This is one of the best days of my life. I'm not kidding. But the reason why will have to wait. First, I have some information to share with you.

And so I share:

Generally speaking, people are retarded.

They do retarded things.

I've done retarded things. I'm a people.

And I'm retarded sometimes.

The great thing about people, though, is that they're forgiving. If you do something retarded, you might get reprimanded, but you also might get some major landmark named after you. Wouldn't that be nice? All for being retarded.

In 1996, fifteen people died while trying to reach the summit of Everest. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but those people were retarded.

That's not to say that they don't deserve sympathy - they do. They totally do. But we need to look at the facts.

Fifteen people died because they tried to do something extremely dangerous. Part of the excitement about climbing Everest is narrowly escaping becoming a human popsicle. It keeps you going. I realize I'm talking about it like I've actually done it, which makes me a fraud, but just run with me on this.

Climbing mountains is dangerous. You're going up a verticalish thing that has all sorts of dangerous things on it. Like snow. And ice. And maybe animals, like rabbits. Rabbits can bite, and they carry diseases. You might reach the summit, but you'll probably die of rabbit AIDS before you return home.

See? Retarded.

In 1998, Jimmy Swaggart got busted for doing it with a ho. This guy had everything going for him. He had figured out how to get people slightly more retarded than himself to give him money for absolutely nothing. To say that I envy this man would be a gross understatement.

Jimmy Swaggart is one of my heroes. Jimmy, Warren G. Harding, and Superman - these are the men after which I model myself. One day, I plan to be a corrupt presidential televangelist who wears his underwear on the outside. That's me in ten years. Just wait.

I think you'll agree that Jimmy Swaggart was a puddinghead for having gotten caught. Not so much for having done it with a ho - just the sloppy way he handled it. Dipshit.

Then, in 2003, Rory Blyth received his first prescription for opioid pain killers. Just a few Vicodin.

After taking the very first, I felt happy. You all have probably noticed that I have problems with depression. I've taken about 4,000 different anti-depressants, and they're all effing bunk. Sometimes they make me feel worse. That's no way to live.

But, Vicodin, a semi-synthetic opioid narcotic, did the trick. I think the day I took that first pill was the first day in my entire god damned life that i felt genuinely happy. No worries. Just relaxed and happy.

Shortly after, I used my noggin to figure out how to acquire more. This happy thing had a huge impact on me. I dug it. I wanted more.

I got more.

Fast forward to March of 2006. My opioid dabbling had become a hobby that had become a habit that had become a full blown addiction.

I went from taking the occasional pill to stuffing as much morphine in my head as I possibly could.

Yeah. I was a bit of a morphine junkie. It was horrible. And wonderful. But mostly horrible.

You might be wondering why I'm even writing about this. It's simple. I usually write about what's going on in my life, but my life has been so sordid for the past year that I haven't dared to write about it. I know that I'm opening myself up to criticism, but I'm counting on Neopoleon readers to be a little less retarded and judgmental than the rest of the bastards on this planet. We're all human, and we all screw up. My screw up was particularly retarded, but it was still just the result of a glitch in the machinery that makes humans human. You've probably never touched morphine, but we still have a lot in common.

Anyway.

Things got bad. Like, bad bad. It was the typical drug addict story. I wasn't eating. I wasn't doing anything productive.

It's awful. It happens because morphine makes you believe that you have everything you need, and I'm not exaggerating. You feel content. It's a feeling that scares the crap out of me. When you're content, you aren't driven. You're just satisfied with what you've got.

For me, feeling content took all the meaning out of life. I didn't understand why I was working for Microsoft. Didn't understand why I had the job I did. Didn't understand why I should bother to get out of bed. Stuff like that. Content.

Scary.

Around the early summer, Aydika found out about my drug use and told me very clearly that I was retarded. That night, we talked for a long time. There was a bunch of crying. I was coming down, and because she was there, I wasn't getting all doped up. When you're coming down, every little bit of pleasure you derived from the drug comes back ten times over in the form of Pain. I've never felt anything else like it. Misery. Everything becomes sinister. You shake, sweat, everything hurts, your muscles cramp, and you think you'd be much happier if someone came along and blew your brains out.

Shortly after, I decided to quit cold turkey. Made it to the third day and couldn't take it anymore. Wasn't sleeping. Throwing up. Sweating like mad. Was hallucinating. Had nightmares while I was partially awake, which, to say the least, sucks dog balls.

I went right back to the drugs. Then, a few days later, my grandmother died, and everything about my life changed. My drug use went to a new level. You hit a point where you're taking enough morphine to kill a dozen people who don't have a tolerance to the drug. It's amazing. I was at that point.

