I am depressed, worried, and angst ridden.  I am also pathetic, aging, sagging, washed-out and energy bereft.  Every cell in my body has been pickled in caffeine; if not for the artificial stimulation, I probably would have died months ago.  Needy and infantile, I am a ten year old who happens to be forty-three, with no idea of who I am supposed to be now. 

The flow has reversed.  Once, I benefitted from the kindnesses of those who saw me as young and innocent—a babe inspiring the care and concern of strangers.  Now, I am the one who is concerned and caring for the rare babe who appears, needful, in my vicinity—and I have precious few resources to draw upon for the benefit of a needful one, even if he is me. 

A twenty year old called detox last night.  He'd been in only one other detox before, and he'd never been to the one where I work, unlike most of the people who call me.  His voice was soft, almost sleepy.  His drugs were heroin and OxyContin, and he'd just had a few OC's.  With an incongruously gentle voice he was trying to express a desperate need.  Here still were the old life-fears which we all encounter, fears that made the escape look so good to him a couple years before, magnified now to a nightmarish scale.  Added to that are new annoyances like, where will I sleep tonight? and where will I get some stuff when I get deathly ill? and who will I get it from? and will it be safe, because I know I will do anything for it.  In the background a woman's voice, his mother, screams obscenities at him.  It can be difficult to hear, but between his softly spoken words is a real fear, and a question, sometimes asked half-hearted; I can't do it any more—can you help? 

No, actually, I can't.  But I happen to work at a place that will take him out of there for a few days, and provide a brief interlude of structure while postponing the dope-sickness.  We don't really eliminate withdrawal symptoms, we just soften the blow with methadone, and two days after he leaves us he'll be sick, but not as sick as he would have been without us.  That's not helping much, I know, but that's not what we really do at a detox.  We don't cure the agony of withdrawal, nor the agony of life.  We simply show people that there is another way of dealing with it. 

We try and make them see. 

"I got a car, I can get there," he says unconvincingly, after I tell him he has a bed.  "Don't do a thing," I say.  "Just stay where you are.  I'll get a driver to pick you up and bring you in."  That's one of the best things about my job; somebody calls needing to be rescued, and most of the time I can send them a real human being, anyplace in Massachusetts, and that alone probably saves a lot of lives. 

I see him just before I leave for the night.  The driver has just brought him in.  "You're the one I talked to on the phone?" he asks.  He thanks me.  He's young, cute, and despite everything, sweet and innocent.  We are all sweet innocents, whether we're young and cute, or not. 

We just don't see.