RxMas

IT SEEMED LIKE a plan. A 20-bag-a-day heroin habit had cost me my job, my apartment and most of my friends. Not to mention any money I might've once had. For those not in the know, that's about $200 a day.

My plan was to stay the holidays with my parents, where I'd sponge and steal as much cash as I could. I'd chip my habit down gradually and then kick it completely by New Year's. Once clean, I could start all over again-this time with a more manageable monkey on my back.

Thanksgiving was excruciating. I was jonesing, my dealer was MIA with his kid in Staten Island and all my alternate numbers turned out to be useless. Relative after obscure fucking relative piled into my parents' house, each one more annoying than the last. My guts were twisting into knots, and the dope-induced constipation dam I'd built up over the last few months was threatening to burst into a diarrhea flash flood at any moment. Distant kin wanted to shake hands and hug, but my skin was crawling, my hands were cold and damp. The only thing I had to be thankful for was the phone ringing; Flacco was back from Staten Island.

I ducked out of the house, ran to the spot and dropped a pilfered C-note on Flacco.

By the time I returned, most of the guests had split. In my desperation, I figured it'd be safe to duck into the can and get straight. I reckoned I'd nod out on the couch and blame it on the tryptophane.

Once fixed, I settled my ass into the folks' Jennifer Convertible. My warm fuzzy opiate reverie came screeching to a halt as my sister stormed out of the john screaming at my ma, "Your fucking junky son! And while the fucking kids were here!" All eyes turned to me.

It seemed I'd left a set of works on the floor of the bathroom.

I never was the most careful dope fiend.

"You're such a fucking loser," she shrieked. "I wish you were fucking dead!" I cursed back at her, and as she charged toward me, I hurled the coffee table at her head. My high-along with my plan-was shot to hell.

The police showed up a few minutes later. They cuffed me, sat me down and asked what my problem was. I was tired of fighting.

"I just shot some dope," I said. "I have six more bags in my right-hand pocket." I awaited their response. The cop looked at his partner, sighed, smirked and said, "You've got three choices: jail, the psych ward or detox."

Noting the pissy look on my face, he noted, "Hey, I would normally just take you downtown, but fuck it, it's Thanksgiving."

"Lutheran Medical Center," I said, knowing from experience that they were one of the few detox units that gave out methadone, along with liberal doses of Librium if you were a boozer as well (which I was).

I waited countless miserable hours in the emergency room, and just as the smack was wearing off and the sick was starting again, I was handed my puke-green robe and paper slippers with the little happy faces printed on the toes.

I had been in and out of Lutheran so many times I was surprised they didn't have sheets with my name on them. They gave me my meth mixed with some Hawaiian Punch and I was happy again.

Medicaid pays for 10 days of detox. After that it was off to rehab for the requisite 28-day stint. Also on the government's tab. By my calculations, I'd be out by New Year's. Perfect. I might even get out in time to watch them take Dick Clark out of cryo so he could drop the ball on Times Square.

They shipped me to a place out in Pennsylvania, right outside Philadelphia. I was still shredded from detox (10 days is not enough time to kick dope), and I couldn't sleep or shit straight for days. I figured if things got too bad, I could call a friend I knew in Philly and have him sneak a bag or two in on visitor's day.

With no one on the outside-my family had cut me off-I had to bum smokes until I was finally able to beg a carton of GPCs (Ghetto Pack of Cigarettes) from the AA guy who'd visit us on weekends for our mandatory 12-step meetings. Sucker, I thought to myself.

My jaded fuck-the-world-without-lube attitude was starting to wear thin-even to me-as I watched the nastiest crackheads get care packages from their wives and girlfriends. The lowest dumpster-diving mooks still had people who gave a shit about them.

I quickly befriended a few of the others who seemed to share a similar fate. One was a little hippie chick with dreads who'd been sucking cock for crack in South Philly up until she wandered onto the wrong block and was beaten, raped and robbed. She walked into the place with a case of head lice so bad she was instantly ostracized by the other patients.

I told her not to mind those losers, because a week ago the same guys who were now making fun of her had been picking at their scabby foreheads, wearing pants filled with their own shit and eating rotten cabbage out of the trash. Fucking hypocrites-one week in rehab and a couple of showers later, and they think they're Mr. Clean. The powers that be had doused her in Kwell and demanded she lose the dreads. She cried all night.

Another guy who didn't seem to have anyone was a rust-bucket drunk named Benny who had dropped the cooker years ago in lieu of the fifth. His Thanksgiving consisted of copping a seizure and going into serious DTs.

"Kid," he'd say to me, "I don't do dope no more. I had an allergic reaction. It made me break out-in handcuffs. I'd start to see the spots-crack spots, dope spots. I suffer from terminal visits to Rikers."

He was a funny old coot, and like me he was alone. We partnered up and won endless hands of Spades. I got a real kick out of watching the trembly bastard try his luck at Jenga.

Christmas Eve came around and the AA guys came by with candy, smokes and real coffee (caffeine was normally verboten). Other people were getting presents, phone calls, visits-even the lice-head girl got a call from her pimp.

I was starting to splinter. I felt like that kid with no little red wagon under the tree. When you're drying out, you feel every tiny pain like a barbed-wire catheter. I called my connection in Philly and begged him to send a bag of smack hidden in a box of chocolate. He was doing the family thing and couldn't help.

I wasn't mandated to be there, so I decided to check out. I could hitch to Philly, maybe break into one of the suburban homes along the way for some extra shwag.

As I was packing, Benny peeked into my room and asked, "Where you goin', slim?"

"Fuck this, I'm out-going to get high."

"Kid," he started again, "listen to me. Some junkies, they're stupid-they die. But some junkies are smart. They don't share needles. They don't shoot rat poison. They don't die. They suffer. They live like the cockroaches until they're my age and the best they can hope for is that some crackhead comes along with a box-cutter and does 'em in quick. Is this what you want?"

The next day was Christmas. One of the counselors came to my room and said I had a phone call. It was my mother. I ran to the phone. Sorry about this and that and I'll pay back everything I stole and I love you and dad and my brothers and sisters and blubber blubber bla bla, sobbedy sob sob sob sob.

She told me she loved me and to forget about the money I'd stolen. It was payback enough, she said, to not watch me poison myself every day.

I was shocked. What the hell did my elderly Greek mom know from heroin?

"You knew I was getting high the whole time?" I asked.

"Of course I knew, stupid! I'm your mother," she retorted, her voice lowering down a notch to about as near to a whisper as my mom gets.

"Now listen; I'm going to put your father on, but don't tell him you're in rehab-I told him you were upstate resting with some friends. If he knew where you were, it would kill him."

"Cool. Thanks ma, I love you."

My dad picked up. "Hi son, how's rehab?"

"You know?" I asked, even more stupefied.

"Of course I know, you moron. I'm your father!"

At this point my father also sounded like he was turning his back and cupping his hand over the phone's mouthpiece so no one could hear his next sentence.

"Don't tell your mother. She thinks you're upstate with friends. It would kill her if she knew."

Every Christmas I think of an old joke: What do Keith Richards and Christmas trees have in common? They both dry out and leave needles lying around. I don't play with needles anymore, and it's been years since I've been back to an institution because of my nasty habits. I still talk to my folks, whom I am very grateful are still around. When I look back at that particular day, I always think about how depressing Christmas is. But if you want to make it unbearable, spend it in a cheap green robe and paper slippers, chain-smoking GPCs, sucking down a cup of decaf, watching a bald crack ho open presents from her pimp. It'll make you want your mommy.