My Recovery Way: As We Trudge the Road: The Heroin and Prescription Opioid Epidemic and Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury

My Recovery Way

As We Trudge the Road: The Heroin and Prescription Opioid Epidemic and Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury

Darren H.

Copyright © 2020 Darren H.

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64801-474-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64801-475-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

For The Millions Of People Trying To Live Life One Day At A Time.

On the nineteenth of March, 2014, at 4:00 a.m., I was woken by a loud crash upstairs. My girlfriend, Sara, who was lying next to me on my bed downstairs, said, Put your sweats on, something’s happening.

The next thing I heard was my locked doorknob trying to be turned, then that awful gut-wrenching sound of my door being kicked open and the sight of six cops with clear shields on their faces and rifles in their hands surrounding the bed! Sara was sitting up on the side of the bed, and I was lying on my back.

The officer in charge said, Roll over and put your hands behind you!

I did what I was told and I was handcuffed as another cop cuffed Sara. As our rights were read to us, I was then pulled off the bed. I said, Please put my shoes on me, I have a head injury that makes me very off balance, and I need them to walk.

After he let me step into my shoes, we were taken up the stairs and led into the front room where all nine of my roommates were also cuffed and sitting on the couches. The officer in charge pulled a warrant out of his pocket; he looked down at it and said, I have a warrant for Darren H. in possession of heroin.

Suddenly I became the most important person in the house. My ego loved it. The hateful stares from my cuffed roommates I will never forget. They sat Sara down on one of the couches and then took me into the kitchen. I was sat down on a stool by the wall as I looked over at the kitchen table. I saw three more cops sitting there. Two of them were on laptops, and the third was on a phone. The officer in charge said to me, We’re going to search your entire house, but it will be a lot nicer for you if you tell me where and what we’re going to find.

Memories of the couple years I spent in the penitentiary in the mid-nineties came rushing over me, so I felt like I should be as cooperative as I could be, so I told him, There’s sixty twenties of black in my front right pocket of my jeans on the floor in my room, and there’s a quarter ounce of go-fast in the lockbox on the floor in the closet, and in that same box is fifteen-gram bags of medical marijuana.

After about an hour sitting on that stool in the kitchen, the officer running the show came back upstairs and thanked me for telling him the location of all the dope. He then said, You have enough of three different controlled substances that we’re going to charge you with three distribution charges. He then told me, Because this house sits 525 feet east of the Kearns Elementary School, we’re going to enhance the charges from second-degree to first-degree felonies, and we also found $700 cash in your jeans pocket.

I politely asked if I could have some of my cash to put on my books.

He said, No. I was then walked out of the kitchen through the roommate-filled living room and out the front door and into the back of one of the many cop cars that were parked in the driveway.

I had been in a daze since I woke to the loud noise upstairs and wasn’t really sure if I was awake or in a dream, but when they booked me into the jail and I was given my booking sheet that read the same sentence on three different lines—Distribution of Controlled Substance, First-Degree Felony 5 to Life—I realized then that I was wide awake! After reading those words, I got very sad and I began to get tears in my eyes. Memories of the years I spent down twenty years ago consumed me.

As I waited for them to call me up for my mug shot, I was able to call my mother on the phone. I think I cried as much as she did for about ten minutes. I was then called over for my picture to be taken, and then they issued me a wheelchair. I waited for about three hours for them to dress me and take me to quarantine where I stayed for five days, and then to D-pod, my new home. After a couple days in my new home, I thought I’d start writing about my life.

I was born on the second of July, 1969, in Salt Lake City, Utah. My folks were divorced when I was about a year old. I guess my first memory of life was when I was four or five. My mom was remarried to my two little sisters’ dad. His name was Dan. My memory is not telling me how I felt, just the action that took place. I still see my mother, Phoebe, standing in the doorway of Dan’s office, crying at me or with me as I lay across Dan’s lap with my pants down, and he whipping my butt with his belt. Life with Dan and that belt of his lasted just a few years…well, that I remember anyway.

