Revealing the Roots and Behaviors of Addiction

A Large, Green Army Bag

I got high on meth the day we left Washington D.C for the Central African Republic — Day 13

Think about how many times I have fallen Spirits are using me, larger voices calling What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

Southern Cross, Crosby, Stills and Nash — 1969

(Fun fact: David Crosby’s vocal is not on the studio track.)

In the days before leaving for Africa, I packed like a twelve-year-old running away from home.

My husband (Anthony) has a brother named Yousef. We call him Joe. Joe has a son named Fady.

Anthony was born twenty years after his brother, so although Fady is my nephew, he is thirty-two years old. We are kindred spirits. When we’re around each other, corks fly and vodka bottles are tapped. He’s my compatriot; I am his sounding board. He announced that he and his girlfriend were coming over yesterday. For the first time, I was wringing my hands over not drinking.

It’s one thing to be at a table of people drinking, where I can just ha-ha-ha at some of the jokes and enjoy a meal, but Fady’s English is near fluent, so he and I are customarily in each other’s faces. We talk about everything.

“So, what, you aren’t drinking today?”

“No.”

“Why not? It’s just today.”

“It’s not just today. It’s through January.”

“Why?”

Fady didn’t understand. Lebanon is a country where many people won’t even say cancer out loud. Alcoholism is practically “non-existent.” Why would you need to take stock in your drinking? No one has a problem here. Just me.

He was a bit loud last night, and aggressive. He kept asking me if I was okay. He couldn’t handle that I could sit there with my tonic and cranberry and be okay. It really bothered him. It rattled me.

Is he like this all the time? No, that’s not possible. He just feels threatened.

I woke up with a hangover. I have no idea why. Very interesting.

There is a shitstorm of tension in the house today, mostly around video games, a funeral yesterday and other such garden variety family flare ups. For now, I’ll continue our story.

I arrived in D.C. in July of 1995 for Tier One of Peace Corps staging before departure for the Central African Republic. I’m sure there were workshops and activities. I remember none of it, except for the bewilderment. Chris (yep, that Chris) came to see me off.

Can you believe it? He had left California, crawling back to Ohio for the first attempt at kicking his addiction to heroin, finally questioning whether a life emulating Lou Reed was really worth it.

When I first left San Francisco for Houston in 1994, Chris had called me for three weeks straight. Pleading, crying, begging me to come out to L.A. I was a wreck, and it took everything I had in me to not go back to that monstrous familiar.

The calls stopped. I moved to New Mexico. And there I was in D.C., and we somehow got in touch. His tone was the old Chris, pre-addiction Chris. Of course I’d like to see him before I left.

Among a new group of happy strangers, it’s always easy for the drinkers to gravitate toward one another, and we meandered down to a pub. Chris was back to his old self, bright and complimentary, fascinated by what we were all about to do, asking questions in happy humility. The crowd thinned out to only about six of us left at the table. The bar core, the ones who would shut the place down.

That crew are still my tightest friends to this day.

And then, Chris offered me speed. And I took it. The old ghoul was still there.

I was something like twenty hours away from departure for the Central African Republic, and I was high.

Everything after that into the wee hours is gravelly and grey. I made it back to my dorm. I screamed at myself that I wasn’t peacefully snoozing like the four other girls in the room. In the blue light streaming in through the blinds, I lay down on a thin mattress, my heart pounding, my brain cursing me.

But I was twenty-six years old, so I was still able to get up and prepare for the day. I went to put on my glasses. What was at first a gentle turning of the pillow, a rummaging through a pants pocket, turned to panic.

My glasses were gone, and I am coke-bottle blind.

We were less than ten hours from departure, and now my staging director needed to whip me up a pair of glasses. She moved through the process like it was nothing, all in a day’s work. I was in a fog, but I could see again. The panic subsided and I could once again pack my bags.