After a few weeks of damn near killing myself, waking up to throw up for hours, feeling dead, and unable to move, some intelligent part of my brain decided that enough was enough. Everybody told me I looked like a corpse. My eyes were bloodshot, baggy, and tired. I was passing out in cafes and strange houses. I woke up in some interesting places. I did some really stupid things. I'm all right, which is bloody fantastic, but I was scared for a little while.

Worked with my doctor to reduce my morphine intake. He was kind - understanding - and he gave me just enough to get me through the day. I was basically suspended in a state of constant mild withdrawal, but it was better than what I had been doing to myself prior.

Interviewed for Channel 9 totally doped up. Was confused, sweating, and worried I wouldn't get the job because of how screwed up I was at the time.

But, I got the job. Probably based more on my reputation than the interviews.

I asked for ten days off between positions. Jeff gave them to me. I told him I had a few things to take care of before starting.

Ten days before coming on board at Channel 9, just to be a total cliche, I flew down to Beverly Hills and checked myself into a detox clinic. They swiped my card, thousands disappeared from my checking account in an instant, and then I was surrounded by people who were poking me, asking me questions, and telling me what was going to happen. It was kind of like the alien abduction scene in Fire in the Sky.

By the time I left, I was completely off the morphine. I had been switched to a fascinating medication called buprenorphine. It's an odd opioid that's just recently become a standard for opioid rehab. My head was much clearer, and I didn't feel like I was dying.

Over the next seven months, I slowly tapered down off of the buprenorphine. The benefit of buprenorphine is that, if you use it properly, you'll be able to avoid the horror of opioid withdrawal.

That brings us to today.

I'm nearly five days into a total cessation of buprenorphine, and I feel bloody wonderful. I can't even think of a time that I've felt better - on drugs or off. Part of the happiness is having gotten past the addiction. Most junkies don't actually want to be junkies. They just do one stupid thing, and that stupid thing kicks off a sequence of many other stupid things.

I liked the stuff because I was able to stop worrying about being in debt, about my screwed up relationships, about my not-so-great family life, about my boss calling me every week to tell me I was going to get fired (based on bullshit accusations - it was seriously messed up), and so on. Why other people do it, I don't know, but that's why I dug it.

It's the typical smart person's mistake. It's all hubris. When starting, I told myself that, because I was so god damned intelligent, I could do morphine without becoming an addict. I've learned a thing or two since then about who I really am as opposed to who I want to be, and one of those things is that I'm every bit as likely to wind up hooked on morphine as anybody else. Humbling.

Coming off of the buprenorphine, I've felt more and more like myself every day. I can't even remember the last time I felt this way.

Since yesterday, I've had six (6) moments of clarity where things around me looked real. After you've spent a while with your head in a drug-induced fog, reality is a welcome thing. It feels like waking up from a coma. Melodramatic, but true.

During the worst moments, I felt worthless. Lost all my self-respect. Lost my confidence. Didn't want to post because I didn't trust myself to write well. It got so bad that, when writing, I was reading my old stuff and then copying the style. I was stealing from me because I had forgotten how to write.

I beat myself up for months. I felt guilty about all the relationships I had last year, and the way I behaved in them. I treated people as though they were disposable. There were a couple exceptions, but for the rest... I felt terrible.

I carried that guilt until last week. It was time to get off the buprenorphine, sober up, and move on.

It's so god damned wonderful that I can't think of a way to express it. Since Sunday, I've felt all the emotions that people usually feel. Instead of having the emotional buffer of an opioid, I'm just me.

Part of the reason I got into drugs in the first place was that I thought I could control the way I experience life. I wanted to eliminate all anxiety, doubt, fear, sadness, and I succeeded for a while. But life isn't quite the same when you go around feeling nothing but joy. The whole time, you love it, but you know something's wrong.

Never thought I'd be happy to be able to be sad about something. Uncertainty has found its way back into my life. I'm no longer trying to steer my feelings with things I snort, inject, and swallow.

Life is much more interesting this way.

And that's about it. That's the short version. The details, horrible as they are, would make for great reading, and it would be fun to write. Trying to compress years of idiotic behavior into one post is tough. Uber tough.

Before I go, I wanted to thank Jeff Sandquist, my coworkers, most of my friends, my addiction shrink, the people at my posh detox center, and most of my family for being understanding about this mess. When you're in the middle of an addiction like that, you don't think about how selfish it is. A lot of people went well out of their way to help me out when I was just about unable to even dress myself in the morning. I'm a lucky bastard to have had people there to help me.

I don't know what you all think about this. I just know that being afraid to write about it isn't going to help me. Despite the mistakes, I'm proud of myself for having gotten out of this intact. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I expect a few assholes will come out and tell me what a douche I am, but I don't care. Caring about the assholes is a waste of time.

As I said earlier, today is one of the best days of my life. The assholes can fuck right off.

Other than that, I found a fly on a slice of pizza I was eating yesterday, and I had to throw it away.

How was your week?

(Also, if you're having a problem like mine and you want some help, write to me.)