.
As was written: the neighbourhood's heroin junkie community were all cooped up sick in Grace's apartment, laying out in the tawdry summer afternoon, moaning and groaning and vomiting and waiting for something to move. Some addicts were worse than others, some handled sickness better, some were not yet sick and had the added horror of watching what would become of them in the next few hours. It had begun as a din of panic, cursing, snivelling and dripping noses, but as the summer day wore on, as the dealers' phones remained off, as the sun settled in the west and the smell of kebabs and Greek vine leaves made their way down from the high-street, the room fell into a sick and deathly trance. And with the falling light came shadows and into those shadows the features of the ill receded, only the twisted outlines of their forms left visible, each man and woman suffering in their own hell, in their own darkness, their minds wandering over the battlefields' of their lives, a collective of tragic and disquieting thoughts and images filling the room in a tension of atmosphere that hung and buzzed in the air and became the sound of waiting and suffering itself.
The room was square with a bay front window facing out onto the street. Along the back-wall was a decomposing sofa-for-three, along the left-wall a sofa-for-two, and in the alcove, under the bay window, was a bean-bag and on the bean-bag was a dog. The windows were covered by a heavy brown blanket, and in the slatted light, of late afternoons, hung like a thick waterfall of dust. The only time light ever got in, in any decent measure, was when pushing the blanket aside to watch for the dealer coming into sight down the road. But there was no light coming in now, and no dealer was on his way.
Grace lay flopped out on her side, her head resting against the filthy arm of the eaten and mouldy three-seater, warm-sick-tears running constantly from her left-eye and over her cheek-bone. She didn't look at anyone and didn't care if anyone was looking at her. No-one was, of course, there was real suffering in the room and pain or tears had no gain here and so were muted and internal.
As with everyone Grace's mind was ambushed by thoughts completely outside of her control. Terribly bleak images of the past and atmospheric hallucinations arrived as if from another place and seemed to have more to do with the present than anything else. Up in Grace's mindseye, drifting out into the room, were thoughts of her partner George, his mind shot through from years of substance abuse and trauma, laying on the bed in the adjacent room, as sick as anyone but completely unaware it was heroin withdrawals which were raging through his body. She wished that she could be that blissfully unaware of what the sickness was. That's the problem, she thought, knowing that this could all end with just a pathetic quids worth of pathetic smack. Her thoughts of George were clouded by a great sadness. Not for George, for herself, of how she had ended up with this man-sized-dead-weight attached to her and how he was the anchor of all her problems, and yet, how she needed the money his incapacity benefit brought in more than she didn't need him. She thought these thoughts as she lay there, her liver aching from hepatitis and no medication to soothe the pain. At times she wanted to break down entirely butshe knew it would only deprive her of more energy and she had no more to give. She thought of the best-of-the-bad-days, back in the seventies, when she'd had ounces of smack and was doing well and how useless life-lived and former success was now. And yet it seemed so close. Like there was some way back if only she could find it, like she could wake from sleep and rejoin those good moments of her old life, like that heroin and that youth and that flat in Leytonstone were somehow accessible through some as yet undiscovered science. It was hard to accept that all she once had was now gone, that even something that passed only a second ago was over for ever. It wasn't right. To Grace it felt more like she had stored her nuts in the past and was rich and well if only she could find her way back. The idea of time and space were lost in her, and now, all that was left was her ravaged body, suspended in the seemingly eternity of sickness, and memories drifting by as the sticky summer night wore on and brought more pain each moment. How things change so quickly, she thought. How one day you're young and healthy and the next you're 25 years into the future, a long-term-junkie-case with a bad liver and no energy reserves. And that's what Grace was thinking as she lay there sick in her flat that evening with hot tears leaking out her eye and not a score to be found in the entire fucking town.
David was on his back in the middle of the floor, his knees arched, his eyes scrunched shut in pain. Every now and again he would grimace, make a snivelling sound, and then go “Aaaaaaaahhhh” : it was the sound of absolute suffering itself. Sometimes David would shake, intentionally, as a way to pass time and keep his thoughts on the rhythm he shook to and not the illness working away inside him. The most important thing was to not let the present fall still around him, a place where time stops and the true hell of junk withdrawal begins. He was thinking of his phone, imagining it down by his head on the floor, joyfully lighting up and ringing and vibrating, his dealer's name shown across the screen. He was willing it to ring. He thought that by willing it hard enough he could make it happen. Illness was only a good half-a-day in him and already he was onto miracles. His muscles ached and he fidgeted. His spine was sore against the hard floor, but if he moved then his shoulder felt worn and bruised and the angling of his body upset his stomach and he'd then retch and have to rush to the toilet. Memories of his last serious bout of illness settled in his mind, how after a moment he'd given up and just let his body malfunction, but now, today, he figured he had at least another full night in him before his insides melted to mush and his sphincter gave way. At times David would roll his body gently from side to side, and to that lulling motion he would think the words: Ring.Riiing. Riiiiiiiing.
