I am not going to lie. I am not going to be coy about my past. I am not going to hide behind euphemisms or Narcotics Anonymous slogans. And I am not going to cut corners or try to blunt the needle sharp reality of the events that took place.
When I was nineteen and twenty years old, I was a junkie. For those of you not familiar with informal parlance, I mean that I was a heroin addict, that I ingested heroin so frequently that my body became habituated to receiving external opioid agonists and stopped producing its own natural opioid neurotransmitters. This meant that I would get “dope sick” if I did not ingest heroin. Again, for the uninitiated, “dope sick” is what happens when your body, no longer producing endogenous opioids, does not receive any from external sources and begins to go through what is known as “withdrawal”. Some people liken the sensation to having the flu, but I can tell you that it is actually much, much worse. Opioid withdrawal makes the flu look like a cloudless day at the beach with the breeze coming off the ocean and a fresh piña colada in your hand.
The ironic thing is that I was militantly anti-drug all throughout my high school years. I would actually rip my friends’ packs of cigarettes to shreds, shouting all the while about the evils of smoking. I never drank or smoked pot and I admonished the classmates who did. The very idea of being exposed to ‘hard’ drugs terrified me. I was a straight ‘A’, honor roll student who sat erect in her desk chair and I did not flout the rules. Hell, I had even been the valedictorian of my eighth grade class. My idea of fun was reading and sketching, alone. My chronic anxiety, childhood traumas, and hyper startle response would not let me be anything other than perfect and in control at all times.
That was all about to go up in four alarm flames.
∞
I met my first serious boyfriend, Luke*, when I was sixteen. Luke was twenty one but told me that he was nineteen because (as he later explained) he thought I would not go out with him if I knew our real age difference. He was correct; I would not have. Being highly intelligent and perceptive, I believed that the maturity level of a sixteen year old and someone who can legally purchase alcohol were too different to have a successful relationship. Plus, Luke was just generally bad news: he squatted in the garage of an unoccupied home around the corner, he had a part time job where he made about one hundred dollars a week, he had a perpetually musty odor about him due to lack of hygiene, and he had serious mental issues coupled with a tendency towards suspicion and violence. I only dated him because my father hated him (come to think of it, I didn’t particularly like Luke, either) but I had entered my angry and rebellious teenage years and dating Luke seemed like the best worst thing I could do to express my anger at my dad, my anger over my mother’s death, and blow my ‘good girl’ image to kingdom come.
Luke liked to smoke marijuana and, seeing that no negative repercussions ever arose from this practice, I tried it one day before I was due at work (I was a page at the town library). He and I were sitting on my back steps and I simply asked for a hit. He acquiesced. I took a few more hits and then he drove me (in his employer’s car) to the library. I arrived at work and, suddenly, everything was hilarious! I just kept laughing and laughing; I was having a GREAT time. For someone who suffered from trauma, anxiety, and depression, this marry-ju-anna seemed like a magical elixir. It also made me wonder: if the D.A.R.E. Program had lied about weed, what else had they lied about?
Once I checked weed off of the list, I went all in. I started smoking cigarettes (unfiltered Lucky Strikes, because I saw a flapper Julie Andrews buy a pack in the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie), tried cocaine and ketamine and ecstasy over the next year or so, and started binge drinking. I maintained my honor roll status all throughout. I was just naturally curious about what the next drug would make me feel, and I found that I liked every feeling except for the way I felt sober. Any chance for respite from my sober unhappy state of being was frantically seized upon. What I really needed was therapy and pharmaceutical treatment, but, as I was still pulling in A’s, no one knew the extent of my trauma, depression, and anxiety. I wasn’t even aware of it myself, due to my coping strategy of burying memories of numerous traumatic experiences so deeply that I literally did not remember them. I just knew that I was angry and sad all of the time and intoxicants made those unbearable emotions go away.
Naturally, by spring of my senior year, Luke and I had broken up (turns out that he liked sleeping with younger girls in general and I, for my part, was done with our ‘romance’ the day he picked me up by my throat and slammed me against the bathroom wall). Life went on and I did, too.
