A Story about a Crack Pipe

The below picture is of a metal pipe…I am sharing this picture with you because it has a pretty wild story to tell. It was used as a crack pipe!

This is a pipe that up until a few days ago was attached to a water heater in my laundry room in Florida. A person with great determination and ingenuity unfastened this pipe from the heater without any tools. He didn’t even break the pipe (it was  soldered to the rest of the pipe) supplying water to the heater. I am duly impressed with how he actually did this without damaging the pipe — all in service to his “addiction or his deep desire to feel something other than what he was feeling.” He also used the louver doors after he dismantled them as a bed and old towels as a blankets.

In the morning after his night of getting high in a relatively cozy environment he knocked on one of my tenants doors and asked where the bathroom was. (At first shocked — she then closed the door and called the police). In the bigger picture I thought it was very kind of him not to take “a dump” in my laundry room. However, he did leave his urine in a big Burger King cup for me to dispose of. When the police arrived he was on the street, but, all his belongings were still inside the laundry room. The story goes that he was kicked out of a nearby halfway house and needed a place to stay and get high for the night. He wasn’t arrested but was allowed to take his things from his one night residence(my laundry room) and be on his way. I arrived the next day to clean up the mess and fix the plumbing problems that he created. You see while perfectly dismantling the pipe he damaged two water heaters limiting the hot water in the house for two days.

I am so impressed with what this kid did! I could go into “if only he would use that ingenuity to make a better life for himself…” or other such sayings.  I am sure that there are many people that will say that. But I am going to stick with the idea that this person was doing the best that he could within those moments of his life experience.

I don’t have any big philosophical things to say about this experience. I do find it funny! Not for his crack habit but for the pipe that he created and the story that I share.  I am happy that no one was hurt. It took me a few hours to clean up his mess but I used that time as a meditation reflecting on how fortunate I am and have been in my life.I grew up with the majority of my friends shooting heroin (or dope as it was called). Having an aversion to needles I would never “shoot dope”. I was a lookout for “the cops” as they cooked their drugs and got high. I would smoke pot and be content. On many occasions I helped people go through the horrors of trying to STOP! Holding them down, sweating and crying together while they would scream in agony trying to “Kick it”. Knowing in my gut that they would have a “better life” if they could just get through this and stop!

After so many friends died I decided to walk away from all of those “using” and redirect my life. While they were all doing their thing I started working for American Airlines. All I wanted to do was travel the world and leave all that trauma behind me.

Until next time……