What Becomes Us

Written: 2007
© Julie Ruffell 2007
Description: Seven addicts in a recovery group share their stories about their various addictions.

"What Becomes Us"

ACT ONE

Lights come on stage with seven chairs arranged in a semi-circle. There's a table with coffee, coffee cups, condiments and doughnuts on one side of the room. The middle chair is occupied by CARRIE, who is sitting with her head down.

ELIZABETH, wearing a business suit, walks in, fast, like she owns the place. She does not look at or acknowledge Carrie. She has a cup of coffee in her hands. Spotting the coffee table, Elizabeth finishes her coffee, and tosses the cup into the trash. She fills one of the cups with coffee, black, and takes a deep sip. She frowns and tosses out the decaf coffee. Reaching into her purse, she pulls out a small bottle and swallows two pills. Elizabeth is never still. She moves about the stage, fussing with her hair, her suit, her purse, her make-up and so on.

FRED is the next to arrive. He looks at Elizabeth, but not at Carrie. He moves over to the coffee table. He looks back at Elizabeth, who isn't looking at him and he then begins to stuff condiments in his pockets.

ROY enters, looks around, and then moves to the coffee table. As he does so, Fred stops stealing, takes a plate, puts a doughnut on it and then moves to sit down. He sits in the middle chair of the three to Carrie's left. Roy fills a cup and also takes a seat. He sits in the middle chair of the three to Carrie's right.

BELLE walks in slowly. She holds her arms close to herself, holding her shirt or holding a jacket closed. She sees the coffee table and quickly moves to sit in the chair farthest away from the table. She looks at her feet.

GARRET enters with ERIC directly behind him. Garret glances around and then also moves to get a cup of coffee. Eric checks out Elizabeth, and then Belle. He stops himself from staring and moves to sit in the chair farthest from Belle.

Garret sits down between Carrie and Roy. Everyone except Carrie looks over at Elizabeth. Elizabeth huffs, but sits down between Carrie and Fred. There's a pause as the seven look around at each other (though none of them look at Carrie).

When Carrie speaks, the other characters react subtly to her comments, but never make eye contact with her for the duration of the play.

CARRIE: I think back to all those parties in high school. It didn't matter that it was illegal. It's not like it's hard for kids to get liquor. Everyone did it. The party at Joey's house on Friday and the one at Rob's on Saturday. Then next weekend, drinking with Linda and later with Jill. Vomiting on some stranger's carpet at some other party the next day. Waking up on Sunday, your head pounding so hard, you're sure it's about to blow up. The thump, thump, thump against your skull like it's ticking down to disaster. But you do it all again the next weekend.

ELIZABETH: It's not as though I'm passing out in alleys or assaulting people. It's just caffeine; perfectly harmless. It's in everything. It's sold on every corner. It's in our offices, in our schools. I challenge you to walk two blocks without finding a coffee shop. It's not like it comes with warning labels, it's caffeine! The ridiculous notion that it can be compared to alcohol or crack or some other degenerate substance is absurd. It's absurd! How many people do you know who don't start their day with a cup of coffee? Ri-i-ight, I can see how it's dangerous. "Look out! She's being too productive!" I swear everyone is getting their psych degrees from cereal boxes lately. I can think of a few 'doctors' who should be investigated. Sending me here. This place is utter nonsense.

She holds her hand to her head like a gun and makes a sound like a gun shot.

ROY: I love the roulette wheel. The sound of the ball as it circles the wheel, a hunter on the prowl. Then the pounce and the clack, clack, clack, as it jumps from slot to slot. 'Roulette'...sounds dangerous. Each clack like a gun hammer dropping on an empty chamber. You can almost hear a gun shot when it lands, your fate decided. Either you survived or you're dead. The adrenaline courses through you, more additive than any drug. That rush, that excitement. Feeling the adrenaline surging forward, your fight/flight response begging you to take action. But you stand there and you wait for your fate.

GARRET: Everyone has addictions. So who decides which ones make you an 'addict'? Who needs therapy and has to stop? Cigarettes are an addiction. They cause disease. They can even kill the people who aren't smoking them. But you can smoke two packs a day and no one would bat an eye. We don't send people for rehabilitation for drinking two cups of coffee a day. I could walk up to any person and find a compulsion. Something that if they had to stop, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. They wouldn't be able to cope. But those people aren't here.

ERIC: I don't understand the obsession with sex. I can understand the desire to have children, though I would never want them myself. I don't feel the need that others do to have a part of me live on when I die through offspring. Any idiot can do that. But sex is only about pleasure now; being controlled by your lower instincts. I always thought that I could be bigger than them. That everyone else was just weak. I'm a smart guy, a cardiac surgeon. I spend my days doling out longer live spans. But I can't control these urges anymore than a dog can.

BELLE: Women love to shop. Or so the cliché goes. There's nothing I hate more than clothes shopping. It's perhaps one of the most degrading things ever conceived. Stepping into a store full of tiny sales women who look you over and then push you past the rows of double zeroes, ones and twos and over to the small racks with 'larger' sizes. Sometimes there's not even a point looking at women's jeans. You just have to go straight over to the men's side, where the snide, tiny sales women inform you, "You're in the men's section" like you got lost or something. Everyone is always talking about how everyone is fat now, overweight and obese, yet the clothing stores carry smaller and smaller sizes. I used to have to go to plus size stores. Plus sizes start at size fourteen. Fourteen is fat. But what isn't fat when compared to double zero?

FRED: I like the cookies with the icing in the middle. Where you pull off the top and eat the icing. I like the icing. I don't like the top or bottom. I would sneak down at night and hold my shirt out and fill it full of cookies. Then I goed back in my room and eat all the icing. I put the tops and bottoms in the desk drawer. I gotted in a lot of trouble when they were found. So I stopped keeping things. Sometimes I threw them away. Sometimes I even putted them back. I just like to take them.