Tabatha sat on the edge of the two-seat-sofa clutching her terribly thin stomach and rocking back and forth with her eyes closed. Her head was down and her straggly blond hair, greasy with sweat, fell over her face in a mop. She was wearing a pair of grey leggings and a dark tube-top and with her flat-chest it looked like her torso was bandaged in black. She was plagued by thoughts of the day her husband was jailed, how she missed the trial from running from one end of the borough to the other on a wild goose-chase of scoring smack. She hadn't seen him since, had missed the two prison visits she had been reserved, but would love to see him now. She was onset by visions of the white handkerchief, held up and waggled in the air, then the same handkerchief taken away by the wind and an inexpressible sadness going with it as it rose and swooned in the blustery day. It was the dealer who had waggled the handkerchief, a black man who had appeared up at the corner of the road, stood there just long enough to be noticed, then held up the cloth and shook it like a dead rat caught by the tail, a sign to all the surreptitious junkie eyes watching that dinner was bagged and ready to be served. Tabatha didn't remember the score nor the dealer's name or face, just the handkerchief and how after conducting business it had escaped his hand and was taken away by the wind. That vision now made her cry. She twisted her face up in pain and anguish and rocked at an increase pace trying to block out and deny the image in her head. That cloth being torn away like that, puffed and sucked and flapped and battered, dropped and then picked back up again, somehow embodied a great tragedy. She didn't understand what she found so tragic in that struggle, or why such a barren memory had returned like this, but there seemed something greatly foreboding in it and her illness unfurled to that blustery day, back then, when scoring her rocks was more important than anything else, more important than her husbands plight and whether he was sent to prison or not. Now, in this position of junk withdrawal, just to have her husband back she felt she could be the most honest, the most trustworthy and self-sacrificing soul ever, that she could do anything just for him, just for the strength of him fending for her - physically rebelling against addiction - stealing and begging to keep them well. It was heroic. He was heroic. She was a miserable bad catch. She thought how lucky he was being in prison, warm and well and not addicted to anything. She wished she was in prison. She was crying inside. She told herself it all had to stop: all the pain, the lying, the cheating, the filth, the illness. But she knew, and her heart knew: this was only about pain, as even while she was in the very midst of cursing heroin and promising to get clean she was there waiting to score, to get better, and once better she knew that all these silly-sentimental-thoughts would end.
Nick sat slouched back leaning against the side of the mounted gas-fire on the right-side wall with his legs pushed out straight. He was a tall, broad, rangy addict with black hair and an olive coloured tint to his skin. He seemed to faintly glow in the dark. He had his shoes off and wore no socks and around his right ankle was dried blood from some old fix. He looked at the blood and as Grace had done with her past now he did the same: tried to figure out the route he had taken from that injection to here and wondering if he could have changed his fate with a few different choices. But something wasn't quite right. In the world of Nick's mind a forlorn omnipresent gloom hung in the heart of all memory, like a default recollection of some barren landscape he had known and which was hard-coded into the kernel of his brain. It felt like à memory from a time before he was born, from a former life, of another world to this one. Nick remembered the golf course on that early winter morning of the day his mother died, cutting across it on his way to score more crack. There was a low mist floating just above the dew on the grass and way over to where he had to get to the sky was pale blue with a small, distant, brittle sun straining useless against the frost. A lone flag rippled on a distant green. He didn't know it then but his mother was spasming and contracting in a hospital bed, suffering the first of two heart attacks she was to have that day without either of her two sons being there. She died alone that evening to the face of a strange doctor and Nick was now all crumpled up inside with guilt and empathy and pain, fixated on the terrible part he had played in her last hours, in her last ever moments in the history of everything. He would never see her again, never have her bail him out with money again, never apologise to her again or gouch out on the seat beside her again. He saw the distant flag flapping in the cold morning. A stray bird scattered like there had been a crack of a shotgun. The smell of the turf rose up from the dew and mist. His mother was gone forever-eternal and he whimpered when understanding the reality of that now and wishing he had realised it before.
And why hadn't Nick made it to the hospital? There had been time. His mother's death had been officially called at just gone 9pm that evening. Nick's mind did not approach this question directly, rather his brain went through the two contrasting fates: his evening, and the evening of his mother (or how his mind imagined it unfurled at any rate.) He had been warned she was gravely ill but he'd convinced himself that it was no longer a matter of life and death, that she'd survived the first attack and was now in the best place possible to be kept stable and calm. And anyway, he had reasoned, she's not conscious so even if I visit tonight she'll not benefit in any way. Junk sickness pawed at Nick's mind and tormented his inner-self. He saw a retracted image of himself, hunched over his crack pipe, like a classic conspirator, loading it up, bringing it to his mouth, lighting it, hearing the crackle of the crack... sucking in... Deeeeeeep... holding the smoke, then, release:...... ........ ........ ........ ........ ....... ....… Going silent as a few seconds of agitated and frenzied brain activity took place within him and he felt a pulsating excitement towards the world – or at least he should have. But Nick was troubled that afternoon, the early evening too. His promise of getting to the hospital had plagued his crack session and all along he cursed his obligation and cursed his mother for falling ill after all he had done to get the money. He told himself he could visit the next day and make up some excuse as to why he'd not been able to get down earlier. But there was no next day for his mother: she died some hours later and Nick missed the call and so received a text with the news instead. In Nick's mindseye now he could see himself stood in the light of a bus-stop, wailing with a face full of tears and grief and bringing up the message to show to his oldest dealer, using his mother's death to procure a free bag of brown. And it worked. He knew it would. It was a calculated decision to see that particular dealer with that particular news. He felt smart at the time, but now he felt like a rat and alongside his ever worsening junk sickness and the bleak and barren world that haunted his existence, he now felt a deep sense of shame, more than shame, because this feeling was internal and honest and connected to his abstract being by a thousand different threads, each one derived from some low or despicable act until now he needed drugs not to block out any pain but to block out himself, so as he didn't have to live with or face up to all he had done to survive. And the evening of his mother's passing, after he finally got his fix, he said it was the greatest fix of his life. Of course it was: he had spared himself one of the greatest and most important traumas a man must live through, and more, had convinced himself that his mother had somehow been embodied in the shot of smack, that she had come to him that way and soothed him and said she understood and forgave and loved him. But now, in this terrible dark light of sickness, in this sticky summer night, in this room of decay and disease, endings were not so neatly tied. In illness memories returned and the internal voice got loud. Nick beat himself up over his actions and grieved for his mother now. He cried, and he did make a sound, and he did say “mum”. But the truth was he wasn't crying for his mother but for comfort, for self-pity and redemption, for something to cure the pain. He was crying for heroin, and he knew it, and knowing it made him cry even harder still.
