Heroin

I’m the one who usually prepares the dope, because I have to draw first. Ricky has hepatitis, and I won’t share any other way. I don’t share needles — wait, I kind of have before — people have asked to use needles after me, but I have never used after anyone else.

Whenever I go to some sort of counseling, one of the first questions they ask is do I share needles. I have probably known over a hundred addicts in my life, and only three of them admitted to being HIV positive, but at least half have hepatitis. Ricky was dating this girl who had hep, and when they broke up, she called him: “I hope you enjoy your hepatitis, asshole.” Click! We can joke about it now, but I could tell Ricky was sore about it for a while.

Although this routine of mine and Ricky’s makes it possible for us to survive and remain high, or at least not sick, things are not the same anymore. At the beginning of the summer, things were fine. I had at least a half dozen connections. Rarely could I not score dope between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. But after all the recent arrests and overdoses this summer, dope became scarce and people became paranoid and the prices went up. What you once could get for $15 to $20 a bag now cost $25 to $35.

Ricky and I used to hang with this girl named Rachael who also is 30-ish with a teenage kid. I’ve known Rachael for years. She used to go out with this guy who was my first dealer in Portland. At one point I probably gave him close to $1000 a week just to keep me from being sick. He got sloppy, though, never left the couch — really couldn’t because he was so high. He was living in Munjoy South and the neighbors saw all the traffic coming in and out and blew the whistle. It didn’t take much to figure out what was going on. If you see a half dozen cars pull up before noon and everyone is in and out within five minutes, chances are it’s heroin. Cocaine dealers do their business at night. Pot heads are in the afternoon. Only heroin dealers do business in the a.m., and that’s because all the addicts have been up for a while and are starting to get sick.

Rachael’s boyfriend just got too high. Rumor was that he was doing close to seven bundles a day (70 bags!!), at least 10 bags in a shot. Rachael was doing close to 40 herself. After he got arrested, I could only imagine the pain he was going through in jail those first few nights. I can’t imagine Cumberland County Corrections Officers being too sympathetic. This is when Rachael started hanging out with me and Ricky.

At least one of us always had cash. I had a car, Ricky had his own apartment, and Rachael knew people who wanted dope. We just pooled all of our resources. Ricky was older, and he knew a bunch of old-timers, and I knew a bunch of young addicts from years of going out in the Old Port. I can always tell addicts by their eyes. I’ve spent years trying to hide mine.

We were a good team, and our habits were all around the same level. Sometimes Ricky would do too much and get stupid or have a mini-overdose. We would joke around and say we were the Three Musketeers, but this only lasted a few months.

Rachael quit her job when her man got busted; she couldn’t go through that kind of withdrawal while working. A lot of people were afraid of her because of her connection to her man; they thought she might be hot, too. She probably was for all I know, but I hate seeing someone go through that kind of sickness alone. After a while, Rachael stopped pulling her weight and was into me and Ricky for a few bags each.

This is one of the sadder parts of living this kind of lifestyle; friendships and acquaintances are solely based on services and connections — what can this person do or what can this person get. Friends come and go. Ricky and me could no longer support Rachael’s habit as well as our own. We just stopped looking out for her and eventually stopped calling her. She would later complain that the only time Ricky would call her was when he couldn’t get in touch with me and was looking for something. Rachael knew how to network, though, most addicts do.

Rehabs, methadone clinics, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are great for making connections. Although some people may get something positive from those places, I just think when you put a bunch of addicts together, it leads to no good. Hell, I used to score dope at the methadone clinic myself. You had to be careful, though; most of the workers know what’s going on. They know all the tricks. Every client is a drug abuser of some kind — they wouldn’t be out there if they weren’t.

Addicts think they can hide their habits, but there are too many signs that give it away. If not the eyes or the slurred speech or the blood stains on the sleeve, it might be the track marks or missing money or sudden weight loss. I should point out that two of my old dealers were quite fat, and growing. I tried to stay away from the sweets, but they gave in to the sugar craving too much.