ERIC: My mother was obsessed with sex. When my father left, I swear it was like living with a dog that hadn't been fixed. She'd...she'd brush up against me any chance she got, especially as I got older. The smell of perfume still makes me sick. I did everything I could to stay out of the house. I avoided sleeping there when I could. She was far more dangerous at night.

ELIZABETH: Eight hours of sleep a night? Crazy! Lazy. Why not just lie in your grave? Do you know how much I can get done in eight hours? I started taking caffeine pills back in collage. I'd watch other students knocking back coffee after coffee after coffee and still fall asleep in their books. How much knowledge were they even retaining? But me? Alert. Alert. Alert. And those tests were easy because I put the time in to really study. I would wake up every day, crush two pills and snort them. Instantaneously awake. I was prepared to go in minutes. Instant energy! Pop a few more during classes, and when I got home to cram. Always, always, ready. Not that I don't drink coffee. I do crave it, but the pills are just faster.

BELLE: I get cravings all the time. For pizza or ice cream or chocolate. Chocolate...I almost forget what it tastes like. I think about it though. I try to remember what it felt like to let a piece of chocolate melt on my tongue. How it would coat my whole mouth and the sweet taste of it as it moved over my tongue...but then I panic and get up on the treadmill. I always wake up, at the foot of the machine, having collapsed and fallen off. Just the steady sound of the tread moving filling my ears, like it's in my head.

CARRIE: What happens when you come to doesn't matter. You just take another drink, steady those nerves and that horrible thumping in your head and keep slogging through the day, through the week, to the next time you can throw a few back. Because when it hits your tongue, you know that, very soon, everything that sucks, everything that hurts won't matter to you anymore. Soon you'll be rid of all the shit, and just...floating. Giddy and excited and happy; the only moments in your life where you can be happy is when the alcohol is inside you. The burn down the throat and the liquor settling in your gut is more comforting than any hug, or any kiss. It's freedom.

ROY: Winning is like tasting life. That euphoric feeling lasts for days. When you win big, you are a god. You're holding Nike in your palm and everyone else is your bitch. Irrelevant. Which would explain why Chelsea left me; eight months pregnant with our daughter at the time. No forwarding address. It didn't bother me twenty-one years ago, but when the cards stop falling in your favour, when it's all crumbling down around you, you start to understand everything you treasure is meaningless and all you want are the things that got away from you. The things you let get away from you. I don't even know my daughter's name. Sometimes it makes me feel like I don't exit. Like I'm weightless.

BELLE: I didn't weigh myself today. I...I even ate a rice cake this morning. Not lettuce, but a rice cake. It felt so heavy in my stomach. As though it were a hundred pounds of rice cake. A hundred pounds of rice cake sitting in my stomach. A hundred pounds of rice cake already spreading, rounding my waist, my legs, my arms, my face. Instant snowman. Just fat, round balls stacked one on top of the other. And even if I got rid of it from my stomach, the damage is done and the pounds would stay on me, holding on with sticky fingers.

ERIC: I would just lay there. She would come into my room, naked. She moved my covers aside and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop from being stimulated. Then she would crawl onto my bed and straddle me. I had expected my mother's actions would have removed any desire for sex. But it seems nature can't be denied by a little emotional trauma. I'd get these...urges, and I started to welcome my mother's visits to my room. Just seeing her walk in was all the stimulation I needed. The first time, she just smiled and said, "That's my good boy." I didn't think about it, I would just lie there and let her satisfy her urges, and my own. I couldn't think straight when my hormones took over, and this was the only way to be rid of them. I never could have made it through high school without her.

ELIZABETH: You want to accomplish anything, it takes commitment. Not an 'evenings and weekends' or a 'nine to five' commitment, but an 'everything you've got' commitment. That's not easy; there's a lot of stress. I'm sure that's why I had that mild heart attack. But you've got to commit like that.

FRED: I prefer small things. Anything that fits in my pockets. Not big. Too much to hide them. I don't wanna be caught. But when I have something not mine, it becomes mine. Something new. I sit and I look. I like to feel. It's something new. Then I throw away and get new stuff. I don't never need money.

ROY: Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails. It's supposed to be fifty-fifty, but my luck keeps failing. My hand always empty. Lady Luck is becoming as vicious to me as women of flesh and bone. I need a win. Even a small one. I just need to get back in the game. Get back that feeling. But I know I've got to stop. To let it go before I get in any deeper.

CARRIE: It doesn't even matter that you get rapped and pregnant at one of those parties. You still keep going. You still keep drinking. Nine months later you hold this tiny thing in your hands and the doctors make sure you understand what it all meant for your baby. That his heart is too small and his brain won't work right. So, you do the only thing you can. You take another drink.

ERIC: When I was fifteen, I managed to get invited to a senior party. Everyone was dancing, but they might as well have been having sex. You really couldn't tell the difference. I got the urge and had to do something about it! On my own I knew a stall I could use until I could get home. I tried desperately to find a place where no one would see me. All the bathrooms were in use and people were everywhere. I began to panic, feeling like I would explode if I couldn't relieve the impulse. I opened a door to a bedroom and found one of the senior girls, passed out. I paused. I wanted to turn around and get out, but instead I closed the door. I don't even remember doing it. I was scared. I thought for sure someone was going to walk in or that she would wake up. It felt like I stood at the side of the bed for hours, but I didn't pause at all. It's like some other person took over. I just climbed on top of her, pushed up her skirt up and her thong aside. Wearing that, passing out on a bed at a party, I wasn't doing anything she didn't want. It's not like I had a choice. I had to. It was the only way to be in control again.

ROY: One of the great things about winning is the excitement of the people around you. They clap you on the back and cheer you on. You're the center of attention. Everyone wants to be around a winner. I'm not blinded by them though. I accept the energy they give me, but, in the end, they are only hanging around to watch me lose. They're envious of my win and need to see me fail, like they've done. They'll look at me with sympathy when it's all gone, but really they're thinking I deserved it, and everyone loves to watch a train wreck. They don't want anyone to win but them. No one honestly feels happy for someone else winning money. Your friends and family will resent you even more than strangers. They all wonder what makes you so special. So they all enjoy nothing more than to see it all taken away from you. "Serves you right," they think. "No one deserves a free ride."

