I Watched Him Overdose
What it felt like, as a teenager, watching drugs ravage my home and lead to an overdose
When I was 16, my mom told me she had started dating someone new. I hadn’t heard anything about him prior to this. She said he was a good deal younger than her and had been working as a waiter, but having lost his job, he’d be coming to stay with us for a while. She also said he had had problems with drug addiction but was now clean. His youth, unemployment, and difficulties with addiction all made me wary, but I was going through a philosophical awakening at the time — having just recently discovered the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, which I interpreted as a call to freedom from established values and an end to all judgment. I purposefully sought to look past what others might be critical about. Moreover, as to his drug use, I myself had come as of late to recognize the pleasures of smoking marijuana. I welcomed him with an open mind.
When I first met Phil, I was surprised by how young he looked. He was not only younger than my mother, but he also looked considerably younger than his age. He occupied, for me, that strange inter-generational space where I was unsure whether to interact with him as I would an established adult or one of my peers. Still, in reality, he was well into his 30s, and I was not yet an adult. He brought with him some gifts: books on philosophy and psychology and writing. It was from him that I received my first copy of Strunk’s The Elements of Style (an essential book for any writer). Another among them was Freud’s Dora, a case study of Freud’s work with a woman with hysteria. Others that he brought I had already, such as Carl Jung’s Synchronicity. These books, playing on my interests and sentimentality, confirmed to me how right I had been not to stereotype him. He was a tortured soul, but a thinking, feeling mind nonetheless.
As time progressed, things were nice, though they had an eerie feeling of simulation, as if things were not what they seemed. It is a feeling that builds in the gut when you notice signs that things are not altogether normal, but have yet to recognize the hidden implications and sequelae of those subtle incongruities. For example, Phil would cook and clean — he was, in fact, quite good at cooking, having worked as a chef for some time —…
