DOSE:

repeated

Heroin

(powder / crystals)

Apathy has been an unwelcome presence in my adulthood. Undoubtedly a huge factor when it comes to my addiction, it gives me an overwhelmingly passive attitude to life, almost as though my life is on cruise control and I have no intention of switching back anytime soon. Plenty of addicts know the feeling all too well; in fact it’s exactly why addicts have no problem with exploiting, conning, stealing, or abusing their closest friends and family as long as they get their fix in the end. It’s an essential part of the quintessential “junkie” persona - a persona which undermines, and sometimes destroys, important relationships, standards, and morals someone could have possibly spent their entire life developing. It’s amazing how fast personalities change when drugs get involved. Hell, who DOESN’T know all about that shit?

That’s the problem with the public opinion of drugs. Everyone knows that drug addictions can ruin lives. In fact, the public expects them to. Depressing stories, horrific pictures of addicts, and the morbid consequences of mingling with drugs are strong-armed into the minds of children via programs like D.A.R.E. and scare tactic commercials, all in a futile attempt to dissuade the youth from even trying them in the first place. Since the Reagan years of “Just Say No” to the modern day War on Drugs, the U.S. government has been flushing billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet for decades over this nonsense of drugs being the scourge of the world. Jesus, if only the public would discover that this phony war has been having the opposite effect on the youth. I can only imagine the backlash.

However, I live in Canada. Fortunately, Canada is considerably less concerned with the impossible goal of ridding the world of drugs. We don’t have half as many anti-drug ads or programs crowding the media like our southern neighbour does. Is it because our government has realized that it’s going to be a part of society as long as there’s a demand for it? Who knows. It’s probably just as big a problem here, but the consequences of being caught holding aren’t nearly as severe as in the US. Thanks to this, a false sense of security has just contributed to my apathy, dulling any sense of threat I would otherwise have. It’s just as good as legal in many junkies’ eyes.

And that is the kiss of death for most of us.

My drug career started in a predictable fashion; it began with some drinking, some pot smoking, the odd MDMA cap, and a psychedelic trip once in a while. I had a close-knit group of friends, all of them interested in experimenting with mind-altering substances with the thinly veiled reasoning of their alleged “mind-expanding” properties. The real reasoning, though, was closer to curing our adolescent boredom. We were late bloomers, only getting into drugs and alcohol in our senior year of high school, which was well after most teenagers start. We were nerdy guys who didn’t party in the same way our peers did. Our idea of a great night involved multiplayer video games instead of drunken dancing and obnoxious yelling. We caught up quickly, though, and over the last few months of our senior year found ourselves part of own group of party people. The drinking escalated quickly, and after our graduation we began to drink and party every day.

At one point, things began to change. To this very day I argue with my pals over when it was exactly. I still believe it was when we all started abusing cocaine. We found a reliable and decent hookup for the stuff eventually, but at the start we had to get it literally off the downtown streets from the sketchiest dirtbags in town. Needless to say, we loved it and we all jumped at the opportunity to pick some up before our parties.

Not too long after we began, I started to go down a different trail. After getting kicked out of a show for being caught with the powder and being forced by the security to flush the rest of my coke, I called back the dealer asking for more. He was fresh out of blow, but had one bag left of another drug - lady H. The big one. The king of opiates. Heroin. Being coked out at the time, I wouldn’t have cared if it were powdered milk, I would have bought it then and there. I dragged two of my friends who also were kicked from the show along with me to my house where we all proceeded to snort the pinner amount of powder.

Heroin became my favourite drug within moments. It toppled any effect any other drug could provide. I felt untouchable. Wonderful. Comfy. Happy. Warm. Opiates have no right being as amazing as they are. They make it all too easy to spend every cent within reach, whether or not it belonged to me, in order to get a shot at that serene, perfect comfort they provide. After the fantastic and unforgettable night of nodding and gaming, I soon came to a realization: without them, life is a grey, dreary place with little to offer, and my two friends agreed with me. So, we began to harass the dealer to give us more, but had no success. He apparently just returned from a big city and just happened to have a bag left over. We were all disappointed, but decided to move on, despite finally finding the holy grail of drugs. The risk of addiction was enough to scare us away from trying it again for some time, but it didn’t last.

Fast forward a few months later; I had just met this wonderful girl with whom I am, to this day, very much in love. We had an instant bond thanks to our similar interests, compatible personalities, and the fun we had together. Little did I know, though, she used to be a meth addict over the summer while she was living with her dad in the big city. The only reason she had to give it up was because she had to come back to her mom’s in our town and our town is pretty dry in terms of meth dealers. So, she did the next best thing and transferred a heroin habit. All of a sudden I was re-exposed to the drug I loved so much, and I embraced the serendipity.