GARRET: Most 'addictions' are things that are outlawed, like drugs, or are a crime on their own, like stealing or rape. Other addictions we construct entire buildings around like casinos or bars - but only the chosen few are called addicts. What godly figure points and says, "That person is an addict and needs to stop?"

BELLE: I weighed myself constantly. When I got up, before I went to bed, after every glass of water. But what I weighed never seemed to matter. I always felt fat. Even when I hit ninety-six pounds, I felt fat. I refused to look in mirrors. I couldn't see the skull face staring back at me. I thought I looked like the marshmallow monster from "Ghostbusters". Light perhaps, but huge.

CARRIE: You give in to the desperation. Long past any hope of graduating, you work as some bartender slash stripper. Letting the men buy you drink after drink; eating macaroni and cheese every day for every meal while you spend the rest of the money on more alcohol. Drowning yourself in it, because it's the only time you can feel real. The only time you can feel alive. The only time you don't feel like a worthless mother is when you can ignore the shallow breathing coming from the crib because you're passed out.

ELIZABETH: There's something exhilarating about being awake when everyone is sleeping. You're a million times more efficient when you're awake at five in the morning. There's no traffic, no lines in the stores. I can just get in and get out, finish my day-to-day errands, and put my focus back on what matters - on the cases. The silence can be unnerving at first. But you learn to utilize it, along with your time. And your regular thought process? Long past gone. The longer you stay up, the more creative you get. Like waking dreams. Things you never would have thought of just come to you and the whole train comes with it, everything falling perfectly into place. Let the mind race, unchained from sleep and what you can unlock will astonish you. My best ideas come between two and five in the morning.

FRED: I don't take 'cause I need. Not 'cause I want. I like that no one catch me. I only catched two times. First time they take me home. Second time they yell. They say it was expensive. The man in the black dress said I had to come here so I not take anymore. Getting caught is always bad.

ROY: My parents decided my sentence some time ago. They won't even let me come over anymore. I couldn't help it. I sold some of their things. I was sure I could turn my luck around and buy it all back. I was so sure. So sure. I lost it all. All three grand of it. My friends have stopped talking to me. I lost my job. And still I don't want to stop. I might need to, but I don't want to. I don't know if I can. I owe money. If I can just win enough to pay it off, then I can stop. I can stop then. I know I can.

BELLE: It's funny. People say I have an addiction. An addiction that requires will power not to do something. Isn't an addiction when you can't stop doing something? A complete lack of control? It takes so much will power to stop eating. To ignore the pangs in your gut. To pretend it's not a big deal that I stopped having my period two years ago. To take natural impulses to eat and redirect them. To be able to will muscles to induce vomiting; it's all about control. Holding that rice cake this morning, it was almost as though I couldn't remember how to put it in my mouth. When did it take more will power to eat than it did to starve?

CARRIE: It's like standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down into an endless, dark void. Drinking makes you think that the cliff edge is gone; makes you feel safe. But it's just an illusion. The precipice is still there. And when you fall, you have no idea you've even gone over. You still feel safe. Locked away in your own mind, some liquor bottle holding the key. And if you can just keep drinking, you'll never need to look out. You won't need to see the darkness that engulfs you. You won't know that at some point, the seemingly endless fall has to end. And even if you stumble upon that realization, you start to welcome it. To crave what can only be a lasting peace at the bottom - a never ending high.

ELIZABETH: I don't belong here with these people. This whole thing is preposterous. These people have no control. I'm working to become partner. I pop a few caf-caf pills and I can move right into my second wind, while all the other juniors are fast asleep. Next morning, wham! There's the defense. Everything we need to win. It's how I get noticed. How I stand out.

ERIC: I try to avoid temptation, but it's fucking impossible. I mean, nine year olds dress like prostitutes. Have you walked by a high school lately? They all look like they are in their twenties, and the outfits are enhancing every curve of what they even bother to cover. They might as well strip naked and bend over. Work is the only place I have control. It doesn't matter how people dress. Even seeing people naked doesn't affect me at work because there I am a god.

BELLE: It was almost like a game at first. I wanted to look like the women on TV. The successful women. Rail thin, barely more than skin and bone. I never thought they looked good, but everyone else said they were beautiful. Skeletons with skin had become the new face of beauty. But no matter how much I dieted, or how much I exercised, I couldn't look like them. I lost weight and my clothes soon became too big, but I still couldn't look like these Aphrodites. They stood out of my reach on goddess pedestals that I could never climb onto. So, in my frustration, I stopped eating.

CARRIE: When I lost Paige...when...when I held her tiny, blue body, I looked at the doctor and tried to will him to tell me that she had a small heart or that her brain wasn't right like her brother's. He could have told me anything; any horrible thing that the drinking could have done to her, and I'd have been glad. Because it would have meant she was alive. But she was just limp. Limp and lifeless. You'd think I would have known then that I had a problem. That I needed help. But I just drank more.

GARRET: Cigarettes are probably the most socially accepted dependence. We might be idiots to smoke them, but no one will have us committed or question our sanity for doing so. We can step away from a frustrating situation and light up, finding that tranquility from the smoke that caresses us. But when I put that cigarette out on my arm - an act that runs no danger of killing me - that is a dangerous addiction that I need therapy for. Who the hell has the right to dictate my life to me?

ROY: Flip a coin. It's a fifty-fifty chance you'll come out ahead. If only life could have those odds. But life is too random. You can't call it like a coin toss. So when life is beating you, flip a coin and restore some balance. Turn your luck. I'm trying so desperately to turn my luck. But I can't seem to call the coin.

FRED: Smooth feels best. Shiny best to look at. I also like red. My mom that grew me in her tummy liked red. She slept lots. So I take things. I like to take things. But don't get caught or there will be trouble. The places after mom caught me lots. Until I got better. Then they stopped catching me.

