"Heroin's Vicious Grip: The Price For One Last Hit"

[How, why and where I sold my childhood dream Dodge Ram 1500 for $400 while dope sick]

The Background

In 2014 I was sure I had met my future wife. She was externally beautiful, internally incredibly confused, traumatized, and beat-up from life, had major daddy-issues and also had a similar IV heroin/meth habit as myself, so, can you say, perfect? "Where has she been my whole life, " I giddily asked my friend, like a sheepishly charmed school-boy who had no idea of the precarious situation he had gotten himself into, "Um she's been in 6 rehabs before 20 years old, county jail, and bouncing back and forth between Men who are twice her age Spencer, that's where she's been!" Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I met my damsel-in-distress while in Rehab, in Kerrville TX, where we both currently were. What? Is it so outlandish to think God meant for us to be together? Gosh have some faith y'all!

[Starlight Recovery Center] in Kerrville, TX where I attended my 3rd out of 7 in-patient treatment for heroin addiction.

Here's the thing about in-patient rehabs that allows Men and Women to co-mingle: its really really dumb and irresponsible. An argument can be made that its actually very unethical due to the fact that you're taking a bunch of mentally, emotionally, and spiritually broken people, putting them all in a room together essentially forcing them to trauma-bond, throw in some re-awakened raging hormones, and then expect them to not fall in-love, while having sex every chance they get? Starlight Recovery Center didn't see it that way however. They are the professionals though, I mean they have a 9% success rate for their clients so they definitely know what they are doing! If you don't know me, I'm being as sarcastic as humanly possible right now. If you operate a rehab and you are not, "Paxton from Passages Malibu who WAS an addict but NOW HE'S NOT," do your due diligence, separate testosterone and estrogen from the get-go.

The Proposal

Upon graduating from Starlight Recovery Center, aka not getting kicked out, I had a new lease on life. I had paid my own way through this round of treatment, 5 Large ones, and had 35 more tucked away in my account. I had a truck, cell-phone, independence, and everything that most people getting out of treatment don't have. Oh yeah, I had a new girlfriend who I was about to ask to marry me! What?

I agreed to live in a sober living house in Kerrville, thinking my newfound love would stay in the area as well, but the State District Judge presiding over her 1st Degree Felony probation case wasn't letting her out of Harris County, something that really pissed me off. Didn't he know he was getting in the way of our eternally destined love? Here's the thing about Red Flags in life: the one who definitely should be heeding them at all costs, is usually the last one to recognize them as RED FLAGS. I saw them as heavenly Green Lights.

[Sober Living] facility in Kerrville TX I lived in for just over a month, upon leaving Starlight Recovery Center.

Due to the Harris County justice department jamming up my future wife, I did the next best thing, the most reasonable thing, in my opinion, I left sober living in the middle of the night, drove to Houston with everything that would fit in my truck, found one of the nicest parts of town, and rented a $2000/month 1 bedroom studio for both of us to plan our new life together. Yep, that's just the kind of guy I am, always thinking of others. What could go wrong?

The Delusion

Addiction is defined as a disease of the mind. The actual drugs/alcohol are but a symptom of my problem. One of the most painfully harrowing lessons I have learned as an addict is that by the time I have a conscious thought in my brain, it has gone through layer upon layer of subconscious filtering. It has been cleverly disguised from its true foundational origins, and by the time it actual pops into my mind, it is so easy to misinterpret if I am not spiritually "fit", as we say in recovery. Example. I am in my third rehab, I am feeling lonely, dejected, and searching for some kind of relief because my only solutions, intravenous drugs, have been yanked away like Ken Griffey stealing a home-run ball in center field. I am completely unaware of these feelings however, because after-all, I am an emotionally, mentally disconnected drug-addict who is using drugs to escape the very pain in my subconscious mind that continues to flow to the surface of my conscious mind. So, I see a beautiful, young, vulnerable woman who is going through similar circumstance as myself. Being a Man, its engrained in my DNA to be a protector and a provider, so that Male part of my brain becomes subconsciously activated, like its supposed to be, but by the time it reaches my conscious brain where reason, impulse control, and emotional regulation are rather stunted at the time-being due to the poison I am ingesting and diseased mind I am operating under, all I am aware of is, "Something inside of me feels really good right now, it reminds of that rush I get from heroin, lets take this feeling and run with it." This is very very common in recovery. Its called alcoholic/addict delusion. Rationally thinking people, including those who are in active sobriety, look at this situation and say, "Two addicts fresh off the street, trying to save each other, moving in with one another and getting married in two months, could be the dumbest shit I've heard all year." However, those two delusional addicts look at it as love at first sight, destiny in the making. I've been down that road multiple times.

