Enough - Prologue

by Jim Wile

Prologue

Charlotte, North Carolina
2024

I woke up this morning feeling great. That’s part of the problem. I feel great every morning when I wake up. Have since I began taking Dipraxa, my own invention. I got out of bed, waded through the mess of dirty clothes I’d left everywhere, and made my way to the bathroom. After relieving myself, I looked in the mirror at my reflection.

The image was shocking. In six months, I had gone from a not-bad-looking, clean-shaven 32-year-old guy with normal-length, sandy-brown hair and an average build for my 6’2” frame to a beanpole with a permanent bedhead of long, stringy, unkempt hair and a thick, scraggly beard. I also stank so bad that even I was grossed out. No matter; I’ll be taking a shower tomorrow.

But I felt wonderful—best I’ve felt in years—since the chronic pain I had suffered until six months ago was no more. The pain had been due to injuries I’d sustained to my neck and back in a car accident I’d had at 16.

I wended my way through the jumble of clothes on the floor over to my dresser to get dressed. My underwear drawer was empty, as was my sock drawer. I grabbed one of the two remaining T-shirts from the T-shirt drawer and headed over to the closet to find a pair of pants. There weren’t any hanging up, so I found an old, holey pair of sweat pants on the floor that were way too large in the waist for me now. Fortunately, it had a drawstring rather than just an elastic band around the waist. I also scrounged around the floor for the least offensive-smelling socks I could find. I grabbed a random pair that weren’t too bad. They didn’t match, but it didn’t matter, and I put them on. I decided to forget underwear and just pulled on the sweatpants, tying the drawstring as tightly as I could; it could only be tightened so much. It barely held my pants up.

I left the bedroom and headed for the kitchen. I flipped on the light switch, but nothing happened. That’s right, I had gotten a shutoff notice from the power company a few days ago, threatening to shut the power off unless I made arrangements to pay, which I failed to do, of course. Since Julia had left two months ago and was staying at her cousin’s, there was no more money coming in now. The last money I’d earned was a royalty check from the publisher of a high school chemistry textbook I’d written 10 years ago. But that’s okay because it will all be over soon.

I opened the fridge, which wasn’t working now, but it hardly mattered since there was almost nothing left in there anymore that was edible. I pulled out a bottle of flat, lukewarm Coke and drained the last few ounces. There were a couple pieces of greenish-looking bologna in a dented pack, which I threw away. All that was left were a few limp carrots in the vegetable drawer, so I pulled one out and began munching on it.

With the power shut off, I had finally hit rock bottom. Now I couldn’t charge my phone since I didn’t leave the house anymore, and my computers and TV wouldn’t be working. I didn’t feel particularly bad about it, though. In fact, I didn’t feel much of anything at all, including pain. But that would soon change as I reached for the bottle of Dipraxa and took five. In about 10 minutes, I would be on cloud 99, feeling the most intense pleasure you could possibly imagine—a greater high than the most potent narcotic could ever give you.

I will do this again—take five more—four hours from now and every four hours for the rest of the day. The bottle will be empty tonight, and there won’t be any more after that. Tomorrow I will begin my comeback and my return to normalcy—hopefully. The experiment will be over. What I will do after that, I’m not sure yet.

Who am I kidding? It wasn’t any experiment. I knew full well how it was going to end. There was nothing unknown that I had to discover. But at least I'd had enough self-awareness to know that after creating this last batch, I had to destroy all my equipment so that I couldn’t easily make any more.

Maybe now I'll be able to fight off this addiction, for that’s surely what it was. Perhaps not a physical one, but a powerful one nonetheless.

How did I get to this point of absolute rock bottom? Now there’s a tale worth telling. Maybe by rehashing it all, I’ll get a clue about how to proceed with my life.

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