62. We Drove Them Wild

At the heart of addiction lies trauma. It’s an answer to the question, How can I live with such pain? My love affair with needles was a problem-solver and like all dysfunctional relationships it began with the explosive belief that I’d found the one, and ended with my world reduced to a pinprick. For three years I travelled back and forth to Australia using crystal meth and cocaine to make life feel better and for a while it worked. I was stick thin and unapproachable but to a degree I was happy. My friends and I partied in remote and beautiful places, liberated in trance for days at a time, pounding the earth, our bodies loose, all rules abandoned, an ironing board for a bar, an inflatable for a pool party, ketamine and vodka for breakfast, we drove them wild. I made friendships that I cherish to this day and I see how close I sailed to the edge and it takes my breath. It was magic and it was terrible and we’re lucky to have had it and come out of it alive and some of us didn’t. But temporarily it solved the problem, How can I live with such pain? while not telling me what the pain was, a deal that by the third year was just me and my gear in a room and the most fleeting of escapes. Because addicts are chasing the feeling of finding the answer and it’s never as good as the first time. By the third year I’d cut all connections, what did I need other people for, they just got in the way. I cannot pass a parked car in a lay-by without thinking the people inside have stopped for a taste and when I think of the ritual my cells remember. I have lain in the bath and apologised to my body and my veins have stood up in my arms and my blood has pulsed visibly and let me be clear, the body does hold the score, it is conscious, it forgives and it remembers everything. The end came at a party in Australia, not an outdoor trance delight but a room in a house where we’d gathered, the people there linked not by friendship but by method. I was lying in a bed; bodies were scattered about, and on either side of me were two people with needles in their arms. I remember having a moment of seeing the scene as if new, without irrational explanations. I remember thinking, what am I doing? It was so sudden and so obvious. I got up and left, flew back to England, never used again. I felt I’d got off light until I understood it wasn’t needles or crystal meth or cocaine that I was addicted to, but something deeper. “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe