Junkie salvation

Good morning, Perris ARC(adult rehabilitation center) it’s 4am time to rise and shine it is wensday june 2nd 2016… beds 103c,230d,122e,111c drug tests need to be done in 30 mins. The loud speaker reverberates throughout the center that’s holding 100 convicts,drug addicts and homeless men. My eyes are forced open by the moans,farts, and sometimes singing of my 3 roommates if I'm lucky

We have 10 minutes to get dressed,make beds with hospital corners TIGHT, and vacuum. I can still hear the sounds of 30 vacuum cleaners humming in the early hours. It was almost meditative. 100s of young men ready to go serve our lord and savior! Here’s some of the rules. No facial hair,shirts tucked in 24/7, no logos on shirts

We all skitter off to showers and sinks to get ready. Male genitalia was a common normal sight. I get dressed rush to the chapel for morning service 100s of men with tattoos. Some look healthy and full of Jesus. Others like myself looking like we just were on the streets shooting heroin. Which yes, yes, I was. We pray and all break into groups based out where you work in the warehouse. They start everyone off on the docks, unloading the precious memories of someone’s life. The couches have seen better days, and I can see the stains from its owners. Happy stains and sad stains. The couches looked as if they were about to be put down. “Why, jeff!? Everything we been through all those whores you fucked on me” the couch sobbed in anger while dollied it away to be auctioned off or destroyed.

Sometimes, I would talk to the old torn used furniture and try to tell them things are going to be okay. I’d make sure the pieces of furniture I liked made it into the shop to be refurbished and sold to a new loving alcoholic. You could tell when someone’s kid passed away. The furniture felt lost like they were at the gates of hell all of a sudden with feelings and emotions. I have no idea why they felt so hopeless. I felt a connection with these people’s lives. I could imagine how they looked the further I dug through a truck. High heels were a common occurrence. They often made me horny. Sorry, god.

I progressed to other parts of the warehouse. I eventually ended up in books. Selling the books online and packaging them. A very prestigious job at the Salvation Army. I got access to the internet also DVDs,video games, and rare books.

I started a hustle of selling porn(printing pictures out),certain books, and DVD. I’d trade for ducets. Ducets were cash for inside the Sally. Were you able to buy stuff at the snackshop at night. Junk food . Ice cream,nachos,burritos,ramen, etc. Also, I’d trade cigarettes and then sell the ciggs. Which ultimately led me to relapsing. I met the gangsters in this salvation army this way, and I became quite popular. I was a funny white nerdy heroin addict,hanging out with the most gangster of guys you could imagine.

I befriended a Mexican gangster from fontana named “smiley” because he always smiled. We got along like any two heroin addicts would. Smiley was tattooed from neck two toe with no room for any more. I had one. About a month into our hustle. The inevitable happened we relapsed. I would be in the church bathroom shooting heroin before I went on stage to sing. I was the lead singer of the arc in the band. I’d go out on stage all high and sing like christ is going to save me. That I was a good person.

1 month later, Smiley and I are homeless and pushing a shopping kart in Perris, California. I would ask people for change. Nobody spoke English. Smiley would do his hustle , he was good, and he lived here. I would be dopesick with a faucet of snot and tears flowing out of me. I begged smiley for a shot. He said only if I muscled it to save money. If I wanted enough to IV, I’d have to suck him off. “Fuck you” I moaned at him and walked over to a homeless camp.

I managed to manipulate my way into a 10 bag. It was 103 degrees. The camp smelled of piss and vinegar. The inhabitants mostly all with chins on chest nodding off to another world…I sit on a rock and start looking for a vein. I push in the heroin and blood, and I remember nothing. I wake up to my pants down with tons of ice in my boxers to help bring me back from overdose and an old junkie sitting on another rock. He just grinned and said, “Tell you it was good.” I pull up my pants and sigh.

The sun is setting, and I can hear the rattles from the diamondbacks. The swooshes of passing cars in the distance. I have no money and no hustle. I call my family and tell them I need help again crying real tears. I hung up and sobbed and sobbed. I don’t know if I do this to myself, I thought.

I continued to do this to myself for the next 10 hellish years. Jails,rehabs,skidrow,lost relationships,overdoses,alcoholism, and meth addiction.