My mom was shaving her chin the other night and talking about her ‘third eye’ and an approaching comet, when it occurred to me just how much she’s changed over the last year.

And before you get prickly about my inclusion of this very personal detail about her, know that she has given me explicit permission to describe her beard. She may even be a little proud of it.

I wouldn’t even call it a beard, really. Just one or two thick white—

“No, no,” my mom interrupts, while I’m reading the above passage for her approval. “Don’t give it all that. You don’t want people to think you’ve got some kind of freak mother.”

Later, she’d say, “The eloquence of how I think compared to the eloquence of how I speak is like night and day.” And I would dutifully write it down.

Anyway, the only reason why I mention her ‘old-lady-o’clock shadow’ is because it’s constantly pricking me.

Because she’s constantly hugging me.

I guess she’s always been wise. I just wasn’t paying attention. Too busy getting high in the abandoned warehouse of my own mind.

When I went clean, I moved back home. You might think a man fresh from a long and feverish drug habit living with his mother would make for a rather combustible situation. And sure enough, in the early days, the tiniest of frictions threatened to take a match to the situation.

But as time went on, we got close. Not in the Norman Bates–ian sense. It’s more like a couple of plants mutually agreeing to water one another.

Probably for the first time since I was a kid, I can actually hear her.

Listening — really listening — makes you feel smaller. In a good way. It allows space for others to exist in, and reminds them that their voices are valued and their perspective is considered. You wouldn’t believe the things I learned from truly listening to the same old people I thought I’d squeezed dry decades ago.

Sometimes, you have to make yourself small in order to grow.

When I first sat around a table with addicts at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, I had so much to say. My turn! My turn! Hand me the conch shell, already. I wanted to talk about my experiences as a druggie — my frustrations and disappointments and misadventures and how I ruined my life worse than yours.

But I had to wait patiently for everyone else to tell their inferior tales of woe. Eventually, their words — no, I guess the feelings behind them — began to sink in.

When it was my turn to speak at meetings, my stories got shorter. They didn’t seem so important anymore. Everyone knows suffering. Mine isn’t exceptional. Besides, I can’t learn a thing from my own tales of woe — only those of others.

Then one day, it was my turn to speak at a meeting. And all I could do was pass along the conch shell.

By and large, over time, the stock market always goes up. Humankind gets richer too.

But markets crash. So do civilizations, from time to time. A divisive election. A war. Another catastrophe filling the headlines. It may seem like we’ve gone backwards — that there’s no hope for a progressive, enlightened world at all — but that’s because you’re in the weeds.

We’re a little kinder to animals today. Addiction isn’t a crime. And we’re even starting to see that trees are people, too. So hold on to your shares in this world. Believe me. I’ve lived through volatility. That's why I'm betting your investment will pay dividends. The long game is the only game that pays.

A friend of a friend had a lapse the other day. I was asked for a little advice: What should I tell him?

He’d been clean for four years.

That’s more than twice as long as me. And I’m supposed to have some magical words for someone who’s proven far better at recovery than me? He’s the expert. He didn’t make it. If anything, I should be asking him what happened. How do I avoid the same fate?

At first, the news was chilling. Maybe it’s true what they say at meetings. You’re never truly finished with addiction. You’ll have to be on guard for it all your life.

Yet I refuse to accept that. I’ve long felt that I’m building a new human, pretty much from scratch. The old one survived by lying — mostly to himself — to cover the holes inside him. But foundations built on denial always crack.

We’re all slightly perforated people. Addicts, however, often come with gaping holes in their foundation. You can’t pretend everything is going smoothly when there are so many wrinkles in the concrete.

So what went wrong for this friend of a friend? Something unfinished remained. We’re all works in progress. Maybe getting high is just a way of testing the structure. Not there yet. Some buildings take a lot longer than others to complete, anyway.

So I told my friend to tell her friend something along these lines:

No one comes down from drugs thinking, ‘That was wonderful. I’d like to do that again.’ No, we’re dangerously down on ourselves, sometimes fatally. Don’t let everyone else pile on. You’ve got more guilt and shame than you need already. Instead, try something different. Be positive. Insist on being loved.

Looking back, the one consistent feeling I had throughout addiction was a sense of emptiness. It was like there was a hole inside of me. I could pave it over with motorcycles, lovers and vacations. But the pavement would inevitably crack. Maybe that’s why I was a peak drug user when I had a career, a house, a dog and someone I really cared about. Too much pavement. It had become impossible to get down to the foundation to make necessary repairs.

In recovery, you’ll hear a common refrain: “I lost everything.” Addicts always talk about the money, the job and the family. Think about it too much and all that loss can be overwhelming.

Eventually, though, I understood that I had to lose everything. It was all pavement, built over a hole that none of that stuff could fill. Recovery razed it all to the ground. I remember weeping about all that loss. Then came a feeling of unrelenting gratitude. I had an opportunity to build the right way.

So when you lapse, maybe it’s also an opportunity. You didn’t get at the real trouble yet. You had lost everything, went into recovery — and then started paving over the hole again. A lapse is a reminder that it’s still there. It’s another chance.

Getting clean means wiping away all that surface debris and exposing the hole. Recovery is an investigation, maybe even a conversation. Stare into that hole. What does it tell you? It’s only when you understand it that you can start building again.

And all that time you spent clean? That’s quality time — years of gaining the tools you need to continue the work. No one took those tools away from you. You’re not starting from scratch.

Make no mistake. A lapse isn’t a step forward. But it isn’t a step backward either. It’s more like a side door into the darkness. And that’s okay. Sometimes, for whatever reason, you might feel a need to step into it.

The important thing is to remember to use that door again to step back into the light.

“I have a sore neck,” I told Lacey once, between puffs of a crack pipe.

Lacey, who had watched people die on the streets in every imaginable way, leapt to her feet as if I’d announced a terminal diagnosis.

“Oh no!” she wailed. “You poor thing! What do you need?”

“Maybe just some aspirin?”

She held out her hand. I gave her some money. She vanished in a wisp of crack smoke and wasn’t seen again for several days.

The neck pain was probably innocent enough. I had recently awakened from a two‑day sleep coma, and you wouldn’t believe the positions crack people pass out in. Sometimes crouched mid‑sentence. Sometimes upside down. Sometimes folded like a marionette someone dropped.

What troubled me was that you’re not supposed to feel anything when you’re high. If something managed to break through the veil of crack, it had to be bad.

It took months — and a heroic amount of self‑medication — for the pain to fade. Maybe I beat cancer without knowing it. That’s the thing about addiction: when you’re high, you can’t die. You only reckon with the devastation you’ve inflicted on your body when you get clean. For many people, that’s reason enough to stay high.

When a crack smoker wakes up after a long slumber, there’s a brief, terrible window where you feel everything: the aches, the wheezes, the diseases. You feel mortal.

A good session wipes all that away. Crack smokers don’t even age while high — or so we like to believe. Men will proudly announce their age like it’s a miracle.

“I’m 85!” a withered creature will declare. “Can you believe it?”

I’d play along, insist he didn’t look a day over 30, maybe even ask about his skincare routine.

Women follow a different system. Under 40, they’ll tell you their age. Over 40, they drop to their 20s. And any woman over 60 is usually around 37.

Of course, crack doesn’t actually hold back time. But you can’t blame us for believing it. Prolonged illness — even aging — is unheard of in crack country. We tend to just drop dead.

