Xanax Memories

Years of accumulated change in shoe box. Susan B. Anthony Dollars. Fifty-cent pieces. My first-day desire chip taken from “John G.” sobbing, powerless, and broken. My one and five-year sobriety chips. Worn, corroded pennies, nickels, and dimes.

A box of memories. Memories of bouncing a basketball while I stole quarters from my father’s change jar as a teen so he would not hear me. Memories of pouring water into the whisky bottles so he wouldn’t know I was siphoning his liquor cabinet. Memories of hiding my cocaine and black-market Xanax in this very box buried beneath the loose change. An almost nightly combination punctuated by the once sickening, 6 a.m. sounds of the blue-bird’s and robin’s wake up songs after being up all night.  Fragmented memories and dreams.

Read the rest on my column at Above The Law.