ERIC: As a cardiac surgeon I am the top god of the Pantheon. Mortals pray to me to save the lives of the wretched, because only I have the power to do so. My hands, my skills let the mortals live. I've performed hundreds of bypass surgeries for triple vessel disease to prevent myocardial infarctions. People who should be dead, but are alive because of me. Zeus on Olympus has control.

GARRET: A smoke can be reassuring. It allows me to compose myself. It settles me. I can send a stressful day away on a puff of smoke. But sometimes, it's not enough. When some sicko miscreant or murderer gets set free, regardless of the work put in to make a case that sticks, because twelve morons can be influenced by cheap theatrics, that simple cigarette doesn't cut it. So I turn it around and put it out against my flesh. I can smell my skin burn, and, for that moment, the only thing in my world is that pain. It consumes everything else and becomes euphoric. That pain I can stand up against. I can conquer it. I am the victor, and nothing else matters.

ROY: I miss casinos. I'm with the only people who matter there. The people that let me feel normal. The energy! It's like being at a rock concert for your favourite band. You're surrounded by people who understand you, who share your obsession; you feed off of each other's excitement. It doesn't matter that people in your 'normal' life don't get you, because you're with people who do.

FRED: You have to look. Have to watch everyone. They not watch me. They think I don't know. But I watch them. They look that way and I put in pocket. I want to laugh, but I have to look normal or they catch me. I feel smart when I leave; my pockets all full of new things. I feel good.

CARRIE: Fredrick is six now. Just started school. You know, he doesn't talk. Just slaps my face in the morning to get me out of bed to take him to the bus stop. The first time he did that I finally began to understand. I didn't come here from some court order. Or from the pleading of someone who loves me. I only have my son. And he never talks to me. But he made me understand that no matter how good the alcohol might make me feel, it was damaging not only to myself, but to him too.

BELLE: One time, I nearly drowned. I decided to try swimming for exercise since I kept passing out when I tried anything else after awhile. I wore a T-shirt over my suit; I didn't want anyone to look at me, even though I was in the middle of nowhere. I swam out half way into the lake and felt dizzy, like I was about to faint. I didn't have the strength to swim back. My head sank below the surface of the water as though my wet shirt were an anchor. I let myself sink, my eyes open, looking out into the clearness of the water. I watched the fish swim just out of my reach. I thought about how they would pick my bones clean and I wondered if I'd feel skinny enough then. But, deciding I would be discovered before that, my skin bloated from the water, I let myself turn on my back and float back to the surface. Eventually a current pushed me back on shore.

GARRET: The world is fucked up. It's impossible to be part of the world and not be fucked up. It's impossible to make it through the day to day devoid of something that let's you cope. It you aren't hurting anyone, why does it matter what you do? Self injury doesn't kill. It's a tool to stay alive. It gives control. It grounds you. It lets you feel alive. That's what pain is. It's a voice shouting, "You're alive!" And if you can endure it, then you can endure life.

CARRIE: There's a warning on the bottle. You go and tell some psychiatrist that you're an alcoholic and they ask you about your childhood and your life. They decide you drink because you're depressed. So they give you a little pink pill or a little green one or a little white one and send you on your way. Warning you, of course, not to mix the pill with alcohol, even though you clearly explained that you were an alcoholic. And there's a warning on the bottle. On the bottle that houses these little pills that all the doctors say will make you feel better. But there's a damned warning on the bottle. Do they see the big, black box? You don't see it, because the doctor told you take the pill and you hope that that pill will make you feel like the alcohol did, but that it won't be harmful to your son. And you take that pill, every single day. You're not looking at the warning on the bottle. You take your pill and you feel like shit. You feel worse than you have ever felt. You feel like you are back in that hospital bed holding the body of your baby, your lifeless daughter, but you keep taking those pills. You take those pills, but then you drink again too. You can't stop yourself.

ERIC: You'd think I could just go home at night, watch TV and avoid temptation. Except that every station, every channel is full of hot women, in those tight outfits, hugging every curve, boosting every asset. I can't avoid it. So I go out. I don't have to put any effort into getting women. I sit at the bar and wait for them to come to me. They see how I look and watch as I pay with hundred dollar bills. The ones who come to me want the same thing I do.

BELLE: I've never had sex. I can't imagine being naked in front of someone. Their eyes looking over my body. Repulsed by it as I am.

GARRET: Hiding scars is effortless. Working as a prosecutor, I always wear a suit. I avoid swimming and I only go running where no one will see me. Or late at night so even if it's too warm for sweats no one can see my arms. Even the most cautious though can't hide every scar forever, but anyone who sees makes up your excuses for you. "Cooking accident?" "Did you knock a candle over?" No one wants to see. And so they don't.

BELLE: Lying becomes second nature. "No thanks. I ate just before I came." "I had a late lunch." "I'm not really hungry right now." You don't even think about it. Just pop off a response to explain away the lack of a plate in front of you, even when you're out for dinner. People don't want to know. They accept all your excuses. They assume you just have a high metabolism. They don't think about it long enough to realize they've never seen you eat. And people who have known you for years, who know what you looked like before, they don't want to deal with any issues, so they are happy to accept whatever you tell them and compliment you on sticking to your diet. They don't want to see that you're slowly killing yourself.

GARRET: One percent of the population might sound small, but that's seventy million people. Hell, that's more than twice the population of Canada. Do our numbers still sound small? If seventy million people self injure to survive, why is it wrong?

ERIC: In the end, they all invite me back to their place. I let them do the talking as I pay for their drinks, one after another, until they start to get tired. When we get to her place, I don't want to deal with her. I drop her on the bed and just go at her like when I was fifteen with the senior girl. Most of them probably don't even remember. But I need to satisfy the animal. It's the only way I can be in control and be a god again.

