My Drug Buddy

The Halfway House I'm living in is pretty weird and often trying. The fact that I'm surrounded by adults (21-50 years of age) who act like the age from when they first picked up. This is true of addicts anyway. If you started abusing drugs at 16 and now your clean after a twenty year run; you are basically a 16 year old in a weathered 36 year old body that has been through the mill. I myself feel like a 17 year old even though I started erasing the pain at 15. I'm one of those teenagers that friends' parents would love and state that he is wise beyond his years. The rooms at this house are set up in combo's of three to a room. 24 of which are guys and 6 women. So, picture them all at their clean age (12-17 ish) and it makes for quite a dichotomy. There is all the usuall stuff that made me want to pick up in High School: Backstabbing, Unconfirmed rumors spreading like wildfire, clicks and closet cases. Being the type that loves to analyze people in these habitats, I should be giving you guys quite the earfull. One thing that kind of befuddles me is how everybody wants to top each other with their last run. These are termed "War Stories" by the professionals and at the Rehab I just went to, you could basically get kicked out for being some kind of braggart. It's hard for these chroniclers to realize that basically one upping each other on the War Stories means dick, because we are all occupying the same seats in a Rehab on Medicaid and Social Services and (most) don't have a house or an apartment to go home to, nor family. You see, with these stories comes the "one upping". Topping each others superhero like escapes from the cops or "thousands" of dollars in contraband. This program that I am following now, allows ME to be the MOST HONEST person that I could be. Lies are well behind me: "What do you mean I reak of Alchohol? It must be my mouthwash" et al. All these newly hatched 28 day programmers might as well sign up now for the next available empty bed at the nearest Detox if they allow themselves to feed into the anticts of constant relapsers who THRIVE on taking someone out with them.