The dog was on the bean bag, beneath the bay windows, coiled up like a snake. It ressembled a Golden Retriever only with short bristly fur which gave away its mongrel breeding. The dog stank. It stank of tongue and arsehole and bad food and from licking the black resinous spots in the carpet where things had been spilt or thrown up and trodden in. It was hot on the bean bag but it dared not move. In the summer night it was thirsty and panted whenever it lifted its head to look around. There was water in the taps but noone had the strength to get up and fill the mutt's bowl. So it lay there, coiled up and sad, its large eyes, underlined with black, staring over at its owner who lay flopped out on the settee opposite. If there was a worldly sadness in the room, something seeing the greater tragedy, it came from the mutt. The dog understood it all: it understood the tawdry summer night, the passing of time, death and illness better than anyone else. The dog didn't know what was wrong, but it knew from procedural memory that when its owner was lethargic like this that its own stomach got empty, that it had to piss and shit in the hallway or kitchen and that things would only get better once Grace was again animated and talking as rapidly as she usually did. The dog was down. It could sense the weird desperate malaise in the room and didn't yap or whine or interact much at all. Quite unaware of it, the dog was waiting for the sound of its chain, for its empty bowl to be taken and replaced, for someone to beckon him over and allow him to lick the blood from off their fingers. It was lazing just now but it wished it was on a full belly. Hungry and dehydrated the dog couldn't find sleep in its rest. In the heat it would at times uncoil, push its front legs forward, kinda half lift its head and panting, look around at all the junkie bodies sprawled out. Then it would whimper lightly and lower the underside of its jaw flat against the floor. And like that it would remain, its large sad eyes to the world.
Mitsy was maybe more sick than any other addict. She was over a day and half in and hadn't slept and the sound of her dry retching, vomiting and snot bubbling in her nose would be one of the retaining memories of all the group. Mitsy was in her mid-forties, very small and nimble with dark medium length hair, threaded through with grey and pulled back into a dove-tail. Because of her slight size she was always treated more like a teenage girl than an adult female, and because she had always been seen and treated as such she had adapted herself to fit that image and would whore out her adolescent charm, talking in a dumb, babyish way, giving hugs and huge loud ultra-friendly THANK YOUs in exchange for free sprinkles of smack or crack or anything else which came her way. Everyone had a scam, worked some kind of angle, and that was hers. At certain intervals during her sickness she would crawl across the room, approach some addict like a cat sniffing at a face, whisper something like “I'm dying, babes” then take up a position besides him, her body tucked in, rocking in pain before giving up and moving onto the next. Her instinct for whoring dope would not desert her, even when she knew there was none to be had, even when the wells really were dry. So she'd crawl off and take up a place alongside someone else, trying to find a position that'd let her be comfortable for even just a few seconds.
As Mitsy lay on the floor, all the muscles in her stomach sore, she imagined the time before she was a junkie and how light the world now seemed – even with all the problems she thought she had then. Memories of the aftermath of her first real broken heart gripped her, how she wanted to die when that had finished and how she had met Scouse Wally not long after and tried to rediscover artificially in him all she had lost. But this time she would strive to become a part of his existence entirely, be indispensable, so as he'd need her all along his life. She remembered their early days together, in a flat only two streets down the road, how they had lived there with nothing but love, and how the bare walls and floors had held all the promise of a wonderful future together. Echoes of how their laughter used to ring out in that place came to her, how they'd arrive home freezing cold in winter and spring, and having no heating get into bed together and watch TV just to be warm. But these memories hurt now. It seemed the happiest recollections were the most awful and empty. In the dark space around herself she now trembled and retreated alone, her young life playing out in a series of memories in her head, a desperate sadness rebounding away into the forever of time. She remembered bare skin, smooth and soft and clean and unmarked. How they'd scamper naked from the bed to the bathroom and come rushing back, twice as fast, all goosepimply and making cold-sounding sounds FRRRRRRRRR while diving back into the bed and wriggling down into the warmth. But, then heroin came into the flat and that comfort and innocence was never the same again. Suddenly they didn't need each other to make themselves warm, and not long after that they didn't need one another at all. The bed became a pit of crumbs and ash and cigarette burns, both living off their side of it, Wally lent over one way smoking his smack and eating bowls of Weet-a-bix and her lent over the other way doing the same. Regardless, compared to what they would become, the early days of heroin still seemed fun and romantic – going out with unbrushed hair and crumpled clothes, both malnourished through youth and a militancy towards life, running around town grabbing bags of smack from dealers' hands, shopping cheap food and cereal and picking up little things from the market to attach to their hair or clothes. That was before the bite of addiction became lock-jawed and before Wally started borrowing her out to acquaintances for sexual favours.Then Wally got sick and lost all the weight and disappeared, and when she next had news he was back up in Liverpool and was suffering from some kind of cancer. Of course, she knew it wasn't cancer: Wally was HIV+. The doctor at the drug-clinic had told her as much when pushing her to get tested herself. She tested negative, but didn't care so much anyway. All these images and memories that came to Mitsy were blighted with the same bleak and hollow atmosphere, taking place in a weird, estranged space which was somehow her past and future too. I'm sick, Mitsy thought, I'm sick through heroin: I'm a heroin addict. Mitsy needed to vomit again, but there was nothing to vomit. For a moment she thought she was back in that old flat, the bed gone, the electricity disconnected, Wally gone, laying on the bare floor surrounded by all the losing players of addiction. The pain was immense. The pain was torture. Nothing like the flu at all. And for a moment, in the dark of the room, all that could be heard was dry retching and the terrible groaning and crying of a woman who had never grown up, who was trapped in the body of her tragic youth, growing pains splitting her open from inside out. Mitsy wasn't hurting or crying for heroin. Her tears were of her death, of an unrequited youth, for a life she could have had but never did. She had squandered it all and the losses had now come home to roost.