This is why getting clean is so daunting. The first reckoning is with the body. The doctor’s appointment is a horror show: skin condition, parasites, heart murmur, shadow in the lungs — and, oh yes, you’re actually old.

Whatever happened to my neck never mattered much. I probably did sleep upside down.

But if you manage to clean up your medical charts and even take up a fitness routine — I recommend swimming — you experience the first unexpected high of sobriety. Coming back from the dead is intoxicating.

Then comes the mind. Pills, books, school. You wonder if you have an attention span left. But you do. That thing you used to do with your cheeks — puffing them out like a chipmunk when you thought no one was watching — that’s gone too. Memory still works. The brain doesn’t need a new transmission. Getting straight As still rocks. Planning for the future is a very good drug for grown‑ups.

This is where the addict takes stock of what remains of his mind and is surprised — even thrilled — by the results.

And then comes the final reckoning, the one we worked hardest to avoid: the soul. Feelings return. All of them. The drag of life’s drumbeat — taxes, relationships, toxic people. But music sounds incredible. Relationships can feel really good. The good, the bad, the boring — all of it is food for a soul that’s been starved too long.

Every crack smoker has their reasons for not wanting to feel the world. I’m still not entirely sure about mine. What I do know is that to live, you have to keep showing up. All I have now is a strong body, a clear mind, and an honest relationship with myself. It seems to be working.

Because sometimes — and I swear this — I can feel my soul.

When you can feel the world again, in all its agonizing stupidity and ecstasy, and embrace it anyway, that’s when you finally understand what it means to live forever.

It’s easier to describe other highs. Coke or meth turn the body into a livewire. Heroin makes the world distant, inconsequential. But crack? Crack is euphoria — too much euphoria. The kind that makes you wonder what you’re supposed to do with all that joy. Or why you need it in the first place.

Then it settles down. The world goes quiet.

Maybe it’s easier to describe what used to happen in my head.

You see, I had gathered a lot of thoughts over the course of an existence — some ordinary, some exotic, many troublesome. I would bring this bristling head to the local trap house and many more concerns would arise. Like, how I would make it to work and how would I get my shoes back from the proprietor of the establishment and so forth.

Cheap thoughts burning like cheap candles on a birthday cake.

When I took my first toke, all those burning lights were snuffed out at once. No thoughts. No worries. Just the eternal none-shine of the spotless mind. Only not so eternal.

A wick would re-light. Then another. And another. Suddenly, the cake was covered again — more candles than before, more than it can hold. The drapes were e ablaze.

So I reached for the pipe again. The great snuffing out ensued. Then the lights returned with a vengeance. More candles. More fire. Until I was all out of dope — and hope.

Today is my birthday. I've been clean for about a year and a half.

I still get troublesome thoughts. I don’t have the drugs to sort them out. Only words. Writing helps me process the prickly notions. Words don’t blow out the candles, but they keep the cake from burning down the house.

And now, I find myself wanting more birthday cakes. Real ones. With real candles. The kind you make wishes over.

Also, the time machine frequently blows up mid-flight, taking the pilot with it.

If I could build a real time machine though, I might visit the childhood version of me. I might even offer him a little advice. I’m not sure he’d follow it.

But since I went to all the trouble of building a time machine, I’d tell him anyway. And since I know for a fact that he was a very lonely little astronaut, he’d probably at least listen.

My advice?

Try to do as much as you can in the first run. I mean, everything you want to try, the places you want to see, and the people you want to love. Don’t let them get away because you’re afraid of making mistakes. Life’s too short to circle back for anything you think you missed.

In this world, the only thing you should ever overindulge in is the moment.

Hold fast to it, even if it occasionally blows up in your face.

And if he asks me about the future — about the mistakes waiting for him — I won't tell him to stay away from drugs. But I will say it’s even harder for an ex-addict. We just wake up one day to find the whole middle part of our life gone. All we’re left with are the bookends — youthful memories and haunted old age. With just a void in between.

This life can seem like a breeze until you try to circle back for something you may have left behind. Then you’re facing an unrelenting wind. But many ex-junkies will only run harder because they know that learning this lesson, even late, is the best thing that ever happened to them. Some will even find the things they missed. Others will die trying.

Will the childhood version of me listen to the former crack smoking version of me? Probably not. That kid never thought much of me. He’d probably build the busted time machine anyway. Just to spite me.

But he'll figure it out eventually. And circle back around. Maybe we’ll even meet again.

Ever get the feeling someone you love may be a drug addict?

Don’t check their phone. Even if you could confirm the worst, it’s nearly impossible to go back from what you’d have become — someone who violates a sacred trust. And it is a sacred trust to leave an unlocked phone on the couch without worrying about prying eyes.

In fact, I’d argue that, unless someone’s life is in immediate peril, their phone is strictly off-limits. It holds so much more than just text messages to drug dealers. It’s the new diary. A pixelated window to the soul.

Believe me. It’s much easier to follow the money. Check a bank statement or an ATM receipt if you can. No addict is so meticulous about their paper trail for so long. They’ll trip up.

Why did you take out $500?

I bought a collector’s edition Star Wars Lego set, darling.

It makes sense that my final reckoning came at the hands of an accountant. I had followed a giant sign in a downtown alley: FILE YOUR TAXES HERE.

It was her job to paint people by the numbers. For me, she painted a portrait of an addict.

“You earned $110,000 in 2021,” she says, staring at a T-4 slip. “That’s good money.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It was a good gig.”

“Where did it all g—” she caught herself.

The numbers already knew the answer.

All that income. No taxes filed. Not for six years!

“In 2022, you made a big deposit to your RRSP,” she said, staring at a screen. “That’s good.”

“And then in 2022,” she added, “you withdrew it all. That’s not good.”

I never imagined a list of financial transactions could carry so much emotional weight. My voice thickened a little when I tried to explain my misadventures. For years, bank accounts swelled and bottomed out.

“I’m sorry, Rozie,” overcome by shame. “I really appreciate this. But I wasn’t in a good place.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “This is a really important part of your recovery. You’re going to get through this and then you’re going to feel so good about yourself.”

It’s true. I went clean, but years of unclaimed taxes still loomed over me. It’s the one, awful thing I just couldn’t face. Until I did. I can’t plead ‘addict’ to the government. To them, I’m just a collection of data. Unchecked boxes where all my tax filings should be. I was an unchecked box where a person should have been.

Not to Rozie and her compassionate calculations. Who would have thought numbers could be so relentlessly indifferent and hopeful at the same time? She’s doing everything she can to help me sort this out, even finding tax breaks in the unlikeliest of places — “You’re a journalist. You can write this off. And this too.”

She knows I’m trying to make it right. But she also knows there’s no mercy clause for addicts. Just the unflinching truth of accountability. My return won’t show up on a balance sheet.

It’s a known fact that the older you get, the more you talk. It’s as if you have to narrate your own life for other people — who, of course, find it so very fascinating.

I’m sure some of it has to do with Death being a dreadful conversationalist. We make noise for the long silence to come.

But you can blow your talking gasket at any age. I’ve known people in their twenties, who can completely drain all of the oxygen from a room without breaking a sweat.

You know who else often suffers from a ruptured tongue regulator? That’s right. Your overly friendly neighborhood crack smoker.

And you know who often bears the brunt of our unseemly chattiness? Your friendly neighborhood convenience store clerk working the overnight shift. Ask my friend Salim, if he’s still around and hasn’t made good on his vows to go back to Syria.

My, did he ever get an earful whenever I paid a visit in the dead of night to pick up a couple of Freezies, a lighter and maybe a glass tube with a rose inside.