ELIZABETH: I lost a lot of headway after the heart attack. Everyone is constantly trying to get me to slow down. But I don't want to slow down. My light isn't going to dim. It's going to burn for all to see, until I die. I'll have an eternity to sleep then. But I'll be remembered when I'm gone, because I'm noticed. I don't enter a room, I take it over. I'm not going to let some freak health issue stop me. Doctors don't know what they're talking about anyway. I know, I'm a lawyer. They contradict each other and themselves all the time. And you can't say you've never seen an overweight doctor or one that smokes or drinks coffee. That's how interns survive. They talk to you like you're an idiot, like your choices are going to kill you, then they eat a cheeseburger, have a smoke and drink a cup of Joe. You can't listen to anyone but yourself. Most people are morons. It's an effort to find someone you can have an intelligent conversation with. Everyone likes to think they're smart, but the majority have the intellect of a child. I swear at times I could get more of a conversation with one of those gorillas that know sign language.

FRED: People treat me dumb. I like to take their stuffs. They think they better...but I got their stuffs.

GARRET: Scars add character. Each one a badge, physical proof of what you have overcome. I'll admit, some days I can't stand to look at them. Some days they make me feel like a freak. Some days I find them repulsive. But usually I enjoy them. Scars are soft. New skin that is so smooth. I can find comfort just from touching them. Even feeling them under my sleeve can calm me when I'm in a place I can't add to them. Feeling them there, I can tell myself, "You're strong. You can handle this shit in front of you, because you could handle these." Others would scream or cry from the pain. But not me. I'm bigger than it.

CARRIE: No matter how bad the pill with its warning on the bottle makes you feel, you don't care anymore because you've put the fire back in your gut. You can't even begin to think why you stopped drinking in the first place; why you tossed your happiness out the window. Yet you keep taking the damned pill and then even the liquor can't make you happy anymore.

ELIZABETH: There's nothing like the thrill of the court room. Most people walk in and are intimidated, but not me. I get excited just stepping into one. The judge enters and I stand; tall and proud. It's a noble profession, regardless of people's opinions of lawyers, especially defense attorneys. Someone needs to be sure all teams are playing fair; that no innocent person goes to jail. Better to let fifty guilty people go free than put one innocent person behind bars. That's what it's all about. I've been allowed to try a few cases and I won them all. I was even second chair on the Fremrick trial. I did most of the research and leg work. It's really only a matter of time before my name gets on the door.

FRED: I tooked a mouse once. He was small and soft. He not a real mouse. He was red. I tooked him from the pet store. He the mouse the kitties like to play with. I kepted him in my pocket. I liked to take him out and talk to him. I called him Rasco. Rasco was a rat, but I don't think my mouse Rasco minded. I talked to him about my mom. She used to read me the Rasco book. It was my favourite. I liked the smart rats. Rasco was smart. I liked him best. So my mouse was Rasco. I would hold Rasco in my hands and up to my nose. I'd looked his red face and I would tell him about rat Rasco and show him the voice my mom used when she spoked like Rasco. Rasco was my friend. I putted him on the table by the bed at night. One day he wasn't there. I think the cat got him.

ROY: When you gamble, you don't just gamble with money. You gamble with the present and the future. And when you're addicted, you gamble with jobs, friendships, family. It's not seen by people as being a dangerous addiction, but, in many ways, it's the most dangerous. The most harmful. Your life is certainly in the pot when you get in deep enough. People kill for money all the time. It's nothing new. You gamble away your family's future. You gamble away the mortgage and the bill money and the grocery money. You gamble away people's trust in you. And, go deep enough, and you can even gamble away the lives of people around you. After all, you can't get anything from a dead man. But you can certainly kill those around him to get him to pay up.

ELIZABETH: It's beyond insulting to group me among these delinquents. I'm the first one in my family to even go to collage. Graduated with top honours. I'm going to make partner. My family was on welfare all my life. I pay to keep my parents off of it. I earned my own scholarships and worked to get through school. My sister is on the street. She won't accept my help. Believe me, I've offered. So many times, I have offered. But I'm going to make partner. So don't try telling me I have a problem. They're just caffeine pills.

BELLE: I keep waiting for the day when I'll be the right size. When I'll be skinny enough. When I'll look like the women on TV. Surely I've got to be small enough at some point. I can't possibly always be this fat.

CARRIE: There's a warning on the bottle! There's a goddamned warning on the bottle! "Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour." And you're so far gone...you are so—far—gone. You take that bottle with those 'happy' pills and you take that other bottle with the only thing that has ever made you feel real... And you empty them both. You stare up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how it got in front of you, having no grasp that you're laying on your back. And blackness starts to creep in from the corners as you wonder why you feel clammy, yet cold, until all you see is the black. Nothing is real anymore. And you won't feel alive again.

The lights fade to black.

ACT TWO

One side of the stage is set up as a courtroom with two tables facing a judge's seat. Garret and Elizabeth are sitting at the prosecution and defense tables. A railing that serves as the 'jury box' is located on the center of the stage. On the other side of the stage, Roy is sitting alone in a chair on a raised platform. There's a table next to him with a noose on it (not obvious to audience what it is) Belle is sitting on a step that leads up to Roy's platform. Beside Roy's platform is a bed that Fred is sitting on. Eric sits between Fred and the courtroom. Carrie is standing with her back to the audience in Roy's apartment, standing equal distance between Roy and Belle.

The characters do not react to each other's monologues in this act, with the exception of Carrie who hears everything.

Lights come up on each character as they speak.

ROY: I'm trapped. I thought I could get out. I thought that the group could help. That if I talked about it, it would go away. God! But I can't stop. I can't stop. The debt...is insurmountable. It's too much. I used to be good. I used to win. More money than I knew what to do with. I thought I could stop. But I started losing, and losing, and losing, and losing, and losing, and losing, and losing. I'm losing it!

BELLE: I feel so trapped. Locked away in my head. I wish I could take my brain out and just put it in a jar. Or trade it for another one. One that isn't crazy. One that could process what my eyes see correctly. In theory, I know I'm not fat and everyone tells me I'm too skinny. But that's not what my head tells me. And I can't get out of my head.

