Higher and Higher and Higher:

Addiction, Withdrawal, and Overdose in the Life of Someone Who’s Never Tried Drugs

Originally published in Flying South, #10, Fall of 2023

Three

God, what a beautiful day to get high! I’ve never felt so attuned to nature, alert to every bony branch creaking overhead, every dead leaf crunching underfoot, every shard of late-afternoon sunshine tumbling to the forest floor. I launch up the trail’s next hill with a hell of a smile, prismatic, palpably shiny.

I’ve been drinking more coffee lately, first two cups, then three, then four and then six, chasing the full-body buzz from that caffeine surge. Maybe it isn’t healthy, but you have to find something to look forward to, alone in yet another new city, to keep you from crying over your breakfast each day wondering how many more years you’ll be cooking for one and cleaning for one and waking and living and dreaming for one.

Today, I’ve had eight cups.

The late-autumn sunlight casts everything in low saturation, like the kind of photo filter that mutes people’s smiles and hollows out their eye sockets. The only thing that might’ve made the day better would’ve been hiking friends, but that’s the beauty of these highs. They’re a path out of the isolation, even if it’s a trail that dead-ends in a darkening forest.

Two       

My dad falls silent on the other end of the phone. I tap my toes impatiently.

I’ve just finished explaining, in calm and rational tones, that I need to sell my bed. Mattress. Frame. Everything. He gets to the point of crackling, “You want to do wh—?” before I hang up. I don’t have time to explain that the couch has to go, too.

But that’s okay! They take up too much room. I have better uses for the money. Investing. Traveling. Marathon training. The floor works fine for sleeping.

Not that I’ve needed much sleep, ever since I waterfalled all my pale-blue pills off the apartment balcony into the traffic flowing below. But that’s okay! I wouldn’t give up this high for all the sleep in the world. Antidepressant withdrawal doesn’t feel like withdrawal at all—more like the way I’ve heard people describe mania, or taking meth, only that this high has lasted for two weeks straight, turning my thoughts into an ongoing eruption, a rainbow tesla coil, a glass snow globe dropped into a blender, so beautiful and deafening and dangerous that I can’t resist reaching in, grabbing hold.

I’ve mostly stopped eating, and what I have eaten has mostly stopped making sense: a fistful of raw kale, a shaker bottle of dry brownie mix in cold water. But that’s okay! I have other things to do, learn to handstand, re-re-reorganize my closet, practice Spanish by streetlight in the park, and when the old lady two doors down walks past at sunrise, ask if she’s in the market for a mattress, or a couch. Tomorrow, I’ll snap awake after sleeping two hours and two hours too many, go for a run past the dozing patrol cars and the dead fast-food drive-throughs, eight miles out and back, maybe ten. The sidewalk has started tilting back and forth, and eventually, I know, it’ll spill me off my feet, slam up into my face, maybe fling me into the midnight sky. But that’s okay. I might never have to come down again.

One

The sun gleams between the cracks in the clouds. A cool breeze ruffles the trees’ golden leaves. Bluebirds twiddly-twirrp on the backyard fence while my big brother daydreams on the swing set.

I hunch away from the curtained porch windows, staring at the computer screen.

My unbrushed teeth shine in its blue-green glow with a smile, prismatic, palpably shiny. My ragged fingernails twitch and tap at the mouse. I don’t really know about drugs yet, only half-heard tidbits from the kickball outfield at recess, but addiction? The only thing I don’t know about that is how to spell it. I’ve been bingeing on this online video game for hours, even though I planned and promised and prayed last night that I wouldn’t let it suck up another Saturday. But that’s okay. It’s only two o’clock (then three, then four and then six). And I’m only ten. Still plenty of time to quit.

But maybe later. Because I’m fighting the game’s final dragon with my raiding party, a total blitz of magic spells strobing across the screen, characters jerking through attack animations, battle music vamping hypnotically.

None of that even comes close to the rave in the voice chat when the dragon finally crumples to the ground.

I slump back in the creaky kitchen chair. Blood bubbling warmly. Arms and legs fizzing. I’ve done it. I’ve beaten the game—at least, until the game’s next expansion. Months of fresh content. Just the thought of that next dose is so intoxicating, so overwhelming, so…

Months of my friends asking why I never come to their birthday parties anymore.

…so nauseatingly euphoric that I can’t…

Months of my brother asking when I’ll play with him in the backyard again.

…I can’t.

My brother sniffs in excitement when I hop onto the swing next to his. I take my first breath of fresh air in days, kick off the ground, pump my legs in and out for momentum. God, it really is a beautiful day to get high. The sun soaking into my shirt. A cool breeze swishing over my skin, past my ears. Bluebirds waterfalling off the fence, startled by the backyard swing set’s squeaky chains.

My brother swinging beside while I yell, “Higher! Higher! Higher!” Until I’m the highest I’ve ever been. Until we, together, really might never have to come down a