A Friend Through Thick and Thin

There was one person who refused to give up on me. I had met him only about five years earlier...he was  much older than me, but he was a real flower child too, and looked and acted much younger than his years. I think aside from the whole "counterculture" thing, the real bond between us was the music. Don loved music, and owned a very nice guitar collection, and always worked to learn more. He was always very appreciative of how I could play. And he was very supportive of me, even when many others had walked away... He was a person I trusted, and still trust, and he was one of those friends who tried to help me after the intervention. He was from New York originally, and I think he had more experience with the heroin thing, because of friends he had known there, who had gone through it.  He also knew about the bond that is possible with a dog...he had one too.. and after Kilo died, he searched me out and took me into his house. After I found out there would be a week before I could get started at the Clinic, he kept an eye on me, spending most of his time with me, listening to music, smoking pot with me, and in general trying to make me as comfortable as possible while I dealt with the withdrawal symptoms. There was a few times he would lend me the money I needed to score some dope, but he tried to not do that, it was only when I was really bad, that his compassion got the better part of him, and although he knew the dope was making me sick... he also knew it made me better, too. He knew, even better than I did...that it would be over soon, and he didn't want me to suffer needlessly. On the day I was scheduled to start the Methadone detox, he personally drove me into Hartford, over thirty miles away, and he did that every day for the entire 24 days of the detox program. He was pretty amazing. I am still grateful for his concern for me. I was also amazed at how Methadone relieved all the heroin withdrawal symptoms...I couldn't believe how well it did that... and twenty five days later, I was heroin and Methadone-free. But I wasn't quite myself yet...I had beaten myself up pretty badly..and I needed vitamins, and food, and time to get right, and Don helped with all of that. Of course, the problem with all of this was.. that I thought my problem was heroin, but heroin had only been the relief from the problem... and the disease of addiction was still alive and well in me...and so was the pain...