The body laying along the two-seater, on his back, behind Tabatha, was Portuguese Jo. He had been laying there like that, with his arm over his face, his eyes in the crux of the pit of his elbow, since early afternoon. Sometimes he'd unstick his arm from his face and squint out into the darkening room. He kept saying that he was going to leave, that there was “nothing but hurt tonight” but as he didn't have his own phone he was bound there eagerly waiting that news arrived from another source. Jo wasn't ill but would be by morning and didn't fancy being sick and alone and out of the loop on anyone who came thru with a score. In the dark pit of his arm it was humid and sweaty and he could see things, worlds and planets and solar explosions. Sometimes he saw comets too, and the craters on the moon, and sometimes he saw a city, his city, a hellish vision of Lisbon overrun with outside shooting galleries and feral looking junkies and discarded syringes leaking thick contaminated blood. He had died in Lisbon and would be buried in London. But London didn't interest him, not the London he had come to discover anyhow, and so his thoughts wandered through his home city, sometimes a fantastic version and sometimes the real thing – the warm continental nights, the street lights and bars and the mauve summer sky, close, humid evenings as he scored smack around the central station and rushed off to shoot up in the echoey underpass that smelled of piss and wine and the sea. Lisbon. He breathed in and tried to taste his home. Oh, to be back there now it'd be easy. He listened to the noises of the addicts already sick in the room and despised them for it, for showing him so brutally his fate. Or maybe he needed to despise them? Apart from the phone Jo had one other huge problem: he was penniless. No-one knew that of course, except maybe the dog who was staring at Jo suspiciously after seeing him stir and settle back down and who for no real reason wanted to bark. The world of junk is deeply calculating . As Jo lay there with his eyes covered, the heat spread across his forehead and his body moist, he again went through what he'd do and how he imagined it'd unfold. In his internal world, fuzzy empty visions in the depth of the black of his arm, he now saw himself cursing and swearing with the dealer in the apartment. All the sick addicts were uncrumpling their money and buying up what they could, biting open bags, cooking up fixes and taking out syringes. Jo saw himself in a panic in the middle of the room, patting down his pockets and searching under the cushions on the sofa, fucking and tutting and throwing his arms up in defeat and saying he'd left his wallet at home. He'd not ask anyone for cash but would instead play for honesty, asking the dealer if he could hang on at the flat for 15 minutes while he ran home and got his wallet. Of course he knew the dealer would never agree, at least he hoped not, and so from that point on he would be waiting on one of the other addicts to offer to stand him his score. Under normal conditions it would never work, but in this drought, where the dealers stock would be bought up almost immediately, where in 15 minutes the dealers phone would be turned off again, Jo had calculated that the camaraderie and empathy between addicts would be that much more solid and figured that there would be someone who would be uncharacteristically generous and offer him their trust. Illness touches the heart, he thought. Not even I would let someone else stay sick if I could help it. In the worst case Jo envisioned himself being given small pickings from each addict and getting his well-being that way. But for the moment it was all games in the mind and imagination, and for the moment Jo lay there feeling not too bad but better than the others. In the dark he huffed and blew, lit a cigarette and said, I'm gonna leave soon, there's nothing but hurt for us tonight.
George lay mentally bound to his bed, flat out and terrified, in just a pair of summer shorts. He was suffering just as bad as anyone but could not express his illness other than through absolute fear. Unlike the addicts in the front room he thought the sudden violence of the turbulence inside of him was a succubus, an evil spirit that had been tormenting his existence for years and had now finally induced itself within him, within the apartment. On his back, supine on the bed, George lay frozen in a physical and sensorial hell, seeing the world inside his head, hearing voices and frequencies and cringing up at strange alien rain, long thin invisible shards of light, coming down from a fiery sky, piercing him and pinning him down. It was Armageddon, the battle he'd been warned of for so long and which had left him picking holes in the plaster of the wall besides his bed in an effort to unveil the intruders of his mind.
George looked down lengthwise at his body on the bed. He saw himself not from a first-person perspective but in third-person, which is to say, not through his eyes but from a detached position somewhere over him. He was quite literally out his mind. George watched horrified as the succubus snaked and angled about beneath his skin, wormed its way into his muscles and around his joints before settling itself into every cell and atom of his body. At times George would double up with cramp and his legs would violently kick out straight, locking and straining the muscles behind and around his knees. At other times he'd suddenly tense and grip into hideous poses, resembling the contorted forms of the charcoaled corpses of Nagasaki or Hiroshima or Pompeii. At intervals, during the long sick evening, George would struggle to his feet and inch his way painfully down the corridor. In just his shorts he'd stand in the doorway of the main room, his shoulders dropped and rounded, his frail light brown legs bowed, his mouth hung open in the same cavernous shape, a world of dread and conspiracy and paranoia arched into him, looking at the suffering addicts lain out in the room. To George he was staring into a squalid dungeon in Hades, watching the condemned after the weighing of souls, the psychostasia. George would stand there like that, frozen in terror, the junk sickness seeping out of him. Then, without saying anything, he would emit an animalistic sound, a noise which seemed to originate from his entire being, a sound somewhere between a reverberation of fear and pain and that of a mother animal who has lost her young and is calling and grieving at the same time. After a moment the tortured figure of George would turn and slowly make its way back down the hall, a nausea in his stomach and bowels, having visions of snakes and spawn and blood, all tangled together and writhing about inside of him. He'd lay back on his bed, petrified in his own being, sweating and in agony, turning ice cold then raging hot, his shorts pushed down, cock erect, masturbating, muttering, crying. Terrified, George lay there like that, his pupils like saucers, waiting for the dawn and a day of clouds and blackness and the great armies of destruction to arrive. And that is what junk illness was like to George, the balding, schizophrenic, light-skinned Jamaican who wasn't aware that he was even dope sick at all.
For Three days and three nights the flat remained in a death of sickness and despair. Each junkie lay cocooned in his own dark and humid space, suffering not only the most grotesque physical trauma but an existential sickness too, a place where ones own Being is out-of-kilter with the world it should thrive in. It was by no sheer coincidence, as it is already said, that it was the dog who first sensed the changing tide. On the fourth day, just before noon, its ears pricked up and it looked inquisitively at something on the floor. It listened intently then cocked its head to the left and listened some more. And it was not mistaken; and it didn't know why: it just did. It sprang up, its mouth clamped tight shut, whimpering with excitement and turning circles around the floor as a phone lit up and rang out jubilantly. David scrambled for the phone, answered, but in his haste fumbled it like a bar of soap. The phone popped out his hand and went skidding across the floor. For just a moment the world stopped again. Grace held the dog by the collar, her bony pale arm trembling. The dog whimpered even harder still.
