Last Room on the Left
Heroin addiction claims tens of thousands of lives each year in the U.S. This story lends insight into the beast that is addiction
By Mitch Farley
I remember the fear nearly paralyzing me. I remember the exact moment when I knew it was more than shaky hands and a sweaty forehead. It was something I’d long ignored, pretended not to believe. It won’t happen to me.
I was heading back from West Seattle. My then-girlfriend’s parents lived there, and we were both home from college for the summer. Just as I turned off Admiral Way onto the West Seattle Bridge, it crept up on me–I’d felt fine all day, and then, in a matter of seconds, a wave of cold sweats and shakes.
It was late August and the sun had just set, but its warmth was still on the pavement, sticky and thick. Dramamine by Modest Mouse was playing through the left speaker of my ’89 Prelude, the other one was blown. The car still held the day’s heat, but I was shivering. I cranked on the window reel to catch some air.
Tears started to form, the kind you get from yawning. And then a realization crashed into me. It was something I hadn’t known when I kissed my girlfriend goodbye 10 minutes earlier.
Opiate withdrawals.
It turns out if you smoke heroin every night, your body develops a taste for it.
I was disturbed, frantic. I felt the realest fear of my life. But the hunger made me forget all of that. Drug addiction is a codependent relationship — nothing else matters.
I picked up the phone and dialed. “I’ve got $20 and I’m headed back from Seattle.”
“Cool, roll through,” the voice said.
Three words of relief.
I wish I could say that was all it took — a realization that my grasp was slipping, that it was starting to win. Sadly, no. My affair was only beginning. I spent the next four years doing the rehab dance, trying to beat it on my own.
I’d string together a few months of clean time, get into a sober-living house, and then just when everything was looking up, I’d trip, right back into its comforting grip.
I relapsed on my 21st birthday after my parents threw me a party. My mom was in recovery, but the rest of the family was drinking. I was so angry — angry at myself for being a drug addict. After the party I dropped my girlfriend off at her sober-living house and made the call, the same one I’d made so many times before.
I had six months clean, a job, a place to live with a sober support system, a new car, a girlfriend, my parents had just started to trust me again. I burned it all up on that Reynolds Wrap, sitting in my car, alone.
Heroin is like a warm bed on a winter morning, when you first get out, all you want to do is crawl back in.
Christmas of 2014 was the pit of my addiction. I was on a hellacious bender; I had been up for three months on crystal meth. My family checked me into a medical detox in Ballard. I snuck drugs in, palming them in my hand when they searched me, they forgot to check my hands. I spent a day pretending to take the meds and shooting up in the bathroom before I ran out. I couldn’t fake it any longer, I needed to get more. So I put on my clothes and walked out.
I called my dad and told him, he begged me to stay. I can’t give it up right now, I just can’t. I went home and packed everything I owned into my forest-green Jetta. I was heading south to California. I can get off it in Cali, I just need one more bag. Delusions of an addicted mind.
I’ll never forget the words my dad said to me before I left.
“We’ve done all we can son, I wish you luck.”
They’d helped me so much, giving me that unconditional love that parents do. But I couldn’t accept it. I was incapable of receiving love. That was the only time I’ve seen my father cry. I turned away. The pull towards the road was stronger than my family’s desperation.
I picked up one last bag and hit the interstate with no intention of turning back.
I had a plan, I was going to wean myself off of the drugs and detox in the woods somewhere in Northern California with my dog. Then it was on to the City of Angels to become a writer.
It was the dead of winter though, and in central Oregon it was damn cold. I was sleeping in my car at rest stops. Three nights of that was all I could take. On the third morning I woke up with blue hands. I knew I was losing the fight. I wasn’t going to drive off into the sunset happily ever after. Maybe I should go back.
I pulled off the interstate in Roseburg, Oregon and found a Starbucks with WiFi. I called home. “Mom, I’m gonna die. I can’t win.” She got me a room at the Motel 6 for three nights to detox. “You better be out of drugs, because this is it.”
I paid and got the key, second floor, last room on the left. I collapsed onto the bed as soon as the weighted door closed behind me. It was New Year’s Eve. What a way to celebrate.
The next two days were a blur — a state somewhere between a dream, and a bone-busting pain. I paced all day and squirmed all night. Opiate withdrawals feel like every cell in your body swelling with pressure, like a water balloon left on the spigot too long, about to rupture.
I would prop myself up in bed, then immediately fall back, exhausted. My muscles had spent everything they had. I considered urinating in bed, weak and out of dignity. The times when I finally worked up enough strength to make it to the bathroom, I’d stare into the mirror, looking into the holes where my eyes used to be.
What have you done to yourself?
I spent two days in that room. The air in there was like a bad fog that wouldn’t lift. I kept the lights off the whole time. Gas station food wrappers littered the navy blue carpet. On the third day I gathered my belongings, scattered in every corner.
I opened the door and looked back at the mess — the one I’d been making since I had my first hit. In that moment, standing in the doorway with my dog, I knew I was ready to live. I was tired of being weighed down. I turned and trudged down the floral-print hallway.
I’ve heard addicts say drugs allowed them to find themselves, that they didn’t know who they were without them. That’s not how I feel. Drugs for me were a nearly-fatal road block that kept me from finding out who I was. Heroin was an obstacle I couldn’t pass.
They say an addict will never quit before they’re ready. That is frighteningly true. I still struggle to figure out how I found the strength to walk away from that room and leave it behind, but what I do know for sure: It’s staying there, with my eye on it through the rearview.
In the years that have grown between myself and that room I’ve come to learn one thing: I never have to go back. It’s been ages since I’ve felt that hunger, but I still remember its appetite. And when I do think about the burdens I’ve had to bear, they’re not as heavy as they used to be.