ROY: These people...you can't not pay these people. You can't just say, "Sorry. You got all my money. I don't have anything left to give you." You just can't tell them that. You cannot tell them that. I'm so trapped. Suffocating. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do. They're not going to let me get away with it. They're not. There's no way out. I can't escape. They're gonna come for me. Except they're not going come for me. They're gonna hurt someone else. They're going to hurt people until I can pay them their money. Because my addiction put me here. Put them in danger. God. Why couldn't I just stop? I may as well have picked up a shovel and began digging graves. Because soon I will be keeper of the crypt.

BELLE: Everyone keeps telling me that I will kill myself if I keep this up. Like the cliché, I will starve myself to death. I wasn't trying to die. I just wanted to be beautiful. To be treated like I mattered. Everyone is so fixated on beauty, on looking perfect, to look like the women on TV or the ones on the face of the magazines. The sexy people. They aren't fat. They're tall...lean. Lean, skinny, small, sometimes unnaturally so. I wanted to matter like they mattered. I wanted to be wanted. But now I can't stop. I can't stop. I can't stop! I don't want to fight anymore. I just want it all to go away. Just want it all to end. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't have the strength to fight anymore.

Lights come up on Carrie as she turns to face the audience.

CARRIE: Suicide...the ultimate "Fuck you" to the universe. "You can't fire me, I quit!" Thing is, the universe doesn't care. You know, the biggest misconception about suicide is that it's a choice. It's not a choice. It just...happens. It happens when your pain is so great, so overwhelming that it exceeds all of your resources for dealing with the pain. The mind goes into shock. It cannot look at the situation anymore without rose coloured glasses.
I broke my leg once. I remember looking down at it and it was twisted in some abnormal angle. I knew it was broken. But it didn't hurt. It was like part of my brain turned off. Like it was saying, "Wow. That's a lot pain. That can't be right. I can't be hurting that badly." So it refused to believe. And I stared at my broken leg, but I didn't feel anything. I could deal with the situation because I was numb to the pain.

Carrie begins to make her way over the court room.

CARRIE: But the shock wore off. Slowly at first, but then there was so much pain. There was so much pain. They had to give me a shot to deal with it. Emotional pain is no different. You try to shut yourself off from it, but just like physical pain, it's going to come back. But you can't give emotional pain a shot and make it go away again. When it comes back, the pain just hits you, slams into you like a semi. And either you have the ability to cope with that pain, or you don't and you die. Just like physical pain.

Carrie sits in the judge's seat. Garret stands and moves over to the railing. He is making his 'closing arguments' to the 'jury' (the audience).

GARRET: You've heard a lot of testimony here today. A lot of different views about addictions. You've heard arguments both for and against. You've heard arguments as to what constitutes as an addiction and what doesn't. I'm not asking you today to vote on addictions. How can I? It simply is too big and too controversial a topic to rule on. There is no clear and definitive line about addiction.
But I am here to get a conviction. Because we need to take a stand as people, as a community. There is someone on trial here today. What is on trial is not addictions, but rather institutions. Government. There are a lot of reasons why democracy doesn't work. But in many ways, it's no different than a dictatorship. The only difference is we elect our dictator for the next few years. Someone who, no matter how much you may agree with them, at some point will have a view that is different from yours. And therein lies conflict.
There are no two people that agree on everything. No where on this planet will you find two people with the exact same views on every single topic. And yet we place single individuals in charge of millions of people. Millions of people with millions of different views. A single person who dictates the lives for all those millions. A person who decides what is right and what is wrong. There does have to be some level of law of course. You simply can't say, "Do what you want." That merely creates anarchy. But humans are not robots. We cannot be categorized and filed. We cannot be given a book of laws and rules and expected to fall into place. The fewer restrictions the better. There was a time when there were only ten. Laws are more political than anything else.
The people who determine what is lawful and what is not are the people with the power, not the majority. Most of the time the people in charge of us, have no concern with our best interest. And yet, every year we sit back and we allow institutions to rule our lives a little bit more. Let them take a little bit more of our personalities. Let them take away a little bit more of our liberties. A little bit more of our freedom.
We need to tell institutions that it's time to stop. What happened to trial and error? People need to make their own decisions, and yes, their own mistakes. It's like the germ phobia that's sweeping the nation. Everything you buy now kills 99.9% of germs. And yet our children are actually getting sicker because we are preventing them from building an immunity which leaves them more in danger and more at risk. The control that we give our institutions is not unlike our desire to battle nature.
Institutions are trying to eliminate germs, which to them, is free will, thoughts, opinions. We need to tell them that they have no business in our lives.
Imagine a world where every day you wake up at the exact same time. And you're not the only one. Everyone else gets up at the same time you do. And we all get up and we all put on the same type of clothes that we wore yesterday. The exact same clothes that our spouse is putting on. The exact same clothes that our neighbors are putting on. The exact same clothes that our friends, and our families and our co-works are putting on. And we walk into the kitchen for breakfast. Which we have at the exact time as we did yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. And we eat the exact same thing that we had yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. And we go to work and we do the same thing again and again. We eat lunch at the exact same time as before. The exact time as everyone else. And we're all eating the exact same thing. And we finish work at the exact time and eat dinner at the exact same time, the exact same meal and go to bed at the exact same time so we can repeat it all again tomorrow. We're not that far away from such a reality. Because we are not letting people be people. We are creating drones.
There is somebody who is guilty here today and it is institutions. And you should vote that they are guilty. Guilty of trying to make our decisions for us. Guilty of taking away our freedom. Guilty of taking away our liberty. It's time to reclaim our lives. To make our own choices and our own decisions again. To once again hold our institutions liable, not the other way around. You need to vote guilty because when you vote guilty, you reclaim your life.

Garret returns to his seat.

CARRIE: We're all guilty of overlooking people. No one sees me because I am dead. But no one saw me when I was alive either. No one saw that I had a problem with alcohol. No one saw when I was raped. No one saw what my drinking did to my kids. Even when I reached out, when I asked for help, no one saw me. No one cared to see me. And I died because of it. My son grew up without his mother because of it.
I don't think I'd have known what to do if someone looked at me. I was so used to be overlooked I wouldn't have known how to react to someone who tried to help. Sometimes it's too late to be saved.