You got? You got? shouted David, the phone still on the floor, him reaching across to pick it up.
Yeah Bro, yeah... I got.. … I got
Everyone heard the reply and the room of heroin junkies started stirring and sitting up, their eyes open to the last dregs of their sickness. Grace let go off the dog, brought up something from her lungs and gobbed it out over the arm of the sofa.
George, she screamed, get in here with ya spoon.
From the room adjacent there came groaning and the sound of someone rising and rummaging around for something. A moment later George appeared and stood in the doorway holding his spoon out in front of him. He was dripping sweat and his arms and legs and face were picked to open sores.
Get over here, said Grace, it's over now. George entered the room and sat besides Grace. He looked awkward, rigid and held in, like he didn't want to touch anyone either side. His head was slightly lowered and his eyes stared straight ahead. He was trembling and muttering away furiously, gibberish, like some incantation to keep evil at bay.
He's here, said David letting the corner of the blanket fall back across the window. And for a moment the room descended into hazy darkness, though not for long, just until the dealer was in the room and then the lights in hell came on.
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Junk Sick Collective
The Post-Junk Dawn
The Sinner's Eye - The Culture of the Needle
The first time I ever saw a needle I was five. It was being pulled out of my father’s arm by my mother as he lay slumped and motionless on the floor. We had found him like that one evening when my mother had care of me. I remember her slapping and rubbing his face before frantically running off in search of help. I stood outside in the warm dark night, petrified and alone, looking into the distance for my mother to return. She soon did, her distressed silhouette picked out the dark by ambulance lights. Twenty years later I too would be laying slumped on floor, and in a hideous repetition of history my mother would also be withdrawing a needle from my arm.
In the following post I will detail my own romance with the needle, why I did/do that, and the places and people it has led me to. In my travels I've seen and experienced an underbelly of city life in all its perverse glory. It was never beautiful, often sickening, yet always fascinating. This is the story of The Needle as seen through The Sinner’s Eye.
Like the majority of injecting drug users I did not start off that way. For me it was an economic decision I took one year into my heroin addiction as a means to keep the job that was funding my habit. My first dalliance with the needle took place one blustery autumn afternoon in a homeless hostel in West London. It was a place with anti-suicide bars fitted to the windows and emergency alarms in each room. I had gone there in search of a beggar girl I knew named Katy and had burdened her with the responsibility of fixing me up for the first time. With intent junkie eyes she would hold the syringe up to the fading light and flick expertly on the barrel. Seconds later she would slide it painlessly into my mid-arm and press. That plunge would send me down a one way street of self-abuse and would be the precursor to over 50,000 (and rising) shots of heroin. But I do not regret the needle and I neither damn nor curse it: as it killed me, so it saved my life.
After that first shot I wandered home with the remaining needles of the pack. I had closely observed Katy and had questioned her as how to cook up, hit a vein and inject oneself. Later that night, after an entire evening deliberating over it, I decided to have a go myself. I was petrified. But not at the prospect of overdosing, more of the inknown, of what lay beneath my skin that I could hit, tear, puncture or damage. Still, I went ahead, cooked up a fix and then naively tried to inject it. Oh, it was a disaster! What had looked so straightforward in the hostel and at someone else’s hand, now seemed ridiculously difficult. Every time I tried to hit a vein I only managed to puncture it and leave large blue bruises in my trail. Even in my hands, with veins the size of a thick bootlaces, I could do nothing but damage and bloat them double. Finally I gave up and for the last time in my life I smoked myself to sleep.
Come the following morning I tried again. This time I did manage to hit a vessel, but each time I pulled back on the plunger I also pulled the needle out the vein. On about the twentieth attempt I succeeded in drawing blood and in an awkward amateurish manoeuvre I repositioned my fingers and emptied the syringe into my bloodstream. For a few seconds after, surprised that my fist hadn’t bloated up, I sat in shock and kind of moved my eyes from side to side, up and around registering things. When I was absolutely sure I was still alive I relaxed... and then it hit me. Up my arm and itching through every small blood vessel in my head. My pupils contracted as the pressure built and suddenly I was there, nodding over onto the table without even having time to withdraw the syringe. But that wasn’t the end of my injecting debacles... it went on for weeks before I could get a clean quick shot and months before I had experienced all the little lumps, bloating and swelling of missed and bad injections. But no matter how terrifying or hairy it got, I somehow enjoyed the process. And more than that I enjoyed the marks that I was imposing upon myself. It was a thrill, and finally I had some visible mark for the invisible pain I was trying to tame.
But being on the needle entails a lot of work. That is if you intend to stay alive. One of the first things you then learn is where you can pick up free, clean needles, vitamin C and filters. This invariably leads to the local Needle Exchange or some equally anaemic, bleached and sanitized place. I turned up at mine (The Old Coach House, Devonport Road) on the second morning of my IV life. I registered and went through the rigmarole as a soft spoken counsellor masquerading as an ex-user went through the perils of shooting and gave me a leaflet on safe injecting. He also sat me down and with picture cards of the venal system pointed out where the body’s main arteries and nerves ran. He said I must NEVER inject around those areas. He explained that if I was ever unlucky enough to hit an artery, and supposing that I survived, I would wake up sick in hospital with limbs the size of tree trunks. Of course, more than anything this freaked me out and my hypochondriac brain suddenly (and against my desire) jumped to attention. In a few nervous seconds I had blinked and memorized every image into my head and it seemed that just about every site was loaded with potential peril. For the first few weeks I poked around gingerly convinced that I would hit the nuclear button. Of course, I never did and since then I’ve stuck a needle in all those dangerous places, every junkie has. And thats another thing you learn, injecting isn’t quite as hazardous as it is made out to be.
