Cunning, baffling, powerful and BRUTAL

I spent a good chunk of time today reading the last couple months' worth of posts from The Junky's Wife. She's a powerful writer with powerful things to say. She's brutally honest about herself. It was an insightful, but not an uplifting experience. I am not a junkie, never have been—not even remotely in the same vicinity—and have never really been close to one. I'm sure I can never understand her world, but I think a big dose of reading her blog gave me some feeling for the life of a junkie's wife.

I think she could write a good book. These blog entries reminded me of A Million Little Pieces which, despite the controversy around it, is an interesting read (so long as you don't worry too much about what's fact and what's fiction).

At my A.A. meeting tonight, I heard a guy I'd never met before. He was introduced by someone I've known since I got sober as someone who was there when she started coming around in 1986. I started off looking forward to hearing a good strong message of long-term sobriety. Somewhere along the way, he took a left turn. Yes, he'd gotten sober in 1986 (shortly before my friend I guess). In 1996 he stopped going to meetings. In 2003 he was prescribed Percocet and starting abusing it. He wound up buying it on the street—$5 a pill—and consuming up to 150 of them a day. He took out three business loans to pay for his addiction, and tried to hide everything from his family. He did this quite successfully, at least until recently. A few months ago, he began not feeling well: he was short of breath and had no energy. It got so bad while on vacation that he finally decided to ask his wife to take him to the hospital. Turns out he'd had a heart attack and didn't even know it. At that point the jig was up. He came partially clean to his wife a while ago at the time and, he says, completely clean to her a few months ago when she started asking questions about certain business practices he had started in order to hide what he was doing from her. At his wife's request, he hasn't said anything to his children. Today he has 92 days clean and sober. This man, like the Junky's Wife, was brutally honest. It was not an uplifting story, though I am glad he made it back and now has a second chance. I was also grateful to be reminded of the kind of thing that's out there waiting for me if I pick up.

The most painful thing I heard was how he clung to his almost 20 years of sobriety. Even though he wasn't able to string them all together, he said, it's a one day at a time program and he still has nearly 20 years' worth of days. How sad! I don't know him well enough to judge accurately, but I can't help wondering how long it will be before he's willing to settle for the 92 days that he really has.

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Updated 05 October 2007 15:22:
As a result of a memory lapse, I couldn't remember everything that was relevant at the time I made the original post. Now I've remember something that I meant to include. Changes are shown in this color brown.