I just threw a brand new tissue into the toilet, because it was on the bathroom floor. And it made me think - whenever my tissue box gets low, I start to go around old pants, digging tissues out of the pockets to take to work. I can do this for weeks with an empty tissue box. And then as soon as I get a new tissue box (as I did last weekend), I start treating them mercilessly again. In the toilet for the crime of being on the floor. Or in the bin for the crime of being "too many" in my pockets.
It's this kind of experience that gives me a negative view of Man's stay on earth. Despite what we try to teach ourselves, we're voracious and thoughtless consumers. Sure it's cool to argue about renewable resources and recycling, but we're only doing it because that tissue box is close to empty. If someone had tried to push the concept three hundred years ago they would've been nailed to a tree, as Douglas Adams would say.
Do we have to see the end of the road to plan for our arrival at the destination (Yes it's Metaphor Night here boys and girls). For once can we not try to act responsibly before the damage is done? As a junkie I'm the worst one to talk, taking dope 24/7 whilst my body's young and resilient and only thinking about detox when the money starts to run out and I've been busted once or twice.
Though I'd like to point out that I went to Biala detox in 1993, with a load of cash under my then girlfriend's bed at Red Hill. I had no short supply of dope or customers, but I could see I was on a very short road and the best way off was taking myself off it rather than letting the forces of authority try. I failed, then authority had its day, ten years ago to this very day. They sentenced me to a plethora of requirements - urine tests, counselling and a stay at a rehab. None of which I ever did because a) The authoritys were too underfunded to follow it up and b) I knew that a forced "cure" was worse than no cure. It only works when you're ready.
So ten years have passed. I must have been on methadone for most of the last eight. My longest sober break (though I was still on methadone) was last year, just on six weeks. Total sober days before that six weeks totalled less than six weeks. The last year hasn't been too bad but I am declining back into it as self-opinion deteriorates and esteem wavers.
What to do?