Come with me if you want to live

'Your soul looked like it left your body.'

The addiction clinic in downtown Niagara Falls didn’t look so bad, actually.

It boasted a modern, clean facade. Bright, tidy and even hopeful. And certainly, after spending years in the throes of heavy addiction, hope was just what the doctor ordered.

Last winter, I surrendered, at last, to the care of family. I was broke, mortally skinny and plagued by health issues.

‘Your soul looked like it left your body!’

My mother drove me to the clinic.

Only we weren’t looking at the drug clinic. This was a medical facility for non-junkie society. The place we were looking for was a shanty across the street — a nicotine-windowed pharmacy attached to a tiny clinic.

Not so much medical, as medieval.

I used to score dope in the alley that ran alongside it. Maybe I’d be back later once this whole recovery farce blew over.

My mother squeezed past a couple of clients in the doorway — one asked for a cigarette, the other offered to sell us ‘bennies,’ or benzedrine. Inside, someone was having a spirited conversation with a wall. A woman was nodding off, sliding inch by inch, from chair to floor.

I had already been nursing doubts as to whether recovery was going to stick. When we crossed the threshold, I knew it wouldn’t. I began plotting my exit strategy: The money I’d have to save up, the debts I’d have to repay to dealers, and the mother whose heart I’d find a new way to break.

That last bit turned out to be a sticking point. She was just so relentlessly hopeful. Even confident. After all these years, she was getting her son back.

And, on paper, at least, it seemed easy. As an addict, I gave up everything for just one thing. In recovery, all I had to do was give up just one thing for everything.

So why did it still feel like I got a raw deal?

We stuck it out that day, greeted by a tired nurse behind foggy plexiglass, met by a doctor who dared only make an appearance by video — and departing with a bag-full of drugs.

Sanctioned drugs, of course. The kind that stabilizes mood swings, helps with sleep and staves off cravings for the unsanctioned kind.

A pharmaceutical lobotomy.

Good luck with that, I thought.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or how famous you are, the first handful of days in recovery is the tenth circle of Hell.

I had checked into Mom’s Rehab Clinic — a magical realm of laundered sheets, bath salts and an ever-replenishing pantry.

And yet, I stayed clean by the skin of my yellow crack smoker’s teeth.

It wasn’t until my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting that I stopped feeling sorry for myself. There were tearful tales of lost friends, fortunes and fingers from winters exposed. There were deadbeat doctors, cruel cops, and punishing judges.

Almost everyone had someone important in their lives die from an overdose. The Canadian Mental Health Association pegs the number of drug-related deaths in Canada at 8,049, or 22 people per day — it’s a historic health crisis.

My recovery was held together by chewing gum, whispered prayers and a family’s unwavering love. My dreams and schemes of returning to the high life began to fade. Drugs felt incompatible with the life I sought to build. It reached the point where too many things would have to break for me to return to the underworld.

And the last thing I wanted to break was my mom.

Many addicts have the courage to go clean — but don’t have a mother in their corner. Just a dingy clinic, a hard shelter floor — or shared room, if they’re lucky — and a grudging crumb of social assistance.

Is it any wonder so many don’t come in from the cold — when crack is the only compassion they know?

This isn’t a drug crisis. It’s a people crisis. How do you manage that? Compassionately. Starting with the dignity and security of a home. Affordable housing has been in shamefully short supply for decades.

Addiction clinics ought to be as clean and professional as any other healthcare site. With a doctor who actually shows up in person from time to time. Maybe we can even grasp the reality of drug addicts, in fact, doing drugs — and ensure clean, dignified and safe spaces to do them.

Sounds so simple, doesn't it? It definitely shouldn't take us another 200 years to get there.

Meanwhile, back at Mom's Rehab Clinic, potions, pills and treadmills have helped rebuild this street-worn body.

My mind gets plenty of exercise too. It's still a work in progress, but I don't dream about troublesome houses and troublesome people so much any more.

It's my heart though, beating with hope and gratitude, that feels strongest. Probably, because it gets the most exercise of all in this house of love.