I've never worn a cowboy hat before because they are only appropriate for ranchers and rednecks, but I did live in a cabin in the high desert in eastern Oregon for a year. Before leaving San Francisco, I bought a Stetson cowboy hat. That and I brought a leather motorcycle jacket with me.
With those and the rest of my stuff, I brought 4 bags of luggage with me on the flight to Paris. That includes my bicycle and mountaineering gear. Total luggage weight was 223 pounds. 4 bags of stuff is now all I own. To picture this mass, it almost completely filled the backseat of a taxi. I needed a buggy to move it at the airport.
Going thorugh security was nerve wracking since I was carrying about a gram of heroin. I had dissovled it all in water and put the mixture in a Visine bottle. Sadly, 1 gram was still barely enough make me stop feeling crappy.
About 12 hours into the flight, I was feeling nasty. Even though I had tapered, heroin withdrawals were kicking in. I had actually smuggled some onto the flight in a Visine bottle, but I went into the bathroom at the Seatle and squirted it all up my nose. I was scared of going thorugh French Customs that I would be caught.
The airline fscked up the back wheel of my bike. It now has a slight wobble and rubs the brake pads. Before travelling, it was perfectly true. I'm going to file an insurance claim to get it replaced.
Codeine is converted to morphine by the enzyme CYP2D6 in the human liver. As any bluelighter must know, morphine is what makes you feel good by its action on mu opioid receptors in the pleasure centers of the brain. To help things, I chug some grapefruit juice which contains .... to inhibit the liver enzyme .... which steals your codeine if left unchecked. In large enough doses, codeine will get you high as heroin. The onset is a lot slower.
So later in the evening after getting off the plane, I put on a Brooks Brothers shirt and sweater, some khakis, my leather jacket, and my Stetson cowboy hat, . And went into a drugstore and bought a box of Tussipax tablets. They contain the opiates codeine and efthylmorphine. Each tablet contains about 15 mg of codeine and 10 mg of ethylmorphine. There are 20 tablets in a box. That totals to about 500 mg of good stuff. All for around 2 boners a box. They keep them behind the counter, and so I have to ask the pharmacist for what I want. I was sick as hell when I went in. I hadn't slept in 3 days, was exhausted from getting ready and nervous about having to move. I actually liked San Francisco. It's one place where you can surf in the morning, get on a train to a ski resort in South Lake Tahoe, and ski all in the same day. Plus, the natural beauty is spectacular.
Anyway, I felt %100 percent better after eating the box of codeine tablets. I felt alive again.
I'm surprised overall how few people here actually speak English. I've never been here before.... but I've read that everyone in Europe speaks English. Not true. Since July, I started learning french, studying a little each day. My method was to memorize a Petit Larousse dictionary that I found on the roadside in Paris the first day I arrived. I memeorized about 6000 words (about all of the non-jargon and non-technical words). The problem with that method is that while I can read french very well now and write it (except my grammar is bad) I don't know how anything is pronounced.
So to get what I want, I say in my broken french that I have a dry cough. She brings out the robotussein. No, I odn't want robo. I prefer codeine. It will help me sleep. I have jet lag because I just crossed 9 time zones. It's still yesterday where I'm from. She gets the tussipax. Then I go and do the same thing at a pharmacy on the next corner. Tehre is a pharmacy on every stgreet corner in Paris. Now I have about 1 gram of codein and ethylmorphine. That's enough to get a good nod.
As you might guess, I never fully quit heroin. I worked it down to once every few days. Technically, I'm no longer physically dependent, but I still like the stuff. The day before departure, I was packing.. I dissolved a couple grams of heroin in a Visine eye dropper bottle and stuck it in my carry on. (I would never try this going back to the USA because the imagration and customs officials are nasty fscking illiterate pieces of shit who harass everybody going into that toilet bowl of a country.) The weight was under 3 ounces, so it was unlikely they would check it. So I had a 4 hour layover in Rejkjevik Iceland after a 9 hour transcontinental/transatlanctic flght where neigher food nor water were served. I was hurting. I was too scared to try it in the lavotory of the plane. I was hurting so I go to the toilet and squirt a large bolus of dissolved heroin up my nose. I hold my head back for a few minutes, then pinch my nostrils, let go, and suck up anything that dripped. Within minutes, the pain is gone.
Last week I spent doing administrative things for setting up my work at the Institute. I'm going to set up a research lab working and getting used to my apartment
Drugstore Cowboy
So I put on my cowboy hat. I actually brought a wool Stetson cowboy hat with me. And go into the drugstore and buy boxes of Tussipax. They contain the opiates codeine and ethylmorphine. They keep them behind the counter, and so I have to ask the pharmacist for what I want. I'm surprised overall how few people here actually speak English. I've never been here before.... but I've read that everyone in Europe speaks English. Not true. Since July, I started learning french, studying a little while each day. My method was to memorize a Petit Larousse dictionary that I found on the roadside in San Francisco. I memeorized about 6000 words (about all of the non-jargon and non-technical words). The problem with that method is that while I can read french very well now and write it (except my grammar is bad) I don't know how anything is pronounced.
So I eat 2 boxes of tablets for about 600 mg of codeine total. It's slow to kick in, but once it does, the effect is similar to Mexican Brown tar heroin taken up the nose. Injected, heroin is like riding a rocket, but insulflated, it's mellow...
In some cases, my broken french is even better I eat a box of the tablets and feel good for a little while.
It's strange how freindly poeple are here. Especially when I wear a cowboy hat, it's obvious I'm a foreigner, and people will smile and say hello. I have no idea. Am I the Village Idiot that they take pity on or are they sincerely welcoming?
I ache all day and have a constant cold. I think I'm going to take a train to Amsterdam and buy some heroin, just so I can feel good for the first time in a month.
