Chapter Text
The ride home from the hospital is mostly silent. They’re in the captain’s trucks with dad because TK, Carlos, and Marjan had been loaded up in ambulances (despite TK’s insistence that he didn’t need to because he’d been higher than this on a fucking Tuesday and actually it was telling that less than half of 70mg of oxy was nearly enough to knock TK out when it wouldn’t have been at most other points in his life) and they didn’t have vehicles at the hospital.
Carlos is in the back seat staring at the window. The drugs will probably wear off for Carlos in an hour or two, but they’ve worked their way through TK’s system, binding to receptors like old friends and then quickly vanishing into the receptors that were primed for more than they’d received.
Besides the low drone of the radio playing pop hits from the 90s, the only sound in the car had been from Dad’s repetitive apologies that popped up every five minutes like clockwork. The apologies were the same, “I didn’t know. I never would’ve brought her to your house if I had any inkling. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
TK reassures Dad he understands and doesn’t blame him.
TK’s not high anymore, and he’s fucking glad about it. Even two years ago, if you’d told TK he’d gotten drugged with his drug of choice and he wasn’t happy about it, he would’ve laughed in your face. Two years ago, TK would’ve been thrilled to be drugged with oxy.
TK was glad he’d never attended the type of meetings that told people to “take responsibility” for their role in a relapse or even calling it a relapse after they’d been drugged, but TK knew they were out there. He knew there were people who considered forced ingestion of a substance to be the same as a lapse. He was just glad someone had taught him better.
There was a guy in one of TK’s Recovery Dharma meetings in New York who had outlined it pretty clearly. One of the meeting goers, Sara, had mentioned her AA sponsor had slipped drugs into her tea to “help her relax” and that she’d ended up leaving her AA group because of it. Sara had been spiraling, frustrated that she’d trusted a sponsor who turned out to exploit her. She’d blamed herself. She’d called it a lapse.
John, a regular meeting goer who TK knew attended for non suicidal self injury addiction spoke up before even the facilitator could.
“Sara,” he’d said. “I’m in here because for the last ten years the only way I’ve been able to cope with hard emotions is cutting my arms or my legs, sometimes badly. I haven’t done it in a year. But if TK over here came up to me and stabbed me, would you consider that a lapse?”
The group had dissolved into the laughter at the idea of TK stabbing anyone but the point stood. Getting stabbed wasn’t a NSSI lapse. Someone trying to kill you was not a lapse in time without a suicide attempt. And being drugged was not a lapse.
In NA, which TK had attended a couple of times because everyone in early recovery did 12 step at first, whether the program worked for them or not (it rarely ever did, but it was everywhere), people called it a freebie.
Either way, TK knows this isn’t a lapse, that it doesn’t count, and the fact that he’s pissed about the high is proof of how far he’s come.
Mom would be proud of him.
TK tries his best not to think of the irony of surviving his mom’s death without touching a pill and then getting high anyway a few weeks later. Thinking about it too hard makes TK’s chest hurt like someone dropped a ladder truck on it. Because what do you mean he survived his mom’s death sober for it not to even fucking matter? If he’d lapsed on the day of mom’s funeral, he’d probably be in rehab right now or at the very least Dad wouldn’t have brought painkillers into TK’s home. But he can’t dwell on that.
Dad parks in front of the building the loft is in with a flourish and an additional apology that is mostly the same as the four but then he adds: “Why don’t I take you to a meeting in the morning?”
“First responder meetings are on Tuesdays,” TK answers absently, mainly because he absolutely does not want his dad at a meeting.
Dad looks disappointed, like he’s trying to help and can’t figure out how.
“But I do have a recovery dharma meeting on zoom in the morning,” TK adds. “Maybe I could sit with you? I’d have to use my headphones since it’s closed.” (Because despite the fact that Dad’s alcohol use points to him benefitting from a recovery meeting or two, Dad doesn’t identify as someone in recovery.)
It’ll be a pain to lug his laptop to Dad’s only for his dad to sit and hover and for TK not to be able to be actually honest about his emotions and feelings. He’s really hoping dad will say no.
“I think I’ll let you have your privacy, then,” Dad says. He gives a small smile. TK smiles back.
