Chronicles of a Cockroach

Special Guest Author: Madison Wilkins

I got drunk for the first time on my elementary school playground. It was a freezing night (by SoCal standards) and I vividly remember being surrounded by stars. I had stolen Coronas and we broke into school by hoping the fence. We had forgotten a bottle opener; my knuckles were red with blood from trying to rip off the bottle caps. My first bottle was gone within five minutes.

At that moment, I was no longer drowning. The constant, berating anxiety had vanished. My head was quiet and my stomach untangled. I suddenly wasn’t trapped in a painfully awkward and ugly body. I was prettier, smarter, funnier, and cooler. For the first time since I could remember, it was bearable to be Madison. It was the feeling I had been searching for my entire life.

In the coming years, my certainty that I had found endgame was solidified. Alcohol, drugs, money, drama, lies, illegal activity; anything for the rush. It seemed that I was made for this lifestyle. I never had any interest in becoming an adult anyway. I couldn’t envision a future for myself past the age of 18; all I could picture was a void of nothingness.

Along the way, I fell crazy in love with this kid who drank and used just like I did. Immediately I knew him well because I was him and he was me: the funny friend who was known widely but never deeply. I remember he drove his car fast and didn’t care about much but me. We listened to the same loud music and hated the way our fathers drank. We symbiotically lived by anger and tattooed our bodies to disguise the sorrow with apathy. We chased every last high and never stopped trying to control the uncontrollable. We soaked up all the negative attention from peers, teachers, parents, and cops because attention is attention… right? We drank and we laughed and we blew our feelings into clouds of smoke and we cried and we wallowed and then we drank and laughed some more.

I can’t seem to find the correct combination of words to articulate the euphoria I experienced while using drugs and alcohol. It often felt like I had reached Nirvana; I thought I had found everything I ever wanted. It was incredible. For a while. But nothing is permanent, and eventually what goes up must come down…

It didn’t take nearly as long as you would think for me to reach a misery equal in magnitude to that of the euphoria I had once known. The magic was gone. The drugs weren’t working anymore and my head was louder than it had ever been. I was pursuing a high that no longer existed; I did bad things as I went chasing ghosts. Bad things happened to me. I never even had a fighting chance of defending myself because I was always strung out.

All of a sudden, that kid and I were no longer kids. We were young adults in a relationship built on a foundation of pills, potions, and chasing the night. Consequently, it crumbled, decayed, and became diseased with hatred and violence. If I didn’t already know it well enough at that point, it was he who taught me just how worthless I really was.

Any semblance of love left in me was officially gone. I tried to fill myself back up with even more happy pills and liquid courage. It didn’t work. My heart had been beaten to a pulp and then curb-stomped until I couldn’t feel a thing; I was ice cold.

In the end, I was drinking a fifth of liquor every day, ingesting an absurd amount of pharmaceuticals, and taking anything else that I could get my hands on. I woke up each morning shaking like a leaf and puking bile. Then, to get well, I did it all over again.

I knew I couldn’t live this way much longer, but I didn’t know how to live without drugs and alcohol. Existing in that state of cognitive dissonance was the closest thing to hell I’d ever experienced.

I remember dreaming a lot during those final months of addiction. On more than one occasion, I found myself face-to-face with who I could’ve been. I met a smart and beautiful young woman full of self-worth and ambition. I knew I had traded the dreams of little Mado for a cheap price. Once I woke, I was nothing but a hollow shell of a human haunted by phantoms of my lost potential.

I resided in a place so dark and hated myself so much that eventually, I was just waiting around to die. As I medicated myself to oblivion each night, I prayed I wouldn’t have to see one more sunrise or be conscious for one more second. But I kept waking up. Over and over again, I woke up.

One day, I had a realization that my physical self is a damn fucking cockroach. it wouldn’t die. No matter how much poison I consumed, no matter how often I begged for death. this body wasn’t dying. for now at least.

I had a deeply disturbing feeling that instead of dying, I would come to handcuffed to a hospital bed. I would be told by a cop that an innocent person is dead because of me and I am being charged with DUI and vehicular manslaughter.

This vision was so clear that it scared the shit out of me. It was entirely in the realm of possibility as I was blacked out driving all the time. Instead of getting the easy way out and fading comfortably into the void, something bad was going to happen to somebody else. And I would be here to experience the grief of it all. In jail. Sober. Was the vision filled with fear and egocentrism? Yes. But was it also effective? Yes….

I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I was so tired. I was blessed with the gift of utter desperation and misery; this is when my awakening began. I found the courage to get sober. And that I did.

All my life, organized religion had bent and twisted my perception of everything... it pushed me away from the concept of god…I was deeply resentful, and I went searching for Infinity in all the wrong places. but one can never go too far to where they cannot come home again….

Slowly and then all at once I found Infinity. I choose to call it God. Looking back, even in my darkest nights, God was never far. My God is love. my God is forgiveness. my God is serenity.. my God does not judge, my God does not hate, my God does not condemn.. my God is you, my God is me, my God is the ocean, my God is a hug from my mom, my God is the smile on a little girls face, my God is the person holding the elevator for another, my God is EVERYTHING!

Time isn’t as linear as I once thought; everything is everywhere, moments and memories and souls flow all around... I don’t need the drugs to feel this Oneness anymore…

This body means nothing to me. However, I love hard, and my people mean everything to me. So, while I’m here, I’m trying my best to take care of my flesh vehicle so it continues to allow me to be here physically and love them. I guess maybe this body does mean something to me.

I am grateful to be of the alcoholic variety. It almost took me out and still could; it’s an internal war for the rest of my life. But for now, at least, I hold the upper hand. My greatest attributes and talents are directly linked to the alcoholic intensity and sensitivity I possess.

Thank you, roach body, for keeping my heart beating long enough for it all to finally click. Thank you to AA for the network of friends who know me deeply and hold me closely. Thank you, universe, for the angels I have as friends and family; they never gave up on me and loved me until I could love myself again. Thank you, God, for my sobriety.