A beginner's guide to being human

It's always a good sign when you start trimming your toenails again.

Someone once said to me that if you go into a recovery program, you have to want it 100 percent. Or else you’re wasting your time.

That pretty much ruled it out for me. At the time, I was a committed user. Maybe three percent of me, at most, wanted to go clean.

Eventually, it was zero percent.

Oh, to be normal: To lust after iPhones, wait with bated breath for another Star Wars reboot and enjoy the occasional near-beer in the backyard with friends.

Life is too short to be normal. Weirdness or death, I vowed.

And so, every time I picked up the pipe, I felt death at my heels. I was all right with that. In fact, it made things so much easier. There was no need to sleep. When I did eat something, it was invariably Cap'n Crunch cereal. Maybe some Skittles. And why brush my teeth? I’d never see a dentist again. Hair went untrimmed, beard unshaven. And there was no way I was going to subject myself to a toenail-clipping. I couldn’t even be bothered to clear my bellybutton lint. What a corpse I’d make! What did I care?

But one day, for one very good reason, my willingness-to-go-clean meter jumped. It might have even hit 25 percent. That’s when I entrusted my miserable self to the care of my family. The crumbling, pothole-infested road to recovery had begun.

What an apparition I must have appeared on that first day. All of 146 pounds on a six-foot-two-inch frame. You could almost see the outline of various organs.

If my willingness to go clean had been well shy of the 100 percent mark, it took a precipitous dip in the days that followed. There were bugs – yes, bugs – under my skin. The doctor’s appointments were cold and demeaning. My dreams burned. And so much sweat!

Like a prisoner, I etched numbers on a mirror to reflect the days. 1… 3…

When would that invisible switch be flicked? When would the cravings suddenly disappear?

Just to be safe, I secretly plotted a return to drugging – and began saving the funds I’d need to escape the hellscape of recovery. Each night, I prayed not to the gods of recovery, but to the Crack Fairy. We’ll be together again soon, I promised.

The switch never fully flicked. The cravings did subside though. At one point, another kind of switch flicked inside of me. I was 100 percent ready. Okay, 85 percent. I abandoned my secret plan – and began the great grind of rebuilding this husk of a human being.

It seemed like I was in the gym every day. I swam oceans in the pool. And there was a smoothie waiting for me at home.

At Mom’s Clinic for Wayward Sons, there was no tough love. Only the 100 percent unconditional kind. My teeth got whiter. My toenails got shorter. I got stronger.

And what about my mind? It followed a similar trajectory, but its return was far less certain. In the early days, even weeks, I couldn’t think or speak clearly. I became muddled easily. Needless to say, most days, I was in a very dark mood. How I longed to rejoin my crack-smoking community.

Instead of a gym membership, I got on a treadmill for the mind. I learned to read again, starting with books by Gabor Maté. I engaged in long, soul-searching conversations with my mom, my ex-partner and others in the program.

Little by little, I started to string together written sentences. Not necessarily good sentences. But here they are.

If you don’t like them now, you should have seen what I used to cook up in my journal.

My drug counsellor suggested I write in it – anything that came to mind! Early entries are painfully basic, mostly illegible scrawls and cave paintings. There are charts and simple questions like, ‘What do I like about my drug of choice’?

If I was being honest at the time, I would have written EVERYTHING. But in the spirit of recovery, I lied and wrote, 'I like the high, even though it's short.'

As pages go by, the literary grunting gives way to more elaborate writing: Helpful strategies to stave off cravings (dunk your face in cold water, meditate, avoid triggers) and a list of food I should be eating (Walnuts! Avocados! Blueberries!)

Gradually, self-reflection emerges. There are honest journal entries, observations, and even conversations. There are lots of thoughts about the future too. What will my next chapter look like? What happens when I emerge from this chrysalis?

This book has evolved from a basic manual for keeping a body from a drug-related death to an investigation of my own mind. After all, that’s where all the trouble started. Why do I feel a need to self-medicate in the first place, I mused?

It’s a stark contrast with the earlier parts of this journal, where the tone was mostly anxiety and fear: How do I avoid fucking up? And what happens if I do?

That tone gives way to a quiet understanding that I’m not only well along on this journey, I may actually be enjoying it. Because it was never about the drugs. They were just a symptom of an unquiet mind. And every day, this mind grows a little more peaceful — as it’s fed a steady diet of hope.

Like my own journey, this notebook may have begun dark and dreary. But every day is a fresh, clean page.