Mom was always better at the recovery stuff anyway.
Carlos is still sluggish even when they get out of the car. He’s probably going to fall asleep as soon as they get in, which is good because it’s late.
Dad walks them up to the loft, leaving his blinkers on the in the fire lane because he’s in his captain’s truck and so long as Sgt O’Brien doesn’t drive by, Dad will be fine for a few minutes.
TK gets Carlos situated on the couch. He’s still in shock or high or just processing. TK hands him a blanket to make sure he’s warm.
Dad leaves as soon as he’s satisfied the threats in TK’s house are gone and then it’s just TK and Carlos.
“You wanna go to bed, baby?” TK asks Carlos.
Carlos blinks slowly.
“Bed it is,” TK announces, but Carlos grabs his wrist when he goes to stand.
“Sit,” he says quietly.
TK sits.
“Are we going to be okay?” Carlos asks.
“Of course,” TK answers. Medically, they’ll be fine. “It’ll be out of your system in a couple of hours.”
“I meant… withdrawal. I don’t know how that works.”
The corners of TK’s lip quirk because despite the fact that Carlos is also a first responder, it seems even he doesn’t fully understand withdrawal. Of course, given the calls TK has been on where law enforcement needlessly escalated a situation because they didn’t understand withdrawal, it’s not that surprising.
“Carlos,” TK says gently. “You were dosed once. You’re not going to go through withdrawal.”
“What about you? Since you used to…” Carlos trails off.
“I haven’t touched a pills in two years,” TK responds. “Withdrawal only happens when you’ve been taking it consistently for a couple of weeks at least.” Withdrawal is milder when it’s only a few weeks of use. It’s comparable to a hangover from the pits of hell minus the fact that TK has never had a hangover convince him he was going to die without a hair of the dog that bit him. When you use long term, like TK did, withdrawal is a prison that lasts for days.
“Oh.”
“And trust me, you’d know if you were in withdrawal,” TK adds.
Carlos cocks his head, curious.
He’s high, so TK will give him a pass and now Carlos won’t ask for clarification in the morning.
“Opioid withdrawal feels like you’re going to die,” TK says. It’s the simplest explanation but no one ever seems to understand.
“I thought you can’t die from it,” Carlos says.
You can’t, technically. There are a lot of variables and some people die in opioid withdrawal because of a mix of other things but it’s generally not deadly. Alcohol withdrawal will kill you. Benzodiazepine withdrawal will kill you. Opioid withdrawal will just make you feel like it will.
“You can’t,” TK explains. “But opioids go to the same parts of the brain as pleasure from food and sex. Your brain associates that reward pathway with survival, so when you don’ t have opioids, it feels like you’re going to die.”
Sure, the diarrhea sucked, so did the shaking and the nausea and the general feelings of malaise and the anxiety, the pins and needles, the feeling of bugs crawling over your skin, too hot and too cold all at once. But worst of all was the feeling that TK was going to die if he didn’t get a pill. It was relentless, unending, and TK at the time would’ve done anything to calm the noise in his head.
At one point, when TK was trying to quit before Mom got involved, TK had done anything to calm the noise in his head. He’d found himself on the receiving end of a stranger’s cock, trying to escape his body and his mind all at once, trying to trick his brain into believing sex was enough to reset his brain. All it ever resulted in was TK waking up sticky, sore, still in withdrawal, and feeling nauseated about the whole thing in a way that had nothing to do with the drugs leaving his systems.
Carlos still seems to be processing the notion that there’s no risk of withdrawal for either of them. “Are you going to be okay? Not just… withdrawal… with everything.”
“My dad needs to stop pissing off homicidal maniacs,” TK grumbles. He knows it’s not Dad’s fault, but this is the second time in less than a year that someone connected to Dad has tried to take it out on TK and Carlos.
“He really has a knack for it,” Carlos jokes with a smile. “But seriously, TK, are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” TK says breezily.
It earns TK a skeptical look from the man he loves.
Carlos looks the way he usually does when he’s trying to decide how to phrase something without hurting TK’s feelings, like when he asked about koshering food and why TK chose not to do that.