I graduated and went off to Douglass College, Rutgers, New Brunswick. I arrived with expectations of a fresh start and rock solid ambition buoyed by the fact that I had received not one, but two scholarships based on academic merit. Again, however, I met a guy and we eventually became a couple; he turned out to be a sweetheart but was, ultimately, a far worse influence than Luke had ever been. My new beau, Mickey, first came over on New Year’s Eve carrying a single red rose, which he proffered shyly. He taught me about IDM music and would take me to shows in NYC and Brooklyn, paying for everything. I had always been interested in computers, and Mickey, lacking a mouse, could navigate around a screen using only a keyboard. He taught me about Unix, Linux, and the importance of disk de-fragmentation with Windows. Thanks to Mickey, I learned about the existence of drivers and was able to successfully install my printer after the corporate tech guy I phoned for assistance failed. Mickey was a low level hacker, and I thought that was just the coolest thing. He worked at an animal shelter and had a pet gecko that he loved like his own child. Plus, he had a genuinely optimistic outlook and possessed a rare sense of daring humor. What can I say? He made me laugh.
The problem with Mickey is that he liked to do heroin every now and again. So did all of his friends. I could always tell when Mickey was high because he had ice blue eyes and, with his pinpoint pupils, the blue of his irises really showed. He looked like an Arctic wolf, so I started referring to his heroin use as “wolf eyes”. Once again, I didn’t see any of the TERRIBLE OUTCOMES that D.A.R.E had presented as inevitable when one uses heroin. I merely saw a group of somnolent, relaxed people with constricted pupils smoking cigarettes and scratching themselves. It looked… well… nice.
In September of my sophomore year, only two weeks in, actually, Mickey came to my dorm with a couple of bags of heroin. He suggested that I try some (obvious sarcasm in 3, 2, 1: just so I could have first hand experience with the stuff and would be more completely informed, one knows, because one never knows when a debate about heroin is going to pop up and one certainly does not wish to appear ignorant). Obviously, that was not my rationale for trying one of the most infamous and addictive narcotics known to man. It was more that I was so comfortable around Mickey and so trusting of him that I thought, “Why not?” So I snorted half of a bag. Within 1.7 seconds I felt all of my trauma, anxiety, and despondency simply disappear. I actually felt okay being in my own body for the first time in my entire life. A pleasant warmth radiated through me and a comforter of contentment cocooned me. I thought to myself: “This is how I want to feel forever. I just want to feel at peace, I just want to feel okay.” I was addicted after that first taste, not physically, of course, but psychologically. But it was not the drug that hooked me, it was what I was bringing to the table when I used. I’ve known people who have tried heroin and never touched it again; it didn’t do anything for them. But I, with my cargo ship’s worth of emotional baggage, fell in love. Hard.
As with all young love, I began by only dating heroin once or twice a week. But, as my (poppy) love blossomed, it became every other day, and, sure enough, every day. I was dating heroin from September to May. Those nine months were marred by death after death of friends: Rudy ate a bullet when going through withdrawal, Sam was found alone in his apartment sitting at his computer (rigor mortis had set in), and Kirk was found dead by a stranger, frozen solid in his car at a rest stop outside of Woodbridge off of the NJ Turnpike. Mickey, himself, almost joined them when he injected a “speedball” (heroin and cocaine) and was breathing so shallowly that he turned gray in his face.
The thing about heroin, the first deception, is that it looks so innocuous: it comes in small glassine paper envelops, carefully taped closed, and stamped with the “brand” of the dealer or cartel that produced it. Some of the brands were fairly funny, actually; they revealed a cleverness that one does not normally associate with international narcotics distribution rings: stamps like “CA$H MONEY” or “G-UNIT” or a leprechaun with his pants around his ankles, coyly exposing his globular arse cheeks. The dope itself, with its country farm egg shell hue and tendency to coagulate into little flakes (Heroin Flakes: The Breakfast of Champions!) looked more like your grandmother’s face powder than an addictive life-ruining drug.
But heroin reveals its hidden agenda when you mix it with water in one of your mom’s antique teaspoons to prep an injection: as soon as you mix the dope with water it turns a really ugly shade of stagnant swamp sewage brown. I’m talking brown like you ate chocolate cake and then had explosive diarrhea. That kind of brown. Mickey got into needles; I stuck to insufflation (snorting). My decision to snort was pure addict thinking: heroin lasts longer if it is inhaled as opposed to injected; so, in essence, I was getting more bang for my buck. I was a smart addict; after all, I had gone to college for a year.
