10th March, 2012
Heroin & the Holy Grail, Part 1
(Ten Days without Mushrooms)
Heroin & the Holy Grail, Part 1
(Ten Days without Mushrooms)
I was supposed to quit all psychedelics for six months. Weed was a pipe dream, though. Complete abstinence from psychedelics wasn’t likely; I knew that from the beginning. In the end, I didn’t last one day without smoke. This failure: I justified it by forcing myself to refrain from tripping; my inability to quit smoking weed would go hand in hand with my ability to resist the mushroom. In the end, I would be consuming less, which is better than a kick in the dick with a steel-capped boot. Failing completely was too depressing a notion to even consider. Another failure, another stain on my conscience: the dirty rag that absorbs all of my spilled, and forgotten, dreams; my endlessly faithful inner voice. The little version of me with wings and a halo: it never gives up; no matter how much neglect I inflict upon myself. It says, without a quiver of doubt, that I will succeed one day; all evidence to the contrary. It tells me all is not lost, when nothing good can be found. My conscience, it enables me; it is the thin film between my descent and the rocks at the bottom.
I never made any effort to deal with the withdrawals I experienced from my epic mushroom binge; instead, I distracted myself with non-psychedelics. Alcohol – being the only thing readily available to me – replaced the hallucinogenic mushrooms; my vow to never drink again, defeated by my decision to stop tripping: sixty-five alcohol-free days, down the drain. But the sauce didn’t satisfy me like it used to. I found myself, after little over two month’s absence, genuinely not wanting to return to drunkenness; the bar for recreational-drugs having been raised significantly by a psychedelic binge from hell. Compensation, if it were to exist, had to come from something else; something stronger; something capable of smothering my anxiety.
The choice was obvious; the next drug on my to-do list: heroin. But I didn’t seek it out; I continued to drink, emptying bottle after bottle of beer. To score would require hitting the streets and picking up off someone I didn’t know. The idea tortured me. It lingered in my brain, calling me a coward; laughing. The little version of me with horns and a tail, reminding me that my true desires had once again been outnumbered by my fears; reminding me that I am a failure.
Days went by without mushrooms, but I continued to hallucinate. Without alcohol, my anxieties resurfaced – so I tried to stay drunk as much as possible; my desire to get some gear rising with every sip. Until, finally, I reached my breaking point.
Wandering back and forth on the platform, fuelled by frustrations; my mind an endless mess of overlapping and contradicting thoughts: I had no idea what I was doing. Whether I should appear anxious, like I’m already addicted, or calm so as not to create any suspicion; whether I should talk to people or just tried to establish eye contact; what terminology I should use; how much it was going to cost: these questions had no answers. And, consequently, I had no approach.
At one point I was sitting on a train, eavesdropping on two smacked out goons talking about how fucked up they were; just as I was about to say something to them, they started boasting loudly about their exploits robbing and assaulting people. This was the closest I came to approaching someone, before returning home a failure. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a six pack of beer on the way back; alcohol, the consolation prize, was a fucking insult.
Back home, the jar of mushrooms kept popping into my head; I couldn’t shake it: tripping was inevitable without a suitable replacement. I had a choice. To return to the land of psychedelics and, by doing so, give up on the idea of a sober day; or go back out there and find some fucking smack: in my mind, heroin being the only thing to save me from my addictions. The opiate world is unfamiliar territory; heroin is, yet, untainted by my recklessness. I have abused everything else beyond repair; ruined entire classes of drugs. Opiates remain pure, untarnished, and, therefore, guilt-free. The decision to move on to heroin is a good one. I don’t have a smack problem yet; so, using is not yet an issue. Under the guise of convincing myself I can use drugs responsibly, I have a whole new class of drugs to explore and ruin. I smoke three joints and get on a train to the city.
Richmond station is crowded with football folk; true blue Australians dressed head to toe with merchandise. Colour-coded beanies, jerseys and flags; their faces painted to match. These sports enthusiasts, they make my mission impossible. So, I start walking.
I mean to head towards the city, but I’m too stoned to think properly. I walk for twenty minutes in the wrong direction, half-aware that I’m off-track. Upon realizing my mistake, I turn around to see the silhouette of Melbourne’s skyscrapers. The city, it is huge; I have been walking aimlessly away from these enormous structures, practically oblivious. I laugh at myself.
On the way back towards the station, I duck into a bottle-o and buy a beer. It’s a good costume for someone who definitely isn’t a narc; cops don’t walk around drinking beer in the middle of the afternoon, regardless of their position regarding cover. Continuing to drink throughout the mission was all part of the strategy. Getting pissed, while stoned, in the middle of a hunt for heroin; it is the only way to resist temptation. I am quitting mushrooms; I am doing a good thing.
I walk down the street, listening to the Velvet Underground, drinking beer, and scanning faces for likely drug-dealers. I ask a couple of harmless-looking people. I know they won’t be able to help me; I ask them, so I can go home telling myself that I tried: predictably, they brush me off. Some of them are disgusted by the very notion; a junky, actually talking to them, asking them for gear. I guess the implication is that if I ask them, they too look like junkies. And nobody wants that.
I throw my empty beer into an alleyway. A homeless man asks me for change. I offer him two dollars for a tip on where to score some smack. He tells me to go down to Victoria Street. He says to get on the Church Street tram and follow it to the end of the line; I walk, instead, drinking beer after beer as I go. The alcohol combines nicely with the weed.
Wandering through darkening streets full of drunken maniacs, I feel good; my mind is protected by a sedative cloud. By the time I reach my destination, I feel like actually going through with it. Fuck the consequences. But it’s not as easy as all that.
The homeless man led me to a fortress; a series of high-rise buildings, government commissioned flats. This place, this retirement home for the perpetually downtrodden, it requires a key-card to get through the doors. I watch a junky scan himself through a series of entry-points to reach the elevator; concluding that there is no way to get in. I keep walking, down Victoria Street. Everybody that walks past me has this look about them, like they just got out of prison.
I keep my mouth shut. Asking them would be suicide. That’s what my mind told me anyway. These people, they aren’t even human beings; they’re animals waiting for feeding time. They want me to give them an excuse. Just because they’re Maori or Vietnamese, doesn’t make them a fucking drug dealer. And, I should know that. Fucking racist little spoilt white cunt that I am. That’s what they say, in my dramatization, before they stab me to death with a biro and piss on my corpse. If I’m going to ask someone, seriously, it needs to be a white guy. And, he needs to be smaller than me.