Sometime in summer 2011, I was frantically getting my money together to go buy my daily heroin and cocaine fix....It was a hot summer day, but I was shivering from the light breeze combined with my own sweat made cold by the dope sickness beginning to kick in...I took a bus into the city and walked into the heart of one of the worst parts of town that was centrally located between where I needed to meet my two dealers.
I had crashed my car some 5 months earlier, and mine and my girlfriend's habit dictated that, besides rent, every cent we cam across went to drugs....I found it nearly impossible to get high from heroin at that point...No matter how much I did, I never really actually felt high, that's one of the reasons I started on speedballs. Heroin just ceased being all that pleasurable, even if I was near death, I just never really felt that intense "glow"...Cocaine didn't help at all, it made me feel the heroin even less for the most part...
It was a very depressing situation, but I didn't feel depressed about my life at all really...I didn't really have much feeling for anything or anyone...I went to work everyday...well, went to work MOST days, and from the second I got out at 330 until the moment I lost consciousness lying on my back with my clothes and the light on, I was completely consumed with getting as high as humanly possible...
It was the end of a vicious, self-destructive run that could have and probably SHOULD have ended much worse than it did....It was a juggling act of deceit, money, over-consumption and avoiding arrest, every day...The combinations were getting dangerous. I was using about 2 1/2 grams of H and a gram of cocaine IV'd every day...On top of that, I was getting 180 1mg Xanax and 120 30mg Adderalls every month from a girl I copped dope for. I managed the massive heroin habit for 3 years, actually was able to somewhat handle it. It wasn't much of a life, but the rent got paid and I kept us from getting sick, kept us high....
I never cleaned my apartment, my kitchen was host to the biggest colony of fruit flies on the East Coast. They swarmed like cloud, I hated it them so much, but I felt utterly helpless to do anything about it, felt overwhelmed by my apartment, like even it hated me for neglecting my relationship with it. It was a nice place, at first. One of us nearly burned it down every month! Gas stoves and junkies don't mix....
I had 3 empty gallon jugs of Arizona Ice-tea filled with used rigs...Sheets over all the windows...All the musical gear that I hadn't sold yet strewn about as a reminder of a past life I just threw away to chase what must have been more important to me: blocking out every last thing inside me bearing any resemblance to a real emotion...I've had bad things happen to me in my life, but definitely nothing so bad that I shouldn't be able to get over it and carry on as a real human being...And we wanted ourselves back so badly...
we'd talk about it every night, how we were "...gonna do something about this! We can't go on like this anymore!" After saying that for a year, it gets harder and harder to believe yourself. After 2 years, we both knew it was hopeless, the only thing that was gonna get us of heroin was a full-blown disaster, a tragedy of some sort. And most tragedies involve death, extreme near-death illness or prison....Don't really know what I'd choose out of those three, I guess it depends on how much prison time is involved.
I made it a point to not look in mirrors, which is hard when you're in the bathroom all the time....I still caught glimpses of myself out of the corner of my eye, I definitely wasn't the same guy that just had to smile and say hi to get most girls' attention...Nobody naturally looks like I looked, well I guess if you were severely malnourished and sleep-deprived....
I worked a job that could be very physically demanding, and yet, I hardly ate anything....I'm 5'11 and was weighing around 130 lbs...It's amazing to see what the body can endure and it's amazing how you can bounce back, but actually witnessing these phenomena in yourself should be something that only occurs if you end up held in a third world prison or lost in the wilderness...Actually being responsible for putting yourself in that state is unforgiveable...a sin, if there is such a thing...
If you don't give your body enough fat and protein and it just starts feeding off itself...the times I did look in the mirror it was alarming...I've always been a vain person, and sadly, despite the drugs killing my relationships with my family and friends, and killing my love for life, the way the drugs were affecting my appearance was the one thing I actually regretted most of the time....