∞
Sick and tired of going to funeral after funeral and tired of being sick, Mickey and I decided in early May to quit heroin cold turkey. I snorted my last half of a bag at work around noon, came home around two PM, and decided to take a nap. When I awoke at about eleven PM, I was already going through withdrawal. Not knowing what else to do, I confessed my drug use, addiction, and present sickness to my dad. The next morning I was roused by my father who told me to pack a bag: I was entering detox at a rehab facility a little ways north. Packing that bag was THE HARDEST thing I had ever done at that point, I was that sick. The very act of putting pants in the bag took every fiber of willpower I possessed. I don’t know how I managed the feat, but, bag in tow, I went off to rehab.
Once I had completed my rehab stay (where one of the counselors came into my room, closed the door, and started fondling me while telling me how “sexy” I was; I reported him and got him terminated. I might have been an addict, but I still had self respect) I felt GREAT. I was clear headed, my sex drive had returned, and, simply put, I could actually feel again. But sobriety is a road with many twists and turns, and I did relapse once or thrice. But, the last time I used REALLY settled the matter for me.
An old high school friend, Joe, had also just gotten out of rehab. His family gave him a job in the family business, rented him a three floor walk up apartment, did his food shopping, and put his earnings into a bank account that Joe had no access to. One day, bored, alone, and missing my old flame, heroin, I called Joe and asked if he wanted to pick up some dope and chill for the evening. I guess that he was missing his old flame, too, for he agreed.
I had wanted to go to my usual spot on Grafton Avenue in Newark, because I knew and trusted the dealers there, but Joe was so anxious to get high that he suggested that we go to Stephan Crane Village, which is a mere five minute drive from my house. I didn’t like the idea; everyone knew that those projects and the people who lived there were bad, bad news. Joe had made up his mind, however, and, since he was driving, we bee lined into the lion’s den. Since Joe had no funds, I paid for the stuff: four bags at ten dollars a bag. We would each get two bags, which is more than enough to have a good time.
When we settled in at Joe’s apartment, he put on some water to boil to make ramen. He sat in his reclining leather desk chair and I sat on his bed. I warned him to take only half of a bag to start: we had no idea what our tolerances were after rehab, nor did we have any idea how potent the dope was. Instead of heeding my advice (again), Joe immediately snorted both bags. He then opened a pint of tequila and began drinking. I warned him that mixing central nervous system depressants was a terrible idea, but he continued nursing that bottle. Then he went on “the nod”. I shrugged and snorted half of one bag. Within seconds I knew that something was very, very wrong. I felt way too high, like I was going to pass out. Then I remembered the pot of water on the stove. I half stumbled, half fell into the kitchen, turned off the burner, and sat at the kitchen table with my head cradled in my folded arms. Then I passed out.
I don’t know how long I sat like that, but, when I came to, it was dark out. I tried to push myself up off of the table only to find that my right arm from elbow to fingertips was completely numb and incapable of movement. I was concerned by this, but was much, much more concerned when I went to go check on Joe. I called his name. No response. I shook him. No response. I slapped his face, hard. No response. I filled a glass with cold water and threw it in his face. No response. That’s when I saw that Joe had a sickly blue color to his face and neck and I heard him breathing in a shallow, raspy way; the breaths were too slow and far in between. I picked up his cell phone, but, with my paralyzed hand and no signal, I couldn’t call for help. I tried going outside to see if I might get reception out there, but the phone refused to cooperate.
I ran back inside and up to the apartment beneath Joe’s and pounded on the door with my left hand. A concerned looking young woman opened the door and I shouted, “I need a phone, quick! My friend is overdosing upstairs!” She jetted like the wind and handed me a cordless phone. While I dialed 911 with my left hand, I asked her what the address was. When the operator came on the line, I said clearly and with urgency, “I need an ambulance to 143 Harrison Ave. in Belleville, top floor. My friend is overdosing on heroin.” Without waiting for a response, I handed the phone back to the woman and rushed upstairs. I began CPR on Joe, which is no easy task with only one working hand. I was still at it when EMTs and police swarmed into the apartment. They carried Joe out on a stretcher and into the waiting ambulance and sped off to the hospital. I gave my remaining bag and a half to the police and, after answering some questions at the precinct, was driven home. I went to bed, still woozy from the dope.
