DETOX

You should never start out a story like this. The first time I was in detox I went to secure myself housing. The idea was to live in a half way house. I realized you don't end up in detox for no reason so I realized I needed to get sober. I wrote about this experience a thousand years ago when it happened.

 I remember you sat around all day eating cinnamon toast, drinking AA coffee and smoking between AA meetings. I remember there was a guy who couldn't really talk. All he could say was, he'd mumble "I was taking 90 Xanax a day." There was another guy who had been drinking fucking gasoline. He had lost the ability to communicate. I remember during dinner one night he, without warning, totally flipped the table while yelling. Because I had to wait til there was a bed in the halfway house I was sent to "holding." 

This is where they put people just out of prison waiting for sober living. Because our country is insane everyone, well just about everyone was African American. I was told I'd be there 5 weeks waiting. Over the loud speaker every day a guy would say, "All the inmates please line up in the front for a meal." Eventually someone complained about him using the word "inmate" and they changed it to "clients". I don't know what meds I was on, but there were plenty of people on Methadone. Every day we'd all line up and they'd give us our meds. One day I was in line, the guy in front of me was there for Methadone and he said "Maybe this time I'll just smoke crack." That was his plan. So you get the idea, these people were fucked. At one point during a class the fucking FBI bust into the room and pulled one of the dudes out. I later learned he had murdered two people in Worceter.

At one point I ran out of cigarettes and no one was coming for a week to bring me more. After 2 days I finally got the courage up and asked one of the men for a cigarette. All the "clients" only had Newports. I had never had a Newport. I finally asked this guy for one and he gave it to me and said, "Son, this is the Cadillac of cigarettes." It tasted fucking awesome. From that moment on I loved Newport/menthol of any kind. Me and my brother call them Nature's Toothbrush and I used to only buy them when I had extra money. I can't really smoke a whole pack so I'd get them when I was particularly flush. I used to say "They call me 2 pack".