Everything

The question was posed to me in a round-about way: How much does addiction cost? It seems like such a simple question, yet it’s been on my mind all day. The question as it was posed, refers only to the monetary aspect associated with addiction, so I will not rant about what my addiction took from me over the years, because it would be a long list and go all the way from every job I’ve ever had, to the last thread from the last shirt on my back. This question was actually a treatment assignment during my six-month boot camp-treatment experience at Willow River Correctional Facility at the end of my incarceration, but all 16 men in my squad were given that same assignment, so it was really just a competition to see who could come up with the highest number. I believe I actually wrote down one million dollars.

As I sit here and think about how much I spent over the years, I wonder if a million might be a little high. For most of my working years—age 15 until my first sobriety of five years, and then age 26 to 35—I worked low paying jobs, or sold drugs as a means to sustain my habits, whatever they may have been at the time. Every penny that I earned—legally or not—went to some form of addiction. There were some months I paid my bills, but rarely two in a row, and even more infrequently did I pay all of my bills in one month. Fortunately, I lived an unintentionally minimalist lifestyle, and had few possessions, no credit cards, negligible utility costs, and rarely ate food. Evicted, fired, and arrested were terms commonly used to describe me.

I spent most of my money in bars, so to be a practicing alcoholic for years was costly. I enjoyed gambling, often at the expense of my employers who I would steal from in order to keep the rush of losing going. $100-$300 was easily spent at the bar when I went, and most weeks you could find me there on a nightly basis and that was for years.

With the hard stuff—meth and coke—the numbers are terrifying. Sadly, most of what I lost in the game of meth dealing wasn’t money. It was the life, soul, friendships, family, relationships, etc…. that I listed above. There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do to get my fix, and as odd as it may be to say it, I’m grateful I had some good connections  in the trade, because I may have gone down other avenues , who knows. Would I make a great prostitute? Obviously, but it didn’t come to that. So as a drug dealer, I made sometimes $1,000 a day, for days in a row, but somehow at the end of a streak like that, I would be broke. I used more than I could afford, and in the end I had nothing. I was empty, alone and afraid.

Even in my sobriety, my third chance at life, I’m still paying for my addiction. When I left prison I walked out with just under $300. Imagine starting adulthood with no job and less than $300. To say the least it’s been uphill; starting from scratch from underpants, toothbrush, and a blanket, to a car, and a computer. Of course, I had some help with a few things when I got out, but the majority of life’s expenses I have paid on my own because it feels better to obtain things honestly.

Okay, I don’t think I can go any longer without starting over at the top because addiction takes so much more away from life than just money. It takes desire, compassion, love, dreams, desires, and goals. It gives you nothing in return, leaving only emptiness in a hollow form where there used to be thought, compassion, and a will to endure.  It pushes you so much farther than you ever thought you could go into the pits of hopelessness, and somewhere, down there near the bottom, you find the ability to tell yourself it’s okay; that you can keep on doing what you’re doing and things will turn around. You tell yourself the way you are is fine even though your moral compass points south. You find the courage to trudge on but in the wrong direction only to find that the bottom gets lower with every step. There is only one answer now to the question of how much addiction has cost because you have lost it all again. You’ve lost everything.