White male crack smoker's privilege is real

But trauma unites us all.

Maybe they were right to call me a tourist at my neighborhood drug den. I never felt like I had the credentials to back my burgeoning habit. Not enough suffering.

Sure, as a kid, my dad’s poor command of the English language compelled him to speak with his fists. Later, a juvenile love affair led to grown-up caliber heartbreak. And still later, while posted overseas, I saw plenty of suffering and a little death.

But compared to the stories I heard at the crack den, it all seemed a little light on the trauma. I mean, Tammy was found as a toddler in the forest, a stab wound to her neck. Macy was drugged and brutally raped. Brayden can't even talk about the darkness inflicted on him as a child. And all that trauma earns compound interest when they become full-time addicts, snowballing misery into misery.

Me? I had clean sheets, food on the table, tuition money and parents — though divorced — who loved me. In their own way. So my dad hit me, and once, I fell off a romantic cliff, breaking on the rocks below. Plus, it was kind of my job as a journalist to see the occasional dead person. Boo hoo.

So what exactly was my major malfunction? Why did I take up the pipe?

Maybe it would help if I looked at the activity book they give out at the local drug counseling agency. There's a chart you're supposed to fill out early in recovery — basically, just two empty boxes. On the left side, you’re supposed to list all the things you like about getting high. All I could come up with was, ‘Feels good.’ In the right box, you list all the things you don’t like about it. No matter how tiny my letters, there wasn’t nearly enough space in that box.

Maybe I'm just a lightweight. Maybe I wasn't built for this world. But, really, who is? Not anyone I would like to know.

But maybe it’s something else. My counsellor says I downplay my trauma. Kind of like how I used to slouch when I stood in a circle of friends in grade school. I did it because I was tall and didn’t want to stand out. I’ve had posture issues ever since. I just wanted to fit in.

So maybe I should dig a little deeper to express my trauma. Because, like my posture issues, repressing it has probably haunted me my whole life. Let’s revisit that trauma then, starting with daddy dearest. He was an amateur boxer. He knew how to punch. When I was around five or six, he started with slaps that left my ears ringing. As his own frustrations in life mounted— he was a seriously disgruntled factory worker — so , it seemed, did his beatings. He began throwing real punches. Boxer’s punches. Later, he’d incorporate kicks into his routine. It was always escalating. Playing dead on the floor granted no reprieve. In fact, I was probably around 10 when I started wondering if I would survive until I reached legal adulthood. Until then, it was a never-ending, utterly unpredictable blitz of beatings that kept me from classes — I had to heal — and even forced me to change schools twice.

As for my mom, she was always stalwart in her love and encouragement. But she couldn’t endure the matrimonial mayhem. She fled for a northern town. My dad had terrorized her into giving up custody of me. I spent most of my childhood missing her terribly.

Between them, my mom and dad married and divorced seven times. I was there for it all. They’re both alone now. That’s probably why I’ve never had an honest and healthy relationship. Terminally fucked up role models.

I’m sorry for bringing this story to such a dark place. I guess once the abusive genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back in.

One thing’s certain. I'm a privileged former addict. I recognize that every day in these crisp linens, the subscription to Spotify Premium and the keys to mom’s car. Hurrah! My mom and I have finally been reunited, while my dad languishes in a nursing home. Recovery is proving to be the happiest time in my life.

But for all that, getting clean is the hardest thing I've ever done. Imagine what it must be like for people who don't have the option of checking in at Mom's Everloving Rehab Clinic. Imagine sharing a room with three raw strangers at the only free treatment facility in the city. The other one costs more than $20,000 for a single month. Imagine being a person of color. Or being a woman. Or a mother. Or having to sleep on the bare-ass floor of the downtown shelter surrounded by addicts because there are no available spaces at the previously mentioned recovery home.

Besides that, I have a family doctor to help guide me through the warts and wobbles of recovery. Others have a doctor who only appears via Zoom at a urine-stained downtown clinic — and where nurses only interact through three holes in a thick sheet of plexiglass.

At this very moment, I have a mango smoothie with a shot of creatine in my hand. Others don't have a shot at all. Yet, by some unfathomable feat of spirit, they succeed.

Maybe my credentials for being a junkie are stronger than I suspected. But certainly, my recovery cred is weak. I should be acing my return to humanity. Not hanging on by the skin of my suburban white teeth.

How do you manage to recover from that when I'm just barely holding it together with smoothies and Apple TV?

It turns out I’m not a tourist. Or a crack dilettante. I needed my street-grade medication as much as anyone else. And I found myself on life’s bottom floor with everyone else. Eventually, everyone pays the same price — absolutely everything.

White male crack smoker’s privilege is real though. It does make it easier to pick up the pieces.

And recognizing that fills me with a profound appreciation of the kind of spirit it takes to pick up those pieces when you weren't born with an ounce of it.