AT THE TOP OF THE SLIDE | NON-FICTION

AT THE TOP OF THE SLIDE
I remember a week or so earlier, than that fateful march day, when my girlfriend asked me if I wanted to go with her out to Denver and watch the Rockies play baseball. It was their inaugural season. I answered with, “sure, if I am not at work” which really meant “no I‘ll be working.” I worked on a mineral exploration drilling rig and little did I know then that I would see the Colorado Rockies play baseball in April that year, but I wasn’t going to work for awhile either.
March 23rd, 1993 I cut off the ends of all four of the fingers on my left hand, as the result of an industrial accident. In an environment where the use of illicit drugs was no less than a daily practice, the twenty-third was an exception because I was not high.
A guard missing from over a 9 inch guide sprocket that directed 180mm chain is the most apparent reason, even though, and I hate to say this, operator error was also factor. I know I had the right to say at anytime, “We have to stop and put that guard over the sprocket,” but I didn’t. Instead I stuck my hand down in between that chain and sprocket. An instant was all it took and my life would change forever. There were immediate changes, some differences developed over a couple of years, and there are some things that are part of what’s in the picture right now.
What I remember the most is I had to have someone help me use the bathroom. I was living with my mom, but quickly moved in with my girlfriend. My personal life caused my mother a lot of heartache; she had never even drunk alcohol let alone has had any interaction with drugs and especially not on that scale. I couldn’t work but I still got paid, so I got high and sold dope. I don’t want to glamorize the situation but things seemed to working out pretty good for me. I had it going on, or so I thought. Every relationship of consequence was falling completely apart and my drug use was out of control. I was hooked bad, I loved the money and the power, but more than anything I love to get high.
I must have done something right for the drilling outfit that I worked for because they re hired me fifteen times, meaning that somehow my employment had been terminated fourteen times. Out of all of those times that I lost my job, they probably only fired me four times for failing a drug test. One summer in Yuma, around 97 or 98 the biologist at the drilling site demanded that I go into the clinic and get checked out for heat exhaustion, my boss decided that they should do a drug screen, I tested positive for THC, opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, and benzodiazepine. All that was said was the boss telling me that I better get straight.
Perhaps I had finally reached the proverbial “rock bottom,” in June of 2005 after spending eight months incarcerated, for possession of a controlled substance; I was released from the Millard County jail. I got high a few times but somehow it just didn’t feel the same. I began to attend a support group, which I am ashamed to say, I went to high. With some help from my parents, church leaders, and the people from the support group I went to treatment again, and just before I left I got high
While at the treatment facility, I got straight. Whatever those ladies said worked for me while I was there. I stayed there for a total of 7 months completing my first semester of school at Snow College while living at the treatment center. I won’t claim perfect adherence to sobriety but on my fifth visit to a drug rehab I found a way to refocus my energies and channel them into positive outlets. One thing I know changed me was seeing people come into that place fresh off the streets and the condition that they were in, and knowing that someone just like the person I was had helped them get there.