The Secret Of Addiction; P 2

I must think of Fyodor Dostoevsky as I write this story. He had lacked the time and a challenge with himself to finish his novel: The Gambler. It was not only a story but almost a piece of his own life story. Of course, I thank you all for praising me and my courage to tell this period of my life.

Anyway, when we discovered drugs and began to use them, I think we were searching for another world. I believe it is even generally so. The one gets disappointed in its world and the environment and wants to leave this, the body, to let the soul fly away from all that shit! Maybe to find God, even, with the help of the Devil!? As Dr Jung says in his letter about a specific addicted patient; s. Part 1

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent of a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.

We had a lot of fun while taking LSD and when we smoked hash. With two dear friends, Al and I were hitchhiking toward the Caspian Sea and had laughed the world out. But the Devil: heroin, had its evil plan: the first third or fourth times we had our enjoyable height, then slowly but surely, it comes to a pleasant tingling in the back, a nice itch which doesn’t hurt but desired to smoke it again, and with the first inflow the smoke, a joyful fire run into the whole of the body! And that is the point in that the one is lost: you are in the hands of the Devil! Although when you are addicted, this feeling never comes again, the pleasure has reached its highest end, and after this, you smoke only to be normal. And there had begun some lonesome years for both of us, losing friends and creeping increasingly into the depths of our solitude. Of course, we have tried about five times to quit, the first four to no avail! The first two were with funny tablets given by the doctors that did not even calm our physical pain, and the next two were through methadone, which also wasn’t successful, and after some months, we returned to this again. But the last one has a unique story.

What is astonishing to me is that we both have never given up on our world. I mean, we have never mixed ourselves into the addicted world. You know, addicted people always have a world for themselves, not to be alone. I knew this world and met it as I went to buy the stuff every time. But as soon as I got that, I vanished again into our privet hide! We kept ourselves away from this mass; maybe that’s why we were not infected with the pills, which were very current on the market. These pills were actually very coveted by the addicted because when there was a lack of stuff on the market, which happened when the police mixed in, they used them to spend this painful time in ecstasy, but Al and I knew this infection. I was an eyewitness to such scenes where the young people lay in the corner, unconscious and totally helpless. We never wanted to belong to them! Or another example, we met friends who were rather injecting than smoking. They meant with this one would get higher. We tried it, though, after a while, as once we had to help to rescue a friend’s life from his Syncope and watching horrifyingly torn and swollen holes on the arms of some others, we stopped doing it and threw them all out of the house! We preferred to smoke only! Therefore, we kept ourselves decent as our mother always wished, and with the help of the dosage, we didn’t waste the stuff we needed. We knew we’d never get high with that; it was only to keep us constant!

Although it went well with the dealers we found, we felt exhausted. In the first years of addiction, we had a few friends with us to turn the sufferings into joy by laughing, but in the later years, everyone scattered, and it was hard to endure the situation alone. There was chaos in all systems, even in the centrum of the happening; I mean in southern Tehran, where drugs were the main business. Of course, it wasn’t going in a positive way to fight against it, but to make more money from the corrupted regime. They kept the market empty to raise the price. Therefore, we thought enough was enough! We didn’t have to be dependent on them.

Honestly, in these four inconclusive attempts during our five years of addiction, we’d never taken it seriously to end it. It was more to have a change. But the last one had to succeed. We have heard about a good doctor for his treatment, and when we visited him in his practice. He said although he had stopped the treatments on this issue some years ago, he decided to do it again and help us to quit. He sent us to a hospital (the first time for us to go to a hospital) and treated us there with his magical mix, as he called it. It was a syrup mixed with different meds. It really was a magical drunk as we left the hospital after three days, and we rarely had pain in our bodies. In quitting drugs, the first three days are known as the most painful period; the rest is much easier…? Nonsense! It might be apt with other drugs but never with heroin. The body pains are like childish games in front of the soul pains. This emptiness! You know! Heroin isn’t only a drug; it becomes everything in life: eating, drinking, sleeping, and worse: the music, poetry, all the arts which might fulfil the soul: it becomes the soul! And without it, there is a vast vacuum; you don’t know how to fill this emptiness.

As Dr Jung says in his letter, which I mentioned above;
How could one formulate such an insight in a language that is not misunderstood in our days?
The only right and legitimate way to such an experience are that it happens to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding.
You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through personal and honest contact with friends, or through a high education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.

The Islamic revolution had conquered the whole country, and we witnessed how the wishes for freedom in Iran went down into nothingness. It hits us both, and maybe Al more than me. Because he became active in his writing in the famous Iranian Newspapers during the unrest in the 78s, and he got his own page in one of the famous and well-known magazines after the regime change. But it was less than a year after overcoming the Shah’s regime that Khomeini shot down all the free press.

The hope was dead, and the soul was lost. Life was hard to carry on. Outside between the people, we felt like foreigners and at home between our four walls; it was like hell! We had smoked heroin all the time in this place, and the memories were horribly temptational. We didn’t want to begin again, and further was like torture; that’s why we decided to commit suicide!

I must go for the third part, I am afraid! It is hard to remember those days and write them down on this paper, but anyway, heartfelt thanks for your interest. 🙏🤗🙏💖

The image above; ravenectar.com