I had some ISSUES in the early oughts.
Back when I was still willing to leave the house after 7 p.m., I spent a lot of time at a little comedy club that smelled like desperation, bleach, and Axe body spray. I was doing stand-up back then, trying to make people laugh while quietly unraveling inside. That’s where I met Crackhead Shelly.
Well, to be clear, she wasn’t Crackhead Shelly at first. She was just Shelly. A bartender, a mom with two kids, and a wife pulling a second job to keep the lights on. She was sharp, sarcastic, and generous with the cheap shots. I never paid for drinks when Shelly was behind the bar. Not once. And in my 20s, that counted as deep friendship.
Then Shelly met the 21-year-old bouncer. He had the energy of a human Monster energy drink and the attention span of a mayfly. Their affair was the stuff of messy soap operas. Along with the relationship came late nights, sketchy friends, and a growing love for any substance that could be snorted, smoked, or swallowed.
Still, I trusted her. Because trauma bonding and free alcohol make a potent cocktail. So when she pulled me into the bathroom one night and suggested we trade my .25 mg Xanax for her .50 mg Xanax, I didn’t hesitate. She smiled and said, “I just prefer the smaller dose.” I nodded like that made perfect sense, like we were exchanging stamps instead of Schedule IV narcotics.
Now that I’m older and significantly less trusting of people I look back and think, what the hell was I doing?
No addict willingly gives up a higher dose of anything. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
It looked like Xanax. It had the little score line and everything. But honestly, it could’ve been anything. A counterfeit pill. A chalky mint. A tiny tablet of doom. Who knows? I never took it. Or maybe I did and just don’t remember the next six hours. Unclear.
What I do know is this: Shelly may have been generous with her drinks, but she was not someone I should’ve been accepting pharmacological advice from. The comedy club bathroom is not a pharmacy, no matter how many people are crying in it.
Lesson learned. These days, I only take pills from people who can legally lose their license for screwing up. And I raise my metaphorical cheap shot to Shelly, wherever she is, probably trying to trade someone a Haribo for a whole other type of gummy.
Godspeed, girl.
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