The year 1977 was the one when I first felt grown up. I remember going to my first movie without my mom, Star Wars, Episode Four. A couple months after, in July, I turned eight, so I was baptized in to the Mormon Church, a real growing experience. I then bought my first album, Love Gun by KISS. I joined the KISS Army shortly thereafter. Then the following month, I felt my first rejection by a woman. I was over at my friends’ house, David and Michel. We were playing hide and seek, and I was hiding under the back of an old truck that was in there backyard. One of the brothers released the tailgate, and as the door swung down, I was standing up. As the blood and tears ran down both my cheeks, the three of us ran into their house.

David yelled, Mom, Darren’s bleeding!

Their mom was sitting in front of the black and white television. We got no response. So again, he said, Mom, Darren’s bleeding.

She didn’t even turn around. I remember how sad her voice sounded when she said, Elvis Presley just died!

The move away from Salt Lake was really just a move away from that violent stepfather of mine. The first altering of my mind felt proper because of the freedom I now felt being away from what or whom I feared so much. My mom, my three sisters, and I moved to an apartment complex in North Kansas City, Missouri. Phoebe, my mom, had an old guy friend that lived there in Kansas City. His name was Clyde. That’s why we moved so far away from what she knew. In the complex, there were a few recreational spots for the kids to play. There were Jungle Gyms, slippery slides, swings, and something I didn’t know much about, boys to play and hang with. I could leave my sister’s home with Mom and venture out in the hood with the fellows. I must have been a pretty cool eight-year-old.

I hung out with the ten and twelve-year-olds. They—or we—grew pot back behind the apartments in the field by the woods. Most of my new friends were African American. I remember a couple Spanish kids, but I don’t recall there being any white kids, but there must have been some. Oh, wait, except for Mary. She was the first girl I ever kissed. She was white and stunning. The kids that I hung out with would steal alcohol from their parents. My mom didn’t drink. Not real sure how they would always get it so easily, but they did.

We would soak down the freshly picked pot leaves with the alcohol and then lay the wet pot on a big thin piece of wood in the sun. We would come back the next day and retrieve the pot, which was always dried out completely. We would then crumble down the dried pot in our hands, roll it up in a rolling paper, and smoke it.

I went to court today and talked to my attorney about my options, then I instructed her to tell the judge that I was willing to do drug court. After she informed the judge that I will be applying for drug court, my next court date was set up. She, Judge Ruby Mills, set my next court date out to about thirty days. Then she reduced my bail from $50,000 to $25,000, which was still way to high of an amount to even think about a bonding out. Now drug court seemed like the best option because once completed, my charges would be dropped off my record or reduced to misdemeanors anyway.

She, my attorney, thinks she can keep me from going back to prison. She says that the President Barack Obama is on a mission. He’s trying to push programs over prisons. I told her that I was in a rally or a march back in the late 80s up State Street to the capital here in Salt Lake City. About forty or fifty of us from CA (12-Step Fellowship) with picket signs in our hands chanted More Treatment, Less Prisons, More Treatment, and Less Prisons. We got all three local news channels up to the capitol. But nothing ever changed; just more money went in to prisons. Before she left, she said to me, Hopefully, the president can make it happen for you.

Before I went to sleep that night, I put my hands together and bowed my head and prayed for Gods will to be done, something I used to do every night but hadn’t in a couple years.

*****

It’s almost 7:00 a.m. here on Delta block, and its Sunday morning. We just finished breakfast and have now racked back in our cells. My roommates name is Tomcat, and he’s here on a probation violation. He has a release date in June sometime. Sundays here in the County Jail seem just like every other day here in paradise except for the AA meeting. This meeting has made Sunday my favorite day.

Terry comes in from the outside and runs the meeting. Terry and I have been friends for twenty-five years. I met Terry in the rooms of AA (12-Step Fellowship) in 1988; we had both just gotten sober.

