Page 37 of All the Way to the River

H ow swiftly that moment of peace came to an end, after the first morphine pill disappeared into Rayya’s system.

How quickly the dragon of addiction began to roar through Rayya’s blood—demanding what it always demands: more, more, more.

Soon Rayya went from needing one morphine pill a day to two pills a day to three a day, to one pill every hour, to two pills every hour, to clusters of pills at a time—until, within a matter of a few weeks, she was yelling into the phone to her doctors, “This shit doesn’t fucking work on me!

You gotta give me something stronger, or I swear to fucking God I will go out there on Fourteenth Street and find something stronger and shoot it right into my fucking veins—and don’t think I don’t know how! ”

So then they gave her methadone. And then they gave her fentanyl patches (“something stronger,” to be sure), which worked beautifully until they didn’t—until her addict’s brain became resistant to the powers of even this most formidable and dangerous of drugs.

That’s when Rayya had the inspired idea to add a bit of cocaine to the mix, “to give me a little bump and help me stay awake”—and she bought her first gram of coke in nearly twenty years and put it right up her nose, to tremendous and obvious relief.

Was that when she officially lost her sobriety and sanity?

Or was it the next night—when she shot the remainder of the cocaine into her arm (“better than the nose, as always,” she said) and then chased it with a few morphine pills, then downed a handful of muscle relaxants just for good measure, and then informed me as she was nodding off into oblivion that “a hole just opened up through our bedroom ceiling and my ancestors are rolling in, four layers deep”?

Was that the moment of relapse?

Or had it started long before the cancer even appeared?

Had she fallen off the wagon many years earlier, when she decided to start drinking and hide it from everyone?

Or had she begun sliding back into addiction when she had stopped going to twelve-step meetings because she got annoyed with all those “rigid bitches” in the rooms, and because she didn’t want to work a program anymore?

Or had her decline begun even before then, when she stopped letting people know how much emotional pain she was in, and decided to keep her suffering a secret from those who loved her?

Or was it all of that combined?

Does an avalanche happen suddenly, or does it begin with the first flake of snow that sticks to the edge of the mountain?

I don’t know.

I can’t know.

I can’t even tell you when my love addiction got triggered with Rayya, or when I collapsed into the utter abandonment of self that is codependency in its most deadly and life-destroying form.

I can’t name the exact moment when I made her into my higher power, or when I surrendered all my will and agency to her, or when I decided that it was my job in life to serve her every desire—no matter how much it cost me, physically, emotionally, or financially.

Had it been back when I first met Rayya, seventeen years earlier, and seeds of desire were planted by how cool and strong and mighty she appeared?

Or was it when I stepped into the role of rescuer and decided to save her from the sorrows of her divorce back in 2008, by moving her to my church in New Jersey?

Or was it when I made her my rescuer, by putting my spirit in her hands, by deciding that she—a mortal and flawed human being—was my only source of safety on this entire terrifying planet?

Or was it when I found out she was dying, and I threw my whole life overboard just to be with her?

Or was it when her demands became so impossible to satisfy that they were completely swallowing me—but I still kept giving her everything she wanted?

Or was it when we stopped praying together every morning?

Or did I completely lose my mind that night in the spring of 2017 when she commanded me to give her some cash so she could buy that first gram of cocaine—and I did it, without hesitation?

(In my weak defense, she had looked me straight in the eyes and told me, “This is the exact amount of cocaine that will last me until I die, trust me. I’m just gonna need a tiny amount of coke each day, to keep me from falling asleep in my soup because of the opioids.

Trust me, I know how to do this. It’s better if we only risk buying it once—that’s why we’re getting such a large amount. ”)

Or was I a total goner a few days later, when she told me to go to the ATM again and get more money so she could buy more cocaine (an eight ball this time), and I did it?

Or was it the morning I walked down to a “harm reduction” agency in Chinatown and registered myself with the City of New York as an active intravenous drug user so I could get clean needles for Rayya—because I was determined to keep her safe and free from infection, even as she was dying of cancer and shooting cocaine and opioids into the veins of her feet, her hands, her neck?

And also because I wanted her to see what a good girl I was, what a loving and accepting girl, what a generous girl?

Or did I abandon myself completely the first time I suggested that perhaps she was becoming addicted to the cocaine, and she told me I was a “needy fucking crybaby” who needed to “back the fuck off from talking about shit you don’t even fucking understand,” and I stuck around after that for more abuse?

Or was it when she and I (who had never once had an argument, in seventeen years of friendship and love) suddenly started fighting every day, as I begged her to look at me again like she used to, to touch me like she used to, to speak to me the way she used to?

Was it when I started sobbing, “Where did you go , where did our love go ?” Was it when I started hiding in the bathroom at night, weeping on the floor (again with the crying on the bathroom floor!) while she hid in another bathroom, grinding down her cocaine into a finer and finer powder?

Or was it when I tied off her arms or legs for her while she shot up, watching over her carefully (even holding the light for her so she could find her veins) to make sure she had everything she needed?

Just so I could be in the room with her?

To make sure she still wanted me, loved me, and approved of me?

To make sure I was still important and cherished?

To make sure that I was still being seen ?

To make sure that she—who had clearly already left the world of the living behind, and who was also, by the way, dying—would never, ever leave me?

“Cunning, baffling, and powerful” is how the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes the disease of addiction—a disease that is mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual in its nature.

A disease that comes at you from all sides, that stalks you throughout your entire life, that sneaks up on you when you’re not looking, that builds power over the years and then eventually devours you until you are left with nothing .

Addiction: a disease that Rayya and I were both powerless over, in our own awful ways.

Love addiction, drug addiction, dependency, codependency—it’s all the same thing: a disease so tireless and dirty and dignity-consuming that it will never rest until you’re ruined.

A disease that makes you do stuff you never in a million years imagined you would do, and accept degradation you never dreamed you’d accept.

A disease that makes you hurt people, that makes you hurt yourself.

A disease so greedy, it will never be satisfied to destroy just one person when it can take down two. And will never be satisfied to kill two people when it can kill three—or four, or every member of a family, or a whole community, or an entire country.

Addiction.

A disease so insidious and vile that—I swear to God—it makes terminal cancer look like a day at the beach.