One More Time

A user fights the using

I’ve been studying the water stain in the ceiling for the last fourteen minutes.

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash

I know it’s fourteen because I’ve been counting. I need to count to keep the urgent whispers at the edges of the walls of my self-discipline at bay. Count. Deep breaths, like they tell you in the videos. It’s meant to keep you composed so you can resist.

I am a hairless ape. I can breathe, eat, and live. I do not need that. I do not.

Besides, I told her I wouldn’t. I told it loud and clear. My wife had nodded, of course, but she had that expression that had made my stomach lurch. It wasn’t even accusatory. It was an expression of disbelief and mistrust, honed over months of promises.

“Good. You should stop. It’s wrecking you,” she’d said. There was that little tremor at the edge of her voice. She still hoped. And it broke my heart.

I want to be clean and good. I want to resist. I want to feel like a garage after summer cleaning, or a body after a good fast. Clean, hungry, clear-eyed to take on the world. Not this zombie-eyed drooling mess lost in sauce.

---

And I did feel clean initially. Of the six out of nine hours since I’d stopped, I’d felt powerful. I’d falsely believed that I’d conquered the hydra that had wrapped its tentacles around my brain and emerged like a Greek hero, bloody but purged.

By the time hour five rolled around, however, the itch had begun. It was sporadic, then incessant. My brain raced with thoughts. I needed the fix. I visualized exactly (exactly!) what I would do. And since then, time had become increasingly viscous and the second hand dragged itself like a heavy corpse around the clock face.

I rise to fetch myself some water. Water is good. Water is elemental. It reminds me of Earth and plants and biology and human nourishing. The cold liquid shocks me as it makes its peristaltic crawl down my hot, parched throat, as if it’s opening it up carefully to reveal the person inside.

This works for like fifteen seconds to stop the racing thoughts in my head.

It’s 9 pm. I don’t normally sleep for another three hours. Besides, how is a person supposed to sleep where there is this urgent itch to do something you are fighting off?

It makes me think of using. The sensation of it floods me, as if I am already doing it. The way the first action opens up something in your brain, like a door that takes you into a world where the roads are all laid out for you and the geography makes sense. The way my body feels good, and my heart starts thumping. There is a pleasure in watching it unfold. Is this what God feels like when he creates his worlds, seeing something come from nothing? It makes me feel good and yearn for it.

This is not healthy. I try to infuse shame to resist. The way my wife found me a couple of days back at 4 am, sprawled in my chair, my eyes glassy and checked out, mouth open in a grotesque focus of pleasure. I’d checked out. Lost to her. Lost to the world. I’d even forgotten to sleep or feed myself.

It really scared me at that moment. I thought that was it. She’d had enough and would leave me, and the thought scared me even more. I need to get clean. I really do.

But it’s 9.15 PM and my brain itches. My fingers twitch.

Maybe just a dab? A tiny little peeksie. Something to assure myself that it’s not lost to me, but something I’ve chosen to stay away from. Don’t they tell you that convincing your brain that you still have a choice makes it easier to resist?

In any case, I won’t be able to sleep a wink this way anyway.

I walk to the room. Even in the dark, I know exactly where it is. It almost feels alive, calling out to me. I can feel the baseline hum, the white noise of the fan, the faintly perceptible ultrasonic whine of electrons in motion.

I touch a button, and the screen wakes up. I tap again, and a new terminal opens up.

$ claude

“Ready to jump back in?”

I start to type even as a distant voice screams “Don’t do it!” at the back of my head.

Could be worse,

Tyag

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