Carrie moves over to stand near Eric.

ERIC: I stopped going to group. I thought they could give me some insight, some way to just stop the impulses. No on there has a clue! Everyone is weak, like me; giving into whatever impulse drives them. Talking about it doesn't help. It just made me think about how desperately the animal wanted to take that anorexic chick. Talking makes it worse. Makes me focus on it. Makes the impulse stronger. I've come to accept that there's nothing I can do to sop them. The sooner I surrender, the sooner they get their claws out of me.
I never would have thought about it before, but I figure since the end result is the same, I may as well make use of my access to pharmaceuticals. Just a little something in the drink and I can save hours. It also knocks them out cold. I just toss them on the bed, do my thing and leave. No fuss, no issue and I'm free for the night.

CARRIE: We don't think about it, but it's so easy to ruin a life. It's so easy to corrupt someone else's happiness. So easy to damage them. We're such fragile things. And when someone destroys us, we often destroy others. Not on purpose, but simply because we can't look beyond ourselves. It's so easy to lose sight of what matters.

Carrie moves over to Fred and sits near him. She listens very attentively to him.

FRED: I got a new mouse. He is green. I call him Oscar. He is not the same as Rasco, but Rasco had two names, so Oscar can have the other one. I never leave Oscar on the nightstand. I keep him.
I didn't take Oscar. Belle gave him to me. She said he was a special prize for taking no more. I haven't taked nothing in two months. I like to make Belle proud of me. Belle goes to the talk place like me. Belle doesn't take things. Belle always talks about eating and being fat. But she's not fat. I thinked she'd beautiful.
Belle said if I go six months with no more taking, she will buy me a real Oscar. I want a real Oscar, so I will stop. Then I can play with Oscar instead of taking stuffs. I like to make Belle happy. She's my friend. When Belle is over, I feel happy like when I take stuffs.

CARRIE: I didn't write a letter. I wasn't planning to kill myself. But even if I had planned it, I don't think I would have written a letter. What do you say to a six-year-old? "Dear Fredrick, Mommy is sorry that she was such a failure. She's sorry she was always passed out and ignoring you. She's sorry she broke you. She overdosed without even thinking of you." I didn't get to be sober until I was dead. I couldn't see or understand until there was nothing more I could do about anything.
I watch Fredrick. I've never left his side. But all I can do is watch him make the same kind of mistakes I did. I can't hold him. I can't help him overcome what he's been through. All I can do is watch him turn into me. I'm helpless to do anything.

Carrie returns to stand with Belle and Roy. Roy moves as though he is in a lot of pain. He has recently been beaten.

ROY: It's not like I can go to the hospital. They'll ask what happened. What do I say, "I fell down the stairs"!? They won't believe me. It's pretty obvious what happened to me. I can feel my ribs shifting. And yet, the pain doesn't hurt. It's not what scares me. It's been twenty-one years since I've seen Carla. Twenty-one years since she walked out on me, with my daughter. You know, I heard her name for the first time today. Belle. Belle; French word for beauty. Then I saw a picture of her. The name is so fitting. My little beauty. I found out her name today. From the man who told me that he would kill her if I didn't pay up.

BELLE: My mother always tried hard to make up for the fact that my father wasn't there. I think she tried so hard because it was her decision to leave. It was her decision that I didn't have a father. I think about him sometimes. Probably a lot more lately. Wondering who he is, where he's been. I wonder if I got my addiction from him. Mom would never tell me much. She told me that she left because it was the only choice she could make. Because he was being consumed. When she found out about me, she cried. She cried because she felt she didn't try hard enough with him. That she should have stayed and helped him to stop. It made her try so hard with me. To make things right. To fix me. To help me overcome what my father never could. Because he was never given the chance. Yes, I wonder about him sometimes. I wonder if I'll ever see him.

ROY: I don't know what to do. If I could take those moments back. If I could just go back when where I picked up my first card and just leave it on the table and walk away...if I could that, I'd have my family and they'd be safe. But I can't have that. I made my choice. Even though it really was the only choice. It's hard to imagine life without my addiction. I wish so many things had gone differently. That my life hadn't been so fucked up that I felt the need to be an addict. It was my only freedom. My only escape. And I didn't have the will to fight against it. Because of that, because of that, they're gonna kill my little girl.

BELLE: You know, it's true. That there really is only one way to be happy. It's so stupid how easy it is. How simple it is. I wanted out of my head. All I had to do was leave. To look up. To look out. To stop burying myself inside my own skin. We spend all of our energies holding onto to everything that's painful to us, holding onto the past, this heavy burden we seem determined to carry with us everywhere. We put all our energy into our own suffering, when the trick to being free, is to just let it go.
When you let go of everything that's been holding you back, you feel so light you just float. If you want to be free from the pain inside you, just stop being self centered. It's strange because I kind of learned it from group, but indirectly, you know? There's this guy there. He's a few years older than me. His name is Fred. He doesn't think like other people. He's slower, but it doesn't hold him back. He's actually a really, nice guy. And I learned that if I focus on him, that to help him with his addiction, helps me with mine. To help him know that he matters, reminds me that I matter.

Belle stands and moves over to sit on Fred's bed.

ROY: I can't pay them. I don't have anything to give them. And my daughter? I only have one thing left to offer her now.

Roy picks up the noose so that the audience can clearly see what it is.

ROY: One thing that I can give up. One thing, the only thing...and all I have to do is give it away.

Roy puts the noose around his neck. Carrie steps out of his apartment and the lights go down on Roy. Carrie is sad about his death.

CARRIE: Dying was easy. Slowly fading away, everything going dark. I imagine it wasn't much different than being born, except that in the end you fade to black rather than opening to light. Dying was easy, but death wasn't. It's ironic that everyone is so afraid of death because they are afraid there will be nothing after life. But when you commit suicide, you do it in the hopes of finding oblivion. It's your hope that you can be free. Who could have imagined that it was worse than life? Suicide isn't some great victory. It's a quiet surrender. And to surrender is to lose. I lost so much more than my life.