Salim’s world is a fantastical place for the crack smoker who comes in from out of the cold. Imagine aisle after aisle of choco-cream-sugar confections. There are fresh-cut melons, too, in case you get the demented craving for something healthy. The slushie machine chirps cheerfully. Come hither, whisper the gummy lips. And there’s the good Cap’n Crunch lording over the cereal section.

But the real destination is even more surreal — the front counter where Salim waits patiently for me to finish my appointed rounds. I’ll bring a few random artifacts to the counter, but it’s strictly a formality. I came here to talk him to death.

He used to be a tank mechanic in Iraq. But his heart is with his wife and a trio of children in Syria. Could he ever save enough to bring them here? And how would they all fit in the single, bug-infested room he rents on the edge of town? No, better for him to get back to Syria. Even if there’s still a lot of fighting, and his brother-in-law lost a leg to a landmine. It’s all very interesting, and he must be terribly lonesome, but it’s my time to shine. So I’ll ask him about the new air fresheners sold at the counter.

“Do they work on marijuana smoke?” I ask cautiously. I think Febreze has left me with a permanent wheeze.

“Sure, my friend,” he says with a wink. “Everything.”

The doorbell might interrupt us. Another junkie might be floating through. Salim and I will fall into silence, as the newcomer haunts an aisle or two. Probably just happy to have the night at his back. Salim and I will stare up at the security monitors. While we’re waiting, he might graciously point out that my pants are on backwards.

The visiting crack smoker might try to horn in on our conversation too. But we give him the silent treatment. I’ll even pay for his gummy worms, just to hurry him along.

When we’re alone again, it’s non-stop chatter. We talk about everything you could imagine, except of course, the obvious — why there might be a jittery, wide-eyed man standing at the counter at 4 am with his pants on backwards.

Well, I must be going, I say eventually. I’ve been away from the pipe too long. Better get back to it.

“Why do you do it?” he asked once.

“Do what?” I was already backing towards the door. I didn’t want this conversation and it was obvious. So we just left it at that. Maybe we’d talk about life’s other landmines next time.

On the walk back to the shambles that was my rented room, I dodge all sorts of shapes and shadows. “Hey!” comes a shout from the back alley. I pick up the pace. Some straggler is always looking to babble wildly. Vacant eyes look up at me from a bench as I pass. Given half a chance, these junkies would talk me to the morning light. I’d probably be into it too, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.

It was only much later, when I got clean, that I understood why old people, deranged youth and crack smokers talk so much. It’s not the aging, the deranging, or the drugging. It’s the loneliness. Days and days of not talking to anyone. And when you finally find a willing ear, you unleash a torrent of inner thoughts — not realizing that many of them have gotten old and quite moldy.

Some people don’t like talking to junkies. They’re always in too much of a hurry for them. In early recovery, I passed them by too, but only from a sense of survival. Heaven knows where those conversations could have led.

Mostly, they’re dehumanized. You’ll always pretend to listen to an oldtimer telling you about the fish he caught back in ‘78. It’s the respectful thing to do. Not so much the crack smoker. We’re conditioned to pretend they’re invisible. Pretending they exist is too much trouble for what it’s worth. All they want from us is money. So what? It’s only a buck or two. But I’ll wager nothing is more valuable than an acknowledgment of humanity.

Thank goodness for the kindly overnight storekeepers of the world. The men and women who happen to be, in that very moment, just as lonely as us.

Someone once suggested they would like to get high with me.

As if it was on their bucket list.

I think it was after a recovery meeting. Probably in the early days when my contributions to group discussion were a mix of regret and longing. On one hand, I was duly humbled by the initial impact of coming clean. There was a lot to be sorry for. And what a crater I had made of my life!

But when a meeting facilitator asked what I liked about getting high, I let my recovery rawness show. I went into far too much detail. I rhapsodized about the lifestyle. By the end of my tirade, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one salivating.

When someone speaks coherently about their adventures in addiction — even a little philosophically — it’s easy to mistake them for the right kind of crack smoker. The kind that doesn’t immediately lose their shit at the first toke.

It’s easy to imagine this person is the addict you’ve waited your whole life to get high with. Until, that is, you do.

Of all the people I’ve ever kept company with during a drug session, I can count the number of people I had a pleasant time with on zero fingers. No one is a good co-crack smoker. That’s because at the very first toke, the person you thought you knew is completely transformed. Believe me. I’ve spent endless hours smoking with family, close friends, even girlfriends. It’s always the same. Crack flips them upside down.

I’m probably the last person you’d want to get high with. I stammer and sweat. The paranoia is almost immediate. Then I’m on hands and knees searching the rug for runaway dope.

The crippling sadness arrives without warning. At some point, I’m inevitably struck with grief. I’m not sure exactly why, but I get these images of people in my life who used to cherish me. Mother, partner, dog. I have flashbacks to halcyon times when I was loved on a molecular level — not for how much dope I had, but for who I happened to be.

I imagine it’s too late to change course. The longer I live, the less lovable I will be. I convince myself that one day, I’ll be one of those people who hang around a downtown intersection as passersby sigh, “Imagine. He used to be somebody’s baby.”

A little pink baby with fat fingers steeped in all the love in the world.

I look at my blackened, calloused fingers. Were they ever fat and pink?

It’s a good thing crack smokers are woefully underhydrated. Or else, there would be an embarrassment of tears.

Still, the invisible ones hurt the most. I weep for the sorrow to come.

“You’re ruining the high,” whoever I’m smoking crack with will say, “Just enjoy it.”

Sure, yeah. Sorry about that.

So, I’ll put on my big-boy crack smoker pants and, with trembling fingers, place a heart-crushing chunk on my pipe.

By this time, I’m wondering if the person I’m with has been stealing my stash. How did it disappear so fast?

I might say something. My crack-mate will act wounded, loudly declaring, “I’m not a thief!”

“Keep it down,” I say, heart racing. “The neighbors.”

“Well, don’t call me a thief!” the person bugles.

From there, of course, it’s open hostility. How the fuck do I get rid of this person? I’ll probably have to pretend I’m all out of dope. And frisk him before he leaves. I’ll bet he stole my electric toothbrush. It’s going to be chaos. Who is he, anyway? I met him at the park across the street. We had such a great conversation. He told such poignant stories from his life and all the tragic turns it took.

I was convinced he would be the perfect person to get high with.

This is mostly why I have always waited until the last possible moment before introducing a dating prospect to mine.

Not including, of course, my mother, who I’ve always introduced to everyone as soon as humanly possible.

Honestly, I’m mainly talking about my father, who could be a little much for someone of a more suburban sensibility. People raised in loving environments where homemade Christmas cards were exchanged didn’t get him at all.

Before dementia dropped a piano on him, my father routinely lost his shit. His offspring, including myself, inherited that volatility. So, when we used to argue — over anything at all — we’d always reach for the nuclear football first. The goal? Complete obliteration of supposed loved ones.

The sheer aggressiveness of it all used to terrify people I happened to be dating. They got too close to the sun.

“This isn’t… normal?” a girlfriend once said. I think it was after a family member threatened to throw a puppy out the window if we were late for dinner.

Welcome to the family.

Still, how I envied people who didn’t always take a scorched-earth approach to family feuds — and waste years not talking to each other afterward.

At least, fights with my mother didn’t last long. Sure, frightful words would be exchanged. Then a couple of days would pass and everybody would pretend nothing happened. Easy-peasy. Let’s do it again!

