GROWING UP BALTIMORE (insert)

insert from my manuscript

I didn't have a place to stay.  I asked a few people i thought were my friends.  Every last one turned me down.  The same ones who road around in my car, sucked up my drugs or just in my company everyday. I knew it, yet I would process it in my brain.  My grandfather was right when he constantly told me I didn't have any friends.  Friends kill, steal and talk bout you.  The man was right.

I stayed at my mother's house with my daughters for a week.  My addiction turned ugly.  I found myself waiting on a welfare check.  My home girl and I knew exactly what time the mail lady came with our brown envelopes.  It was obvious to her every month, me and this girl meeting her at her mail truck to get a dam welfare check.  I was sick minded for real.  The mail lady called us trifling.  Drugs will have you going against all your morals, principles and boundaries.  I felt shame but at the same time I had a dam drug habit. Seriously we had monkeys on our back when we got ill everyday.  I left mom's house again for a couple days.

I had no idea where I was going to stay.  I went back to mom's house.  I started sleeping on her porch.  The leaves falling off the trees onto the front porch. The seasons started changes.  I needed change.  Every day after getting well off of the dope, I 'd tell myself I was going to start fresh tomorrow detoxing.  The weather started getting cold in the mornings.  I wasn't too ashamed of sleeping outside on mom's porch.  I made sure I was gone before they'd leave in the morning for work & school.  My oldest brother had to go to work earlier than normal.  He seen me asleep on our porch.  Even though he didn't say nothing, I felt his shame for his little sister.  No one really wanted to address my addiction.  Yet it was talked about.  I numbed myself to the negative talk.

Few weeks later, my mother tried her best to help.  Working at Social Security, many of her friends was depressed from having drug addicted kids.  Most got on the "program".  I was against drinking methadone then.  That day when she took off work, her and I road all the way out to Franklin Square Hospital.  I was ill. Too sick to move or think straight.  My job was on the line.  And I was working for the Dept. of Motor Vehicle. 

Mom told them people how was on drugs, homeless and suicidal.  I really didn't have much energy to talk, so I went with dat.  Immediately the nurses put me in a white padded room.  No white coat this round.  I would have left, straight up.  We wind up spending all day there only to be referred somewhere else near Towson.  In my mind I didn't want to go, yet I had no choice.  I was with my mother who had been showing much needed love and affection.  Long as I was on drugs, she continued to distance herself from me.  Her madness towards me made her vent terribly to my young 6 and 7 year old girls.  Their innocence had nothing to do with it.  

Towson referred me back into the city at Dr. Hayes office.  It was my first time in treatment.  The man talked negative about addicts. He prescribe a cocktail of pills for my withdrawal symptoms without having to put me on the drug methadone.

I tried the treatment but it wasn't working for me knowing dope & coke was right around the corner from my house.  It was in the neighborhood heavy.  I needed some inpatient treatment.  Besides treatment is serious business.  It needs doctors with compassion.  No one but a Doctor at MD General was telling all addicts actively using, that the might as well put a shot gun to their heads and blow their brains out.  Or jump of a cliff.  I tell you the man had made vunerable people, depressed, anxiety folks hurt worse with his words.  I don't know what he was trying to achieve but it wasn't working from what i was hearing.