Carrie walks over to Fred and kisses him on the forehead. Fred reaches up his hand and feels where Carrie kissed him, and then looks over at Belle.

FRED: Belle makeses me think about my mom. I miss her many times. Belle says my mom is like her dad. Says we can missed them, but that we better notted be like them.

Fred touches where Carrie kissed him again.

FRED: Sometimes I feeled my mom. They've tolded me she's in heaven, but I think she here. I think she'd happy I no take things. Belle is made happy too. I happy. Things better than before. I not aloned anymore.
I still haven't taked things. I still have Oscar. Oscar is my favourite thing, but I don't taked him. Belle says I can have a real Oscar soon. We still go to the talk place. We go together.

CARRIE: He became so much more than me. And, thankfully, he became so much more than his father. He might have been born disadvantaged, might not be a lawyer or a doctor, but none of those things matter. He's a good man. And he'll become an even better man; so much more than the sum of his genes.

Carrie moves to Eric.

ERIC: I saw the woman from group at a bar last night. I wanted her, but I knew she wouldn't come over to me. I thought about following her home... I didn't want the women there, I wanted her. Feed the impulse. There was an aching watching her, especially when I saw she was with that retard. I needed her to satisfy the urge; the retard probably had no idea what do with her.
Two young women approached me, so I settled for them. They were happy to take the drugs, wanted to get high. I waited for them to pass out and did them where they lay, one after the other. But no matter how many times I did it, I couldn't seem to get her out of my head.

CARRIE: I remember reading about Fredrick's father becoming a doctor. After he raped me, I couldn't get him out of my head. I kept track of him, always worried that he'd come after me again. I wanted to be safe from him. I wanted Fredrick to be safe from him. Fredrick is nothing like his father, and I couldn't be more grateful. Losing out on his father's intellect was a small price to pay for missing out on being a psycho.

Carrie is completely disgusted with Eric and moves back to the court room, taking the judge's seat again. Elizabeth stands and moves to the railing to make her 'closing argument'.

ELIZABETH: Ninety percent. Ninety percent of adults consume caffeine on a daily basis. Ninety percent of adults and seventy-six percent of children. Caffeine is found in coffee, pop, chocolate, energy drinks, tea, mints, pain relievers, cold relief medicines... it's in far more products than most people realize. There's an entire social structure built around caffeine. It's a way of life for students, especially collage students who are trying to get through the day on four to five hours of sleep. Caffeine pills are an over the counter medication. They're like vitamins. A daily consumption to perform better. Isn't that what we're all after? To perform better? To strive further, reach higher?
You're being asked today to consider that caffeine is no different than cocaine or meth or acid; that it's a harmful drug. And yet caffeine is not only legal, but it's the most popular and widely consumed drug in the world. Coffee is the leading export for many countries; there are billion dollar businesses whose product is caffeine.
If even one person is convicted as a caffeine junkie, we'd better start setting up CA groups - Caffeine Anonymous. And we'd better set up a lot of them, because more than half of the population is going to need to attend.
Addiction is a very serious issue and it shouldn't be cheapened by casually tossing in everyday substances or habits like caffeine. Next we'll be sending smokers to therapy. Or couch potatoes. We'll grab all the people waiting in line for the next Star Wars film and have them all committed for their addiction.
You only have one choice today. And it's 'not guilty'. There has in no way been enough evidence to rule caffeine as an addictive drug. To rule it as such would make a huge impact to our culture, to global economics, to a way of life. Before we start creating problems where there are none, we should be focusing our efforts on real issues. On real problems. Because caffeine...

Elizabeth grabs her chest, clearly in pain. She begins to slowly go down to her knees. Garret stands with alarm and watches Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH: ...Caffeine...caffeine is not a harmful drug...

Elizabeth, still gripping her chest lowers her head. Carrie does the same, saddened by the death.

ERIC: Emerge docs are incompetent! Calling for a surgery consult to look at a patient who was past saving when she hit the floor. Like compressions are going to keep the patient functioning for surgery. The defibrillator couldn't help her v-fib. She'd already had a myocardial infarction. You tell the patient to cut caffeine out their diet and they come back with the cortisol levels and vitals through the roof. Even Zeus can't save the people determined to push themselves to their end.

Garret looks shocked. He moves to the railing to make a new closing argument.

GARRET: I've been asking you to vote 'guilty'. To tell institutions that they have no business interfering with our lives. I've been naive. I forgot that humans do stupid and dangerous things all the time. That we create new products or technologies and immediately begin to use them to make our lives easier, only to hurt us in ways we couldn't imagine down the road.
Too many of us think there's nothing wrong with us. That mental illness is the result of a weak will, something only inferior people can suffer from. We forget that an illness is an illness and out of our control, no matter what organ it infects. And because of our unwillingness to see, we threaten ourselves to the point where a third party has to step in. Friends and family are unwilling to see our weakness, unwilling to see or unable to understand that we need help; there must be someone who will see.
Forget the trial. Sometimes we do need protection from ourselves.

He moves to stand over Elizabeth.

CARRIE: Imagine being lost in a desert for days. You finally make it to a small, clear, clean and cool pool of water. You rush towards it, but someone stands in front of you, blocking you from the water. All you can think is, "I need a drink of water! Get out of my way! I need water! Now!" That is every moment of an addict's life.

Carrie stands up and moves in front of the railing to face the audience.

CARRIE: I've been dead for eighteen years. As much as I want to be with my son, much as I wish I could be with my daughter, much as I wish I could be alive again and make something of myself, after all these years, the one thing I really want...is a drink. An addict can stop using, but an addict can never stop being an addict. The desire and the urge are always with you. When you understand what you've become, and when you're working so hard to stop, the one thing you always wish is that someone had cared enough to prevent you from starting in the first place.

The lights fade to black.

FIN