Submarine (Inside yourself)

How drugs affect a person. An unusual view

My psychotherapist said it was a part of my recovery to write this story. After two months of

serious rehabilitation, I was suddenly told that I should write a narrative about my case. Well, let's

see if it helps. Anyway, it will be interesting to read, most likely.

So, my name is Jaroslav, I'm 17 years old and I used to take various drugs. No not like this. The

story should begin more literary.

Let's start again.

My childhood passed among the opulent chestnut and fruit trees on the very outskirts of the most

beautiful city of Kiev. I never liked the center of this city, there are too many Soviet-era buildings

that killed all the beauty of the old town, which, in fact, completely disappeared. The street on

which I grew up did not even have a name and hardly fit into the Kiev border for a long time but it

was nice there. My childhood passed in the yard between two unremarkable houses built during

the Khrushchev’s era, where there were several benches, a playground, and a small football field.

The houses were inhabited exclusively by old people who moved there from one military town to

meet their old age in tranquility.

We have not known for a long time what drug addiction or crime is because it circumvented us.

One guy, he was seven years older than me, once tried a beer. He was about 15 years old then,

so he fell into disgrace and is still considered the most notorious drug addict, criminal, and

alcoholic. Despite the fact that he eventually became one, it was far from the truth then.

At the time when something began to change in my life, my parents suddenly decided to divorce.

My mother was a dentist and became fascinated by religion. However, my father did not really

approve her fanaticism. She kept telling about the charitable way of life, although she herself After

the divorce, I lived with my mother and grandparents at first but when my father bought a large

apartment and my mother completely got me - I decided to move to my father. This was the

beginning of the darkest period of my life.

The dad's apartment was situated on the Kharkiv district, and there I was confronted with the

realities of the dormitory areas of the capital. In the evening I literally met alcoholics and drug

addicts at every turn.

I was regularly robbed. Beaten and robbed. Nevertheless, this period did not last long, because I

entered a local school and became friends with some guys there. Unfortunately, to blend in, I had

to do different things, which I would never have done before. We were stealing in shops, I started

smoking, I tried to drink vodka, but I did not like it very much so I did not fall for it.

Nonetheless, when an acquaintance got some tablets of Tramadolum, my world turned upside

down.

Fanfares and fireworks appeared in my head. There was a feeling that I was asleep for all this time

and finally woke up! This can not be, why do not other people know about it?! After all, it must be

like this, and not as usual ... as it happened with everyone. Why the gray miserable and sad life

can not be replaced with this constantly?

So I replaced it.

And I did not notice how I fell into a destructive dependence.

But now I'm seeing my dependence from a slightly different angle, rather than the one that’s

pushed on TV. I still love that feeling and I miss it. I'm ready to give up everything to never get out

of that state. And not as much money was spent as one might think. Given that in the last days of

my old life we were ​just stealing tablets from warehouses �" the dose was completely free.

After a year of such life, the body began to fail: first, bloody vomiting, when the kidneys were

refused, but everything quickly fell into place and I decided not to finish it. Then - memory began

to vanish - I came to myself in completely strange places. Almost like the main character from the

Fight Club, however, not on the airplanes, but in ditches, cellars, other people's apartments, and

even on the rooftops. In addition, I stopped getting the high from the usual dose.

Then I decided to do, as typical drug addicts do - “to lie down at the bottom" for a couple of

days. In the movie “Trainspotting” it is described quite well: I closed in four walls and deprived

myself of drugs and even food, leaving only two half-liter bottles of water. I told my mother that I

would be with a friend, then I went to the good old district of my childhood with opulent chestnut

trees and fruit trees and closed there in the grandfather's garage, along with his perfect green

"Zaporozhets". I spent two days there and went completely crazy. No, not from the breaking, but

from boredom. There was no breaking and I knew that I could not have it, just so I had to lower

the dose, pause, and recover.

Deciding that everything was fine, I, dirty and smelly, took public transport back to Mordor.

People preferred not to stand next to me.

As I arrived home, at first I went to see friends. Here we come to the essence of my story.

My friends were surprised to discover where I had been for so long, they were already smeared

and threw me a pack of Tramadol and said that they also have the co-pilot.

Amphetamine has always intrigued me, but I heard it was taken by the military and people who

need to work at night, and it seemed to me that the co-pilot was not for me. I thought, that

probably it just has an invigorate effect. Boring and uninteresting.

But this time I became curious. I hooked 15 tablets of Tramadol and after that decided to make a

small line of Amphetamine.

Somewhere for a year and a half before this, my mother would be nice to tell about the heredity

and mental disorders of our family. But no, she decided that it would not concern me. It did not

concern me until I threw up a hornet's nest with drugs-literally, at one point, I blew the s**t out.