The local needle exchange was open 3 days a week from 9am to 5pm. During that time users could walk in and collect up to 50 clean works a day, sterile water, vit c and small yellow returns bins with the bio-hazard sign printed menacingly on the side. That is the idea of the ‘exchange’. One is supposed to fill his/her small bin and return it. In ‘exchange’ he/she gets to take home new needles. In reality, not many addicts make use of this service and the exchange program doesn’t strictly enforce it. What they are more concerned about is having users not share. Like most addicts I know, I never really made regular use of the return bin either. Instead I’d let the needles pile up until my place was stacked with boxes and containers of syringes. Three or four times a years I’d have a clear out and overload the returns bin. Other than the Needle Exchange, addicts can also pick up clean works in chemists or some clinics. Chemists usually have a limit of 2 packs (20 needles) a day, and disgracefully often don’t have ANY in stock. The Needle Exchange, Chemist and clinic schemes are all free. However, if really desperate or if the chemist is out of free needle packs, you can also buy them. That would cost £2 for a packet of 5 1ml insulin points.
But needle exchanges and pharmacies, although not unpleasant places in themselves, do give the first hint of what lays in store for the intravenous user. I remember sitting waiting in the needle exchange one day with two skeletal junkies sitting opposite. Both were as pale as chicken skin, both looked crippled and both were covered in cuts, rashes and sores. They were resting head to head and drifting somewhere very far away. They looked like something you’d find slumped in a mass grave. It was only when one opened the eyes and drooled: “Have you got a cigarette, mate?” that I realized it was female. Her hands shock as she took the cigarette and she stood outside in the cold, sucking in huge lungfuls of smoke and looking like the future didn’t exist. It was a small thing, but something which stuck in my mind and scared me. I had not seen such people amongst my smoking friends. They had all been younger and fitter and frankly, more alive. This was something else... a different kind of addict altogether. And though it repulsed me, such people would soon replace my old smoking crowd and make up my circuit of friends and contacts.
There are a couple of reasons for this, but probably the most relevant is that the smoking addict and the injecting addict are two different types and clash too much. For example, the smoker may be sickened or disgusted to have someone inject in close proximity to him/her. The injector sees smoking as sacrilegious and cannot bear watching plumes of smoke disappearing and wasting into the atmosphere. Also there is the message that injecting gives out... that you are not only addicted to drugs but self-destructive and reckless in its pursuit. It is almost as if there is no hope after heroin and so you kill yourself before it kills you. But no matter what the reason, my smoking friends were soon all gone. They passed by me as if on some conveyor belt into history. With their hands over their mouths they receded into the distance and as they watched me advance to the place we’d promised we’d never go they cried: “Oh, Shane... how could you!”
Well I don’t know? I just could. That’s all. And very quickly I discovered that the universe of the intravenous user was a world apart from those which I had served my apprenticeship with. The haunts were darker, the misery worse, the addicts older and more pronounced. Everything was 2 shades darker black. I suddenly found myself in a place full of mirth, dirt and disease. For the low of heroin I would journey to and through that darkness. I would meet the diseased, the dead and the dying and have numerous acquaintances go down with AIDS and hepatitis. Amongst the army of junkies that I would cross would be the armless, legless, toothless and reckless. I would see men injecting in their penises and women bent over, peering through the legs into a mirror in order to hit a vein on the back of the thigh. In one homeless shelter I would sit and watch as half a dozen groaning addicts cooked up in a single spoon and then all poked their blunt dirty needles into the same cotton filter and drew up and shot together. They would look at me in bemusement when I would shake my head at the offer of joining in.
But by far the worst place I ever had the misfortune of entering was a junkie squat on St Stephens Avenue. It was a second floor flat in a partly demolished building and was literally held together by needles in a twisted ongoing sculpture that all the users living there collaborated on. One could not take a step without having to dodge an open spike and blood and blood graffiti sat an inch thick on every wall. It was inhabited by such a squalid bunch that the consequences of even stepping foot in there would terrify me. Unfortunately, these people were my friends... well, kind of. A typical household would be something like this: Firstly there was Nick. A tall, medium built addict with horrendously crusty skin. He had thick black greasy hair which showered dandruff in the light beams. Nick would take an obscene pleasure sticking and twisting needles recklessly into himself. He had such a crude injecting method that the tracks on the rear of his forearm were huge purple scars the thickness of an index finger. Next there was Grace. Worryingly thin with the skin on her face stretched taut over the skull. She had taken on a kind of translucent jaundiced appearance and made her way around with the help of an old walking cane. A 25 year dope veteran, it took her up to three hours to get a fix. Two weeks after me leaving London she died of liver cancer. Then there was Scamp the resident amputee. He was as grey as the London pavement -. only much dirtier. His left hand had been removed after a huge abscess had all but eaten it away. He now had a useless, half-paralysed and withered left arm which hung down like something that shouldn’t be there. He was HIV positive. Along with Skamp, wrapped up on the same filthy mattress, was his HIV buddy John. This man was so dismally wasted that he resembled but bones vacuum packaged in skin. He was forever in and out of hospital falling foul each week to a new debilitating infection. Miraculously he is still alive... well in theory anyway. Finally there was Jo, a Portuguese addict with not a single tooth left in his head. His mouth resembled a clenched anus that was attempting to suck all his features in. He had the greenish yellow tint of a depressing bar. A paranoid schizophrenic he would eventually be imprisoned for beating his girlfriend to death. Of course many more passed through the house or stayed a night or two but these were the regulars. On a good night this crowd would sit around a syringe strewn table with a huge mountain of melted wax burning away in the centre. In the low light they’d shoot dope and squirt their blood sizzling onto the flames. It was one of those rare occasions where the people were scarier than the shadows they cast.
And that was just one small group of addicts in one West London squat. But the more I got into the injecting side of heroin the more such users became visible. At one point it was all I could see. Ghosts which had once skulked by unnoticed were now everywhere. Bus stops, doorways, street corners, parks... I couldn’t walk five minutes without passing some distressed type with swollen bloodstained hands and looking like Death with the flu. The city became like a Kirchner painting: long, dark, oblique shadows lurking and hanging ominously against walls. It was a nightmare town. And then I’d traipse home, shoot up, and scrutinize my own face in the mirror looking intensely for any signs of disease or decay. But don’t get me wrong, not all injecting addicts look as I’ve described. And for everyone that does there is another that shows absolutely no obvious signs of drug or needle abuse at all. I don’t quite fall into that camp, but if I keep my mouth closed, and wear a nice pressed shirt, only my mother and lover would know.
