Page 84 of Rat Park
“Cat, you’re an integral part of the community. Come on. Between your work and volunteering and all the energy and time you put in…there’s no one in the town who doesn’t know your name.”
Cat snorted. “Most people don’t know who I am, Dominic. Most people don’t care. And I’m a Latino woman running on a platform of drug decriminalization, so. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Dominic paused. “I thought…can the Sherriff really influence which drugs are legal?”
“No—I mean, not directly. Law enforcement might not actually pass laws, but we sure as hell can have a say in what’s effective and what’s not. And our current obsession with penalization instead of rehabilitation is a core sickness in our society,” Cat said vehemently.
It wasn’t that Dominic didn’t agree, but he’d felt people’s attitudes towards prisoners and drug addicts, and he wasn’t sure how prepared they were to change their minds on a subject they’d practically been indoctrinated in. Still. Even as the remnants of the War on Drugs poisoned the well, maybe people could start being convinced to stop drinking from it.
“You’d make a great Sherriff, Cat,” Dominic said truthfully. “You’ve got my vote for sure.”
Cat smiled at him. “Thanks. But, actually, I was going to ask you for a little more. I know you’re busy with work, and, please, say no if you don’t want to. But I’d love it if you could help with the campaign.”
“Of course. Cat, of course. Whatever you want.”
“Well. I was thinking. I have a friend, goes by Captain, he’s an ex-user too. We were thinking it would be useful to give talks about the experience. To show what it’s like on the other side so it’s not as easy to dehumanise addicts.”
Dominic tensed. “I don’t…I don’t know what…I mean, I’m not sure if I’ll be much good at that.”
“I think you’ll be great. But if you don’t want to, that’s completely okay,” Cat assured him, squeezing Dominic’s arm. Dominic’s eyes flickered away for a moment.
“No. I-I mean, I’ll try.”
“You sure?”
“I won’t promise anything. But. Yeah. I can meet this Captain guy, see what you guys have in mind…”
Cat smiled at him. “Good idea. There’s no pressure. Meet him, hear what he has to say, and then you can decide. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
**********
Meeting Captain made Dominic realise he hadn’t spent much time with ex-users since he got out of prison. He never joined group therapy, too frightened, he could admit now, of exposing himself to so many strangers after having built strong relationships in the prison program he’d left when he got out after his longest sentence.
Captain was seventy-three, looking like he was made of wire half-padded with muscle and saggy skin. His eyes, however, were a sharp, penetrating blue that could pin you in place with a look.
There was nothing remarkable, perhaps, in the theory of Captain’s story. It was a typical account of a shitty childhood rolling into an addict’s life. There was booze, babes, drugs, and rock ’n roll.
“Lost count on how many times I overdosed. They’d just approved naloxone in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t carted around like it is now, so it was always a big hoo-ha. It’s a damn miracle I’m alive, let me tell you that.”
Dominic knew exactly what Captain meant. It wasn’t just about escaping the clutches of overdose—it was about having managed to claw out of the crushing weight of that lifestyle at all.
Captain had gone to hell and back in order to rip the dependency from his life.
“I didn’t care, for the longest time. I just didn’t give a shit. I could be homeless and cold and hungry and as long as I was about to get high, everything was fine.”
“How’d you get clean?”
“A friend forced me to go to rehab. Well, I say forced, obviously you can’t force someone into rehab unless it’s court-mandated. But he drove me there and I was like, well what the fuck. Because I didn’t care—in my blood and my head I didn’t care, but, somewhere deeper…”
“You were desperate for things to change,” Dominic finished for him. Captain looked at him with those ghost eyes, smiling through them.
“Yeah. A bit of an oxymoron, eh? But I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No. You don’t. So—you went to rehab and, what, that was that? That seems…”
