It came upon me suddenly, with no place for refuge. No place to hide. Without warning or siren.
If you’ve ever visited the Florida panhandle, imagine with me if you will, a sunny day, a light breeze, tourists along the coastal boardwalk, but hundreds of miles out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean a storm was beginning to develop. Unaware of its heading nor its magnitude, from one day to the next, the storm grows stronger as it slowly makes its approach. The wind may pick up a little, the waves of the tide begin to whitecap though the sun is yet shining and you continue to enjoy repose. When suddenly, without consideration nor concern, the storm makes landfall, and you are totally unprepared for what has ominously been heading your way for quite some time.
That is what opioid addiction is like. Suddenly, it seizes upon you as a tropical storm making landfall, and the sky becomes black as sackcloth, the rains come. You watch as the trees become uprooted, lightning flashing overhead, and street lights suspended upon the powerlines sway violently, and you find yourself in the midst of it all, seized upon with terror, having no place to hide.
I cried out to a family member, realizing that if there were not an immediate intervention in my life, I would soon perish, and that by my own hand. It was the only way to escape the storm.
Days later, I woke up in a most peculiar and unusual place, and as my cognition and reason began to return, I raised my head to look and watched as the storm clouds moved beyond to the west, toward the Gulf. I looked about me and saw the devastation. The trees uprooted, shattered windows. To one side, there were cars abandoned, street lights flashing red, and to the other side, I looked as the flood waters that breached the bulwark that was once drawing near, now receding back slowly into the ocean. It was the loss of all things I once knew and truly, nothing more but a few changes of apparel did I preserve. Yet I myself, not only was I alive, but a new state of ontology, a transformation of my very being had occurred. After a brief stay in the hospital, I was released to a residential care facility and found myself entirely free of the opioid addiction that raged against me for almost five years. The results of opioid addiction initiated and perpetuated by the hand of a doctor in whom I did trust.
End; Act (1). Scene (1)
Act (1). Scene (2) “Enter, The Dragon” click here to continue