No, the diseased emaciated junkie is a consequence of lifestyle and what he/she is forced to do to maintain a habit. And the junkie collective that I described earlier were all just that. Their lives and addictions were very hard on them and only by pooling their money, scoring and using together were they able to keep themselves supplied in heroin. There was literally no money for anything else. They ate what they found and smoked from the butts they’d collect in the streets. They usually used clean needles, but if they didn’t have them at hand they’d be all too quick to pick up the gun and wager their lives on shooting a blank. Whilst sticking needles in their groins, armpits and necks they all slurred the junkie spiel of getting clean, getting washed and getting a job. But they talked with infinite sadness and there was not hope in one syllable of any word they said. I think they knew they were The damned and getting clean and talking of what they’d do had like everything else become a little part of their fixing ritual. In truth, the strain of getting clean would probably have finished them off even quicker.
Still, regardless of how squalid some of the people and places were, or how much it appalled me, in different ways I was just as trapped within it. Ok, I did not live like that and I’ve never shared a needle, nor a spoon, but my needs were the same and even if my arms were cleaner I was still sticking the same needles into them 5 times a day. And it was that which kept me a familiar face amongst these crowds. Against any genuine desire to become friends I kept a contact and a presence amongst other users for very certain reasons: they were good contacts and as an addict you can never have enough numbers. But there was one other reason, and that wasn’t half so callous or calculated: sometimes I just needed a little company... another human besides me so as not to feel so hopelessly alone. Sometimes it was just a pleasure to fall asleep and wake up with someone else in the room. And that is why, no matter how dirty some places were, or how foul and rotten some addicts seemed, at least they were there. They understood without question and had an agenda more or less the same as mine.
But intravenous drug use goes further than clinics and junkies and palaces of needles. It even goes further than the administration of drugs. That’s its primary motivation but it also touches upon issues of self-harm, obsessive compulsions, and needle fixations. As I got more experienced with the needle I started to realize that I actually enjoyed inflicting these marks and scars upon myself. That outside of getting heroin quickly into my bloodstream I took other pleasures from it. Often I’d be standing on a bus or train, holding the overhead rail and leaving my shirt sleeve fall down to reveal an armful of tracks and bruises. On occasion I’d even jab a needle into myself a few extra times just to highlight the harm. I know some addicts who even when clean continue keeping their track marks fresh and visible. But this self-harm is not a call for help, it’s more a call for recognition... for the world to recognize you’ve been hurt, punctured and broken. It’s a cry for attention without the tantrum, the tears or the breakdown. I know very few injecting addicts who are ashamed of what they do... on the contrary, they are proud of it. And I understand that, because in that act, in the marks and scars it leaves behind, there is a bizarre sense of fulfilment and achievement. In it the addict has found a means to show a hurt or trauma that is not expressible in words.
It’s now almost 10 years that I have been living life on the needle. During that time I’ve shot up in parks, cars, toilets and on buses. In addition to my arms, legs, stomach and chest, I’ve also injected in my fingers, toes, palms and forehead. I’ve hit nerves, arteries, joints and bone, and have suffered every imaginable lump, bump and swelling. I’ve poisoned myself 4 times with ‘dirty heroin’, had abscesses the size of golf balls and I’ve Od’d twice. On my entire body I have only one visible vein left. In my determination to self-medicate I’ve lost family, friends, lovers, two Cockatoos and a dog. My bank is in the red and so after 34 years I have less than nothing.
As I write this it is 24 hours since my last injection and that seems a long time. Previous to that it was 72 hours and previous to that 7 days. The longest I’ve ever been heroin or needle free is 5 months. But I do have some qualities and I use them to convince the few people left around me that I’m changing... that I’ve finally seen the light. And as I sit there with my perforated escape plan laid out, I busk and dance my way around all the awkward questions. At one point I even promise to stop smoking and cut down on the chocolate. It’s then I realize I’ve gone too far, that I’ve said too much. The place kind of deflates with disappointment and without even looking up I know what they’re all thinking, “He’s not getting better... he’s getting worse!” And I can’t blame them for that... I’m thinking exactly the same myself.
Thanks as ever for reading...
Thoughts & Wishes, Shane. x
Just Another Day at the Office.
.
Today I awoke to a glorious sky. It was 6am, the sun was halfway up and the feint hum of traffic was a constant below. I opened the apartment window and the delights of the city wafted in on a breeze. All the flowers from all the gardens from all of Lyon had released their scents.The café on the corner opened it’s shutters and set out its chairs for another day of business. I was up for business myself.
For the last four days I’ve been solely on methadone... not out of choice, but because this city is dry. 4 days is the longest I have been without dope in three and a half years. I don’t feel bad for that... I just feel bad for the wait. It’s been 4 days of piss-stained stairwells, broken promises, unanswered phones and last trains home. Where I come from this doesn’t happen. Where I come from heroin is a 24/7 shop with no shutters. In London, if you’ve got the money and you want to kill yourself, you can. There’s little wait and there’s rarely disappointment. I would hate to be suicidal anywhere else.
Anyhow, I was up with the sun this morning as I was on a promised promise... “Get your arse to Croix Rousse for 10am sharp... it’s sure, sure SURE!!” Normally when I receive a message like this it is genuine... it means the dealer has the gear in his pocket. I hoped so, because not only had I no gear, but due to this little drought I had almost drunk up my entire supply of methadone. Apart from the dose I swallowed early yesterday evening, I had just one left and after that.... well, I didn’t even want to think of it. So my meeting today was more important than usual... It was to score methadone and heroin, to buy my well-being.
I arrived at Croix Rouse just before ten and made the short walk to a pre-arranged spot. On arriving I was horrified... there must have been 15 or 20 junkies circling or lurking around the block of flats where the meet was... half of them dope sick. This is a residential area... people live here with their children and they quickly notice a strange group of sniffling, filthy and poorly dressed adults hanging around. What’s worse is, as no-one is sure from where the dealer will appear, we are all constantly up and down, searching in every direction imaginable for a sight of him. Whilst tyring to act inconspicuous we do ourselves no favours. The only direction we don’t look is up... God has yet to drop a bag out the sky. I distanced myself from this bunch and went and sat alone at a nearby bus stop.