Mark (New Mexico Mark) was an army veteran who’d served in South Korea before we ever met. He was helpful with many things I never would have considered for an extended journey to the other side of the world.

“We need to get you a deck of cards,” he said. “Always keep cards with you. You never know when you may be alone or bored.”

He set me up with a giant, green army sack and a plastic canteen. In the days before leaving for Africa, I packed like a twelve-year-old running away from home.

As a final parting gift, Mark gave me a shiny new Leatherman tool. It was something I ended up using every day for the next two years.

A size 0 was perfect for the glittering thongs I wore on stage as stripper for two and half years. I feel tremendous fear even typing this.

In Washington, we were a group of somewhere near sixty volunteers. I remember approaching security, dragging that green bag across the glossy floor, wearing a floral tank dress and white socks stuffed into a pair of velcro sandals, my hair wisped and frizzed out of a ponytail, my new, huge glasses.

Everyone around me seemed so neat, packaged and prepared, carrying luggage that could actually be carried or rolled. One guy had a guitar. I had spent weeks debating whether I should bring my guitar. I was convinced it would be a burden. I looked at the case at his feet and mourned, and then switched my eyes to the green army bag lying on the floor like a sleeping brontosaurus.

These people seemed so confident, stylish and conscious. I stared out of my thick lenses, my unkempt hair flooding my face and shoulders. I felt foolish and afraid. I felt so out of place.

In Paris, we had a sixteen hour layover. Off the plane, we all tossed our things into the Sofitel and broke up into smaller groups to hit the streets. The Louvre, baguettes and wine in the park, we walked around the city until some of us began passing out on benches in public.

Somewhere, there is a picture of us standing on a bridge over the Seine with me in my huge glasses, floral dress and white socks. I suppose it may help to understand that I had spent the previous three years just throwing on clothing to cover my body. I looked like a rag-doll most of the time.

Once, at the height of my affinity for meth, I went to a Gap in San Francisco. I tried on a pair of size 6 jeans. They fell off of me. I thought that was curious, so I tried on the size 4, then the size 2.

I walked out with a size 0. A size 0 was perfect for the glittering thongs I wore on stage as stripper for two and half years. I feel tremendous fear even typing this. I danced naked for money, showed my body to hoards of complete strangers. These are things I don’t want my kids to know, not even after I am dead, but I must put it here.

I feel weak and sorry that I was not brave enough to say it before. At present, I understand that childhood sexual abuse can counter-intuitively lead to sexual promiscuity and exhibitionism. I am still learning to forgive myself for not caring about my skin, my breasts, my sex and my heart — all the parts of me that are sacred and beautiful. I don’t know if I can write about this anymore.

Anyway, shopping with Mark, after a year of normal eating, I tried a size 4. Nope. Size 6 (my normal go-to in high school and college). Sorry, too small. A size 8 fit perfectly. I felt I had gotten fat.

But, in those waning days, when I was slowly sheathing a knife into Mark’s heart, I don’t recall being fashionable. I think I showed up to Peace Corps Staging as the perfect caricature of myself — shoddy, clueless, jittery and mousy.

Upon descent into Bangui, C.A.R., there was the requisite air bump or two, the sound of the roaring, slowing engines. I awoke, and looked out the window. All was red dirt, smatterings of trees, and tin and thatched roofs. My thumb swiped against the window, there were white buildings in the capital.

The landing gear loudly hissed out of the bay. Astonishment whirled in my gut, disbelief.

And for the first time in years, I felt safe.

Josie Elbiry, 2021

Revealing the Roots and Behaviors of Addiction is a 31-day journal I kept while abstaining from alcohol in 2019. The experience caused me to reflect on my life and get honest about how sexual and emotional abuse had shaped me up to my fiftieth birthday.

Thank you for making it to Day 13. If you are just starting the series, you can catch Days 1–12 here:

Many thanks to Dr Mehmet Yildiz for giving this series a home on ILLUMINATION Book Chapters.