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The reasons we tell our sordid life stories vary widely—from surprise to amusement to awe, or even sometimes horror. But then there are stories that are quietly held, even oddly cherished. The story of a user and his/her drug is, at its simplest and most complicated, an intimate but shameful one. It’s a tale reserved for sharing at 4am on the dark back porch, or revealed inadvertently in a misguided attempt to one-up a new acquaintance, or when playing “Truth or Dare.” There’s some kind of mystical power surge when you reveal your drug resumÈ. Of all the drugs to brag about, however, heroin holds the greatest power as a novelty, inciting a reverence, but also a most profound shame. While the reaction factor is priceless, it also takes its toll on the human spirit.
I never imagined the story I associate with my own coming of age could cause reactions like stunned gasps and long periods of uncomfortable silence, followed by rapid-fire questions for gory details. Heroin, it seems, is still just out of reach of even the heartiest of partiers. It has a Holy Grail quality to it and its esteem is astounding to me, considering our socialization around this headliner of poison. There is both fascination and horror with heroin and with good reason—it’s not a pretty drug; its high is anti-social; it doesn’t enhance your mood at all; and, as a culture, we are often plagued by the many examples of its gruesome and shattering demise. Telling a story of heroin abuse signals to many the end of a line for a person—a last resort, the ultimate fork in the highway of a tortured life. But the telling of this story is inescapable—as we search for commonality with each other and as the reality of its meaning changes with each passing year.
Ten years ago, I used heroin regularly for the last half semester of my senior year in college. Despite its remote location, the small college town’s proximity to New York City made for a rampant and regular hardcore drug-dealing enterprise. The girl and I met at a concert—I was 20 years old, she was nearly 36. We dated briefly, making deep black coffee and chain-smoking until dawn, she on her pills and booze—me on the ultimate older artist woman high.
She got into the dope while I was in Seattle on an internship my junior year of college. I don’t know where or how she decided to try it—but it was the end of her line, apparently. Our weekly phone conversations got progressively shorter and slurred, interrupted frequently by mysterious bouts of puking. In August I returned to find her looking basically the same, as I’d always known her—sexy, stringy, paint under her fingernails, brooding stare, goofy smile, light Boston/Brooklyn accent that made me weak in the knees. She was heroin chic even before she starting shooting. She confessed her heroin abuse to me one night and having only after school specials as a reference, I started doing drug runs when she was too sick to go herself, holding her head over the toilet as she barfed up what little she’d managed to drink or eat. Mostly, we sat around a lot and waited. Waited for it to kick in, waited for her shakes to subside, waited for her to be able to eat something and keep it down for once. It was gross and sad and I loved her to pieces, so, of course, I ended up trying it.
The mirror’s edge was hand-painted by her—I remember there was her signature blue in it. The cut piece of plastic straw was bright fluorescent green, the razor blade clean. She said to me, “You’ve seemed curious about it lately.” I remember nodding and quickly saying, “Yeah, sure, let’s do it. So, what do you do?” It’s one thing to watch someone you adore use and use and use the shit, but it’s another thing to not even be paying enough attention that you could do it yourself. My reasons for snorting that first line seemed legitimate—I wasn’t looking for escape like her, I just wanted to be where she was—I wanted to understand to where my friend had disappeared.
After that, I was your basic beginner heroin clichÈ—dissing friends, missing dates and classes. I remember sitting at an Ani Difranco show with a cup of water in one hand and the cup to catch the puke in the other. I remember nodding out on her couch; I remember something about a raccoon in the road. I remember the rumor of bad smack from the City that could kill you, so I snuck extra dope bags for later until the scare passed. I remember a small table in my bedroom with its own snorting station—the door locked to protect my stash from the house dog.
Five weeks passed, using nearly every day and then I started to understand where my friend was. She’d come to me looking for money or something to sell—acting television crazy. I started thinking she was going to steal from my house or from me—me who had cared for her and helped her and fed her and bought her fucking drugs. I even got high for her—and with that, the understanding of this shit’s reality came just as quickly as my foray had begun.
That’s the heroin story—the one that’s stopped conversation and stunted parties. Its meaning holds a vast difference from yesterday and the year before, but I’m not proud of anything about it, except that my friend is still alive and maybe I played some small part. The ghosts don’t haunt me anymore and I’ll defend my dope for love scheme any day of the week, reactions be damned.
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