Just Raven

Wonder Years Part 3/ Heroin addiction can start slowly or it can overcome the human body in a matter of days. Some people can be addicted to it, yet work and carry on with their life like nothing is wrong. A lot depends upon how often it is used, and by which route. Snorting it doesn’t create the same sensation as shooting it up. Also, things depend upon the dose amount and the purity. The more you use in the beginning, the faster you become addicted. I was too chicken to give it to myself at first. I made Jimmy do it. He was using it more and more too.

Heroin has several names. Smack. H. BlackDeath. Of all the narcotics anyone can become addicted to, this drug is by far the worst. It is extremely dangerous when mixed with alcoholic drinking binges and when used with other drugs. Heroin that is used today is wimpy compared to what was around back in the late 1970’s. Modern day stuff is cut down in potency and purity to the point one cannot achieve the numbness.

People react differently to heroin. Some can’t tolerate it and they get a bad case of the shakes, they will vomit violently and generally don’t have a good experience with it. I wish that happened to me. While I did throw up, I liked how it made me totally and completly numb. I liked the warm sensation that crept all over my body. After a few days, the vomiting stopped.

Janine liked it too. She wanted more of it than I did. I think she was needing it more than me too. She was a mess. And she must have been hurting. She didn’t look so innocent anymore, I remember thinking. Suddenly she looked so grown up.

We all got addicted via the fast track. In a matter of a few short weeks.

Billy of course made sure we had plenty of heroin to go around. He made sure it was pure, that we had our own “kit” and supplies. A kit is what is used to shoot up. A little measuring cup, made of steel or tin. A Zippo lighter. A syringe. A little spoon. And a fancy handmade leather arm band. And needles. The only thing that wasn’t included was the medium: Water to heat the heroin in. Everyone had their own stuff. We kept our kits in little silver hinged top boxes. I still have my kit tucked away in some box somewhere in my closet.

Jimmy had learned how to cook his own fix. I watched him cook mine all the time. It was quite a feat to do that without getting burned. Sometime around Christmas of that year, I finally was able to do my own fix. I lost half of it with my shaking and fear, but I did it. The first time is always the worst. You don’t fear the needle going in the wrong way or fear shooting air into your veins and killing yourself; no-you fear wasting the drugs. Soon enough I was an expert. I was able to remove the armband with my teeth before long…at the same time I was injecting….a sign of an addict who knows what they’re doing. When the Zippo ran out, we used stove matches. I always had burn marks on my thumb and fingers from holding the hot measuring cup and match.

I learned not to shoot up in the arms all the time. Doing so would leave track marks and scars. Cops were always looking at the arms first…No, you shoot up between your toes and under the tongue when you want to keep secrets. Luckily, I don’t have scars like Patty does. She didn’t listen to Billy. One could shoot anywhere there is a vein.

It was the same routine, day in and day out. Wake up, shoot up. Eat, if you had an appetite. You tend to loose the appetite when you use heroin. You eat only when you feel like it, which is only when you’re not flying in the numb zone. The only thing I drank was beer. It was cheap and Billy gave it to us. One would spend a great deal of the day just zoned out. Staring out windows and seeking shade from daylight. For some reason I hated being out in the daytime. I remember watching people. Just going about their routines in the day…and wishing I were in their shoes.

We never washed up. There was no time for that and besides who needed to be clean? I would go weeks without washing my hair. Just scoop it all up into a tight pony tail and no would notice. And I would go weeks without changing my clothes. You just didn’t care about those things anymore. All that was important was getting your fix. Life revolved around it and it ran your life. Nothing else mattered.

You would know when it was time for another fix-you would feel the subtle urges start up. If you didn’t feed that urge quickly, you broke out in the sweats and got all shaky. It was an endless, mindless existence that made no sense to any of us. Sleep, zone out, sleep…the same thing everyday. Stand up to shoot up, only to pass out onto whatever was under you. Don’t worry about your kit, it all stayed right on you or in you, or it might all fall out. You cleaned it up when you woke up. We almost always did it while sitting to prevent the mess.

The very nature of narcotics makes them dangerous when abused. In order to get the same effect you get today, you may have to use more of the drug tomorrow. It wasn’t quite that fast, but every couple weeks I needed to use more heroin in order to get numb. I would know when it was time to increase the dose.

By Christmas of that first year away from home, after September 23, I was a full blown heroin addict. And I stayed that way for the next four years. I used other drugs too, smoked things and snorted things. Sometimes we would snort the smack with other drugs and that was always a wild trip. I had hallucinations when we did that. They always seemed so damn real. One never forgets drug induced dreams and nighmares. And through the years if one went back to shooting up, those dreams and ‘mares would come right back.

There is no drug can reproduce the effects of heroin. Cocaine doesn’t even come close, nor do all the mixes of modern drugs. Heroin is in a class all by it’s deadly self.

Most former addicts cannot ever use any form of narcotic drug, for life. It’s too easy to get addicted.