The shot that gave me seven days

There is a clinic in San Francisco called the Maria X. Martinez Health Resource Center. You might walk past it and not think much of it. But for me, it was the first place I had ever walked into where nobody looked at me like I was a problem to be managed. They looked at me like I was a person.

I could be 100 percent honest with them. About everything. About how long I had been using, about every time I had tried to quit and failed, and about what went wrong each time. And they would actually sit there and listen. Not halfway listen while already reaching for the door. Actually listen.

That was where I first heard about microdosing. They have these little bubble packs, each one laid out by day, and you take a little more Suboxone each day, building up slowly. The idea is that by the time you reach the full dose, you won’t go into precipitated withdrawals. It made sense to me. I wanted it to work.

I tried it over and over. And every single time, I got to day four and stopped. Day four was the day the dose got high enough to matter. And that was the day the fear got loudest. The unknown was taking that larger dose and not knowing if you’d feel better or go into withdrawals. The known was going back to what I was comfortable with. So, I would put the bubble pack down, go back to using, and then go back to the clinic and say I want to try again. No questions asked, they’d send me a new prescription. I am grateful for that. But I was stuck in a loop I couldn’t break on my own.

What I kept thinking, what I told everyone around me was, “If I can just get on that shot.” The monthly Sublocade injection. That’s guaranteed clean time. You can’t undo it. You get the shot and you have 30 days whether you want them or not. That was what I needed — not willpower, not another bubble pack. I needed something I couldn’t talk myself out of at four in the morning.

I had been told I’d need to be stable on Suboxone for two weeks before I could get the injection. I knew I would never make it two weeks. I had tried so many times. So, I had basically written it off.

Then I started seeing this one specific doctor at the clinic. I kept coming back on the days I knew he was working. There was something about him. Every time I came in and told him the microdosing hadn’t worked again, he would actually sit with me — however long it took — and try to figure out what happened and what we could do differently. He never made me feel like I was failing. He made me feel like we were still trying.

When I told him I would do absolutely anything to get on the shot, he listened. And then he told me about Brixadi.

Brixadi is like Sublocade but it comes in weekly doses as well as monthly ones. He told me about a method — not exactly by the book, he said, but one with real success stories — where you start with the weekly shot instead of the monthly one. The logic was simple: if I did go into precipitated withdrawals, at least it would only be a week’s worth in my system instead of a month. He said if I could come in and take an eight milligram strip of Suboxone in front of him and tolerate it, he would start me on the weekly Brixadi that same day. He told me to come back the following Thursday.

Around that same time, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour was coming to London. I had tickets.

I grew up with Taylor Swift. She was the soundtrack to some of the most complicated years of my life. In high school, when my mom went to rehab and I was the one holding things together after I got my license, I would drive around blasting the Fearless album or sit in my car crying to “White Horse,” missing her. When I was in jail, the Red album was everywhere, and on Saturday laundry days I would dance around lip-syncing to “Trouble” for anyone who would watch.

I had never been to a concert like this in my life. I had never traveled internationally. I didn’t even have a passport yet.

I would watch the Eras Tour on YouTube and just sit there crying. Happy crying, scared crying, I don’t know. I was so emotional getting off drugs, and I would watch this concert and think, I am going to be there. I am actually going to be there. And I couldn’t quite believe it. I kept watching it like I was trying to make it real.

I told myself: if I don’t do this now, I never will. The concert became the date I was getting clean for. Not because Taylor Swift would save me. But because it was real, it was coming, and I wanted to be present for it. Fully present. Not managing withdrawals in a foreign country, not sneaking off to find a bathroom.

Thursday came. I had not been able to go a full 24 hours without using — I never could, that’s the thing about opiates — but I had made it maybe 12 hours. I got to the clinic at nine in the morning. I took the strip right there in front of him. And then I sat and waited while the nurses walked to the pharmacy to pick up the Brixadi.

I sat in that office for three hours.

I was starting to feel the Suboxone and not in a good way. I probably should have waited longer before taking it. But I didn’t say anything to the doctor because I was terrified that he would tell me we had to stop. I had come too far. I kept thinking Just stay in this chair. If I can just get this shot, that’s seven days I don’t have to fight for. Seven days are guaranteed. Then another seven. Then 30…. That’s all I wanted. Just enough clean time to remember what clean felt like. Enough time to remember who I was before all of this.

I got the shot just before noon. I walked out of the office and walked home to my friend’s SRO. Past all the people using on the street. And I remember thinking I’m not going to be addicted to heroin anymore.

I should tell you what I didn’t expect: in the first few days after the shot, I still tried to get high. I need you to know that. Because I think people imagine getting clean as a single moment — a switch that flips. It isn’t. My body had the shot. My mind was still completely addicted. I would get home from somewhere and the urge would hit like a reflex, automatic, before I even had a conscious thought. And I had to stop and remind myself You’re on the shot. You don’t need to get high. I had to tell myself that over and over, every day, for a long time. Maybe a year before it stopped being the first thing I thought of in the morning.

For years, the first thing I did every morning was find my cooker and get high. That’s just what mornings were. Unlearning that, teaching my brain that mornings could be something else — that took longer than the shot. That took time and patience with myself I didn’t always have.

Then I was in London. I woke up in the morning like a normal person. I went to the concert. I stood there surrounded by thousands of people singing every word, and I felt the music. I actually felt it. Not through a haze, not while calculating when I could slip away. Just felt it.

That was when I knew I didn’t need heroin anymore. Not as a thought — I had thought it before. As a feeling. Something I hadn’t been able to get to from the inside from willpower alone. I had to get there from the outside, through a shot and a concert and a doctor who refused to give up on me.

I think about that doctor a lot. I wish I could find him now, in New York wherever he ended up, and send him the article that was written about me. I want him to know that it worked. That he was the turning point. That someone hearing you out — really hearing you, not just going through the motions — can change everything.

I don’t have needles in my house anymore. I still can’t fully believe that sometimes. You couldn’t find anything drug-related in my home. I foster dogs on weekends and I sit at adoption events from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. and I don’t have to sneak away to find a bathroom. I show up to my appointments. I show up for my animals. I show up for my brother and sister without having to plan my using around it.

I know those sound like small things. Showing up to an appointment, sitting through an afternoon, walking home through the Tenderloin because it’s on the way home, not because I’m looking for drugs. But I spent most of my adult life addicted to heroin, and those things were not available to me then. They are available to me now. That’s not small.

I don’t always give myself enough credit. I look at the day-to-day and forget to look at the distance I’ve traveled. I quit heroin. I quit something I had been doing since high school, something I had tried and failed to quit more times than I can count, something I thought I would be doing forever. I quit it because I wanted to. Because I wanted to start living again. Because somewhere underneath all the using, the old version of me — the girl doing cheerleading and swim team, the girl who was present for her family — was still there, waiting. She was always still there.

If you’re reading this and you’re on day four of the bubble pack for the third time, putting it down again, going back to what you know — I see you. I was you. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve failed. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It might just mean you haven’t found your shot yet, your clinic, your doctor who will sit with you as long as it takes.

And if you don’t have anyone rooting for you right now — if it’s just you — that is enough. You are enough of a reason. The old you is still in there somewhere, even if you’ve drowned her out and pushed her down. They’re waiting. Go find your shot.