FCYU-Feature Story

Numbing Out
Pills helped me forget the past,
but ruined the present.

By Miguel Ayala

It was lights out at AFC (the Ali Forney Center, a shelter in New York). A few people were talking about sex and one person, Gigi, said she and her girl like to smoke weed, use heroin, or even settle on taking mad pills to feel happy before they have sex.

She said she took some cold pills from a drug store. "Once I did about 50 and chased it with a forty!" she said.

Like a dick I said, "How does it feel?"

She rolled her eyes and said, "It makes you feel like your whole body is lead. You can't move. Everything is heavy. Your tongue is so heavy that when you talk, you drool!"

"That's hot," I thought. "I want to try it."

Feeling Quiet, Unworried, Calm

The first time I tried popping pills was a cool night. I was doing laundry at the Laundromat. I had 10 tabs of cold medicine and Gigi and I split them two ways. We were talking and people were walking by as we waited for our clothes to dry. I was chain smoking. All of a sudden, BAM!

"Wait, be quiet, it just hit me!" I told Gigi. My body felt heavy and my brain felt slow, quiet, unworried, calm. I went home to the shelter, played some tracks from Tina Ann, zoned out and fell asleep.

The next day I felt relieved that I did not get caught coming in high and get kicked out of AFC, but I also felt bad that I broke my sobriety. I'd been trying not to smoke weed or use any drugs.

Doing Nothing But Damage

For the next few days, any time I was mad I thought about pills. I remembered that D12 and Eminem song "Purple Pills" and its lyrics: "Blue and yellow purple pills!" After a couple of days being pissed off because I couldn't find any place to stay other than a shelter, I felt unable to calm down and started taking pills.

That was about six months ago. Ever since, I've been struggling with the temptation to use pills. For a while, I was popping pills every couple of days. Sometimes I'd take 24 tabs. I'd get a head-spinning sleepiness and the urge to throw up. I knew I was doing nothing but damage, but popping helped me forget the hurt, sorrow and seemingly endless pain I was feeling.

About a year ago I aged out of the system, and since then I've been mostly homeless. Often I feel as if I am losing my mind and will never get it back. I'm also sad that I'll never have memories of being a little boy who was happy and safe at home. Pills, marijuana and occasional drinking make it not hurt as much when I think about my family and being homeless.

Memories that Sting

When I think of my mom, I think of the moments when she showed me her love, her smiles. Then I remember one night when I was looking at a sunset from a window in my mother's home, and my family and I were playing cards for a quarter a hand. My mom was getting mad about losing money and started cussing in Spanish in a nasty tone.

She slammed her hands on the table and my mind rushed to the cold eye of the storm-times when my mom forced me to take off my clothes and lashed me with an extension cord on my face and chest. I'd put up an arm covered with welts and plead, "Stop, please, it hurts."

I'm willing to do almost anything to block out memories like that.

Taking my Anger out on Myself

When my mom directed her anger at me, I could not fight back. But now, when I get frustrated, I do what my mom did to me-I take the anger out on myself, harming myself by cutting or popping pills.

Harming myself keeps me from hurting others, but it also hurts me. This year, I lost an apartment and my girlfriend because of pills.

I'm afraid of what's happening to me. I don't want to die like my pops-he OD'd on heroin-and leave people who care for me grieving. But I'm also not sure whether I can deal with my problems sober.

Losing My Housing to Drugs

A few months after I started popping pills, I finally found housing through a program for mentally ill people called Fountain House, where I also get therapy. The day I moved into my apartment, I felt like, "Yes! This homeless sh-t is over! I have my own crib and I can move on with my life."

But living by myself was also scary. I realized that an apartment couldn't solve everything. It didn't get rid of my bad memories or stop me from feeling sad and alone.

When I moved into the housing program, the agreement was that I would focus on my treatment and that I couldn't drink or use drugs. Whenever I felt like I wanted to harm myself, I had to take myself to the hospital. I broke all of those rules.

During that month, I got hospitalized several times after popping pills. Then I got kicked out.

'What You Did Was Dangerous'

After I took pills in front of a staff, we had a meeting and the staff said, "You need to move out. What you did was very dangerous. You caused a lot of drama and endangered your life and the safety of yourself and everybody around you. And for that, you need to leave."

Soon I was upstairs packing.

Could My Girlfriend Save Me?

From there I moved in with my girlfriend, Kenisha, who I'd known for almost three years. We first met at a Christmas party at Fountain House. She was wearing her hair all fancy and had on a nice outfit.

Living with Kenisha felt like walking on air at times, and walking on eggshells at others. She'd get pissed off at me but she could also be very loving.

After a month I lost my girl, too, because I relapsed.

Popping Instead of Coping

One day I was writing about my past and I got so upset that I bought two bottles of pills, took five, and told my staff at Fountain House what I did. They told me that I needed to go to the hospital to deal with my feelings, and I did.

When Kenisha found out she was furious. She was like a locomotive that wouldn't stop-fuming, steaming and pissed off. She threw me out. The last thing she said to me was, "If you want to commit suicide, just do it."

Those nine words played in my head over and over like a broken record. Soon I was really thinking, "Just kill yourself, do the world a favor."

Back in the Shelter

I was also thinking, "I want to pop pills, pills, pills, pills!" Inside a little whiney b-tch was saying, "C'mon, gimme some. I'll take care of you!" Miraculously, I got through the night without popping. How? Don't know, I just know I slept on a table at a 24-hour Starbucks. (I woke up stiff as hell!)

After that, I went back into shelters, and I'm still living in a shelter now. The shocking thing is that I haven't been popping pills at all. (I have been smoking a lot of weed.)

I wish I could find a drug that could get me really, really high without the mental fall-down that comes when I stop getting high. No, really, I just wish I could deal with this pain without doing some dumb sh-t to get through.

Mom Offered No Help

Not long ago, I saw my mom. When I got to her apartment, she was not there so I went to sleep in front of her door. I woke up about an hour later when she stepped off the elevator, looked at me and said, "Miguel, why are you sleeping on the floor? Stayed out all night, huh?"

I said, "No, my girl threw me out."

My mom asked, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know…" I said, intentionally trailing off, hoping and praying she would say, "I have space here if you want to stay…" But she did not.

That afternoon, I slept on the couch for a few hours and ate. Then I went back to a shelter. I was so aggravated. All I could think was, "How could I go from a beautiful apartment to a shelter over something as stupid as pills?" I felt completely alone.

There's Got to Be Another Way

I know that popping pills will always push people away, not closer, but when I'm hurting, I don't know how to handle the pain. I don't know if I can stop hurting myself.

Right now I'm dealing with too much. Nothing makes sense to me.

Life feels so cruel and unforgiving. I dream of a better life, without hurt or loneliness, where I don't have to suffer from my mental illness as much, and I can look forward to each and every new day with hope, not fear.

Sometimes I think I'll get there if I just say to myself, "Hey, Asshole, snap out of it!" I know I need to understand that I can't numb out pain with pills. There's got to be another way…I just don't know what that way is.