But we haven’t done it again. Not in a while, at least. There are a couple of obvious reasons for that. I’m not a drug addict with a disagreeable disposition any more. My father is currently in a nursing home, tilting at windmills. And, of course, ex-crack smoker’s little helper goes a long way.

For everything else, there are boundaries. Funny it never occurred to me earlier to cut out the drama merchants. A reduced craziness diet has done wonders for my sense of wellbeing.

But the biggest reason why all is quiet on the family front these days? I learned to fight like normal people.

When I used to quarrel with my partner — again, as a disagreeable drug addict — she made it impossible to go back to business as usual. This partner insisted on accountability, including a particularly painful postmortem: Do you understand your actions? Why did you say what you said?

“Why do we have to keep picking at the scabs?” I protested. Bygones be bygones and all that.

I wasn’t used to having to reckon with my misdeeds. But the thing is, my partner, being normal, wasn’t used to being eviscerated in every verbal altercation. She wanted to make sure it never happened again. That shit hurts. She had to take every reasonable precaution against feeling that way again.

Sadly, her lessons were lost on an addict with my particularly problematic genes. And, true to her word, she decided not to let bygones be bygones — but rather to just be gone.

Her ideas on accountability turned up again when I went clean. Every 12-step program insists you make a list of people you’ve wronged. Then you’re supposed to actually make amends. Imagine how daunting that must have seemed for someone like me — raised on the ‘fire-and-forget’ fighting method.

Instead, I was told that all the things we do, the vibes we spew, the hurts we inflict — it doesn’t just evaporate. It stays with us, a trunk in the mind's attic. And over time, it seeps into our daily lives, toxifying us from the inside. When you go clean, you have to do some actual cleaning. Starting with that cursed chest.

I’m still a reluctant witness to the old-school of squabbling today — the say-awful-things-then-pretend-nothing-happened approach. As soon as both parties have licked their wounds and recovered from their blood frenzy, they’re right back to being ‘friends’ again. Rinse and repeat. And all the while, we tell ourselves, it’s better to spend more of this precious life together than it is to be right. Or have any boundaries. Or even ensure it doesn’t happen again and again.

Sorry. This is a shit cycle. No accountability means no escape from the endless loop of fighting-and-forgetting-about-it.

Being accountable doesn’t mean never having an argument. It’s a reminder to be gentle. It’s knowing that you’ll have to answer for the hurts inflicted. Or else they’ll end up in that cursed chest. And no one should spend their lives lugging that thing around.

As you probably already know, I used to be a prodigious crack smoker.

But what may still be in doubt is whether or not, I inhaled. Regrettably, the answer is yes. Even in recovery, I’d sometimes wake up in the night, my cheeks puffed with an imaginary billow of smoke.

Now, why would anyone remember, of all things, the act of inhaling crack? Believe me. I wish I could forget. But that’s exactly the moment when my brain engaged its warp drive. It’s when I actually got too many ideas all at once. All in the space of one deep inhale. The barn doors fell off completely and every horse — even the three-legged donkey — charged out of the stable.

I could hardly wait to tell someone all my great ideas, ingenious observations and jokes and what-have-you. If someone was in the room with me, I might even hold up a hand, as if to say, ‘Clear the floor. Brilliant ideas, incoming!’

And then, as I exhaled, all those thoughts vanished. Out to pasture, never to return.

I have a similar experience in recovery.

You see, I wake up every morning, stare blankly at the squirrels hanging upside in the bird feeder and then get on the elliptical machine. Then the ideas show up. One two, five at a time. I can barely keep track of them all. They’re great ideas — things that I will do today. Powerful things.

After this, I’m gonna… wait! I know this much about working out. Never say, ‘after this.’ Because, what does that make ‘this’— this moment when you’re exercising and doing the right thing? It makes it chopped liver. All I want to do is get it over with and get on with executing my brilliant ideas.

But I know this moment on this undignified apparatus is an important moment too. So, I tell myself, the ideas can wait.

And so, I huff and puff away for heaven knows how much longer. Until finally, the machine releases me.

What were those ideas again?

Something about organizing something in the basement. Newspaper clippings? A blog idea, maybe.

But first thing’s first. I have to attend myself in the mirror where I make my customary kissy faces, implore my mother to squeeze my muscles and maybe even send the odd “progress” picture to friends and family.

By the time I’m finished swanning around the house, every last one of those glorious ideas are gone. Even the one about the greatest blog entry you could ever read.

Which is why you’re stuck with this one. And, as disappointing as it may be, I promise it’s better than what you might be looking at right now — if I remembered what I had to say about a year ago.

Back then, it was all three-legged donkeys.

When crack smoking friends run into each other after some time apart — typically due to illness or prison — there’s no such pretence.

That’s because crack smokers can’t follow the same script that regular people do. They can’t lead with, “You look amazing!” Because that’s such a fat and grotesque lie, even their formidable powers of deceit would be of no avail.

No crack smoker ever looks better than they did yesterday.

Nor can they follow up with the standard, “What have you been up to lately?”

Regular people will say all kinds of things: Just got back from a golf tournament, bought a timeshare in Yucatan, daughter is getting married.

Crack smoking is the entirety of an existence.

But what really guarantees that a reunion of old crack smoking friends will be joyless is the part where normal people get to ask questions about mutual associates. Like, “Have you seen Frenchie lately? Wonder what he’s up to.” And “I saw Amanda Bell at Whole Foods the other day. She still looks amazing!”

Crack smokers don’t like asking those kinds of questions because Frenchie probably died of an overdose a month ago. And Amanda Bell is working out of an alley downtown.

As a result, crack smokers spend a lot of time when they meet staring dumbly at each other with very little to say. Neither dares ask how the other is doing. Both know the answer would be long and terrible: the rash is spreading, a couple of new parasites picked up, kicked by a drunken kid on the sidewalk — so hard you can’t hear out of that one ear. It’s always tempting, of course, because crack smokers have so few opportunities for conversation. But they usually refrain out of respect for their old acquaintance. Think of it as mutually assured destruction. Both parties know that listing their miseries would take the better part of the day and completely obliterate the other’s spirit.

Pleasantries are not exchanged. Neither party has any of those to give. And, if they did have one, they sure as hell wouldn’t trade it away.

That’s why reunions between old crack-smoking friends are often brief. Anything they say to each other will only add to the world of misery they already carry. Usually, they’ll just share a street-savvy tip — “Stay away from Gord’s tent. He’s getting paranoid and violent. Maybe they’ll also exchange notes on which dealer has the best dope at the moment, before parting ways.

There’s a third kind of reunion that has a much more profound impact. It happens when an ex-crack smoker bumps into someone they used to smoke crack with on the street.

It happened to me the other day. Her name is Sabrina. She used to be a writer. The rent hasn’t been paid on her apartment in a long time, but at least she’s got a place to sleep. She wraps each of her old comic books in plastic to keep the cockroaches out. Someday, she’s always telling people, they will be worth something. Her collection is the only thing she hasn’t sold yet for dope. Even her body went first.

I ran into her on a downtown street.

“You look great,” she said. And I believed her, only because the last time she saw me, it would be impossible to imagine going anywhere but up from there. Or dead.

“How long have you been clean?” she asked.

“About a year and a half,” I said, with as little enthusiasm as I could possibly muster. I’m careful not to come off as a Mormon, preaching the gospel of recovery to addicts. No one wants to be saved by some grinning, true-believing, 12-step zealot.

