I try to keep the blog balanced between heavy stuff and happy stuff.  We’re a bit heavy on heavy stuff this week, please bear with us.

Sweetie & I had an intense conversation with George & Kurt yesterday on heroin addiction.  Once, when Sweetie had been listing off her grievances with regard to our stressful and failing business, George had quipped, “Well, you could just take up heroin.  That way you’d have one large problem instead of an assortment of small ones.”

We watched a few youtube videos about Kurt; you wouldn’t believe the string of heinous comments on some of those posts.  One comment that stuck in my mind was “He was a junkie and he killed himself, big surprise.”  I felt this huge wave of protest coming from Kurt as I read that comment.

It’s pretty well impossible to get through large-scale rock & roll success without getting into some sort of self-abuse.  The only thing that kept John from mainlining heroin was his near-crippling fear of needles.  He shared this with me when visited me at the hospital once (my work) as I tossed a syringe and needle into the sharps bucket.  I felt a physical shudder from him at the sight of the bloody sharp.

George, sadly, didn’t have any such fear to keep him from mainlining, and with heroin you’re pretty much addicted from the first hit.  George checked into rehab and detoxed.  He meditated a LOT.  Fortunately for George, he had built up a lot of spiritual strength before he had to battle addiction.

Kurt had neither advantage.  He, like George, was hooked from the first hit.  He took H in a desperate attempt to find relief from chronic gut pain and anxiety (screaming his lungs out on stage helped a bit, but not enough.)  Unlike George, Kurt had no spiritual education, no faith, and therefore no help.  He repeatedly tried to seek medical help to get off of heroin, but the doctors he went to patronized him, told him he’d be in constant pain during the detox period, told him he’d be battling urges to shoot up for a decade to come.  Well who the hell would sign up for that?  So he’d leave the belittling, dominating asshole doctor behind and return to his addiction, but feel all the more worthless.

As Kurt told us this story, I felt George’s anger.  This is the first time I’ve felt anything but Zen comin’ from George.  George shook his head in sadness and disgust, because Kurt had been denied the correct information intentionally.  Had Kurt found any doctor with a scrap of morals, or called a few rehab centers himself, he would have learned that methadone would prevent him from experiencing the worst of the detox effects.  And since he was a rock star and could afford all the medical world had to offer, Kurt even could have been kept sedated through the worst of the detox if he became too uncomfortable.  He could have gone somewhere secluded, dropped out of the rock scene entirely.  No one told him this.

Instead, I see stacks of money and a flash of a doctor telling Kurt the horrors of heroin detox.  Doctors who wanted this rich rock-star’s business for years to come.  You don’t offer a quick cure to someone who can afford a long one.  Kurt felt trapped, in so many ways.

I guess, every junkie feels trapped.  The word “junkie” doesn’t do justice to the humanity of the person suffering.

Meanwhile, Heaven opens another door…

On Saturday, while Sweetie & I went into town to do some shopping, a police volunteer came in with a flier of a missing girl.  The cashier announced the flier was posted at the register and could all customers please come take a look.

I’ve never tried to use my psychic abilities to find a missing person.  I asked George, “Should I try to help?”  The answer came roaring back “OF COURSE YOU SHOULD HELP!  Why do you think this flier arrived while you were here?”

Now, it’s one thing to be psychic and read for your friends and family.  It’s a step up to hang a shingle and hire your services out.  It’s another step again to teach.  I’ve taken all of these steps pretty quickly and I’ve been welcomed and supported, thank goodness.  But to out-of-the-blue contact a worried mother about her missing child?  There is a huge amount of responsibility there to do no harm.

Yet I trust my spirit friends.  Everything I’ve experienced told me it would be fine.  I went to far as to take down the mother’s information and I did a meditation to see what I could get…  I got quite a bit.  I wanted to pick up the phone and call, but I just. Couldn’t. do it.
Today I was thinking about it and I said to Kurt, “I don’t know if I’m ready for this missing persons stuff.”  I am the sort of person that when someone asks for help, I want to be able to give it to them.  But this situation had me doubting myself again.   What if I was wrong?  What if I told this poor woman that her daughter was fine, and maybe she turned up dead later?

Yet, I knew this was one door Heaven had opened for me, and I had promised to do the work.  I was so conflicted.

I felt Kurt’s reassurance.  “It’s alright.  Go look at the news.”
So I pulled up the latest newspaper article and lo, the girl had been found.  The brief details given in the article concurred with the information I’d gotten.  If I had called, everything would have been alright.  But, it was just fine that I hadn’t called too, because that was meant to be educational.  To show me I can do it.

“We’ll never ask you to do something you can’t accomplish,” says John with a smile.

Well, that’s comforting.

EDIT:  May 10, 2012

Further to this entry, please also read: https://psychicintraining.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/kurt-cobain-the-suicide-entry-revised/

It talks in more detail about Kurt’s repeated attempts at rehab, which were more numerous than he’d intitially implied.  He used all sorts of medication prescribed by various doctors, some ethically, some inethically, and he obtained many tranquilizers illegally to supplement his treatment.  It was a much longer battle than he talks about here, and from the outside looking in, it really seems like everyone around him did everything they possibly could to help.

After listening to the biography, “Heavier than Heaven,” I felt like the version Kurt gave me of his battle with addiction was dishonest.  Rather than dishonest, really, it was simply incomplete.  It’s the story told from his perspective at the time, when he was incapable of seeing what everyone else was doing for him, or the impact he had on those around him.  You ask any addict to tell their story, they’ll usually blunt the edges.  It’s excrutiating to face the pain you have caused.

I have to give Kurt props for talking to me about addiction at all.  Neither George nor John has gone into detail, and I sense this “do not trespass” on the topic.  But maybe that’ll change in time.  We’ll see.

All Kurt could perceive was his own suffering; even when he acknowledged the impact he had on Courtney and would potentially have on Frannie, he used his guilt as self-flagulation to further amplify his own suffering.

Maybe we’ll have a more detailed conversation to clarify a few more points.