Söbriety • Mötley Crüe •

10. Break Throughs

Your new addiction is Nikki.

I smile at Dr. Mouse when I enter her office and she motions for me to sit down.

"How are you feeling today, Ryan?"

"I feel pretty good despite all the shit I'm going through. What are we doing today, Doc?"

"You've made a lot of progress, you're getting your 30 day chip tonight." She pauses to clap for me. "When my patients reach their 30 days, I like to have them start a journal, like a diary."

I raise my eyebrow. A diary?

"You've been through a lot of shit, Ryan. We need to process through that shit."

"So, what, I write down every bad thing that's ever happened to me?" I scoff.

"Sort of. I want you to write what happened, where, when, how you felt, and what kind of impact you think it had on your addiction. People don't realize that their addictions didn't just start when they picked up that first drug, it was a long time before that. There's always a series of events and feelings that lead us to that drug, that put us in the mindset to say yes to it. I want to know your series of events."

I nod and she reaches into a box behind her, pulling out a brand new composition book and handing it to me. I run my hands over the cover, it's been a long time since I kept a journal. She hands me a brand new pencil to take around with me.

"I know it seems kind of awkward, but I promise once we figure out why you started using we'll be able to stop it from happening again."

This will be a lot to write.

Nikki's POV

Every time I see Mick I get pissed off that he's not in here with us. He believes that we're wasting our time and money in here and that we'll only quit if we're ready to quit. He's wrong on the wasting time and money part. At least this time. Every time I look at him he has this look like he's about to vomit all over the floor.

"Stop it, drummer." Mick swats away Tommy's arms when he tries to hug him. Mick sits in the seat next to me and I give him a nod hello, him reciprocating.

"Alright, guys. How are you feeling? You look better." Jim The Counselor smiles at us, looking at our faces with satisfaction. We all nod or give thumbs up or groan. Jim pulls out a cassette tape and walks toward the stereo behind him. I look at Mick with my eyebrows furrowed and he shrugs his shoulders. After a few moments, the sound of The Rolling Stones fills the room.

I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she would meet her connection
At her feet was her footloose man
No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need

Jim motions for us all to stand and we do, reluctantly. He puts his arm around Tommy and Tommy puts his arm around me, all five of us ending up in a circle holding each other, swaying while Jim sings the lyrics quite loudly, and honestly pretty badly.

I don't understand how this is supposed to be therapy, but my best guess is that Jim is trying to remind us that we can't get everything we want through the lyrics and this weird almost circle jerk we have going on.

"Isn't this the most beautiful song, dude?" Tommy asks me through sobs.

Did he get high somewhere today? What the fuck is going on? Vince raises an eyebrow at me, looking just as confused as I am.

"He's falling for this Jim Jones shit." I whisper at Mick and he nods his head.

The song comes to an end and we sit back in our seats, Tommy still crying and the other three of us looking at each other, wondering what the fuck happened to our friend.

"Now that we're warmed up, we're gonna do a visual exercise. You've been writing letters in your group to your addiction and one of them was how you met it, but I want to go back to before you met it. When we picked up that first drug we were in a certain state of mind that made us accept the drug. We need to find out what put us in that mindset."

Mick groans and Jim puts his pointer finger up in the air to shush him.

"Close your eyes. Picture yourselves as little boys. Picture a normal day in your life when you were young."

I close my eyes.

Small houses fill the street ahead of me and I look around trying to figure out where I am. It's cold, and when I look down I have snow boots on my feet. I look across the street and see a figure far away, but I can't make out who it is. Walk over. My small feet move slowly and the houses along the street are passing me by. The figure is getting closer, and I break out into a run. The closer I get to the figure, the better I can see it and in a few steps I realize I'm running to my mother. I get her almost within reach, and everything stops. I'm still running, but I can't get any closer. No matter how hard I run I can't touch my mother. Harsh memories of boyfriends and husbands of the past punching me and kicking me pass through my mind as I keep running.

"You made him leave! You pushed him away!" My mother's face distorts and her voice sounds drowned out.

I'm running so fast that I can't catch my breath.

"I don't have a son." My fathers voice echoes in my ears.

I feel like a boulder is sitting on my chest.

"Up and down, not side to side!" A hand punches the side of my head as I brush my teeth.

If I don't catch my breath, I'm gonna pass out. I can't breathe. My chest heaves in an attempt to get oxygen in through my mouth but it doesn't work. Nothing is working. I can't breathe, I'm going to die. I'm going to die to the sound of my mother blaming me for my father leaving and the sound of my father rejecting my entire existence.

Tommy hits my back and I gulp to take a deep breath in, coughing as the oxygen stings my lungs.
They're all staring at me. My nose is full of snot and my face is wet, tears pouring from my eyes down my cheeks and pooling onto my shirt.

"Woah, are you okay?" Tommy's eyes are wide, trying to figure out why I just lost my shit.

I finally catch my breath and look around the room to see everyone staring at me with their eye brows furrowed in confusion.

"We're gonna need to unpack what you saw, Nikki." Jim hands me a box of tissues and I grab it from him with shaking hands.

"Looks like you're falling for the Jim Jones shit, too." Mick whispers beside me.

A/N: The band therapy parts are based off The Dirt 🥰 Thank y'all for reading ♥️ Sorry to blow up your shit with constant updates lmao