Chapter Three...Maybe

Before I get into Chapter 3, I wanted to answer a few reader questions posed to me today. Also, Luke is home for the weekend from his dad's so I may not have the hour and a half that it normally takes me to post this serious of a topic - so Chapter 3 may go on hold...I'll see what I can crank out before The Clone Wars and Yugio cards get too boring for him.

How did you get found out? Well, we began getting too sure of ourselves and too sloppy. My townhouse was on a fairly major road in my town. Ziggy began using his own car to come over or spend the night and a salesman who was supposed to be our friend began telling people at work how often Ziggy's car was at my house. As the rumors began, he began job hunting. He was still in control of his addiction - it wasn't out of hand yet, and he easily found another job making more money elsewhere.

Before he found another job, our boss asked him flat out about our relationship and he did come clean. We were able to spend about 2 months "out of the closet" at work and the consensus was a general happy one for us with a whole lot of "it's about times". Ziggy was offered a management position in another department that had just opened up, but he declined it and thought it better for us to make a fresh start.

It was hard for us to be apart at first. We were genuinely a team at work, both of us needing the other to bring out the best (so we thought at first), and we both struggled. However, his leaving finally opened doors for me. I was finally noticed for my own brains, and instead of being in his shadow, I finally was able to shine.

Where was Luke when things got bad? Well, Luke was there. He was protected from the horrors - I'm not some triflin ho that you see on reality TV. When Ziggy's moods became extreme at the end, Luke was shielded properly. Luke was told that Ziggy was sick or that Ziggy had gone on a fishing trip - or other white lies to keep life normal for him. He wasn't exposed to the horrors and to this day he does know that Ziggy had an addiction, but he has no horrible memories and he genuinely loves Ziggy. When the hell ended, Luke had just turned 4, so he's already lost a great majority of his memory of this time.

So there's the answers. Back to the story.

Chapter 3:

The break up was harder on me than any break up I'd ever had. Later Ziggy would say that it was because we were soulmates being ripped apart - I'm not sure about the whole soulmate notion, but it makes for a good thing for him to say to get laid nowadays.

Not knowing yet what was wrong, I struggled with guilt that it was a physical or mental illness that I should stick it out for. My mother had abandoned my father when he came clean and gained his health. She couldn't handle how hard it was to go through the hell, so I guess maybe subconsciously, somehow I knew deep down and I didn't want to do what she had done? I don't know, but that was one therapist's theories.

I tried my best to move on. He called ALOT - to cry - to yell - to be crazy. My friends begged me to change my cell phone number, but I couldn't. Was I too weak, or too strong? That's up to you to decide. At this point, it was probably weakness. Later, it would become strength.

I began hearing bizarre stories through the grapevine - people seeing Ziggy acting crazy and sweating like a nutcase at a wedding - people seeing him walking down Bourbon Street alone and confused - people seeing him wearing the same clothes to work 2 days in a row. The stories were outrageous...and yet they were true.

The behind the scenes story was that Ziggy knew that his addiction to opiates was killing him, so in his sick and twisted mind, he tried to switch to cocaine. He truly believed that he could never be addicted to cocaine like he was to opiates and that the cocaine would help him get through the withdrawals so that he could kick it all and get better. Crazy right? Sure. Hell yeah, but to him it was his only answer.

So the sweating, the weight loss, the general craziness was a body addicted to opiates adjusting to massive amounts of cocaine. For those lacking knowledge of drugs, the two substances act on your body totally differently and he was swapping a numbing/sleepy type drug for a speed/adrenaline type drug.

He was literally killing himself. The same loud mouth salesman may actually be responsible for partially saving his life, because it was him who finally blew another secret and helped me "get to" Ziggy.

Now before I go on, please please don't in any way think that I am actually so vain as to believe that I saved Ziggy's life. Not the case. A handful of people saved his life, including God and himself. I however, only get the credit for being the first one to reach out the hand and go a little further to put the boots on and walk through the shit to get him. It's not much compared to what he had to face and what others did for him.

So it was this salesman who came to me and told me the story of Ziggy acting nuts at a bachelor party and he asked me, "Sandy, do you think it's drugs again?" And I was like...AGAIN??? WTF? You gossipping piece of shit, what do you mean? This salesman knew Ziggy in highschool and knew Ziggy to be a bit of a pot head and hang with the "druggie" crowd. Total news to me. I was in shock and in about 5 minutes it all came together in my head.

