Heroin Was the Most Influential Teacher I’ve Ever Had

It’s sad when I realize that I’ve never had a true mentor in my life.

It’s even sadder to think that so far, heroin addiction has been more influential on me than any teacher I’ve ever had.

It shouldn’t be this way, yet here we are.

I’ve yet to come across a human person who has had as much of an impact on my life as a small sticky ball of black tar has. What’s up with that?

Sure, there have been plenty of people who I’ve read and listened to and have taken advice from in a typical parasocial way, but none can hold a candle to the insidious nature of a narcotic that turns your own mind against you.

There ultimately will never be a better teacher for learning about yourself than yourself.

We are our only true guides when it comes to how we think and choose to act. Give your mentors and gurus and idols all the credit you want, but at the end of the day, you are the one shifting your perceptions. You are the one moving the needle.

You are the one making changes, not them.

Obviously, an illicit street drug doesn’t literally have the ability to teach you anything. It can, however, unlock parts of your mind that had previously remained closed off.

Especially if you’ve lived a life of relative middle-to-upper class comfort, it can be quite a jarring experience to feel things like real desperation and hopelessness for the first time. Or to watch yourself slowly morph from a happy optimist into a puddle of downtrodden pessimism. The other side of the emotional spectrum opens up to you in a way you never expected or were ever prepared for.

For anyone who’s not living in abject poverty and struggling to survive every day, these sorts of extreme states of mind come as a shock because you’ve never felt the anguish that they can bring before.

I’m sure it’s not so much of a surprise for people who spends every day worrying about where their next meal is coming from. To them, it’s probably just a part of daily life to feel those waves of discontent and disharmony. Especially when you find yourself trying to navigate a society that seems to be actively trying to make survival as difficult as it can be.

For me, finding myself in the position of being a drug addict when I had spent all my life spoiled and comfortable almost felt like a second birth, in a way. A birth into a world full of aches and pains. A world that was continually trying to leave you destitute.

Suddenly, life became very real.

Narcotics that are that addictive trigger the same survival instinct within you that you’d normally need for something like not dying alone in the wilderness or navigating the underbelly of deep city homelessness. You wake up with an irremediable hunger and the vision of your life blurs into one singular tunnel — stay alive.

Except it’s a false threat. Nothing is coming for you or hunting you down and if you can simply be patient and just wait for a long enough period of time, your body will expel the curse and you’ll be back to craving burgers and blowjobs like every healthy red-blooded American should.

That’s one of the most important lessons this teacher taught me…

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…patience.

There is no more annoying period of waiting in existence than an addict waiting for his dope man. Ask an addict. It’s fucking torture.

Having to deal with this soul-wrenching stretch of time day in and day out left me with an acute sense of how to handle uncertain wait times and how to occupy myself during them.

If you haven’t noticed, most people don’t have a ton of patience.

We’ve become so used to instant gratification and short-form content that our brains simply can’t handle long stretches of uninterrupted waiting. Especially when the amount of time you’ll be waiting isn’t obvious or known prior.

My suggestion? Completely forget about what you’re waiting for.

Pretend whatever it is isn’t happening until the next day and just get on with whatever you were already doing. Get lost in something entirely unrelated so when the time does come that your DrugDasher is on their way, it’ll be a relieving surprise instead of a frustrating expectation.

This obviously applies to anything outside the realm of narcotic clock-watching, as well.

Lines, traffic, being put on hold, waiting on your girlfriend to finish her fourth hour of preparation for her journey into the world beyond the house, anything really,

Learn how to be content no matter where you are or what you’re waiting for and it will only help you in the long run.

Another thing I learned is being able to discern what I actually want and understanding desire.

Like I’ve said before, the thing we think we want usually isn’t the thing we actually want.

We become enamored with the feeling that the thing we want will give us, but we don’t necessarily even care about the thing itself.

For me, I didn’t actually give a shit about the drugs I was seeking, I was addicted to the relief I felt when I was on my way to get them. I wanted nothing more than the feeling of stress leaving my body and mind. There are definitely other ways of accomplishing this, but at the time smoking heroin off of some Reynolds Wrap seemed like the most effective option.

What this taught me was to step back from myself and work backwards to figure out what it is I’m actually looking for.

When I’m feeling restless and think I want to go out to a bar to get plastered, is that really what I want? Or do I just want the anxiety to go away? If there were another healthier or more productive way of making this happen, would I really need to drown my brain in booze just to calm down?