Crack smokers and ex-crack smokers get to follow some of the script normal people use.

“How’s everything going?” I asked, making sure I didn’t have to be anywhere for a while.

But Sabrina kept it mercifully short.

“You know, I’m still going to NA meetings. And I’m still fucking up.”

“I get it,” I said. Really.

“Lacey’s gone. She smoked something off the sidewalk.”

“Oh.”

“James died too.”

“Fat James? I asked. “Or Skinny James?”

“Black James.”

“Oh,” I replied. “He was my favorite James.”

“Mad Dog got evicted,” Sabrina added.

“Oh. That sucks. I hope she’s okay. And the cat. I love that cat!”

“Bella!” she exclaimed, laughing. “The best!”

She didn’t ask for it. But I gave her a little bit of my very little bit of money. She’d use it to buy a rock, and that’s what I’d have done too. The gift of numbness can be just as kind as a sandwich.

After we hugged, she faded down the sidewalk, her squeaking stroller, brimming with things we’ll always be too young to understand.

I wonder if we’ll have another reunion. Or maybe if the next crack smoker I bump into will tell me she’s been added to the list. Either way, this is probably the last day of our acquaintance.

It’s like that every time an ex-crack smoker runs into a crack smoker. Not a lot is said. But a great deal is conveyed. The addict is a reminder of what life used to be like.

The ex-addict is a reminder of what it can still be like — that it’s never truly too late to change course.

Her voice often cracked when she talked about her kids. Was it two or three? Child and Family Services took them away years ago. There were tears for her boyfriend Josh, who would be getting out of jail soon and they would be getting married. They were in love. She even invited me to read the stack of jailhouse letters stacked high on her chaotic coffee table.

“I’m so happy for you,” I said. And she cried some more.

So sappy.

On the streets, Mad Dog was a different beast. She was a surly, barrel-bodied force of nature, keeping everyone in line and accepting absolutely no fucking-around from anyone. I heard she punched the way a mule kicks. I was happy to know her because she protected and even lent me an air of respectability among crack-smoking society.

She had an endearing tendency to protect the weak: young women on the street like Lacey, the old men from the Salvation Army when they got harassed, and me. Once she even rammed through the door of a crack den, demanding the occupants give me back my phone. I had foolishly lent it to someone who then pretended they didn’t have it. When faced with Mad Dog’s full-bore ferocity, the culprit confessed readily.

No donkey punches necessary.

Of course, she wasn’t always Mad Dog. One day, while driving her home, she started pointing at houses on a tree-lined downtown street.

“That one…” she said, pointing at a tidy two story home.

We drove past just a couple more before she pointed at another. “And that one.”

“That one. And that one. And that one..”

They were the crack dens she operated from over the years, mostly in the 80s and 90s. Most of them are gone now. But the scene still conjures happy memories. That’s when she wasn’t yet Mad Dog, but a radiant blonde girl everyone wanted to be with — but no one dared make a move. She was protected. Kim’s job was to take a big bag of dope from house to house, where everyone was excited to see her.

“I was selling so much,” she said, wistfully. “Making so much money.”

It’s hard to imagine Mad Dog like that. But people told stories. A real stunner, who showed up at trap houses looking like a prom queen.

“I never smoked back then,” she says.

Eventually, Kim would fall in love with a high-level dealer — a real gangster named Mad Dog — and have kids. When he was murdered, Kim took on the business, as well as his name.

She fully lived up to the name too. She’s a heavyweight. She knows how to hurt people. But I don’t think she likes it.

“There was a trap house in every neighborhood,” she crowed on our tour. “Sometimes, right beside each other. It made my job easy. Show up. Sell the dope. Leave with a stack of cash.”

When we finished the trip down memory lane, Mad Dog lit her pipe, because it didn’t matter how many times I told her ‘please no crack-smoking in the car’ she did what she needed to do. And she really needed to smoke crack. Night and day, she would be at the pipe. I don’t think it fully worked, though, as pain relief, because of all the tears she kept letting slip.

I showed her a video about a dog I rescued in India once.

“Here, let me show you another one,” I said.

“No… please,” she replied, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No more.”

Best to just smoke crack and stare blankly at our phones.

Still Mad Dog was one of the few original gangsters remaining in the city. Most, like her husband, were dead. Or, at least, locked up long-term.

I’ve even dropped her name a few times to street dealers, hoping they’d be a little less inclined to rip me off.

“I love Mad Dog! Tell her Mojo said what’s up!”

They’d still rip me off. But maybe, at least, they were less inclined to fight me for no reason at all.

Our relationship changed a lot over the summer. In the early days, I’d visit her dismal apartment and we’d sit in silence smoking my dope. She had swollen ankles, she kept in a pail of water at home. Then I’d catch her walking home from work and offer a ride.

At least, for a while, she had a job slinging dope in Crack Alley. Some people thrive in retail positions. Mad Dog, not so much. She didn’t have the temperament for a public-facing gig. Besides, she had the sketchiest, most unpredictable customers you could imagine. Crack Alley was the only place you could buy a $5 rock. Which made it a favorite among panhandlers.

It wasn’t just the clientele though. By this time, Hamilton police had declared war on Crack Alley. The chief was even talking about it on TV. There were undercover cops and drones hanging overhead. The early warning system of addicts shouting “5-Oh” when a cruiser showed up didn’t cut it any more.

Mad Dog’s colleagues were getting picked up every day. When they were eventually set free with yet another court date, they were expected to reimburse the man who ran the alley for the dope that was seized. That would be Justin — the rarely glimpsed businessman who paid addicts with dope to sell dope to other addicts.

It was only a matter of time before Mad Dog got nabbed. Luckily, she got fired before the Alley was fully raided — cops poured out of two unmarked vans and rounded everybody up. Not Mad Dog. Terminated with cause. She had been trying to supplement her income by selling someone else’s dope on the side. When you get paid in dope, it’s hard to cover the rent for the shambling, overstuffed apartment you call home. That could have got her killed. Maybe the Lord of Crack Alley had other things to worry about. Or maybe she survived it because she was OG. But only by a hair, no doubt. People have been badly hurt for less.

“You don’t come and hang out with me any more,” she’d grumble. The thing is she was one of the few people I didn’t mind getting high with. But I knew that Mad Dog, like everybody else, equated ‘hanging out’ with me treating her to mountains of crack. While I appreciated the company — even if I knew what they were really after — sometimes, I just got a little tired of giving all the time. Sometimes, I just wanted to get high in a filthy tub by myself. Besides, Mad Dog wasn’t entirely honest with anyone. If you send her out to pick up dope — she’ll tell you it’s the best in the city — she’ll come back hours late, with a woefully underweight rock.

That was okay. She was still the best of the worst.

When I ran out of money and started sleeping in stairwells, I chose Mad Dog’s building. The spit-stained stairwell was rancid, but I liked the idea of being close to Mad Dog’s unit. Just in case. No one else I used to smoke crack with bothered with me. Some of them got downright hostile — as if it was my fault I couldn’t buy them drugs and booze and McDonalds any more. But I knew, if I asked, Mad Dog would do what she could for me.

I was right. One day, I ran into her and she brought me to her apartment. She knew I had nothing. She didn’t have much either. An eviction notice was looming. She couldn’t pay the electricity bill so the apartment was brutally cold. She did manage to sneak an extension cord into the building hallway to power up a TV and a space heater. The landlord was always yanking it though. It was the middle of winter!

