil junkie who didn’t care about anything but myself when the truth is — I saw the shit I was doing and it killed me. I was internally screaming at myself to stop but the addiction had me on the ropes. I couldn’t stop until I hit rock bottom. It didn’t matter how many times people had terrifying moments wondering if I’d overdosed on their couch and had to try and slap me awake and beg me not to do it again. I had to hit my rock bottom to reach out for help.

And this is the other thing I hate. The only myth non addicts have right is “once an addict always an addict”. Yeah, I will always be an addict. In recovery, hopefully, from the time of writing this article, but I will always have this mental health issue I have to fight. But the way non addicts say it, they mean, I will never be more than that junkie who only cared about myself, ripping open doors and screwing whoever to get what I needed. I’m still dealing with all the shit I did when I was off my face, I’m coming to terms with that and I am more horrified at myself than people are when they find out the details. I never want to go back there and it’s one of the main things that help keep me clean. I was like that, there’s no denying that but it doesn’t mean I’m always going to be that horrific person I am when the drugs get into my system.

Addicts have been massively left behind, let down, and abused, throughout this pandemic and always have been. This isn’t anything new to me to comprehend, every time my thoughts come round to this. We’ve always been left behind.

I’m nowhere near of a fucking poet or wordsmith but I have this moment, I have this article and this article gives me a voice, so whilst I have the moment: why?

Why do you leave addicts behind? If you don’t want people using drugs why don’t you support us so we can get proper help? Why don’t you push for support groups to be more inclusive? Why don’t you fight for us to be able to get help safely without the prison cycle? Why don’t you decriminalise sex work and drug usage so using prostitutes can be safe whilst they get through their addiction?

Why do you all leave us to rot and act like you’re better when a lot of you harbour smoking addictions, caffeine addictions, an addiction to sweets and chocolate? We’re the same, the only difference is our addiction is more criminalised. Why do you leave us to decompose in our living rooms, our closets, in the middle of the street and look down on us when a lot of you go drinking and give yourself alcohol poisoning for fun?

Why do we have to be left behind to kill ourselves when with just some more fighting from the entire mental health community, things would be more inclusive, easier for us to get help, safer for us to get help?

We’ve always been left behind, and it’s something I’ve always seen happen and laughed bitterly and cried about every relapse but this time, I’m rightfully angry and I’m going to scream it from the rooftops.

Why are we always left to rot?