*The following may be is triggering to those affected by substance abuse/addiction.
Five. That’s the number of pills I had left.
I stared at the baggy, shocked by how many that meant I had taken that day. I must have miscounted, and somehow, the second time I opened the bag, five more pills would surely appear right before my eyes. But this was not the case.
I shoved the bag into my pocket as my girlfriend walked in and asked if I was ready to go. We had planned on going to a friend’s party later that night — something we both always looked forward to. She knew about the drugs, or at least what I decided to tell her. To her, I was simply a guy who liked to get high once in a while. She had no idea as to the extent of my addiction — the toll that it took on me emotionally, physically, and even on our own relationship.
After spending the night drinking at our friend’s house, we decided to Uber to hers. Feeling the positive momentum of the night, we started hooking up as we sprawled out across her oversized fluffy bed. I could tell she wanted to have sex, and I did too. But instead of relishing in that reality, I felt a wave of fear wash over my mind.
How many pills had I taken that day? Would I even be able to get hard? Would I enjoy myself at all?
This was the part of my drug use that I had to constantly hide. How it left me feeling so aroused, but barely able to get hard. Sometimes I couldn’t even cum. I would go at it for two hours hoping and hoping that I’d finally be able to finish, only to end up having to fake an orgasm. The drugs were stealing from me the thing I valued most: connecting with her in one of the most intimate ways I knew how.
I briefly considered giving them up and returning fully to the girl I loved, before a flurry of fear and self-doubt quickly pushed all hope of quitting far away. I knew I could never truly give myself to her while I was high, and I constantly lived with that guilt.
Half of me tried to blame her accepting nature for my addiction — as if I would quit the second she told me to, absolving me of all responsibility for my actions. Deep down I knew this couldn’t go on forever. One day we went up to San Francisco during Christmas break to spend the day shopping and eating. I couldn’t have been happier. Everything was decorated beautifully. I was getting to experience it all with the girl I loved the most. It looked like something out of a movie. Yet I still found myself sneaking away for a moment to slip my hand into my pocket, fish out a pill, and quickly swallow — no water needed. I was an expert by now.
The guilt I always felt was quickly replaced by shame. I had everything I ever wanted in the world right in front of me, but I still felt the need to get high. Even worse, I knew that no matter how much we both enjoyed each other’s company that day or any other day, the experience would never culminate in the deeply passionate sex I used to know.
I wish I could say the problems I experienced ended with the physical, but that was just the beginning.
After a while I found myself needing more and more pills to feel as good as I used to from one (you all know how the story goes). Whenever I didn’t have enough to keep me high, I would look at her with pure contempt whenever she spoke. When I was craving, everything about the girl I supposedly loved left me with a feeling of rage, my mind preoccupied with how I was going to get that next pill. I’d lie almost constantly, making excuses to leave her so I could pick up. I would go to the bathroom sometimes twice during one meal. Eventually, everything came to a boiling point.
I experienced a rare moment of clarity and decided that it wasn’t fair to either of us for this to continue. I promised myself that that was the last time I would allow a substance to get in the way of what was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me.
The following two weeks were hard, but as I felt myself being purged of all the drugs, I knew my decision was the right one. When I looked at my girlfriend, that rush of endorphins that was once so familiar returned and I was filled with a euphoria that no drug could ever come close to producing.
Our sex life became full of the passionate vigor that I always wished for, and my body finally felt clean and free. I realized that the high I had been chasing was right in front of me the whole time, and it blew everything else out of the water.
As cliché as it may sound, love can be a drug, and without it, I fear I would have never been able to break free from my addiction.
Photos by Haley Hasen.