When you are suffering from drug or alcohol addiction, that addiction takes over your world and every waking moment. It never ends.
Case in point, I lived in the bushes on the side of the freeway and sometimes it would be a Caltrans worker who served as my morning alarm clock. And there would be the occasional policeman as well but, when you are homeless sleeping on the side of the freeway, most cops wouldn’t even bother trying to find out what was going on because they had no idea what they would be getting into, and consequently it was easier for them to just pretend they didn’t see anything and move along as opposed to get involved in an unknown situation.
And once again, I perceived myself as being free and living this idyllic life of absolute freedom. And I do not want people to misunderstand me-I knew I was an addict and I knew I had a drug and alcohol problem. But the lifestyle I was living was almost like the ultimate enabler to feed my habits, and I was smart enough to know how to get what I needed to get to get what I wanted to have. Under the guise and illusion of freedom it proved a dangerous mix.
The pros and cons of PCP
And while I mentioned numerous times about alcohol and drugs, I should elaborate that along with marijuana, I was doing LSD, PCP, and other much harder drugs. PCP in particular was a very, very different type of high. It would completely distort your sense of reality to “Alice in Wonderland” like proportions. With alcohol, it changes your sense of reality but you are still understand some semblance of reality. With PCP, it completely changed, altered, and obfuscated all semblance of reality to the point where you simply lost control of every frame of reality. I remember one time while I was under the influence of PCP, I was sitting on a curb and felt like I was 3 inches tall. And as these cars drove by, to me it looked like they were moving a million miles per hour and to me, looked like blurs going by, and since I felt(and probably thought I was only 3 inches tall), I was petrified to move. So even though the high of PCP was not enjoyable and I hated the feeling, as a drug addict I simply could not say no and continued to take part in an activity I hated and did not enjoy.
Cheap High Comes At a Price
You may ask why I still would take PCP, and the answer is that it was also the cheapest drug on the streets you could buy. So I could buy some PCP and then try to sell it, to make enough money to buy something more preferable and if that didn’t work out I could simply take the PCP. I mean, I had no qualms about that at all. It was simply another tool and strategy to life on the streets for someone with a hardcore drug addiction. And the mindset was as such, that even though I did not want to do it anymore-my brain simply would not let me do it. My brain simply overrode the heart in doing what was right. And sometimes getting arrested was a positive in that it gave me time to clean up and focus and try again to remain clean. It never worked though…at least not for long anyways.