Relapse

And with that first dose all the feelings returned...

One year. I had made it one WHOLE year, and was snatched back up in it's clutches before I knew what happened. My appetite subsided, my eyes became bloodshot, it was night.... then it was day before I knew it. While in the midst of getting my "high" I would pray that no one walked in and interrupted me. The sensation of it coursing through my veins.
"I can quit whenever I want!" Although, I had no intention whatsoever. "I have control over this, it does not control me." This is what I thought. I had been abusing for so long... well over half my life. It was the shot caller, I was the soldier.

If I was going somewhere for an extended period of time then I had my stash with me. Enough to keep me going until I was able to replenish supplies. Off to North Carolina; I went to find some. Off to Japan; I take my stash with me and just up the game on the island getting ahold of that good stuff! Back to the U.S. with a treasure chest of goods. Off to Cali with a lil' somethin' somethin', built a lil empire there. Once I traveled back across the U.S. I kept it simple. Had a lil' bit that I did here and there, but nothing big. I ran with a couple of cats that was on some completely different shyt that I wasn't used to. I got real deep in that game. So deep to where I was strung out for like 16 to 18 hour days. Financially I was no longer able to hang with these cats so I just dropped 'em. At this point I didn't really feel like going back to that old shyt, so I kinda quit, cold turkey.
The withdrawal wasn't anywhere as bad as I thought it would be. My mind was so medicated and preoccupied that taking a little hit here or there just seemed like too much work for me. Days would pass and I wouldn't even think about it, and for the days I did think about it, I would just brush the feeling off and find something else to do.
For one year, for one WHOLE year I did good. I wasn't even interested in it anymore. Sure there were the magazine articles here and there, something on television about it, protest for and against, and even mentioned in casual conversations. I could talk about it as though I was on the outside looking in. I had become a spectator to it all. Sometimes I felt ten feet tall, others... not so much. Like having to work all summer while your friends go on vacations, to camp, and goof off and stuff.
Over that year I watched people come and go. I saw the addiction take root and turn unsuspecting users into mindless zombies. The lived in the dark with only the glow of a t.v. or computer for light.  Emerging from dark, dank places they shield their eyes from the sun, like those kids in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" when they escaped from slavery in the diamond mines underneath Pankot Palace.
Do you remember the little boy that escaped and made his way back to the village, with a scrap of fabric clutched in his hand? That was me. No, not actually me. It was me in the sense of escaping from something that had kidnapped me and kept me toiling away trying to achieve something that would only grow more hungry as I progressed. "More, more, MORE!" It would howl, heating up and whirring.  I was convinced the answer was in there somewhere... I never found it. Never finding that satisfaction I  invested so much in to.
I turned and walked away from it all! It felt good to be free! It felt good to notice the world around me! I would tell other people how I broke free from those chains that kept me bound for so long! There's so much to see, so much to do!

And I did see, and do, and so much more...

Until... one day. Working on a project I came across... one.

Two words... snatching me back into the fold... flashing in front of my face...

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