Addiction vs. The Matrix

Here's something I wrote a couple months ago when I first landed back in treatment. 

Morpheus. Laurence Fishburne. Furious Styles. Call him what you want, but know that he’s a badass and speaks the truth, be it laying down the law in Boys n the Hood or freeing people’s minds in The Matrix, I wish he was my sponsor.  

Two lines from The Matrix have been going through my head today.

“You are a slave. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. I’m trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.”

Addiction is a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. You might see me sitting on the street with some bums stuffing junk in my arm, you might smell the stale shit stains on my pants, that part of addiction you see. But your neighbor might be an alcoholic, your partner might be an addict, your father might be in recovery, and you might be completely oblivious to it.  

True, we are not all born into bondage, but some are. Many of us make numerous seemingly irrelevant decisions which lead us to, over time, develop an addiction to some external thing. Without realizing, often, that we have become dependent on this in order to survive. You have your first sip of alcohol at 18 and end up in treatment centers during your 50s dealing with your alcoholism. You get hit by a car, break your hip, get on painkillers and end up on heroin when you can’t afford the pills… and heroin is so groovy that you forget everything and everyone you ever cared about.

I get sidetracked thinking about it. Heroin really is so fucking sweet if you’re ready to peace out on life. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to walk out of my parents’ house past my mother, in tears, begging me not to go. Think about it enough and it makes me think I’m a really, really bad person. What would make you stab your mother through the heart (metaphorically speaking) over and over again? Would you do it for $1 million if I put the cash in front of you? And you can’t just give her the money. You’re a selfish, drug addict, and that money is for you and you alone. Just like what the Oracle tells you.

You tell yourself she’ll be fine, she’ll get over it, but somewhere inside, you know you’re scarring her for life. Maybe you’d take the money, maybe you don’t even like you Mom, but I love mine. I can walk out the front door, or the door Morpheus has shown me, either way, I’m the one who has to walk through it. I make bad decisions for a living.   

“What you know you can’t explain but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind.”

A fucking splinter in your mind? Really picture it, having a splinter in your mind, not knowing how to get it out. Or maybe you’ve been to some meetings, done a couple rehabs, and you know what you need to do to get it out. You can “free your mind”, wake up and choose not to use every day, just for that day. You can ‘work a program’- I can’t even write those words without rolling my eyes - work? Every day? You have to be fucking kidding me, I’ll chose the easy option every time. Pop down the pharmacy and get a pair of tweezers/needles/dope.

A splinter in my mind, a dagger in my Mom’s heart, everyone is suffering. Sometimes I think it would be better for everyone if I just put an end to this now. 

I’m in detox at the moment and I’m just trying to distract myself from the splinter in my mind and the dagger in my heart.