Mood:
d'ohNow Playing: Ritualistically...
Topic: Drugs
STARING AT MY SPOON, dregs of heroin remaining, knowing if I cook them up I will at least feel something…
They say heroin is a drug of rituals (and paraphernalia). During the heavy phase of my addiction I carried with me at all times a little tin box containing spoon, elastic tourniquet, “works” (my 1ml insulin needle-+-syringes), vitamin C, filters and a 50ml bottle of tap water, always fresh that day. Ready to go at all times!
One night, walking past an antiques shop I found a tiny silver jam spoon on the pavement. It seemed perfect for my uses. In fact, the handle was ready bent, junkie-style, so it would sit on a tabletop without spilling. I cooked up my gear in this spoon for several months, joking that I wished I had been born with it in my mouth.
I loved that silver spoon. Unfortunately during one of my botched detox attempts it got thrown away by a well-meaning person. (Not stolen, incidentally: this person was one of the very few I knew who didn’t touch drugs.)
During another of my get clean buzzes, I disposed of all my crack bottles no problem (I had been using crack too heavily at this particular time.) But on seeing my bent-handled spoons collection sitting there waiting to go my heart wrenched out.
Sad to say but I have loved heroin — and I do mean loved it — as nothing else on earth. It has been the be-all and the end all of my life. And as is so very often said, a life on heroin is in very many respects a life made simpler. Heroin is your medicine, your lover, your reason for being, your one-and-all. Life becomes a constant quest to ensure a steady supply.
Whereas with crack, I can always reason to myself that an hour or two later I won’t usually won’t usually feel any better for having taken it, an extra hit of heroin, or heroin on top of methadone would make me feel better all afternoon.
When I have attempted to take the opiates all away — ie to detox myself, as I have done several times over the years, I’ve rapidly become so very bereft without the drugs I couldn’t handle it. I came running back to the “gear” every time.
Trying to explain myself, knowing most of my readers have never had this problem, or at least don’t have it now, I’m confronted by just how very sad this emotional longing is. But addiction is a very emotional thing. Emotions are sad, sometimes. The irony (heroin is a rich source of contradictions) is that the stuff actually robs you, in the end, of the vividness of all feelings.
Right. And I’m stumped for something further to say.
It’s all about circles. Vicious, vicious things.