Outwardly it was like this: I froze and fell to the floor, repeating saying "aa-aa-aa-aa," as if I was

trying to sneeze. My friends waited for me to finally sneeze and calm down. However, it lasted

several minutes in a row and they suspected something was amiss.

The most adequate of them took me home and along the way I continued to make the “aa-aa-aa”

sound and look at the floor. I remember the two guys who were driving me, started to panic and

decided that I had become a "vegetable", and began to think how they would not have touched it.

They came up with a plan for retreat and that they would tell the police if it came out.

"I can hear you, you b******s," I repeated to myself, and then more than once I repeated this

phrase without words.

"I can hear you, you b******s," became my phrase every day of the next year.

Oh yeah, let’s run ahead a bit, I became a "vegetable" for a whole year.

First my father took me home and laid on my bed, saying how disappointed he was that I became

a drug addict. He believed that everything would pass in the morning. In the morning I just

continued lying on the bed with my eyes open, repeating "aa-aa-aa". I wanted to say something

else but my oral organs refused me this. I sincerely tried. There was a feeling that I was screaming

into the microphone but it was turned off and so I could not talk to anyone. It was very vexing.

For a long time my father did not tell my mother what had happened to me, he was afraid of her.

In the hospital, where I was brought, everyone just shook their heads, they said they do not know

what to do with it. My father quarreled a little, but then he calmed down, resigned himself, and

called my mother.

When she arrived, she did not even pay attention to me for the first three minutes, - she screamed

at father. It seemed that she only needed a reason for the scandal, and I was completely

unimportant to her. But then she came up to me, looked me in the eyes, which stared at the floor,

and said, “The God will save you."

Well, the God did not hurry to save me. It seemed that mom drove me across all the churches of

Kiev. They were very beautiful ones and not really. It was stuffy n the Pechersky caves with all the

corpses. I saw Ilya Muromets and Nestor the Chronicler. But my mother led me to the very depths

of the caves to Nicholas the Wonderworker. And there it was already so unbearably stuffy that my

body itself gave a signal that it was time to get out, namely, it was clogged in convulsions. I felt it

all, but not physically, more like from the outside. It was funny and scary at the same time.

In the end, the mother decided to visit the specialists. I was sent to the hospital again, but

another, where there was a neuropathological department. There they finally diagnosed me. At the

root of the wrong, but they tried. The result was a two-week vacation in the room with psychos,

one of which even tried to set me on fire at night. I was stabbed hard trying to get rid of drugs that

I had not had in me for a long time. When the treatment did not work, I was officially called a

"vegetable" and decided to try to treat it with electricity. Electroshock therapy is not as terrible as

it is described in films. Anesthesia worked and I did not feel anything at all and did not see

anything, except for flashes of light. When I woke up, I wanted to look up at my mother, but they

did not rise above the sight of my legs and, feeling unbearable thirst, I wanted to shout "water!",

But it turned out as "aa-aa-aa". I could not understand what to do.

After that, I caught the disappointed look of my mother, who was trying to discern glimpses of

consciousness in my eyes, apparently, she did not succeed.

She cried again and it lasted for a long time. Then my father came in and was kicked out by my

mother, then my sister came in, who was looking at me with curiosity rather than emotion, then

the doctor came in, examined me, and said that the problem was clearly different.

Two weeks later, 15 thousand hryvnia in a free clinic and a course of electroconvulsive therapy,

doctors came to the conclusion that the problem was mental. Thank you, d****t. You, ghouls,

looked into my eyes like proctologists in the a*s not expecting to see a living being there; you,

b******s, brought groups of "tourists" - students who treated me like a plant. They lifted my limp

hands, felt my nose, lifted my eyelids, even blew into my eyes. B******s. I would remember you

for the future, but it did not work out.

The result was that they decided to detain me for a week at the clinic in order to "conduct

research", but in fact, more groups of students looked at me. The treatment was no longer there. I

was put in one room with a comatose, we were not just not included in the light, they did not even

come to us. I felt like in exile to the edge of the universe.

A week later mother came. With all my difficult attitude towards her, I was very happy and my

"aa-aa-aa" was clearly more exciting and joyful at the time she went into the room.

She made an interrogation to the doctor and suddenly I really saw that she herself was a doctor,

even though she was a dentist. Mother realized that I was not engaged, I do not progress, I do not

die, everything is in the same state as before, and decided that it's time to take me home.

And they took me.

Mother forbade my father to even come near me. Not that he was to blame, but she needed a

sacrifice. Morally, she was already prepared for the fact that now her whole life will be wiping me

with drooling and s**t.

