Addiction is a Bitch…

I’m in a new living situation right now. The reasons behind this new living situation I’m not ready to discuss in my blog quite yet, but I fucked up, and am now renting a room from a guy who also lives in the house with his husband, and there are three other renters. There are six of us in this house. I could not be happier with my roommates. There are five men, four are gay and one is straight. The first week I was here I stayed in my room…my very awesome, comfortable, biggest room in the house, room. I just finished setting it all up yesterday, but I have an interesting story to tell and I’m hoping my story gets through to someone else going through addiction. This story is about one of my roommates. I have spent a great deal of time talking with this roommate, in fact I have spent a great deal of time talking to three of my roommates, however this story is about one of those three, and from what I know about him in this short time, he would not appreciate his name being used in a public blog. To be honest, he would not appreciate his story being put in a blog. He has a bit of a problem with paranoia. So I’m going to call him Vin. I know you’re wondering why I chose to call him Vin… well, because he is as gorgeous as Vin Diesel, yes I’m serious. Maybe possibly even more so.

Vin, like me, is an addict. He is a recovering long-time alcoholic and methamphetamine addict. When I moved in to this house he had been mostly clean for several months. He is 51 years old and has struggled with addiction for 28 years. He has been to rehab four times. He has attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings off and on (mostly off, from what I gathered). But he is a very lonely man, you could say Vin is a loner. I’m a loner, so I can relate to that as well. Vin and I are the kind of lonely souls who, if given the choice of going to a party with several really close friends to dance and hang out and possibly drink, or staying at home with our dogs and watching a horror movie or reality tv show such as “I Almost Got Away With It” or “Lockdown”, we would choose to be at home in a heartbeat, no thinking required. Vin has a chihuahua and adores that little guy, he’s always with his dog and that dog acts like he’s a God. It’s very touching watching a 250-pound man, gorgeous and in shape, walking around the house holding his little dog and talking to it as if it were his child. 

Vin is an amazing man. He is so intelligent, and intense. I’ve never met such a non-simple man, he is very complicated and I don’t know why but I like it. A lot. He’s a good guy, yet selfish at times as well. Sometimes ya gotta be selfish though ya know? He’s selfish at the times he should be (mostly). And his dog, Heel, is precious. I can honestly say I’ve never met a man who had a small little dog and was so in love with it and vice-versa. If I get too close to Vin or if I touch him, say on his arm like you sometimes do when  talking to someone, and they say something funny and you lightly touch their arm or shoulder; Heel growls at people for that. Vin is off-limits. A 250-lb man with a 15-lb bodyguard. Ok, Heel, I got it. Vin is yours. 

Well over the weekend Vin decided he was done with sobriety. He did meth and he drank all weekend. It was okay the first night–he didn’t act too too strange, but he definitely is different than most people when he drinks and uses–but each night thereafter got steadily worse. He would do meth at night, then when he would start to come down, which is hard for him because he does such a large amount over a period of several days with no break, he would drink beer. Not just one or two beers; he would drink one or two CASES of beer. And then, when he started feeling sober from the beer, he would want meth again. It went back and forth like this for several days. When he was drinking the beer, he became really, super mean and violent, not violent toward people, but violent toward THINGS, and he would talk to himself, constantly, for hours upon hours. He would rant and rave about guns, the military, boxing, baseball, his ex girlfriends who cheated on him and stole from him, and then the worst part was when he would come into one of our rooms and start accusing us of stealing from him or talking about him behind his back. The guy who owns the house, Jimmy,  lives upstairs, and right around this time of Vin’s outburst, he came downstairs and wanted to know what was going on. I decided to be the spokesperson of this situation, so I stepped up and explained to him that Vin had been using methamphetamine and drinking alcohol; he knew that Vin drank, but he knew absolutely nothing about the methamphetamine. Vin was yelling–talking to himself about guns and imitating how a gun chamber is cocked back; he was talking–hollering–about how his girlfriend cheated on him and going in to detail about what she did with the guy she cheated on him with and how good he had been to her yet she still betrayed him; you could hear nothing but anger, pain, and bitterness in his voice, it was cracking as he was trying not to cry. Then he would cry. And it was the saddest thing I have ever heard. I knocked on the door so I could check on him, and he answered…and tears were streaming down his face, his white t-shirt was all sweaty and dirty, and there were blood stains on it. He yelled at me to get out and I asked him if he needed anything, he said that he didn’t. I told him he needed to drink some water and he asked me to leave again. When I came out of Vin’s room Jimmy asked me if he was trashing the room, he heard a lot of sounds and he was afraid damage was being done. I assured him that none was, but I briefly told him the things Vin was ranting about. Jimmy was speechless at first, and after a few minutes passed he asked me to call the police. Vin’s time in the house as a renter had expired, this had happened before and he was not going to put up with it anymore. 

I called the police and when they arrived, Vin immediately calmed down and spoke to them with respect and like a gentleman. Jimmy crossed his fingers that the cops would take Vin to jail immediately and the problem would, so to speak, solve itself.  However, they spent about 7-8 minutes speaking to Vin and told him to return to his room and calm down or he would get himself in to trouble. He did exactly as they asked and told them he was sorry for the disturbance and stated that it would not happen again.

The cops then returned to us and informed us that, to our surprise and dismay, he had not broken any laws and therefore would need to sober-up at home and we could deal with him tomorrow. A look of disappointment and fear of what would happen next appeared on Jimmy’s face. The cops told us that as long as he stayed inside the home and kept his hands to himself, he would not be breaking any laws. After they left, the four of us discussed what to do next and Jimmy made it clear that Vin was out of here.

It would take ten paragraphs minimum to finish describing what all happened that day. It was exhausting, emotionally draining, hurtful, and heartbreaking what Vin was going through when he drank alcohol. I was the only one who was supportive of Vin in any way. I made every possible attempt to get the rest of our roommates to realize that we needed to help Vin, but it was no use.

It broke my heart to know that when Vin woke up the next morning, he had no idea what he was in for. I laid awake very late that night, thinking about how difficult it would be to hear Jimmy telling Vin he has to move out. Vin is a very emotional, caring man…when he’s sober. More than anything, I wanted to make the focus of this day about helping Vin to realize that he needs to quit drinking and using, or he would end up killing himself.  I thought and thought about what my game plan could be, but somehow, someway…I intended on helping Vin. I had been where he was and hated to see anyone go through that alone. The one person I needed most while I was going through getting clean and sober, wasn’t there for me and it broke my heart.

I would figure out a way to help Vin while not jeopardizing my own sobriety…