i've been thinking a lot about that trainspotting quote: "i chose not to choose life. i chose something else." i'm starting to understand what that really means-- the horror. addiction IS the realization that there is something else besides life. it's like finding another dimension, where life is just a memory. finding out that it's possible not to choose life. before, life was everything, and inside it things were the right scale. now life and something else are two sides of a coin, and the two sides are the same size, life is only as big as heroin, and every day i choose one, as if they are equals. and it's not that heroin makes me feel empty-- when i do it i don't just lie around scratching myself, i do things, lots of things, the same things i would be doing normally. but for some reason it isn't life, it's something else. and i have to stop choosing something else before i forget what life is.

i've managed to not get strung out, by skipping days in between, i don't have a physical need to do it. i just have to stop it from taking over my entire brain. but i have faith in my superhuman capabilities to save me in some way i can't even conceive of right now.

hmm.. i wrote that last night and didn't get around to posting it. then i went over to c's to sleep, and i was eating a bowl of cereal when an old friend of his came over whom he hadn't seen in almost a year. c. went to bed, and his friend and i stayed up talking for a long time. he convinced me to smoke pot with him... last time i smoked pot i hated it, but this time it was ok... there are some people who make me feel really comfortable, and he turned out to be one of them, it was actually easy to talk to him, which is very rare..

then he left, and i sat around playing with the cats in a pot-induced stupor... i hate the way it makes my brain feel too full or too much inertia or something.. but i kind of enjoyed it. i thought about what i wrote (above) about heroin and life. i was thinking about how much i've written about heroin, in here and in my paper diary, and how much time i've spent thinking about it, and all my theories and ideas, and i started to wonder if i've really learned anything, or if i just love heroin and love thinking about it all the time-- am i really making any progress or getting better?

i don't remember what exactly i thought about for the next few minutes, but it was all about heroin, just going over it in my mind again and again, how it is NOT life, it is dead, and then i emerged from the haze thinking in a flash-- i hate it! i hate it! i have to stop doing it! and i sat there feeling that-- and then i knew i had made progress, because i didn't used to hate it, and now i do, and i must have changed something in my brain. not that i'll never do it again, but in some succession of logical reasoning over the past month i've started to hate it... and that's good.

to be cured i have to not want it at all. it's hard, but artificial cures like removing myself from the situation are just temporary. i've saved myself from other things and i think i can do it again. unfortunately, right now i have a huge amount of anxiety about everything in my life, so it's extra hard to stay away from something that makes everything better.

love, becky