I camped out on Mad Dog’s ruined recliner, eating pretzel sticks for days, in and out of sleep. She had lots of visitors who brought dope, but I knew better than to ask for a toke. And still, while I was half-asleep in that chair, Mad Dog would creep up beside me and place a rock on the armrest. Or else, she’d leave half a take-out container of rice or falafels or whatever — I was so fucking hungry.

After sitting in her chair for about a week, in and out of sleep, too weak sometimes to even rise to my feet, I sent a text message to my mother. Not long after that, there was money in my account for a bus ride home. Instead, I treated Mad Dog to a sizable ball of crack.

Then I sent another message home. This time, someone would be coming to pick me up.

I told Mad Dog I was going outside for a cigarette.

“You can smoke in here,” she said, puzzled.

“It’s okay. I need to move my legs.”

I never returned. The only messages I ever got while I was in recovery were from Mad Dog.

“Are you okay?”

“Please don’t make me worry about you. You know I’m your friend.”

“I just need to know you’re okay.”

I changed my number.

I don’t know when exactly Kim became Mad Dog. But I’m sure it involved some great big hurt in her life. That’s when she donned her dead husband’s ill-fitting, hand-me-down armour. It still left her soft bits exposed. And life would keep driving a lance through that oversized heart anyway. It’s no wonder she reaches so often for the most powerful pain relief she can find.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should pay her a visit. Too risky? This is my second year of living clean. Is she still living in that terrible place? What forsaken hole has she found to live in? Maybe Josh is out of jail. Kim’s fairytale ending.

It would be nice, though, to show her I’m okay. Just in case, she’s wasting any of those precious tears on me.

At first, they give discretion their best shot — he holds up his worn jacket so she can crouch low. Then comes the lighter flicking. There's a breeze so also a fury of FLIK-FLIK-FLIK.

After a moment of silence, she rises billowing smoke like an imperious dragon, not giving a fuck who sees her. She doesn't even offer the man her jacket when it's his turn. He exhales, supremely satisfied. Untouchable.

Funny how brazen crack smokers can be. I never imagined I'd be smoking it behind the wheel on the highway. Or at a bus shelter on a sunny afternoon. Or just before a family dinner. Or right before going to the park with my dog, Luna — who I happen to be traveling to see right now. Until I did.

The bus is hardly full and the crack-smoking couple make straight for the very back. She's a vaguely middle-aged redhead in stained grey spandex. Her back bends sharply to one side, which accounts for the cane in hand. The other hand clutches a dirty crack pipe — the kind I used to spend hours scraping black and gold resin from, wringing out every last toke.

Only I remember what always came after.

There's hissing and bickering from the backseat. Doubtless he's getting paranoid. I wish I could turn around and tell them it's fine. Just enjoy.

But I know that's impossible. I'd be taken for an undercover cop or something. Sooner or later, they'll be convinced the whole bus knows. And the driver isn't taking them to Burlington at all — but directly to the police station. They'll spend the next hour and a half sweating, jaws clenched, angrily telling each other to be cool. Maybe they'll make a run for it at the next stop.

Someone's going to drop the pipe. And what a clatter it will make. When they pick it up, the only thing left to do will be to load it and smoke it. But they won't rise from behind the seats like mighty dragons this time. They'll be another shade drained, a little more jittery.

It won’t be like the early tokes. Late tokes don't bury the despair. They dig up all the fears and frictions of being an addict in broad daylight.

And sure enough, I smell it. They argue some more, louder this time.

“What did you do with it?” she asks.

“I gave it to you,” he growls.

An hour and a half until Luna drowns me in kisses.

This is the closest I've come to crack smoking since I went clean. And also the farthest.

Sure, I studied some of the classics. But what really stood out to me about the Greeks is how wrapped up they were in their philosophy. While the Persians sent vast fleets into the world bent on conquest, the Greeks spent most of their time at home. People like Aristotle and Socrates were trying to figure out the meaning of their own existence.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Plato once said. And his words couldn’t ring more true today.

The Romans, who came along later, were certainly flashier. They embraced technology— building cities of concrete and all kinds of weapons of war. They were rabid expansionists, obsessed with stretching their Empire across continents and ruling over millions of people.

But they cheaped out on philosophy. Their arts and sciences were basically a Temu version of their Greek predecessors. They couldn’t even come up with their own gods, having to borrow and rename them from the Greek pantheon.

No, Greece was a special time and place.

I guess I’m thinking of those navel-gazing Greeks lately because I find myself in a special time and place too. I’m reminded of that every morning. The first thing I see when I come downstairs are the words my mother and I wrote on the kitchen mirror:

‘Stay home. See the universe.’

My mom is usually on her exercise machine, listening to a thoughtful podcast about spirituality, and energy and what it means to be a human being.

She listens to a lot of Edgar Cayce, a 20th Century clairvoyant, who had a lot of interesting ideas.

We’ve carved out our own house of philosophy. We have conversations about the purpose of our lives. We look at the patterns. Why do we act the way we do? How do we get past it? What are we learning exactly? We may never know, but it’s important to always be on the road to finding out.

Whatever philosophy I had studied in university is long forgotten. But here, we’re devising our own. It sure beats beetling through life, with our heads down, travelling the same well-beaten paths over and over again.

All the unexamined life I lived? Better to just throw it out. This is the stuff that really counts. The life worth living.

The best part? Like all good philosophers, our quest to to gain wisdom and forge new paths is borne from suffering.

“Everything you’ve been through,” my mom said, heaving at her exercise machine while Cayce’s words rang in the background. “Your addiction. It made your spirit grow so much. You wouldn’t be here if not for it.”

“We wouldn’t be here together.”

hey its lace

r u alive?

What could I have written back? I’ve gotten clean. Looks like I’ll be alive longer than expected. How bout u?

Instead, I followed the drug counsellor’s advice and changed my phone number. But it didn’t stop Lacey from haunting my drug-addled dreams. It’s been more than a year and she still shows up on occasion, like a ghost knocking on my nightmares.

You see, of all the things I had to quit when I came home, drugs turned out to be the least of my attachments. Sure, it was hard. There were plenty of sleepless nights; sheets drenched in sweat. And so very itchy!

But the real struggle was quitting the company I used to keep.

The friends you make in life — the citizens you meet at the gym, or went to high school with or even your family — those connections pale compared to the ones you make when you’re high.

And they’re not even real friends. They’ll rob and stab and cause you all sorts of unspeakable damage at any opportunity.

“I’ll ride for you,” they’ll say, when you’re treating them to pizza and crack.

Broke? Got no dope?

“I’ll break your fucking jaw.”

And yet, the connections with those crack-smoking peers were like none I’d ever known. These dubious friendships were forged in the flames of our shared despair.

That’s why I’m having a bit of a hard time with Lacey’s recent death.

She wasn’t the first person I hung around with who died. Sherry’s heart burst while she was getting high. Rhonda’s body was found hunched over against the wall of her upstairs bedroom — days after her overdose. Max smoked some tainted dope and died in his girlfriend’s arms. Or at least, that’s what she thought. But then he gasped, his eyes opening impossibly wide — as if he saw his own ghost. A moment later, he closed them for good.

I died once too.

“Breathe in,” Lacey’s half-brother said, while sitting with me at my Airbnb. “Deeper… deeper!”

I sucked in so much fentanyl, I promptly laid back on the bed and allowed my heart to stop. No point in fussing about it.

