DOSE:

insufflated

Heroin

(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

I remember meeting my friend Josh. At the time, I was an aspiring recreational drug user - my group of friends and I would smoke marijuana on a daily basis, and additionally pounce on the opportunity of doing anything else that came our way (mostly LSD, mushrooms, ketamine, cocaine, and E). I was a spoiled, upper middle class suburbanite on a self destructive and introspective path of indulgence under the pretense of some vague and undefined spiritual enlightenment (this mostly from all the LSD!).

Anyway, on to my friend Josh... I would occasionally buy some hydroponic reefer from this guy, but only if my other contacts were exhausted at the moment. You see, Josh had a kind of reputation for being shady; for conveniently seeming to lose peoples' money in supsicious deals gone awry. That aside though, he was a cool guy, and we became friends.

Sometime later, I happened to find out that he was nursing a healthy heroin addiction, which spoke volumes about his aformentioned reputation among my friends. Anyway, of course I had to try it, and after some intense convincing, Josh said he'd hook me up. I skipped work one day, went to his house, and railed half a bag of this bitter tasting shit that made me God for the rest of the night. Well, I was god for about 45 minutes, then the nausea set in, and I demoted myself to demigod status. After puking though, I felt just fine, and we proceeded to have a terrific night doing nothing in particular.

A little something I noticed about the actual experience of heroin itself. I had always imagined it to be very mellow; to instill an overwhelming sense of contentedness and general well-being. Wow, I was totally wrong! Of course it does do these things, but at the same time, this shit gets you HIGH. Trying to appear straight while heavily doped up (as I most certainly was that first time!) can often be an exercise in futility (it can be hard to walk, hard to talk without slurring, hard to DRIVE).

And so I went home and promptly went to sleep. One thing about sleeping after a night of heroin use... its great! I slept maybe 6 or 8 hours that night, yet it felt more like 20. I awoke the next morning feeling absolutely terrific aside from vague nausea, and so it began. For the next two and a half years I was a dopefiend in every sense of the word. I would come to erowid occasionally, and laugh at the life-shattering heroin habituation experiences, thinking it would never happen to me. I was, after all, a naive, well-to-do subject of the white upper middle class republican suburban society, with not a care in the world....

...Except (eventually) when the next time me and Josh could drive to the city and get a few bags of dope to get high with was (probably 5 days out of every week). I'd like to say that the things people do while maintaining a heroin addiction are just cliches, and don't happen to 'normal' people. The people that stole money and robbed to fund their dope habits were just city dwelling criminals that didn't really exist, or so I thought. But as much as I hate to write these words, it happened to me.

I'd steal money from my rich parents, I sold anything that I owned of value, and ripped off my previous pothead friends who suddenly seemed to be avoiding me. That was fine though, as long as I could hook up with Josh and sniff some fucking dope, I was A-OK.

During this entire time, I would lie to myself and say that I wasn't addicted, that I was just experimenting (for the 400th time), and that I could stop anytime. I supported this with the fact that I was able to graduate from highschool and successfully complete 2 years of college (with above-average performance) while doing all this, and nobody even knew. They must have known I'd lost weight, that I didn't care how I looked anymore, and during my first period class my teacher would observe me rushing unexcused out of class to the bathroom to puke because I was dopesick 90% of the time, yet they apprently couldn't put 2 and 2 together. The only thing I studied during this time was how much dope I could do and how to have the best time on it (this was easy to figure out.. just lie down). This taught me something about the education system, yet I don't know exactly what, and I didn't care. I was high, man.

I should have known things couldn't go on as they had for very long, and I think in some abstract manner I did, but what eventually happened was very sudden and unexpected. Josh called me one day from one of his friends houses. He had ditched rehab with some girl named Jocelyn, who had 300$ and wanted to get some dope. Sweet! I'll be right there man...

So we drove to the city, dropped 240$ on 3 bundles of dope (10 bags each), and started sniffing it up on the drive home. Throughout the day I had learned that Josh was on methadone treatment in rehab, but I thought nothing of it. They were renting a hotel room for the night, so we headed back there to relax and enjoy our highs. Sometime that night, I had the brilliant idea that we should get some pot, so Josh and I headed to my car to head to one of his friends houses for it (about 20 minutes away). As soon as I stood up, I felt REALLY wierd. I had the dope feeling, but the actual high was like normal dope times ten. We stumbled to the car, brought a bundle with us in case we wanted some more dope during the trip, and set off.