“What?” TK prods. “Just ask it.”
“I just…” Carlos flounders, probably in part because of the question but mostly because of the Oxy in his blood stream. “I guess I’m wondering why…”
“Why I liked the high from opioids?” TK asks.
“Yeah, I want to understand you better.” Carlos breathes. His pupils are still small. He’s still at least a little high. It chills TK to his bone.
TK has heard the entire gambit of responses to people trying opioids for the first time. From a: that’s it? the first time they hooked up a patient whose dad died from opioid use disorder to a fentanyl drip to a slurred, I see why people choose this shit over their kids from a woman that, in her defense, had a knife sticking out of her abdomen and couldn’t feel a thing.
Most people landed somewhere in the middle. It feels good; they’re pain free, they’re floating, but it’s not something they want with any regularity.
TK’s not used to explaining since he only every talked about addiction to mom. Meetings didn’t count seeing as addiction was the whole reason he attended and everyone in the room knew how quickly addiction could spiral. Dad’s tried to understand but he always got lost at the fact that TK liked the heaviness that came with opioid use. Carlos is different. He’s asking because he wants to understand but TK can’t help the fear that Carlos won’t get it either. Explaining why he kept using something he knew was killing him isn’t an easy thing to do.
“At first I really liked the high. One of the guys in my meetings in New York would say it was like being hugged by Jesus, which was weird, because he was Jewish.” (It shocked no one that Noah ended up being a messianic Jew.) And while TK does not believe that that guy is the Messiah, he can absolutely understand why some people describe using opioids as being embraced by the divine.
Carlos looks confused.
“You got a dose high enough to knock you out,” TK laughs a little. This would be a shit way to get introduced to Oxy. “It’s less fun that way. The first few times, it’s amazing. And when I got addicted, it was before fentanyl was in the supply so it was just pure bliss.”
It was pure bliss at the beginning, an unlimited supply of pills from doctors who didn’t know better or friends or a firefighter at the station with a script. TK used to look forward to the floating every time he got off work. And then it was a pill at the very end of a shift so he could be high on the subway. And then, as Kyle from, recovery dharma says, “[TK] fell down a mine.” (Kyle was referencing a meme from an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine where the title character falls down a mine).
Falling down a mine is a pretty apt metaphor for addiction. By the time TK came to terms with how bad things were, he was in withdrawal every time he tried to quit and he would try to cut back by taking half a pill at a time but would inevitably end up with the other half 45 minutes later because the high didn’t hit the same.
One moment, TK was on the track, chugging smoothly along, the next he was in a fucking mine. Not rock bottom but pretty damn close.
“So, it just felt really good?” Carlos asks.
“Well, it did at the beginning. And then at some point, you’re just using enough so you don’t die.”
The last time TK remembers actually enjoying a high had to have been the first time he tried heroin, which was two years into his addiction and a year before mom found him in that trap house, and the thing with heroin was that you got a rush in the first thirty seconds after injection, a warmth and a head and body high that made every nerve ending alive with pleasure. But the highs of heroin had been short lived and eventually the euphoria felt less and less intense until it was just a side effect of injecting.
“So, if withdrawal makes people want to die, how do people get through it?” Carlos asks. “How did you?”
TK’s answer is easy: “I took Buprenorphine for six months.” Buprenorphine wasn’t exactly ideal for TK. It was still an opioid and it only worked because of how it binds to opioid receptors. TK couldn’t get high with it when he dissolved it under the tongue and if he tried to inject, the naloxone would be activated and TK would’ve been miserable. But buprenorphine wasn’t the only option, and it’s not the path for most people. “Bupe is a partial opioid that can help with cravings but not get you high. Other people use methadone, which is a stronger opioid substitute, usually if their use is severe or if they’re pregnant and they can find a good clinic.”
“And what if they can’t?” Carlos asks.
“Cold turkey detox,” TK answers, clipped.
“Did you ever have to…”
TK’s been in withdrawal more than a few times but he’s never done a cold turkey detox. “I’ve had to go through a prolonged period of withdrawal but never fully cold turkey. When you start buprenorphine, if you start it too early, it can make withdrawal worse, so you have to wait. It’s pretty awful. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, everything is both too amped up and not enough, too hot and too cold, too loud and too quiet, to overwhelming and not enough. I couldn’t even eat for a day and a half. I didn’t even want to.”