Apparently, there was much debate among my company as to whether someone should administer Narcan and attempt to revive me. Lacey’s half-brother wanted to get into my online bank account first. Lacey later told me she lobbied hard for bringing me back to life. I took it as a sign of her affection. She really cared. Then again, I still had much to give her.

But enough about my return from the dead. I don’t know exactly when Lacey shuffled off her crack-ly coil, or even how. It happened in spring though, which is as close to a happy time as crackheads get. You’ll see them as soon as the snow melts, chattering amongst each other on park benches, sitting on curbs, sprawled out on the grass of downtown parks.

Everyone’s in high spirits. Winter is understandably harsh for the homeless. Lacey probably spent it holed up at Shawn’s dismal apartment with about a dozen other people in various stages of strung out. She was the only one Shawn allowed to sleep in his bed — for a price she didn’t seem to mind paying. When she finally flung open the door to Shawn’s apartment and stepped into spring, her heart must have sung like a sparrow.

Honestly, I don’t know much about her life before crack entered the picture. What I do know came to me by way of the most unreliable narrator of all: Lacey.

She told me she used to dance on cruise ships.

“Seriously, she wasn’t just a dancer,” the father of one of her children told me once during a crack-smoking session. “She was the marquee performer. She was amazing.”

Lacey, according to Lacey, had worn many hats. She taught creative writing to elementary school children. She was an addictions counselor. She had three children. (Some say four.) And custody of none.

Cohen was real. She often logged into Facebook on my laptop to stare at picture after picture of her oldest boy, named, of course, after the poet Leonard.

She told me about the first house she bought in Hamilton with her husband. He was a drummer. She bartended. They had a baby boy. It must have felt like spring every day.

Once — I think it was Cohen’s 15th birthday — I offered to drive her past that old stone house. We could just sit in the car and maybe honor that chapter of her life. Although she never saw Cohen, she took his birthdays very seriously. We pulled in front of the place and she was already chattering about the games they used to play in and around that house. She loved baking and throwing birthday parties for her boy.

I remember looking at her face, soaked in tears, and trying to find that brownie-baking mom. By then, her obsession with picking around her mouth had left it cratered and constantly bleeding. Her flaming red hair was home to all sorts of creatures that I’d sometimes see crawling across the pillow while she was asleep. So many scars too.

Once, someone hit her over the head with a brick while she was sleeping at Shawn’s place.

“Why would someone do that?” I asked.

“She thought I stole her jacket.”

Lacey wasn’t my girlfriend or anything. I would just pick her up at the drug den because smoking crack by yourself for days on end was a lonely business. I had been seeing and hearing things. Lacey kept me grounded. But also, on high alert. She was always stealing from the rented apartments. I still owe Airbnb a few hundred dollars.

She had a lot of physical pain too. Although, some in the crack-smoking community were skeptical. By her own admission, Lacey couldn’t go half an hour without crack or else she would hunch over in the most excruciating pain. I always knew when it was time to pass her a rock because she would emit a short piercing shriek.

Some days when I was too sick to get out of bed, or just wanted to try a day without being high, she’d hiss and curse.

“You’ll be one of us soon enough,” she howled, before slamming the door behind her.

There will probably be a service for Lacey. Family members are posting sad-emoji’ed pictures of her on the socials. Like me, she probably had forgotten that she was loved. Cohen will be there.

People will, no doubt, call it a tragic end. The thing is, Lacey was a tragedy long before I met her. A body animated, it seemed, solely by addiction. Whatever came before — the Hamilton hipster mom in the house with the baby and the husband in a rock and roll band — was gone.

“Too far gone,” people said to me at the time. “She’s too far gone.”

I never believed them. No one is ever too far gone. I introduced her to my favorite TV shows, made a Spotify playlist just for her — she was very particular about her soundtrack to getting high. She showed me all kinds of crafty crack-smoking techniques. How to cook it just right and maximize the scrapings.

I took her with me to apartment after apartment. Even a few trips to Niagara Falls. I was thrilled to receive her grocery lists — Lacey wanted to cook dinner! And I despaired of all the things she kept taking from me — the bills she feathered out of my pocket while I was asleep, the money transfers to shady figures. Oh, and all the times people warned me that she would be the death of me.

What did it matter, I figured. She’d have to get in line. Because I had already been planning to be the death of me.

I think I would have paid any price just to have someone around. Someone to talk to and listen to music and watch TV and tell bad jokes to. We could pretend to be normal.

For a while, she was my only friend in the world. And it was the loneliest feeling I ever knew. Because my best and only friend was already a ghost.

—

There were a few songs of mine that Lacey actually liked, even obsessed over. She played this one over and over again. In German, Klopfgeist means ‘knocking ghost.’

My ex sent me an old picture the other day.

The details are a bit fuzzy. Which is typical for me when recalling those days.

It was around the height of my clandestine career as a drug-doer. I was certainly at my peak in terms of doling out damage to people who were close to me.

Unemployed. Sleeping all day. Perilously in debt. Waking up mean. And so, so skinny (for reasons unbeknownst to them).

It was cherry blossom season.

We were at a sun-drenched park, just outside of Hamilton. I was in my Patagonia jacket. It was early spring and still chilly, especially on the motorcycle. That poor jacket would be all I had to keep me warm when I eventually became homeless.

There were a few people there already, snapping photos. A man with a scholarly air, stood apart, scrutinizing a small forest. He was delighted to share his passion with me.

“Do you hear that?” he asked me.

Yes… yes. A deep, rhythmic tapping coming from the trees.

“Pileated woodpecker!” he gushed. “Canada’s largest woodpecker!”

How on Earth could you tell that from an anonymous rattle in the woods? Years of passionate learning, I guess.

I remember thinking how nice it must be to live that sort of life. You know, when all it takes is a hint of a black-bellied whistling duck or the call of Henslow's sparrow to get high.

How much I would have preferred to be a birder than a crack smoker.

The man disappeared among the trees, binoculars in hand, a notebook tucked under his arm. And I collapsed into a bench overlooking a verdant valley. I might have slept an hour the night before. And already, I was on my phone organizing a drug deal for later that afternoon. I had scarcely enough time to stash my phone when my partner stepped up behind me.

Let’s take a picture.

But look how happy we were!

The thing about cherry blossoms is they don’t dazzle for long. Just a week or two. But my, are they ever pretty in their pink prom dresses. They mean much more than a photo op in Japanese culture. They represent fragility, beauty, and new beginnings.

Maybe that’s what she was thinking, dragging me to that place. Maybe somewhere among the cherry blossoms in early spring, I might find inspiration. But I was flat and grey. Like every other day.

We sure looked smart in front of the camera though.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Most of them lies. Old photos especially. They often use false pretenses — wide smiles, arms around each other, the best days of our lives — to lure you into a false sense of the past.

As an ex-addict, I know better. Those were bad times. Not long after that day, the motorcycle was sold for cheap. The house too. The smiling couple in that photo went their separate ways. I would sleep in stairwells.

Still later, I would come home to live with my mother. I’d go back to university. I’d get my grades back from the first term— straight As. Passionate learning. I’d talk to my ex-partner on the phone every day.

Today, we’re apart. And still a part of each other. As honest friends.

It’s spring. A time for renewal and wonderment at the fragility of life.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself. But the possibilities are intoxicating. Nutty professor? Pet detective? Birder?

Back to school, no doubt. But this time, as someone who’s finally learned it’s never too late to blossom.

You can’t hurry an ex-addict.