But it’s more than just the heroin that I’m addicted to. I’ve become addicted to the process of shooting heroin as much as I’m addicted to the drug itself. Emptying the bag in the spoon, drawing the water into the syringe, mixing it, maybe cooking it ever so lightly to a boil, re-drawing it from the cotton, flicking out any air bubbles, finding a vein and sticking. Seeing blood return into the needle is the greatest sight I’ll ever see, knowing within seconds I’ll be high. It’s like striking oil. I feel it in my stomach first, then the lungs, and finally my head. A gently warm wave of euphoria.

Needles no longer scare me; I have become the human pin cushion. Ricky would joke and say that if he threw a paper clip at me it would stick. But the truth is that my veins are no longer good; I’ve been doing this for too long and most of my good veins have collapsed. Once rivers of blue have been replaced by purple patches of scar tissue, track marks. It’s almost masochistic. I remember shooting cocaine a few years back and realized that I had stabbed myself over 200 times in a single sitting with the same needle. My forearm swelled up from an infection. I looked like Popeye for a couple days. I was foolish then, I guess. Now I just do the heroin.

I did miss Rachael for a while, and I knew that she was pissed at us. I tried to explain to her that she really couldn’t be upset with Ricky or me because that is the nature of the game.

We would always treat her like a guy, but there were times when she was emotional and sensitive. Not emotional as in crying but emotional as in volatile. She was definitely quick tempered. She wasn’t really that butch, but she sure as hell wasn’t dainty. She could swear better than any girl I knew. She wouldn’t think twice about calling another girl a fuckin’ cunt or telling an ex-lay that he sucked in bed. She could be brutal at times. For laughs she would turn on this thick Maine-via-Kennedy-Park accent and start going off on people. She did eventually start hanging out with a new crowd. Later on I found out she was sucking cock for shit here and there. I hooked her up with a friend of mine who would give her a few bags for head, and I knew he would take care of her and not make her feel bad about herself — not that anybody could. I doubt she has let anybody hurt her or let alone cried in years. Heroin dulls your sensitivity.

I lie to myself a lot, about how much dope I do and the fact that I steal. I do steal — from my family, my friends, from my employer. Most addicts I know don’t work and rely on the state and whatever hustle they got going. Many do the department store routine — stealing shit so you can return it and get the money. Certain places like LL Bean and Home Depot were havens for addicts because of their lenient return policy. But you can only go to the well so many times. Eventually your name gets black listed from those places.

I might have stolen here and there but not from a store. One of my biggest fears is seeing my name in the Press Herald. If I was straight, I still might take shit occasionally if it was a low-risk venture, but not nearly as much as I’ve done as an addict. I would take back LL Bean sweaters in high school for spending money, so I guess my morals haven’t declined that much.

But besides all of that and what drugs will lead one towards, there is something innately wrong with society’s thought process. Yes, drugs are bad, they contribute to the decline of our cities and suburbs and so on. But in a civilized and supposedly free society, whose right is it to say I can’t do something to my own body that really has no direct repercussion to anyone else? If an action of mine compromises the rights or well-being of another, then yes, by all means, punish me. But if I choose to do something in clear conscience to myself, then what right does the state or federal government have to say, “No, you can’t do that to yourself.”

Should drugs be legal? Not an easy question to answer, but the current system — the War on Drugs — is not working. Business 101: there will always be a supply if there is a demand. I think that some of those Partnership for a Drug-Free America commercials are good, but it just isn’t enough.

Heroin is a social disease as much as it is a physical addiction. There will always be a percentage of the population that will continue to medicate themselves. The instant gratification that it brings is unmatched — most addicts would choose heroin over sex every time. There is no comparison. And yet, over-zealous, goateed, DEA agents feel it necessary to prosecute even the smallest of dealers and users with hope of them turning on others, making friends wear wires on friends. They have no consideration for the dozen or so people they have made sick that day or the ones they will make sick next week. Sure it is self-inflicted, but is that reason enough not to have any compassion for them? Sometimes I become tired of all this and want to change teams.

Like I said before, I am sad. I used to think drugs were the reason for my depression, but prolonged bouts of sobriety have proved otherwise. Like most people, there is something missing in my life, and until I figure it out I’ll never get past day two. If I keep this up, I know someday it will kill me. It becomes too frightening at times to see how close I can get to hitting bottom, and then to realize the bottom keeps getting lower. My own private inferno.

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Names and certain details were changed in this story to protect the identity of its subjects.

The damage done, continued

By Anonymous