Anyway, July 2011 I take a bus into the city and walk to an area of old brick warehouse buildings and shitty tenements with mostly asphalt yards...Half of them are uninhabited and boarded up. I have 400 dollars in my pocket, 300 is mine, the other hundred is someone else's money...Fixing my car would have paid for itself, made being a junkie so much easier....Like everything else in my life, the car was pretty acceptable in the beginning, but after rear-ending a few people nodded out at stop lights, and then eventually almost killing me and my girlfriend while arguing about spending 100 dollars of the rent money on dope while sick, things got steadily worse for awhile, and then just eventually completely dropped off the radar...
I'm starting to get sick, I'm on foot and I'm looking to buy 4 grams of heroin and however much coke I can get with what's leftover...I have a bunch of people I can call for dope, but only one guy that has decent powder coke...I'm a sitting duck out there though! If I end up picking up the heroin but having to wait for the coke, I'm gonna be stuck walking around with enough heroin to send to me to prison...I'm praying everyone answers their phone and the whole thing goes quickly...
I'm close to where I need to be and I call the guy I know with the best dope...He tells me he'll be around in 45 minutes...
Shit! Who knows how long 45 minutes will actually turn out to be!
I call the guy with the coke, reasoning that in the time it takes to do that deal, the guy with the good dope will be ready to serve me by the time I'm finished...and.... the coke guy goes straight to voicemail...
Fuck!
I wait around for 20 minutes or so in the heat....Pawn shops, fried chicken joints, some shady discount grocer that's like the twilight zone to walk around inside, an ongoing flea market inside a warehouse...I opt to go inside the flea market...It's hot inside, no AC...There's shitty toys, knife displays, used video games, weird bead things to hang from your door that provide no privacy....After 20 minutes of that I decide to go with Plan B...I'm getting progressively sicker and I'm not about to wait around for 2 hours in my current condition...
I take about a ten minute walk to Bowdoin street...At the time, I don't know anyone particular on that street, but it's just one of those streets....There's not a nice house on the whole street....There's always people walking around, kids on bikes...furniture out on the curbside...obvious drug activity...not the worst street, but not the best...
On the way, I stop at a little store and buy the smallest bottle I can find of Heinz distilled vinegar...
just cloudy...
I had crashed my car some 5 months earlier, and mine and my girlfriend's habit dictated that, besides rent, every cent we cam across went to drugs....I found it nearly impossible to get high from heroin at that point...No matter how much I did, I never really actually felt high, that's one of the reasons I started on speedballs. Heroin just ceased being all that pleasurable, even if I was near death, I just never really felt that intense "glow"...Cocaine didn't help at all, it made me feel the heroin even less for the most part...
It was a very depressing situation, but I didn't feel depressed about my life at all really...I didn't really have much feeling for anything or anyone...I went to work everyday...well, went to work MOST days, and from the second I got out at 330 until the moment I lost consciousness lying on my back with my clothes and the light on, I was completely consumed with getting as high as humanly possible...
It was the end of a vicious, self-destructive run that could have and probably SHOULD have ended much worse than it did....It was a juggling act of deceit, money, over-consumption and avoiding arrest, every day...The combinations were getting dangerous. I was using about 2 1/2 grams of H and a gram of cocaine IV'd every day...On top of that, I was getting 180 1mg Xanax and 120 30mg Adderalls every month from a girl I copped dope for. I managed the massive heroin habit for 3 years, actually was able to somewhat handle it. It wasn't much of a life, but the rent got paid and I kept us from getting sick, kept us high....
I never cleaned my apartment, my kitchen was host to the biggest colony of fruit flies on the East Coast. They swarmed like cloud, I hated it them so much, but I felt utterly helpless to do anything about it, felt overwhelmed by my apartment, like even it hated me for neglecting my relationship with it. It was a nice place, at first. One of us nearly burned it down every month! Gas stoves and junkies don't mix....
