Profiles of the Mundane, Page 1

You have to have either deep inner pain or deep psychological carelessness to continue to be a drug addict after your friends have died, you have suffered great pain, and nearly all has been ruined, but for those hardy enough, it can be a lifestyle and an identity.

Meet the Old Hellraisers.  These are my neighbors, all black, in their late 50s early 60s, alcoholics, and drug abusers.  I don't know that any of them have a physical addiction except to alcohol, which is the worse one to have besides cigarettes but is yet a known quantity.  One knows what alcohol will do to you, and even though the withdrawal is deadly, any alcoholic past the age of 25 knows, you either go for treatment or just draw it down slowly to prevent your brain from full hallucination and your heart from exploding.  Alot of people don't know of the full delirium tremens, which carries a complete hallucination with no recognition of the real world, and up to a 35% mortality, meaning you will likely die and there's nothing you can do about it because everything you are seeing is a hallucination.  Treatment reduces mortality to 15%, still not very good.  They will give you benzos, but the best thing to reverse it, the same thing you were addicted to in the first place, then stretch it out till it is at least becomes possible to not go into the DTs.  Addictive personalities, self-included, know this.  Sometimes you go into withdrawals simply because it becomes impossible to stuff more drugs into yourself as you need.  You're drinking Everclear with clonazepam and you can't legally make stronger alcohol or drink it without burning a whole in your throat.  You can't take more pills without becoming comatose.  You're waking up in withdrawal because you slept more than 6 hours and you need to take drugs every 4 hours.  You have now got a problem which demands treatment.

Some people however, are of a hearty type.  Some of these people are sociopaths.  Neither the drugs nor the withdrawal are they terribly sensitive to.  They are also not sensitive to murder which is why a few of them kill people, not a lot of them however, just more under unnecessary circumstances.  They would kill a spouse rather than get a divorce which could make them look bad.  They do care about something, their own gain, just not other people, like their wife and children.  Or rather, they are not personally sensitive to the fate of others, they can sometimes demonstrate loyalty.

TO BE CONTINUED...