Or, at least, it’s a lot harder than it used to be. In the past, people probably saw me as a shifty clock-watching character. I was always squirming during conversations, or I’d be listening — but with an eye on my phone. When the fuck is my dealer going to get back to me? I’d duck out of family get-togethers at the cottage early, just so I could spend a day or two alone smoking crack. And I always checked the length of a movie before committing to it with my partner. Even so, I spent most of the film counting the minutes until the closing credits.

And let’s talk about my driving.

“Slow down!” my panicked partner would shrill as I barreled down the boulevard, honking at pedestrians to hurry the fuck up and cross the road already.

She didn’t understand how important it was for me to offboard her at HomeSense or Winners or wherever ASAP. So I could make my meetup time with the dealer.

In short, my life was a race from one minute to the next, cursing at clocks and occasionally engaging in the most undignified of public spectacles: sprinting down sidewalks.

And woe to the dealer when he was late. Which happened all the time. I’d chew out that blackguard mercilessly — until he produced his glittering prize. Then I loved him like a brother.

Then time stood still. Recovery took me off the clock in dramatic style. My mom noticed it right away. When she had company in the past, I’d offer polite greetings before fleeing the scene. Nowadays, I sit through the whole visit. Doesn’t matter if it’s a distant relative, my mom’s friend from work or the neighbor. I’m suddenly interested in every last social morsel. Where else do I have to be? And you know what? These people are actually interesting. I want to hold onto these moments.

Indeed, time passes slowly when you’re trying to kill it. But it grows wings when you try to hold it in your hands.

In fact, the only thing that might hurry me along these days is a burning idea. While driving, I might speed up, ever so slightly, fearing that I’ll lose it before I find a pen.

Even then, I know there will be many more ideas. Catch and release.

Because the best part about all this newfound patience? I spend more time in my own head. It’s a quiet place, where thoughts alight at their own pace.

I have an exam tomorrow morning.

I have an exam tomorrow morning.

I have an exam tom—

Wait. I don’t need to memorize that. It’s just that I’ve been staring at words on a screen for the last… five… has it really been seven hours? — and trying to brand them on my hapless brain. Now, it seems like every dumb thought gets stuck there.

I guess I’ve forgotten how to study — it’s been so long. I’m hoping if I just keep reading my course notes over and over again, some of it, at least, will stick.

Neurocolonization is the systematic shaping, constraining and impairment by modern-colonial systems of our cognitive processes…

What does that even mean? Maybe with a younger brain — one that hadn’t been subjected to toxic clouds of crack — I could have at least imprinted the words. Even if I didn’t know what they meant.

But these days, it’s hard for knowledge to make an impression on me unless I’ve lived it. So, I fall back on rote repetition. Just reading everything, over and over again.

There are two ways that humans adapt to a bad situation.

The first is trauma-based — we simply go numb. This often involves addiction, but not necessary substance abuse.

The second is intentional. It doesn’t give in to despair. But rather, it says, “I don’t like the current situation. I want to adapt in a different way.” It’s change from the bottom up.

Of all the frictions I’ve felt on this road to recovery, final exam stress may be the toughest to navigate. You see, it’s all about sharpening the brain — when, in the past, my response to stress would be to dull it. Smoke it all away.

But how incompatible is that with this new world I’m building?

Visionary fiction is realistic and hard but hopeful.

Even at the peak of my drug-addled premature dementia, I would have never entertained the notion of smoking crack before writing an exam. The very idea pulls my brain so violently in separate directions, I can almost feel it tearing down the middle.

Visionary fiction imagines new worlds into being. Worlds that we would want to live in.

Whatever that means. I’ll load up my head before going to bed — and let my dreams sort it all out.

5:03 am, the day of

I just woke up from two terrible dreams about missing the exam — and not one of them involved smoking crack. In the first, I went to the wrong gymnasium at the wrong school. The second dream was even more detailed. I stopped at an old crack-smoking associate’s place on the way to the exam. But get this. I didn’t get high — or even want to. Instead, I just watched and wondered as everyone there got high. It filled me with sadness. But was there something I was supposed to do…? Somewhere to be.. I glanced at the time. The exam had started an hour ago!

I woke up from that dream in a panic. Then I had forgotten to tell Google to wake me up at the crack of dawn.

Visionary fiction is realistic and hard but hopeful.

9 am, the day of

“Please take your hat off and place it under your desk,” an exam administrator tells me.

“Your watch too.”

There’s got to be 500 students in here, writing various exams. Teaching assistants patrol the aisles, checking student ID and coming down like airport security on unattended bags.

What if I need more booklets? Did I bring an extra pen?

Visionary fiction imagines new worlds into being. Worlds that we would want to live in.

High noon, the day of

Want to get high? I mean really high? Just stay up late the night before trying to cram information into your head. Then, first thing in the morning, carry that head like a tea kettle filled to the brim to the local university.

Then dump that kettle all over six exam booklets.

And three hours later, you’re so high, you’re dancing up the aisle to turn in your work. Your writing hand is sore, but you can hardly feel it. You’ll go into giddy excess, telling the professor how much you enjoyed the class. And you’ll heartily congratulate the teaching assistant too.

Then you’ll twirl outside into the big yellow sun, and imagine you’ve just brought a new world into being. A world you want to live in.

When I first came home after years in drug-addled exile, I was a hot topic.

A dizzying cast of friends and family materialized to make polite inquiries.

“He’s doing really well,” my mother would tell them. “We’re taking it one day at a time.”

“And how’s Thomas today?” they’d ask, in a follow-up call.

He’s great. He’s taken up needlepoint and he’s training to be a professional ventriloquist. Nah. They wanted the dirt. Is he back on the pipe or what?

It was so annoying I begged my mother to circle the wagons, call it a private affair and let me recover in peace!

“It’s my disaster,” I grumbled. “I earned it. Please stop sharing it with everyone.”

The healing process felt like it was supposed to be a hurting process. A private and painful reckoning for me alone.

A test of my resilience.

My mother didn’t pay me any mind. She sat back and let the antidepressants go to work, figuring I’d wake up a little less salty by the day. And sure enough, I did warm up to being the resident ex-junkie.

I don’t think it was the pills though. I think it’s because I finally, fully surrendered to recovery. I began to brandish the past as an important piece of my present. It was transformative.

I’m reminded of a friend who tried to convince that I could change years ago. I was in the midst of a death-defying drug binge when she called.

“I’m fine,” I said, drooling into the receiver. “Just a rough patch. I’ll get through this.”

Before she hung up, my friend said, “It’s never too late to change course.”

If only she knew how many times I had tried to be a different person. It just never stuck. Until I finally came clean — and learned to be vulnerable. Everything that grows in this world starts out soft and tender. So, too, it seems, the human heart.

Some people just want to grit their teeth and get on with life. But life isn’t to be gotten on with. It isn’t a race from A to Z. It’s about learning the whole alphabet, even the nuance of the spaces in between.

Of course, there’s plenty of hurt to be had for the soft of heart. But resilience isn’t about battening down the hatches for Tropical Storm Trauma. According to this professor from the University of Connecticut, that’s just plain unhealthy.

“Tamping down negative feelings may provide short-term relief, but over time it is associated with greater stress on your body and more difficulty adapting,” he writes.

Better to lean into what hurt you, and see where it leads.

“Illness, loss and trauma reshape how you think of yourself. Rather than clinging to who you were, resilience often involves expanding who you are becoming.”

Today, I’m tracing new constellations from wounds both old and new. And I’m not afraid to show them to you. Everybody hurts. Every day, a scar is born.

Resilience is learning how to dance with them.