Then the beautiful quiet days began. I was really happy, although I was a "vegetable". There was

not that terrible district, there were no "friends" of mine, there were no drugs, problems, worries,

there were no doctors, drugs, no patients I was afraid of. There were calm elderly people around,

lots of greenery, the bustle of a small courtyard - grandmothers discussing each other, problems

like "this tree needs to be cut off - no, you can not trim this tree, it makes a shadow!", I fell in love

with this little world that was not invaded by infamous realities from the outside. Soon, I met old

friends from childhood. Yes, they all grew up, many parted, but my lasting sense of nostalgia

finally calmed down here - I got where I had been striving since my childhood.

Old friends approached me and with some kind of infantile interest looked into my eyes and tried

to talk to me. When this did not work, they spoke with my mother, who answered all the same:

- Because of the drug addiction

- I do not know

- I hope soon

- God knows

- We are praying

- All by himself

- He does not speak at all

- Sometimes he looks up

And so on.

I, of course, got tired of it all, I desperately tried to speak but words still did not come out. My

mother pulled my comatose body into the yard, put it on a bench and left it for a couple of hours.

It was not scary because there was always a company around: grandmothers, beginning the

conversation with lamentations about my condition and ending with their problems, completely

forgetting about me. Friends of childhood came to replace me, looking at me with sympathy,

remembering the past, laughing at the way I, as a baby, was afraid to ride a tricycle, constantly

rolling him down the street. They genuinely tried to talk me through: they joked so that I laughed

inside, discussed my state with each other, remembered all the drug addicts they knew. They said

that it would have been better with that a*****e Kasatkin than with me. I was pleased, and

Kasatkin was a scumbag, indeed.

Although I was a "vegetable", it was a wonderful time, cozy, comfortable. I felt so good then.

I woke up quite unexpectedly - right in the middle of the night I cried - I dreamed that the doctor

who examined me said that I was a hopeless “vegetable", therefore, I am not needed in this

society. After that, he pulled out a hacksaw and decided to saw off all my hands and legs. This

terrified me so much that I started to shout in panic. By the time I was used to screaming so that

no one could hear me, but this time my mother ran up to me and anxiously started to ask me what

had happened. Without a hope for an answer. But I answered.

In a cold sweat I began to say what a terrible dream I had and that I really do not want my hands

and legs to be cut off and at that moment I noticed tears on my mother's face. She looked at me,

cried, and smiled.

"Jaroslav, you're back."

Yes, I'm back. The curse was lifted.

There were a lot of tears, mutual explanations, confessions, joy flown in the air, grandfather and

grandmother, as agreed, drank Corvalolum because they were restless from joy. Even though I

had parted with feelings for my relatives long ago, I was pleased, I was very pleased to come to

life and that others are also happy about it.

The hangover of joy passed with time and my mother re-sent me to the hospital to be "fixed" in a

normal state. After another questionable course of therapy, I was sent back home. My father tried

to take me back to live with him but my mother gave him the look that made this grown man give

up his idea. And, to put it mildly, I did not want to go back there at all. I was feeling so well in the

yard of my childhood. I wanted to stay there.

That's what became my reality.

The yard from my childhood. Grandpa and grandmother died, unfortunately. I liked them very

much. On the Internet I met a girl. We started dating. She is far from beautiful, but I'm not Johnny

Depp either. Now we live together in the grandparents’ apartment. I regularly communicate with

childhood friends. They are nice. Some smoke marijuana but not seriously. And my attraction to

drugs has completely disappeared. I sold grandfather’s "Zaporozhets" and bought “Lada". I toil

with it every day. The car will definitely run soon, I'm sure. I work in the warehouse of a large

store, the money is not that good but we do not need much, just food and cigarettes.

Just one year of my life lasted much longer that it seems, although, I obviously did not have time

to show it. Eternity. Isolation. Terrifying. It’s difficult to recall it, I walked like a zombie and

constantly repeated "aa-aa-aa".

This what is the most paradoxical in this situation: I fully realized everything. I saw everyone and

hear everything. I knew what was happening. I gave an assessment of all that is happening. But I

could not express it. Consciously, I did not answer for anything. I was watching. Moving slowly, in

short steps, I tried to force myself to change the tempo and even to run. But it did not work. So

even my movements were not mine.

I watched life from some kind of submarine, I saw and remember everything. I recall everyone.

After I recovered, I went to dad’s district, I saw some of my friends from the past but I did not feel

any nostalgia at all. I experienced sorrow towards them and joy in relation to myself. I learned that

one of them died. The one who brought me home to my father. The other one, with whom we

were getting s**t-faced together that evening, lies in the hospital and, apparently, will stay there

forever. It is all the part of my life, in which I was given the most convincing lesson.

Now I'm writing this story and I hope it will please my psychotherapist, whom I have to visit every

Tuesday and Friday. Every week. Until the end of my days.