Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds, I just like to play with the characters every so often.

Author's Note: This is a story that came to me the other night while battling insomnia. I know everyone and their cousin has done a "Reid and his addiction" story, but I decided I couldn't resist getting in on the fun. I hope I've put enough of a spin on it to make it unique. I've been wanting to experiment with point of view recently, and if this story goes over well, I might return to this style in the future. Let me know what you guys think. :)

The real problems are cultural. The problems of the people who take drugs as a cultural trap - I think there's a real problem there, the crack stuff, the hopelessness of the junkie. The urban angst.

---Jerry Garcia

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving

hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry

fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the

starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the

supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of

cities contemplating jazz…

---Allen Ginsberg, "Howl, Part 1"

ALLOSTASIS

For every addict, there is a moment of truth, a point of no return, and for you it comes about five hours after Tobias Henkel's body has gone cold.

Although, you chafe at the word "addict." Indeed, it will take you almost a year to apply the term to yourself. And truly, though you will condescend to use it at the meetings you attend – it's part of that "accepting your actions" clause they so faithfully (blindly?) espouse – though you will stand up and mutter "My name's Spencer and I'm an addict," you will never really believe those words. You tell yourself you're not an actual addict.

After all, you will never steal to get your next fix.

Nor will you sell your body for another dose.

And you certainly will never forge a doctor's signature to get a new script.

(You'll never ask yourself if you were ever desperate enough to do something…rash, either. You don't want to know the answer.)

But all these thoughts, all these considerations come later. Right now it's a decision – Shakespearian in its simplicity. A conundrum worthy of the greatest of Danes himself. You can imagine yourself pacing a dimly lit corridor – or perhaps an expansive throne room, maybe this is Branagh's edition – tossing a skull into the air as you consider your options.

Because that's what it comes down to – this will be a decision.

Later, you'll look back and you'll remember what this moment felt like. You feel like you're standing on the top of a craggy cliff, staring into swirling black waters. Those waters are murky – dangerous even – yes, but you also sense an intangible zing of thrill. To jump or not to jump, that is the question.

You've never been a bad boy. Up until now, you haven't even really understood the appeal. You've spent your life wrapped up in your books, so rarely peeking over the rim of those thick tomes to glimpse the rest of the world. But as you sit there, considering the vial in your hand, you suddenly get it.

You love the idea of doing the wrong thing. And don't fool yourself – you know this is the wrong thing.

You've always been the responsible one. Responsible to Gideon, responsible to Hotch, responsible Diana. It isn't that you resent these responsibilities. In fact, they define you. But right now, at this very moment, five hours after Tobias, or Raphael, or whoever he was, has died, you want to jettison those duties. Not forever. Just for now. You don't know who you are without those responsibilities. So this is your chance to find yourself.

Some people go to Paris to find themselves, others to Rome.

You jam a needle in your arm.

There's an irony hidden in here somewhere, but the sweats are starting and your mind is so addled that you just can't find it right now.

You want to apply logic to this situation because you can't really understand a world that isn't logical.

Your brain, that beautiful mind your mother loved and nurtured, is trying to convince you that this is the ordered, natural end of the story arc. This decision isn't random – you can't handle a world that is random, isn't rational. So you're trying to convince yourself that using is the rational fallout of what has happened to you. Something has to make sense of your abduction and torture. Why not Dilaudid?

But deep down, in that dark, scary place you fear to tread because you don't know where you'll end up, you know that everything is simply that:

Random.

You forget that sometimes, because the unsubs you chase are rarely random. They choose their victims with precision. Everything in your job is infused with meaning.

Outside the BAU, though, everything is random.

It was just a fluke that you and J.J. ended up at Henkel's farm. It was just a fluke that Henkel took you, not J.J. You can't explain what happened, though you follow the thread back as far as you can. Would one word, one expression change everything?

In a hospital bathroom in some town in Georgia, you stare at your reflection and consider the Butterfly Effect, trying to convince yourself that nothing is random. Would you be here if Tobias had cracked a month ago? What if he cracked a month later?

What if the Bears won the Super Bowl? Or the game went into overtime?

Nevertheless, as you stare at your reflection, you find the truth in those haunted, dark-rimmed eyes.

Camus had it right – life, in its futility, is absurd.

You've been in the bathroom too long – the team is waiting, probably getting worried. Since they found you, they've been hovering around you, checking on you and your mental status every few moments. They're afraid to loose you again.

Garcia has been practically hanging on you. You thought she might actually rip into the doctors when they tried to examine you. Of course, a stern glance from Hotch liberated you, but you imagine that Garcia is outside the door right now, trying to figure out how she can get in here without embarrassing herself or you.

Prentiss, meanwhile, has been shooting you careful smiles. She's the newest member of the team – with your mind so cloudy, you can't even remember how many cases she's worked with you. Ten, maybe? She doesn't know exactly how to treat you. Are you a friend or merely a colleague? So she lets Garcia minister to you and hangs back with J.J., who won't meet your gaze. She'll be embarrassed for a few more weeks but you'll forget about it, as you withdraw further and further from the team, into yourself.

The men are less demonstrative – Hotch, as the team leader, must remain level-headed. Gideon, as he always does when his world collapses, retreats from the team and hops around like a wounded bird, trying to protect himself, all the while constantly reminding everyone that he's injured. Morgan has a façade to maintain, though you know he's indignant. He sees you as a younger brother, someone to protect, and his ego has been wounded because he couldn't protect you.

You know they're waiting for you, but you don't want to face them. Not yet. You're afraid to admit that you want another hit. You want to be strong. You want to walk away from the wreck of Tobias Henkel's life unscathed.

You're also afraid of what the drug will do to you. You've always been worried that some day something will crack you, just as it cracked Tobias, or your mother. But you're torn; you don't know what will be worse: living with the drug or without it.

The speed this addiction coalesced startles you. You didn't really spend that many hours with Henkel, and of those hours, you remember even fewer. Yet here you are, already experiencing all the symptoms of withdrawal that film and television have turned into clichés.

These shakes, though, these cold sweats and the nausea don't feel like clichés at the moment. They're all too real and they're limiting your capacity to think…to exist…to be Reid.

So you stare at yourself in the mirror, aware that your team, the people who have become your family, are on the other side of that door, waiting for you, to see how you'll recover. They're waiting to see Reid.

Tobias Henkel has been dead for five hours and you face a choice. You try to see what will happen, you try to imagine how your life will play out if you inject this crystal liquid into your body or what will happen if you don't.

But the fog is closing in and your body is growing weak.

You can't face them, not like this. They've always considered you the weak one, the one who must be cared for – protected. You can't give them ammunition.

In the end, you won't know what broke through. You don't know if reason gave you this answer, or if it was chance. In fact, you won't remember. All you will remember – when the bottles run dry, when you blow off your responsibility to find yourself, when you feel yourself careening again to that nadir after being clean for nearly a year – all you will remember is making a choice.

In time, this moment will seem fleeting. You'll recall that it didn't take long to decide. You'll rail at yourself, you'll crucify yourself, because you weren't strong enough. Because you wouldn't get help. You'll pity yourself because – sober and clean – you'll convince yourself that you didn't consider your options.

But all that comes much, much later. Right now it's a decision. For every addict, there is a moment of truth, a point of no return, and for you it comes about five hours after Tobias Henkel's body has gone cold.

For M.H., who died as she lived – in the service of others.