The next morning my dad entered my room without his usual courtesy knock to tell me that a woman identifying herself as Joe’s mother had just called: Joe was in a coma, brain dead, and on life support. He had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She wanted to speak with me as soon as possible. My dad half asked, half demanded, “What happened last night?” I, still groggy from the dope, responded that Joe had drank too much and that I had had to call 911. My dad seemed to half accept this lie, for he promptly exited my room.
I lay there as the severity and finality of the news bowled me over like a tsunami wave. Joe had died. Joe was dead. And I was the reason.
I lay there for a long time before I was capable of considering anything else. Finally, I remembered my paralyzed right hand. I tried to raise it, to extend my fingers, but nothing happened. I was immensely concerned, but my hand would have to wait. I had to call Joe’s mother at the hospital. When I reached her, she was teary and clearly in desperate pain, but she asked if I would like to come visit Joe and tell her what had happened. I agreed and hung up the phone full of trepidation and worry.
I arrived at the hospital early in the afternoon and was led to the ICU and to a curtained off bed where Joe was, looking for all the world like he was merely sleeping. This illusion was shattered by the various machines he was hooked up to: a respirator, a heart monitor that beeped quietly, and a number of electrodes taped to various areas of his scalp. They weren’t registering anything; the screen recording their output displayed a flat green line. Joe’s mother was sitting in a chair a few feet from the bottom right side of the bed. Her movements were slowed down and her speech was slurred a bit; it was clear that she was heavily sedated and her face still bore the marks of long, agonizing weeping. She smiled at me and urged me to visit with Joe. I approached him and, with my left hand, held his right. “He’s warm,” I said stupidly. Joe’s mother asked me basic questions about the previous night’s events. I didn’t tell her that I had contacted Joe or that I had paid for the dope, but I was mostly honest. She looked crushed for a moment, than thanked me and said that she would keep me updated on Joe’s progress. I respectfully took my leave.
Two days later they took Joe off of life support.
As promised, his mother called to tell me when and where services were to be held. I arrived at the wake, paid my respects to Joe, and then, feeling asphyxiated by the crowded room and my own guilt, sought and found a single chair just outside of the viewing room. I began to sob quietly. An elderly woman noticed and asked me kindly, “Were you one of Joe’s friends?’ I nodded in assent. She then asked what my name was. When she heard the reply, her eyes widened and tears brimmed without spilling. “Sarah? That Sarah? The one who was with Joe that night?” I waited for her to bring down every Old Testament punishment upon me. Instead she hugged me and whispered “Thank you. Thank you for what you did.” Then she called the attention of a few people nearby. “This is Sarah,” she told them, as if those three words conveyed everything. One after another the people hugged me and thanked me. I was at a complete loss, but every embrace and heartfelt “Thanks” only made me more certain that I was the reason Joe was dead.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I learned that Joe had overdosed once before and that the people he was with (people I knew and looked up to) simply loaded him into a car and dropped him on his front lawn like a pile of trash, leaving him to fate and chance. His mother discovered him, barely breathing, when she woke at six AM and, luckily, looked out the window. In light of this revelation, the incomprehensible gratitude of the mourners began to make sense: they were thanking me for not abandoning him, for calling 911, for trying to help him. This new understanding simply tore out my heart. I felt more guilty, more culpable than ever. Did I warn Joe several times about various things that night? Yes. Did I remember to turn off the stove? Sure. Did I try to rouse him repeatedly? I did. Did I call emergency services when that failed? Of course. Did I administer CPR? Did I cooperate with the police? Did I hand over my remaining heroin as evidence?
Did I do enough?
Did I do too much?
After all, I had called him to get high. And paid for the shit.
To this day, I often wonder if I am the heroine? Or simply the heroin? One letter and an ocean of guilt separate the two, and I have never been comfortable accepting either mantle. Perhaps because, once I have chosen, I actually have to face what happened and take ownership of my actions, and that’s not something I am capable of doing just yet. Not yet.
Addendum
When the heroin I had turned over to law enforcement was tested in a laboratory, it was found to be cut with strychnine (aka: rat poison).
*All names, save for that of the author, have been changed to protect identity.