I thought about my move very carefully. Very nervously, I sent Ziggy a text message that simply said, "I know". That was it...just that I knew. Later that night my phone rang and through tears he said that he would tell me, but not tonight. He would stop by the next night when I didn't have Luke. He didn't call the next night and I thought again and sent the text, "I'm telling your parents". Within seconds the phone rang.

For over an hour he came clean...well, he didn't get clean, but he came clean. He told me everything - what he did, how he did it, how he got it, how much he spent on it, how bad off it was, where he hid it - everything.

He didn't ask for help. He didn't say he was quitting. He just said that he was sorry and that he could do nothing more this night than tell me. Being the selfish human I am, I attempted to yell at him for what he did to MEEEEEEEEEE MEEEEEE WAH WAH WAH and I was boldly stopped. He very calmly said, "Sandy, I've been clean for 12 hours now and I have no idea how long that can last. I know what I've done and I'm begging you to please just not make me face that right now, please."

And so I didn't.

The options for opiate addicts are small. You can detox in your sleep at a clinic (they literally put you to sleep for up to a week and you wake up detoxed) and while that sounds ideal, that would mean coming clean to his parents and possibly losing his job. You can go to rehab, which has a very low success rate for opiate addicts. You can quit cold turkey, which we know doesn't work, or the worst, you can go on methadone. Methadone is what heroin addicts take to get clean and methadone is now known to be just as addictive as any other opiate. Ziggy had dozens of "friends" addicted to methadone and he refused it.

At this point, he couldn't even achieve "high" anymore. He was so deep into it that all he was doing was enough to maintain a level in his body that avoided withdrawals. He was spending almost $1000 a week, if not more and he couldn't even physically get high anymore - withdrawal was just that painful and that scary.

Enter George W. Bush. Now a hell of a lot of people hate that man. Ziggy and I however, love him, because he gets a small portion of the credit for saving Ziggy's life. There was a drug being used in Europe for years called suboxone. It is specifically for opiate addicts and about 90% less potentially addictive than methadone. It was George W. Bush who got the drug to America and in the blink of an eye, millions of opiate addicts actually had hope and possibility of a life without being addicted to methadone.

The drug is hard to find and you have to be specially trained to distribute it at this point in time - it's very new in America. In 2005 you may have only been able to find one doctor in a major city who was certified to distribute it. I won't bore you with details of the drug, however, if you have an opiate addict that needs help, research this drug, please, and find a doctor in your area that distributes it.

We got Ziggy an appointment and he began taking the pills. I agreed to be his friend and walk with him through this as much as I could handle. I can't explain how hard it is to take the hand of the monster who destroyed your life and your heart and your dreams and help them get up and walk again without being able to even begin to express to them the hurt and the pain and the trauma that they caused and were still causing. There's a saying in 12 step programs that goes along the lines of "I stayed sober today and for today, that's the best I can do". And while that sounds like a cop out - at this point, it was true. I couldn't mumble a peep about MY pain and MY hurt and MY MY MY - if I was going to do this, I had to keep that all in and save it for later. This was no shit life or death for Ziggy at this point and so I shut my mouth the best I could (I'm wasn't perfect with it though).

The first time I saw him again after the night from hell where Chapter 2 ended, we met at a Subway near our jobs and I can't even describe how close to death he had come. He had gone from a healthy 36/38 waist to a 29 waist. His skin was pale and clammy, his movements were slow and strained. It was heart breaking just to look at him. But I put on my happy face, hugged him and bought him a friggin footlong and forced him to eat the whole thing. As we walked out, he looked at me, almost crying and said, "My God, I can't believe what I've done to you - I will make this up to you, I swear it."

This is where Chapter 3 must end before Luke kills me for the computer. However, I will leave you with this...this is not hell yet. Hell was about to begin. That lunch at Subway was in the beginning of August 2005. On August 26th, the entire southeastern portion of Louisiana began to evacuate for a bitch in the Gulf named Katrina. Katrina pushed Ziggy into a hell that we hadn't yet known. It threw him a state away from his doctor and into a world where even now, almost 4 years later, he will begin to shake and fight back tears at the very thought of. On August 29th, 2005, Katrina would change all of us and a hell began for us both that was bad enough to deserve its own fucking sound track.

And I promise that we'll get through the hell and begin to see some light...next Chapter.