A nurse had to force him to drink water because the thought of it made TK’s stomach turn and even when TK had sipped it, his stomach had turned and deposited it into the small lock free bathroom in the room. TK had never wanted to get high so badly. He wanted it more than he wanted water.
The memories of TK’s own withdrawal are a blur. TK remembers being in a detox room stripped down to his underwear and under a thin sheet, too hot and cold all at once, too overwhelmed to even attempt attending group, feeling like something was crawling out of his skin.
The vomiting made the world spin and the diarrhea was an extra layer of humiliation.
But by far the worst part was the feeling that he was going to die if he didn’t get some heroin or a pill or fucking fentanyl or fuck it even a dick deep in his ass or something, anything to make the cravings stop. He would’ve done molly he was so desperate.
One of TK’s friends in recovery who was quite a bit more radical in their beliefs on drugs and drug use than TK had called cold turkey withdrawal torture, and while Saba had a tendency to exaggerate, they weren’t lying about how horrible it was.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Carlos reaches out a hand to TK’s knee. “That sounds awful, TK.”
TK shrugs because he’s used to blowing it off. People who don’t use drugs, or people whose drug of choice is meth or cocaine or something else with a different half life and withdrawal timeline, don’t quite get it, and they never respond with apologies for what TK went through.
Most people viewed withdrawal and its side effects as something TK deserved. Even the people who weren’t openly hostile to addicts still thought that cold turkey withdrawal would teach TK a lesson and convince him not to use. If that actually worked, the world could cure opioid use disorder in an afternoon.
“TK, I’m serious. That must’ve been awful.” Carlos eyes are wet and shiny and TK wonders if it’s from the conversation or the opioids or the day they’ve had or all of it.
TK has to bite down his instinct to minimize again and instead he says, “It was.” Then, he adds, “I’m glad I’ll never have to deal with it again and I’m glad you’ll never have to go through it.”
Carlos squeezes TK’s knee.
“Alright, c’mon, Carlos, you’re probably exhausted.”
“You’re not,” Carlos points out.
“I’m not even high anymore,” TK chuckles. “C’mon baby, bed.”
Carlos gets up reluctantly and they shuffle over to their bedroom.
Carlos takes his time wrangling himself out of his clothes and into a pair of clean boxers for bed and TK strips himself down to his briefs and leaves his clothes in a heap on the floor.
“Seriously?” Carlos grumbles, eyeing the pile. The hamper sits two feet from the pile of discarded clothes.
“We’ve had a rough day,” TK sighs but he bends down and puts the pile in the hamper.
“Let’s go to bed,” Carlos says with a yawn.
He’s probably going to sleep like a baby. TK has work in the morning, and he’ll be damned if he skips it. He needs a distraction or he’s going to spiral over this, uber the fact that he’d been high a few hours ago, about the fact that TK had hated it and what it represented.
Carlos will insist TK stay home and rest because of the drugs in his system and TK will counter with the fact that 70mg used to be his morning dose before work when he was in active addiction.
Carlos is halfway asleep by the time TK climbs into bed and slots himself next to the love of his life.
TK not even sure if Carlos is asleep when TK says it. He very well might be, or else is too far gone down that path to process TK’s words but the evening is hitting TK like a freight train.
“Thank you,” TK says into the night.
“Huh?” Comes Carlos’ sleepy reply. “For what?”
“Listening,” TK answers. He means more than listening. He means that Carlos heard him. He means that for once TK felt seen by someone other than his mom when it came to his addiction. He means Carlos cares, that it doesn’t matter that Carlos won’t get everything right, that he’ll probably repeat misinformation he probably in a training, that he won’t be perfect but Carlos cares, and that’s more than TK can say for most people in his life.
“Oh,” Carlos yawns. “Okay, I love you.” He blinks twice and then his eyes close for good.
TK smiles. Oxy does that to people. “I love you too, baby.”
TK will explain what “listening” meant in the morning.