[Disease Model] of addiction per SAMHSA.

So, we move in-together, both start using hard-drugs again, she starts prostituting, I start robbing rich White Folk's in Montrose, and we continued to plan our wedding. Seriously, you can't make this shit up. Somewhere along the lines, I went hunting for dope in Southwest Houston, which turns out, was just as dumb if not more dumb than marrying my rehab sweetheart.

The Trainwreck

If you have never been to Bissonnet and Highway 59 in Southwest Houston, which unless you are a junkie, prostitute, or undercover cop you probably haven't, don't let the stigma fool you- its a real shitty place to be. Think of the stereotypical Hollywood gangland portrayal of the "hood", throw in a little more depravity, remove Hillary Swank, add some automatic gunfire, and you're about halfway there. Cops that actually do patrol these streets are either working for the gangs, or are really trying to make a name for themselves because to say it's dangerous is an understatement. On any given day, you will find an array of young beautiful women of all races walking up an down the drag, another flock of not so young less attractive women walking behind them, big Cadillac escalades decked out in all blue, and an open-air drug market that would make Frank Lucas salivate. Oh yeah, if you're a young well-built Caucasian male, you better have a "sponsor"(contact), or you better be able to convince people you are a junkie, because otherwise you are going to be pegged for an undercover cop, something that happened to me regularly. Luckily, I had more track marks than a pin-cushion, so any threat I encountered usually left me alone.

[Plainfield Inn] off Bissonnet and HW 59 in Houston TX, a heavily overrun prostitution & open-air drug market, where I stayed.

I proceeded to find the shadiest motel in the area, The Plainfield Inn, and cased the joint until I found another junkie who I knew would talk to me, for the right price of course. When you're in this type of situation, randomly approaching someone on the street without offering them money for dope or offering to buy their dope if they hook you up with their connect is a sure-fire way to get your ass whooped into next week. Again, lesson learned the hard way.

I connected with a 29 year old white girl named Mercedes, her pimp St. Louis, and immediately had access to all the rock heroin I could shoot. Heroin comes in a few forms, but all you need to know is that "rock" equals fire. For all the elderly white folks out there, "fire" equals top-notch. After a few days of making endless trips(sometimes 5 a day) back and forth from my swanky studio apartment in NE Houston to Sodom and Gomorrah, I quickly came to my senses and realized I needed to stop wasting so much money on gas. So, using all the rational brain power I had left, I decided to just move in with Mercedes and St. Louis, because after-all, that's what a normal person would do.

The Danger

If you have ever been in jail, prison, or on the streets, you are quite aware of the cardinal sin of accepting "care packages" from random strangers. To the untrained eye, this appears as a harmless, selfless act from one struggling person to the next, simply trying to help someone get on their feet until they can take care of themselves, often manifesting in the form of food, clothes, drugs, or all of the above depending on which institution or street you are on. Don't be fooled however, this is a subtle, devious way of trapping someone into owing you later. It goes like this: John is new to the streets, he's a junkie, and is quickly pegged as more "green" than Bernie Sanders. So, a seasoned street dweller will approach him offering him some food, a little dope, maybe a tent, simply saying, "hey man here you go, I just wanted to look out for you." John is ecstatic, he thanks the man, and frolics off to the woods where he stays thinking he just made a new friend, an ally, in this dark depraved world he is currently living in. What John doesn't realize, is that a few days later, that same man is going to approach him and ask, "hey man you got what you owe me?" John thought it was charity, but in this dark underworld, few a rarely that lucky. This seasoned street dwelling loan shark knows John cant pay, so he throws in some threats, attempts to scare him straight, then drops the casual line, "I'll tell you what, take this dope to so-and-so, go rob this person, go steal this for me, and we'll call it even." Thus begins the vicious cycle. In this situation, I was John.

The Danger

Because I was a junkie, something everyone and their blind Mother knew, I was willing to do whatever I could to get dope, including accepting it on credit. I knew I had no way to pay it back, but being a dope-sick junkie, I figured I would cross that bridge later. Turns out later was sooner than it seemed.

[Montrose] neighborhood in Houston TX, an affluent part of town, where I lived for moving to the Plainfield Inn to chase my heroin habit.

