Chop Us A Line Then!

If you have any sense of logic, you are probably wondering how idiotic I was to be so irresponsible and start using drugs again, after having gone through the hell I had in London. Well, deep inside of me I knew I was in huge trouble. I tried so hard to ignore the facts and to justify everything I was doing. But you see, that thing called ‘addiction’ is so sly, subtle and powerful. It keeps your mouth shut and your rational thoughts far at the back of your mind. It forces you to find every reason that what you’re doing is OK. It is the master of lies and deception. Addiction slowly crept up on me again…

December came and went and we fell into what seemed to us like a normal routine of life. We had decided not to live together, but spent practically every night together anyway. We went to our jobs during the week and then on weekends we would inevitably end up getting a few grams of kat. Sometimes we’d be with a few friends, but most times it was just the two of us, staying up from Friday until Sunday, not eating and not sleeping.

The first time I realised that cool and collected Seth actually had a ‘problem’ was when we went to collect a few MDMA pills for a friend of his. It was a Wednesday evening and I waited for Seth in the car as he ran into the dealer’s house to do the deal. When he got back in the car he handed me a few pills and a bag of kat. I put the pills safely away in my handbag in the secret place I had, and asked him if his friend also asked for kat. He grinned at me, shook his head and said: “Chop us a line then.”

I was at first a bit confused, because we’d never used drugs during the week. Any ‘uppers’ made me unable to sleep and I just took it as a rule that we would never stay awake all night in the middle of the week. I started to protest that we wouldn’t sleep and we had to work in the morning. He simply replied: “I know, it’s cool. Let’s just have a few lines and then we’ll go to sleep.” And he flashed me that smile that I loved so much. I hesitated for a few more moments, knowing in my heart that it’s never ‘just a few lines’. Then as addiction would have it, I quickly found a CD case and chopped us a line each.

For me it was always a battle. I never accepted our lifestyle as OK. My spirit was at war inside of me. For about a year I didn’t really express these feelings and I didn’t tell anyone, except Seth, of my fears. Instead, every week I made the decision to stop. Seth always wholeheartedly agreed with me that it was getting a bit too hectic. Come Friday night though, the moment one of us just uttered the word “Let’s…” the other one was on the phone to the dealer.

The only thing, yet again, in which I found some comfort, was to write in my journal. Pages and pages of war. I completely blamed myself for the predicament I was in, yet again.

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Tell us what you think: Why do you think Michelle’s spirit was ‘at war inside her’?