*****

I was first arrested in 1981 when I was twelve years old. The charge was possession of alcohol by a minor. We had moved back to Utah from Kansas City. We were living in Bountiful, Utah, about seven miles north of Salt Lake. I was at the Rustic Roller-Skating Rink with my friend, Brian. Brian was fifteen. It seemed that all my friends growing up were always a few years older than I. We were standing out front of the rink in a big circle of people. I was handed a mason jar by the guy standing next to me. He said, Drink this.

So of course, I did. Well, I tried to anyway. I poured it into my mouth, but it would not go down my throat. It was too strong. So it came back out and onto the ground. The crowd chuckled. That was my first taste of Everclear. Brian and I were walking home from the roller-skating rink. We walked through a parking lot in a strip mall called Colonial Square. While walking, a cop pulled up and asked us what we were doing. I don’t know what I said, but I did speak. My breath must have smelled like alcohol, so I was handcuffed and put into the back of the police car. The cop then drove me to the Bountiful police station.

My mother was then called and told to come down and pick me up. I don’t remember even speaking with my mother about drinking alcohol. When she came and picked me up from the Bountiful police station, I’m sure she asked, and I’m sure I just told her it was an accident that alcohol made it into my mouth that night. When I went to the Third District Juvenile Court, I was given a fine for $35. The charge was possession of alcohol by a minor. The judge also put me on probation.

The week after my first arrest, I lost my virginity. Her name was Gwen, and she was seventeen years old. We were both over at Brian’s and we were walking home together. Somehow, we ended up in the bushes outside a big white church. I didn’t know what I was doing, but she sure did. It was fun, an experience I’ll never forget. Don’t think I was quite old enough to have an orgasm because I didn’t, but it sure felt good.

I was first introduced to pill form narcotics in 1981. I was twelve years old and I was hanging out with some friends one night in the trailer court where they lived. The trailer court sat on the west side of Highway 89 in North Salt Lake. On the east side was the grocery store where we would steal cigarettes. We were headed over across the highway. My friends, Paul and Francis, took off running, and my shoe came off, so I took just a few seconds to put it back on. I then took off behind my buddies but then stopped just shortly past the middle of the road and waited for the motorcycle to fly by so I could cross.

When the motorcycle got about fifty feet from me, I could tell it wasn’t a motorcycle but a little Volkswagen bug with its driver’s side headlight burned out. It was a good disguise because it fooled me. I quickly tried to jump out of the way but not quick enough. The little disguised Volkswagen bug was doing fifty miles an hour and caught my right hip. I flew about thirty feet down the road. I remember the lady, who was a passenger in the car, crying so much and all the cops and my first ambulance ride to the Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful. The doctor told me that I’d chipped a disk in the bottom of my back and that the nerves in my back may get pinched in that chip.

So I was given Carisoprodol (Soma) muscle relaxers and I was prescribed them whenever I needed them. Certain activities I would do would cause those nerves in my back to be pinched, and I would have to arch my back to pull the lower back forward to be able to withstand the pain. I would eat a Soma that would always put me right to sleep, and when I awoke, the pain was gone, truly a miracle drug.

On the ninth of January 1982, I went to my first rock concert. It was Ozzy Osbourne, the Diary of a Madman tour, with Randy Rhodes on lead guitar. My buddy, Brian, took me to the show and bought me a ticket. We had upper bowl seats, but when the lights were turned down, we jumped the railing and made our way slowly through the crowd up to about the third row. I remember standing on a chair next to Brian, and we were smoking a joint. We were so close to the stage I could almost touch Randy Rhodes.

The stage was set up to where it looked like the outside of a big castle. Up in one of the castle windows was a man in a hooded monk’s robe playing an organ. In the middle of the stage was a white staircase, and at the top of the staircase was where the drums sat. At the end of the concert, for the encore, the stairs lifted up, and a big white hand with Ozzy sitting in the middle of it came out. I was so high but will never forget my