Are you spending all of your time working because you just love what you do? Or are you working towards some achievement so you’ll be admired and praised by your peers?

Do you really want the feeling of your skillset growing? Or do you really just want the admiration?

If you stopped craving the validation, would you continue working as hard?

If you already felt loved and validated and self-assured, would you even be doing what you’re doing? Or would you have the confidence to pursue what you really want in life?

It’s questions like this that something as damaging as drug addiction can force upon a person when they’ve never considered these things before.

These questions need answers if you’re ever going to feel content with who you are and what you’re doing.

Heroin taught me how to handle discomfort.

So many people have a nearly zero tolerance for anything outside of absolute perfection when it come to how comfortable they want to be. Physically as well as mentally.

They don’t know what real tolerance is because as soon as anything makes them feel a little uneasy they immediately squirm their way back into their comfort zone.

Heroin, and more specifically the withdrawals from it, have taught me how to handle extreme discomfort in any situation.

From feeling sick and still needing to get errands done, to being stuck in an awkward social situation, to laying in bed sweating because the AC doesn’t work, to continually working on something difficult to see results down the line instead of immediately.

Drug addiction allowed me to truly hear loud and clear that life isn’t comfortable, and we need to get used to that to be able to function with any level of attention and tolerance.

People have a habit of trying to recreate the conditions of the womb. They want everything in perfect synchronicity, they want a constant flow of sustenance and the temperature at all times to be just right. They want to float in a frictionless state of being as worries and obstacles melt away and they can live out their lives as a precious ball of potentiality.

Life is the opposite of that feeling, quite literally. We are born into a world that inherently does not have our best interests in mind. We may have been lucky enough to have been born into the most catered-to generation in all of existence, but that doesn’t mean that the world beyond our modern comforts is gone, it’s just been covered up with a friendly-looking blanket.

We still wake up to the natural entropy of life and all of the external hazards that come with it. We still get hungry, thirsty, and tired. We’re still going to run into situations beyond our control and have to deal with things like tragedy and disappointment and heartbreak and struggle.

These things are anything but cozy, but if you can teach yourself how to be comfortable with what’s uncomfortable, you’ll have a much easier time handling the never-ending barrage of problems that life will inevitably throw your way.

There are plenty of subtle things here and there that I’ve picked up over the years and that I attribute to my time in the black tar sinkhole. All of which have been useful at different points of my life ever since I quit using all those years ago.

Most importantly, though, is simply that heroin taught me how to control my mind better.

I can spot when bad habits are starting to form, and I can see the exact way that I can nip it in the bud or slowly expunge it from my life. I can see the lack of impulse control other people have and how susceptible they are to similar indulgences to the ones that I was. Everything becomes so clear when you’ve experienced the extreme ends of addiction and understand what it takes to conquer your own desires.

I would never wish the experience of addiction onto anyone, but I do wish more people could see just how easily manipulated they are when it comes to controlling their wishes and desires.

From media and pop culture, to targeted ads and manipulative commercials, the tactics they use to play on your vulnerabilities are monstrous, but they’re also obvious. You just have to see it.

Beating heroin has awarded me the clarity to spot these kinds of manipulations and plays on my impulses. It’s also given me stronger defenses than most people when trying to combat my own desires to give into these feelings. It’s like, I’ve played this game before on the Extreme Difficulty setting. Beating it on Easy is mindless at this point.

Try to be more in tune with how your mind automatically functions. You don’t have to be obsessively attentive when going throughout your day, but try to keep an eye out for what your mind does when you’re not using it to think about what’s in front of you.

It may sound strange, but your mind…has a mind of its own. We forget that our subconscious is really the one in charge, calling the shots just below the surface of our conscious thought and thing guiding the majority of our actions and desires. Try to catch a glimpse of what your subconscious is saying you want, and what you know will be better for you. Feel how each option feels. See it for the illusion that it is.

You usually don’t want what you think you want. So be patient, learn how to tolerate being uncomfortable.

My teacher was evil to the core, but I stood my ground, stole what lessons I could from that dungeon masked as a classroom, and made it out alive.

Take it from me. If you can learn how to be aware of when your own mind is trying to manipulate you, and you make an active effort to overcome the various forms of inevitable discomfort in your life, you shouldn’t have to inhale the same toxic lessons as I did to learn something about yourself.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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