Alright, I'm an Addict...Now Where's the Free Coffee and Donuts by Lavinia Ludlow
Alright, I'm an Addict...Now Where's the Free Coffee and Donuts
How those first few hours were breezy. I woke up, chugged coffee, scarfed an Egg McMuffin, downed Coca-Cola hoping with frivolous intensity that my addiction would take a more conventional and socially acceptable form.
Day 3.
I puke everything. I’ve scratched my skin into second degree burns and there’s a bed of hair on the carpet, hair that seventy-two hours ago was perky and growing out of my scalp.
There’s never relief when it comes to withdrawal, no position or temperature of the room that’ll ease the beetles gnawing through my veins. I claw at the mattress with my fingers and toes. My eyeballs are so dry that blinking has become unbearable. My lids and retinas feel like sandpaper grinding against sandpaper even though I’m lubricated everywhere else. The blankets lie in messy piles on the ground, the sheets plastered to my skin.
I tear off my clothes and hit the cool floor on my back, grinding my bare skin against the carpet like a crab with a shell itch. I flail my arms and legs hoping to kick out that restless feeling in my joints, contorting in directions I never thought I could twist.
Who knew withdrawal could be such a workout? I bet addicts become beautiful contortionists without even realizing it. I bet they have moments of perfect clarity when they understand just how pointless and insufferable life is without the one chemical that keeps them not even high, just functional.
I kick and thrash in all directions, inventing curse words, then attempt to calm myself by counting carpet fibers in my head. I try to guess how many fibers there are per square inch of carpet then multiply that number by guessing how many square inches there could be in this very square room. It drives me fucking insane, like trying to count how many pubes a person has or how many herpes sores exist in the world at any given time.
Right now, I’d gladly trade in seventy-two hours clean to stop this pubic lunacy. I’d trade in a longer life, triumphant sobriety, my perfect boyfriend, my impending offspring, to avoid trudging through the remainder of my days without substance – literally.
In this state, not even the lull of Aimee Mann could take away manic thoughts winding through my brain tissue folds like parasites. And when she repeats her chorus in Humpty Dumpty— “All the perfect drugs and superheroes wouldn’t be enough to bring me up to zero” —I disagree because fuck yeah it’d be badass to have someone in Batman spandex bring me a hit on a silver tray, maybe suck me off once my sex drive returns.
Day 3 needs to fucking get over itself.
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LAVINIA LUDLOW is a musician and writer from Northern California. She is currently a reviewer over at Small Press Reviews, Smalldoggies Magazine, and American Book Review.
In early 2011, Casperian Books released her debut novel alt.punk, and in 2013, it will release her sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven.
READ LAVINIA LUDLOW'S REVIEWS HERE ON SMALLDOGGIES NOW:
The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl by Marc Schuster
Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, and Sinners by Ken Wohlrob
Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
AND SEE NATHAN HOLIC'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF alt.punk NOW