At this point, I had been evicted from my studio apartment , my future wife and I barely spoke, and I was sleeping on the floor of a roach infested, trap-house style motel with Mercedes, and St. Louis, often times being delegated to the role of enforcer when John's didn't pay Mercedes, or other junkies tried to rob us. I thought this was the best job I ever had, being that I usually didn't have to put hands on anyone, I just had to scare them, and in return I was rewarded with enough dope to get high as well as stave off any residual withdrawals. Being that most of my life I never felt like I belonged in any one particular group of people, despite always being able to navigate social circles, being accepted by these two actually worked wonders for my low self-esteem and low self-worth. But, because sharks are sharks, and minnows are minnows, like myself, I failed to realize exactly what I had gotten myself into, and little did I know, the day of reckoning was near, and once again, I was in way over my head.

The Reckoning

At this juncture the only possession I had left was my 2006 Dodge Ram 1500, the same truck my Dad bought me when I was 16, something I was very proud of. This made me a necessity to my fellow heathens due to the fact that we could readily move-around quite easily, and could conveniently access the necessary people, places and things with ease, unlike most street dwelling junkies. As I would come to see, this also made me a target.

[Dodge Ram 1500] I sold for $400 worth of heroin due to being so incredibly dope sick.

The day came when I was indebted to St. Louis for over $1000, with no end in sight, and he began to realize that I was becoming more of a liability than an asset. I had gone from the useful phase, to the necessary phase, to the discard phase, fairly quickly. One of the most heart-wrenching things about living on the streets is seeing people put themselves in positions to be used like retail products, not much different than something you would buy at Wal-Mart. The same way someone buys new tires- using them past their expiration date, tries to get maximum productivity out of them and holds on for financial reasons, but eventually throws them away when they become more of a problem than they are worth- this is the same way prostitutes, junkies, and an array of other people are used on the street. For me, my expiration date had approached and I was given one option: pay up.

St. Louis didn't have to give me the alternate option, because he knew I knew "what time it was", plus he knew that if worst came to worst he would just hire someone to rough me up enough until I called my family for help, which honestly was his most lucrative avenue, essentially holding me for ransom, something I signed up for when I placed myself in that situation.

At this point all I had left were the clothes on my back, my truck, as well as an ever revolving door of intense withdrawals that surfaced every 4-6 hours. I knew that if I ran from my debt, I would then have to deal with being dope-sick, something that I wouldn't even begin to consider. As the withdrawals slowly crept towards me like an old friend I had come to know oh so well, but hated oh so much, I knew what I had to do. Full of shame, despair, helpless demoralization, and worst of all- a laundry list of fallible, victim minded excuses-I did what I always did, and sold my soul for a shot of poison. This day, the shot cost me my beloved Dodge Ram, the price- $400 worth of Heroin- which I used in a day and a half, leaving me more empty, more depraved, more demoralized, and back to square one.

The Realization

One of the most harsh, painful realities of addiction is that until someone chooses to stop, nothing stops, and nothing changes. For me, there was no circumstance, no person, no institution, nor circumstance powerful enough to make me quit. What I have learned is that if there were, I would have stopped long before I did. If there were, I would have quit when I received my first DWI, my first Felony, my first lost job, my first overdose, the list goes on and on. The widely pushed narrative, usually from well meaning non-addicts, of "Try harder, just stop, just say non," is an unfortunate fallacy that only compounds the problem, and adds on to the shameful lie of addiction. I don't know one street dwelling junkie, prostitute, inmate, or dead drug addict who would say, "If trying harder would mean I could stop right now, and wake up a new person, I still wouldn't do it." To the outside world this narrative is applicable, because the average outsider is not an addict. I have yet to meet someone who consciously wants to wake up, ruin their lives, ruin their families live, go to prison, live on the streets, and leave behind a path of utter destruction in their wake. It's not that simple, regardless of whichever non-addicted, well-meaning, motivational speaker says it is. Regardless of the challenges we face, as well as the dire, insurmountable odds of actually recovering, there IS and always has been a solution. The solution is painful, it's one of the hardest things an addict will ever face, and it's not fun, at least in the beginning. The sad truth is that most addicts don't give themselves enough time to let the "miracle" happen. We tend to experience a little taste of recovery freedom, then bail once the rubber hits the road. Unfortunately many people die, and most will never recover. Relapse doesn't have to be a part of your recovery, although it has been for me, and it is for most people. I have had many breaking points, many very very low "bottoms" through my journey in addiction. Funny enough, the "bottom" that broke me, was the a day in paradise compared to others I have faced. The difference is that I chose and choose on a daily basis to follow through with my program of recovery, even when it appears meaningless, and hopeless. I am reminded of a common saying in recovery circles, "This too shall pass." The more I follow through with my program, and continue to navigate this new world with courage and bravery, the more I come to believe that regardless of however difficult, painful, or hopeless the moment feels, "This too shall pass." It hasn't failed me yet.

[Spencer Brooks Otto] 2023