I had 3 empty gallon jugs of Arizona Ice-tea filled with used rigs...Sheets over all the windows...All the musical gear that I hadn't sold yet strewn about as a reminder of a past life I just threw away to chase what must have been more important to me: blocking out every last thing inside me bearing any resemblance to a real emotion...I've had bad things happen to me in my life, but definitely nothing so bad that I shouldn't be able to get over it and carry on as a real human being...And we wanted ourselves back so badly...
we'd talk about it every night, how we were "...gonna do something about this! We can't go on like this anymore!" After saying that for a year, it gets harder and harder to believe yourself. After 2 years, we both knew it was hopeless, the only thing that was gonna get us of heroin was a full-blown disaster, a tragedy of some sort. And most tragedies involve death, extreme near-death illness or prison....Don't really know what I'd choose out of those three, I guess it depends on how much prison time is involved.
I made it a point to not look in mirrors, which is hard when you're in the bathroom all the time....I still caught glimpses of myself out of the corner of my eye, I definitely wasn't the same guy that just had to smile and say hi to get most girls' attention...Nobody naturally looks like I looked, well I guess if you were severely malnourished and sleep-deprived....
I worked a job that could be very physically demanding, and yet, I hardly ate anything....I'm 5'11 and was weighing around 130 lbs...It's amazing to see what the body can endure and it's amazing how you can bounce back, but actually witnessing these phenomena in yourself should be something that only occurs if you end up held in a third world prison or lost in the wilderness...Actually being responsible for putting yourself in that state is unforgiveable...a sin, if there is such a thing...
If you don't give your body enough fat and protein and it just starts feeding off itself...the times I did look in the mirror it was alarming...I've always been a vain person, and sadly, despite the drugs killing my relationships with my family and friends, and killing my love for life, the way the drugs were affecting my appearance was the one thing I actually regretted most of the time....
Anyway, July 2011 I take a bus into the city and walk to an area of old brick warehouse buildings and shitty tenements with mostly asphalt yards...Half of them are uninhabited and boarded up. I have 400 dollars in my pocket, 300 is mine, the other hundred is someone else's money...Fixing my car would have paid for itself, made being a junkie so much easier....Like everything else in my life, the car was pretty acceptable in the beginning, but after rear-ending a few people nodded out at stop lights, and then eventually almost killing me and my girlfriend while arguing about spending 100 dollars of the rent money on dope while sick, things got steadily worse for awhile, and then just eventually completely dropped off the radar...
I'm starting to get sick, I'm on foot and I'm looking to buy 4 grams of heroin and however much coke I can get with what's leftover...I have a bunch of people I can call for dope, but only one guy that has decent powder coke...I'm a sitting duck out there though! If I end up picking up the heroin but having to wait for the coke, I'm gonna be stuck walking around with enough heroin to send to me to prison...I'm praying everyone answers their phone and the whole thing goes quickly...
I'm close to where I need to be and I call the guy I know with the best dope...He tells me he'll be around in 45 minutes...
Shit! Who knows how long 45 minutes will actually turn out to be!
I call the guy with the coke, reasoning that in the time it takes to do that deal, the guy with the good dope will be ready to serve me by the time I'm finished...and.... the coke guy goes straight to voicemail...
Fuck!
I wait around for 20 minutes or so in the heat....Pawn shops, fried chicken joints, some shady discount grocer that's like the twilight zone to walk around inside, an ongoing flea market inside a warehouse...I opt to go inside the flea market...It's hot inside, no AC...There's shitty toys, knife displays, used video games, weird bead things to hang from your door that provide no privacy....After 20 minutes of that I decide to go with Plan B...I'm getting progressively sicker and I'm not about to wait around for 2 hours in my current condition...
I take about a ten minute walk to Bowdoin street...At the time, I don't know anyone particular on that street, but it's just one of those streets....There's not a nice house on the whole street....There's always people walking around, kids on bikes...furniture out on the curbside...obvious drug activity...not the worst street, but not the best...
On the way, I stop at a little store and buy the smallest bottle I can find of Heinz distilled vinegar...
just cloudy...