My name is Jason, and I am an addict. I am writing this to you from Dorm 11, Bunk 9 at Multnomah County’s Inverness Jail. I am here on charges that culminated as a result of my addiction, and I am finishing the last 30 days of a 90-day Multnomah County Justice Reinvestment Program probation revocation.
Those are a lot of big words to simply say, as Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction put it, “Been caught stealing.”
Opiates and opioids are my go-to’s. I am starkly aware of my shortcomings and defects of character. Even with all my faults, I hope I can keep my credibility intact regarding the topic I am about to cover. I’m just going to go for it.
A question has come up here in Dorm 11. It is a question that has been asked and pondered since the discovery of drugs, I imagine, and that question is: Is addiction a choice?
Over my 20-plus years as an addict, I have had more people exclaim, “Oh, you can stop. You just have to put your mind to it!” And more pointedly, “Do it for your X, Y and Z. You just have to make a choice about what you want in life!”
These are valid statements, and I wish it were that simple for us addicts. I would love more than anything in the world to use drugs without facing the consequences that occur when I do. I also believe deeply that will never be possible. I want to leave here and stay clean, but I am worried I won’t be able to. Why? Because I have a disease.
Many people do not understand the disease model of addiction, understandably so. Great leaps have been made in the past 60 years or so. Addiction has now been redefined and renamed as a substance use disorder, a more accurate description I believe.
Narcotics Anonymous explains: “When many of us think about it, the idea of control is absurd. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs.”
I do not know the truth about these things. However, over time I have accepted that they are true for me. What really makes me an addict is that I use drugs against my will, even when I don’t want to, and it is clear that drugs are making my life unmanageable and that they are killing me.
Also for me, addiction and homelessness go hand in hand. Is this my choice? I know of no addict who, as a child, woke one day and proclaimed, “I want to be a homeless junkie when I grow up!”
The fact is, I wanted to be a sailor, like my grandfather. Also, I have heard many of my friends claim under no uncertain terms, “I never signed up for all of this! I just wanted to get high!” (Meaning “change the way I feel.”)
The fact is that addicts, and especially IV drug users, become marginalized and alienated until there is nowhere for them to turn, and they become homeless. Society wants to believe drug users are making bad choices, therefore they are bad people that we can forget and let die. It even happens among our peers in our own community. An addict who has housing is held in higher regard than one who does not. And addicts who “only” smoke heroin, meth or cocaine look and treat those like me who inject with fierce disdain.
EDITORIAL: 'Othering' robs people of their self-worth
Do you think addiction is a choice? I am asking you to take part in a conversation with me. Here are a few questions to spur the discussion:
What has been your experience with addiction? With addicts, be they husbands, wives, children, friends, family,
co-workers?
Have you ever thought you might have a substance use disorder or addiction?
If you don’t have any direct experience with addiction, when you see someone on the street who might be (or is obviously) an addict, what do you think? How do you react?
FURTHER READING: Punishment is no cure for addiction: Morgan Godvin pushes for prison reform
On July 30, I will be released from jail absolutely penniless and still homeless. I only have the filthy clothes I came here in. Yet I will no longer be under the influence of morphine. What would you choose at this point? It certainly isn’t a recipe for success. How would you steel yourself against this harsh reality?
I know how I would.
I want to try to stay clean when I get out, but chances are I will use the first day I am free. It is not what I want to do. I worry that if I stay in town I will end up back in the same patterns, deep in my addiction. I need some time away, some time to gather my inner strength. I’d like to leave town, visit my family in Florida, but there are probation obstacles. I’d like to have a chance.
Please hold me in your thoughts.
Jason Everly is a periodic vendor with Street Roots who has been writing to us from jail. This is a portion of his correspondence.