After about 5 minutes I let Josh drive because I was completely wasted, and could barely talk let alone drive. 5 minutes later and he pulled over too so we could walk around; we were both in no position to be driving. So we walked around, thinking wtf was up... we were both professionals, neither of us had ever been to doped out to drive before. We puked, had a couple cigs, felt somewhat better, and decided to keep going. We stopped at a 7-11 to get some heavily caffeinated drinks to bring us a bit out of the decidedly wierd dope high, and when we got back to the car Josh was freaking out because he'd misplaced the bundle we had brought along. Shit!

The next hour or so is hazy to me, we drove back to where we took our breather, then back to where we first switched drivers, and repeated this circuit maybe 3 times. We coudln't find the dope, and were getting seriously pissed and also a bit scared. This dope high was still almost overwhelmingly intense, and it had been a WHILE since we last even had any (a few hours at least). We gave up and drove back to hotel. I somehow convinced Jocelyn to hook me up with one bag for myself, and was getting ready to head home. I was still insanely high from the small amount of dope I'd done 3-4 hours before, and this should have been alarming, but for some reason it wasn't.

At the car my friend Josh said I was his best friend, man. We're going to be friends forever man, when we're in our 30's and shit, man. We hugged then, which was wierd because I've never done anything like that and actually wanted to, but it felt right at the moment and I was too fucked up to give it much thought at all.

I'd like to explain how this high was different. The entire time, I felt like I was on the verge of just dropping out completely, almost like I was in a dream, or watching myself doing the things I was doing from an outside perspective. Thinking was extremely difficult, my vision seemed different, almost as if what I was seeing could fade to complete blackness without warning. And the nausea and puking was outrageous. I've always had a semi-weak stomach, and if I did any medium to large quantity of dope and couldn't just lie down the whole time, I'd usually vomit. This shit, however, had me puking every 15 minutes for the entire night. Wierd!

So I drove home with the music as loud as I could stand it (this helps you drive when you're doped up, low or no music and you risk nodding off behind the wheel), and was afraid to go to sleep. I stayed up as long as I could watching some movies and puking every so often, and I eventually passed out sometime that I don't remember.

I awoke the next morning to a doorbell. I got up and still felt high from the night before, and my brain was still barely functional. I open the door.. It's a cop, shit! I'm immediately suspicious and scared, and ask him wtf he wants. Hi, are you a friend of Josh (xxxx)? (Oh no, im thinking. He did something crazy last night like steal a car after I left, and now I'm a suspect!)
Yes, I'm a friend of his, why?
He died last night at [name of hotel].
(WHAT THE FUCK?)
We'd like to ask you some questions and fill out a report of what happened.

So my best friend was dead. He death was 'heroin related'. I was interrogated for 2 hours and had to file a report, no charges against me. All I did was drive him to the city and get high with him all night, I'm free to go. They only want the bastard that sold it to him. Typical...

And here's the fucked up thing. I have no idea why he died. We had been doing the shit for years, we never touched needles, we did LESS then we usually did that night (although it was some strange dope), and he winds up dead. If this ever gets read by anyone, a response as to what might have happened would be greatly appreciated. With the amount of dope that Josh did this night, I had absolutely no reason to think he'd be in any sort of trouble at all. Later I remembered he mentioned he was on methadone in rehab, and thought there might be some kind of fatal interaction with this, but I dont understand how. Again, he did significantly less dope this night then he was accustomed to, and he died. Please, someone, explain this to me.

Here's where I knew I was done. The next day, just as the death of my best friend was setting in, I finished the bag that I had got from his girl 2 days before, the night of his death. The same shit that had killed my best friend and ruined his family's life, I did more of the exact same dope just two days later. And I couldn't help myself.

And I knew if I knew someone with some dope right now I'd buy some.

And I know that if I had some dope at this very moment I'd be high on it.

This was almost 2 years ago, and I haven't touched the shit since then, but it is a struggle. Its strange how the cravings come too. It's not even an everyday thing. I'll go 3 weeks without giving heroin a single though, just living my life as if I never heard of it. Then one day, craving for the drug will hit me so hard that it almost drives me crazy, and it takes 100% of my willpower not to hop in my car and head to the city.

I'm hoping that I can stay off heroin, for my own life and to honor my friend, Josh. RIP man, we'll meet again.

Peace

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 39517
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 2, 2006	Views: 67,612
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Heroin (27) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Difficult Experiences (5), Bad Trips (6), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Addiction & Habituation (10), Overdose (29), Post Trip Problems (8), Multi-Day Experience (13), Second Hand Report (42), Various (28)