I began joining my now girlfriend on her trips to the big city, which was a commute that took nearly all of our waking hours to just go one way. I fully believed it was worth it. These trips led to meeting the strangest hipsters of the city, all of them junkies. Each of them had their own preference, whether it was meth, crack, heroin, or just regular ol’ booze. The difference between them and I was thankfully my abstinence from injecting. A good majority of these junkie hipsters had no issues with injecting and sharing used needles, and they were persistent in having my girlfriend and I join them. I am so glad I never fell that far into my addiction, but needless to say, I wasn’t just limited to doing smack during that time.

Time passed and I grew weary of the long travelling times, so I began to search for local dealers. It was surprisingly difficult, and more than a few times was I ripped off because of my inexperience with dealing with the sketchy characters involved with the drug game. This all changed when I began to hang out with a new guy in town, a friend of mine named B. He was a smooth operator, able to talk up all the seedy, crooked, scamming scumbags in our town, and always got results. Things greatly improved during one summer when B was able to get the number of these people he met over the internet who claimed they could get top quality dope for cheap. B, my girlfriend and I were instantly sold.

The two fellows who ran this operation we became involved with were not dealers, but merely junkies with good hookups. We gave them money and they bought huge amounts with it from their excellent dealers, they gave us our share at $20 a point, which is around 100mg. We weren’t getting ripped off half as bad as we were on the streets, so the three of us stuck around.

God, these people were fucked. Hailing from South Africa, they had funny accents, were endlessly stupid, and hit on any chick within 20 feet of them. Still, they gave us dope and were the closest thing to reliable we had experienced thus far in our drug odyssey, so we reluctantly stuck around. Tensions built as the months progressed, and the three of us, (plus many other friends of us who started picking up off these guys), were becoming less and less happy with how much the guys profited off and took advantage of us. We made repeated attempts to move on, but our lack of connections made it impossible. They knew that, too.

My girlfriend and I, over time, also drifted from B. He had a fair share of emotional problems and personality quirks which made it difficult to get along with him, and we often found him unbearable to be around. Things were worsening thanks to his long distance girlfriend in Japan and their constant fighting, and it was getting to him in an unpleasantly obvious fashion to the point where everyone around him suffered. His bad attitude left him lonely and circling the drain mentally, and being kicked out of his hotel room, thus becoming genuinely homeless, only made things exponentially worse.

Nobody saw B for a few days at the end of summer and we all wondered what had gone on. A friend of mine was the last person to see him, and she had kicked him out of her house for attempting to shoot up H in her bathroom. Little did she, or anyone, know, but that would be the last time anyone would see B. B had died a few days after that. The police found him in a park, wrapped in a sleeping bag and surrounded in needles. I found out one day when I got a long distance call from his girlfriend in Japan. She was in hysterical and in tears, desperately asking me if I knew anything of what had gone on. I told her the truth of how little I knew about his last few days. To this day I am still unsure what kind of effect his death had on me. I was told he died of an overdose, but our dealers claimed they didn’t get him any heroin recently. It was a really surreal time of my life. B was, in spite of everything, a good friend of my girlfriend and I, and we all had a lot of fun in the short time we spent together. The death of a friend was not enough to shock me into getting clean, sadly. My girlfriend and I continued to use, diving deeper into our addictions.

Another huge step happened sometime later that year. This one guy we introduced to our “dealers” managed to get the number of one of the real dealers, and he passed the information onto us. That was truly the nail in our addiction coffins; instead of trekking out into the world to get our fix, we now could call a number and just wait in the comfort of our homes for the dealer to come to us. My girl and I were so excited. Funnily enough, that was also the last time we hung out with the fellow who gave us the number, though. He’s now in jail for breaking into stores and stealing to fund his intense habit. I can’t help but feel partially responsible due to introducing him to our previous dealers. It appeared as though I was screwing up the lives of everyone I was getting involved with, especially my own.

With my new dealer I was finally getting all the heroin I paid for. That meant more heroin for me, which in turn boosted my tolerance. And with my higher tolerance I needed even more dope to satisfy me. When I found myself broke and without any of the drug, the withdrawals I suffered through were the worst in my life so far. I all of a sudden required way more money to feed both my heroin addiction and brand new crack addiction. This dealer sold crack as well, and after first trying it at my old dealers place I discovered how perfectly it compliments a good heroin high. I needed a small fortune whenever I wanted both the drugs, which was all the time. Bad, bad news. I started to do conniving, horrible things I never imagined I would end up doing, including stealing my parents’ bank cards to withdraw large amounts, selling textbooks I needed for my college classes, begging for money every other day, stealing directly from my senile grandmother, selling all my valuables, et cetera. Cliched indeed, but that is the reality of harder addictions. My debts began to build with my bank account thanks to depositing blank envelopes.

The depression that plagued my early adulthood was becoming deeper the further I fell into the junkie lifestyle. Between my fellow junkie girlfriend, my friends who were occasional users, and a dealer who doesn’t mind fronting, I was too deep in this. Somehow, though, I made this all work for quite some time now. I have managed to hide it from my parents as well, for better or worse. One day I am going to fix my life and get out of this dope-induced limbo. But for now, I am going to go get high.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 89880
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 19, 2011	Views: 54,595
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Heroin (27) : Various (28), Relationships (44), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11)