First generation Junkie
I am a Londoner in my mid 60s, now living in Colchester, Essex. I started taking drugs at 13, pep pills(purple hearts) and weed mostly. Spent most of my youth in and out of young offenders institutions like borstalls and detention centres etc. By 15 I was introduced to Heroin and by the time I was 20 I was well hooked and couldn't go a day without it. For more years than I care to remember, I tried so many times to quit. On several occasions I succeded but always went back to it. Heroin is not so much a drug as a way of life. Your whole life revolves around the 'gear', one way or another. When I first started thier wasn't many of us 'junkies' about, and all the 'H' I saw came in the form of little white pills and was 'scored' at midnight from the queue of long haired 'Beatnicks' outside, 'Boots Chemist' on Piccadilly Circus in London West End. Thier must have been others but that was the one known to me, and I believe most Londoners. That was in the days when the Krays ruled the roost in London and we were all very much aware of the guidelines. In fact drugs in general and especially Heroin, was totally frowned upon. It was up there with grassing and noncing(child molesting).
BUT then in the latter part of the 60s the home office stopped the nhs supplying heroin to addicts creating the 'black market' which has built into what we see today. With it comes crime, never heard of before on this scale and as we all know it finances terrorism. 90% now comes from Afganistan where so many British and US soldiers have been killed. It's a viscious circle where the only winners are gangsters and terrorists.
The crazy thing is though, any inteligent adult knows that the goverments could stop it dead in a single stroke. But no one will make the first move and be seen by the rest of the world as the first ones to legalise class A addictive drugs. If the goverment took control and prescribed 'H', the addict wouldn't need to steal to support his habit and the dealers would go out of business. I predicted all this in the late 60s or early 70s when I saw the first street heroin coming in from Turkey and the golden triangle(Laos, Burma and Thailand). I predicted crime would go through the roof and I was told that I was talking out of my arse.
I will always be an addict to the day I kick the proverbial bucket. But I will say, that I have managed to stabalise my life for the past 10 years or so because I have a maintenence methadone prescription. I have got my life back on track and I am very proud of that. It took me a long time and if I was still messing around with reduction programs, I would be using on top and would loose my script'. And that only leads to criminality.
It's a shame, the powers that be, haven't got the balls to tackle this plague without worrying about how popular they would be with the rest of the world. Every junkie has to steal on average at least £500 worth of goods a day to sell for a third its value just to stop from being sick. Imagine how much that puts on our insurance alone. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work it out. These days junkies come from every walk of life, from the inner city council estates to the quaint little country side hamlets. I know this for a fact.
