First time using heroin
I had been working at a bar in Ann Arbor as a bouncer. The pay sucked but the benefits were good. Hundreds of women came through every night and many were just there to get laid. I wasnt a bad looking guy so I had my share of fun with the ladies and they had their fun with the big bouncer when they needed a fix. I was on the straight and narrow as far as everyone else was concerned there at the bar. They knew I smoked my nightly joint with Stan the Mad Hatter up in the sound booth when everyone was leaving at the end of the night but I was a bouncer and that crew hung out at the gym and shot steroids, bragged about how badly they beat some unruly patron up one night long ago and how the court case was coming for the assault charge they received. I didnt really fit in with the regular bouncers.
There was a day crew that cleaned and maintained the bar during the day and I got to know one of them. Riggs as I call him was a tough, he had his ins and out with the law, a devil tattoo on his arm, wore a old school crew cut, drove a white Rivera which he swore was the pimp, and at the time had come into a little money. He and I were soon snorting lines and I was all about buying for a dollar and selling for two. Id buy an eight ball through him at a crazy price and cut the shit with vitamin B just to make a few bucks selling 1/4 grams. At the time it made me feel like a drug dealer and I figured this is how one makes inroads to better connections. After a few weeks he explained he liked to spike his coke. I had always been afraid of needles just like most everyone but after seeing him put that needle in his arm, draw back the blood to the plunger and pump it back into his entire system of veins, heart, and brain, seeing him in the throes of oblivion and ecstasy, seeing him with the look of absolutely nothing touching him, no pain but not exactly joy I got curious. Something in his eyes said he had everything he needed at that very moment and happiness could be attained for a second. I wanted that and was soon shooting cocaine for the first time.
I sometimes think about the possible guilt someone might feel turning someone on to shooting drugs. When you shoot a drug there is no going back, you broke a wall down that cannot be repaired. Someone has to show you how to cook up the drugs, how to buy a syringe at the CVS, how to find a vein, how to actually inject it. Every IVDU (intravenous drug user) out there was taught by some other IVDU addict. I wonder if Riggs feels any guilt over showing me how to inject drugs. I myself have shown friends, true friends how to use a syringe but I somehow dont feel much guilt. As I know myself, I am a drug user who has always experimented and those that want to try shooting drugs will no doubt find an instructor.
Now that Im older I dont give lessons anymore but there was a time when I did, and I wonder where my karma lies, I wonder about the people who have come through my life that Ive shown heroin and where they are now.
One late morning I stopped by Riggs place and was knocking on the door but didnt get a response. I started banging with no result. I went from window to window knocking on the glass worried to shit he had overdosed and was lying dead in his kitchen. I went back to the door and started to bang again when he finally opened the door. His eyes were black and blue. "Dude, what the hell, I was worried to shit about you, what the fuck happened to you, did you get beat up, your eyes, they're black and blue" I asked him. Riggs rubbing his eyes barely coherent explained he did some heroin the night before and thats why his eyes were probably a little black an blue. "You did what?" I said to him. I was astounded, I could understand smoking some pot, I could understand snorting some rails, and hell I for some reason could even understand using a syringe for shooting cocaine. Riggs shrugged his shoulders and we went into the kitchen. I started to ask some questions like, what does it feel like, are you addicted right away, and probably within 15 minutes I was asking him if I could snort a little bit.
That was the moment my life changed, when I decided that I wanted to experiment with something so obviously life changing that its warned about in schools and by parents and even Nancy Reagan. I remember one night at the dinner table sitting with my folks and my little sister, my Dad explaining what drugs can possibly do to someone and how they ruin lives. I was about 11 years old and had never even thought about smoking pot let alone shooting heroin. I nodded to my folks in an effort to explain that I would never do drugs. They seem content with my response.
Riggs got me my heroin to snort the next day and a week after that, after watching him shoot his heroin and lay back into the couch in an apparent oblivion I asked if he would do me up. We had just eaten pizza and after my first shot I walked outside and gently put the pizza I ate back onto his front lawn.
Riggs is clean now, working at a rehab for addicts. He was the type that couldn't handle being dope sick. If he couldn't get his fix he would just go to a dope house with a gun and pistol whip the dealer then take his shit and run. Deep down Riggs is a good man and he's proving it working in that rehab hes at now.
It took me a few years before I got my habit. I chipped for years getting it here and there when it came around. I eventually went to Thailand where I got my first mean habit, the one that never really went away.
As I sit here writing this Im looking at five nickle packs on the table in front of me. I swore I wouldnt use them until I finished this entry to my blog.
Adios
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