At 10.30 I received a text. “I’m there... I’m there.. 10 minutes...” At 11.00 I was still waiting... at 11.15 the same. Finally, at 11.20 there was some movement. I watched as one be one the circling junkies slid out from nowhere and filed slowly into the flats. Someone must have gotten the call... our man must be here. I crossed over and went in with the rabble, past the elevator and through the door to the fire escape. Imagine the scene: 20 junkies sitting hushed in a stairwell, the dark only lit up by burning cigarettes and the screens of our cell phones. Suddenly my own screen lit up: ‘30 secs’. I let everyone know and we got our money ready. After 8 minutes and 3 unanswered calls the bottom door opened, the light flicked on and someone came running up the stairs. We all stood up ready... but it wasn’t him! Rather, it was a motorcycle courier using the backstairs instead of the lift. He slipped through us suspiciously. “That’s police!" I said to one of the junkies... "That was the police!” He just shook his head... “Calm down... it’s just a courier. We’ll be gone soon!” Well, courier or not I was not comfortable with this... it was just too hot. And not even for us... we were clean... it was the dealer who arranged this that would have all the problems...it’s he who would be in possession of the gear.
I tried to phone the dealer twice more and then I made my decision to up and leave. One other addict decided to part with me. On the way back down the stairs I mentioned Methadone. By pure chance this guy had two bottles of 100ml in his pocket. I bought them both. We left the darkened stairwell and headed out. Just as we were leaving someone was coming in... he stopped us. “What are you doing here?” I didn’t answer. The addict alongside me said something about waiting for a friend. “Who? What floor?” From that question and the way my entrance from the building had been blocked I knew this was more than just a nosey neighbour. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked raising his head slightly “I am the police” he finished, now poking at his chest and grinning. With that he had his ID produced and then strapped an orange police band across his left bicep. Four others entered in behind him and rushed into the stairwell.
We were led outside where there were two more policemen... standing either side of our dealer! I could only imagine they had caught him in full possession... his sullen face and drooped head told me that. Out in the forecourt we were soon joined by the rest of the rotten bunch and just as 15 minutes ago junkies had slid from nowhere out the shadows, now the police done the same. There was soon at least one policier to each addict. We were made to strip down to the waist and remove our hats, shoes and socks. Whilst doing this another police man walked the sorry line of jaundiced, hollow cheeked, scarred and bruised junkies and left with a handful of ragged ID cards and passports. We were told to empty our pockets and lay the contents on the little wall where we were standing. It was here that I remembered I had just bought 2 bottles of methadone. Fuck! I seriously considered just ripping them open and swallowing the contents. I was going to be arrested (it’s a class A drug) so I might as well make sure I’m not ill as well. But I didn’t do that... instead I took them from my trousers and laid them on the wall... the wall that had just turned into a chemists top-shelf! Along it now was a booty of drug paraphernalia and every possible prescribeable drug . There were bottles and strips of pills, amps of morphine, packets and boxes of syringes. There were tourniquets, blackened spoons, pen-knives and razor blades. In fact, there was everything EXCEPT heroin.
After a moment a policier confronted me. “Where did you get this from?” he demanded holding up the two little bottles of methadone
“It’s mine... I get it on prescription.” I replied.
“Where’s your prescription? Can I see it?”
“I don’t have it on me.”
“You do know that this is a class A stupifiant without a prescription, don’t you?”
I nodded, “Yes, excuse me.”
“Who is your doctor?” he asked. I gave my GP’s name, address and number. The policeman went away.
We were all properly searched and then ordered to get dressed. On being questioned everyone said they were “waiting for a friend” though no-one could remember this friends name, address or telephone number. When they asked me I told them what they already knew: I was here to score heroin. They asked me off whom and I said I only know him as ‘D’ (this wasn’t true).“Is that “D”” a policeman asked pointing at the dealer. “No... that’s not him.” I replied. I can only imagine that my broken french and little bit of honesty had helped me, because after a moment of conferring I was suddenly hit in the stomach by my passport, handed back my two bottles of methadone and told to “Fuck off!” I left at a quick trot with about ten others. Our dealer was kept behind.
We were all in shock... me especially. How I left & with the methadone was unbelievable. The other addicts all agreed I had been extremely fortunate. We walked on quickly... we just wanted to get away from this place. 5 mins down the road my phone rings: “It’s me... I’m ready!” Well, we couldn’t believe it... only minutes ago 'D' was being held by police and now he was ready to serve us!? We were sure it was a police set-up to catch us in possession. Even thinking this, not one of us backed out of the deal... we all still took our chances. We met 'D' five minutes from the same block of flats we had just been searched in and we all left untroubled with our orders. As we made our way back down to the Metro the other half of the rag-tag junkie army were making their way up, joking and laughing about the police. We let them know that ‘D’ was waiting and everything seemed in order. By now we were laughing and joking too.
And it is a joke... because 20 police men had been surveying us. They had watched us circle about for nearly 2 hours and had probably listened to our phone calls. They knew who our dealer was and had followed him. If they would have waited five minutes longer they would have got us all on possession charges & the dealer on trafficking... bang to rights. Instead they busted us with nothing to bust... and how they never caught the dealer in possession remains a mystery! So it’s a joke... it’s a waste of junkie time, a waste of police time and a waste of god knows how much public money. What the neighbours must have thought as they saw us refill our pockets and bags with drugs and needles and then be set free I cannot even imagine. I wonder if they saw it as effective community policing or not?
And so it was, I arrived home a little before 1pm, though a little later than planned. I was still half expecting the police to jump out and nab me as I exited the metro... but no, their brains couldn’t follow a smacked-up drug dealer through a block of flats, so there’s no way they’d be able to organise an arrest through the maze of the underground system. Instead, I was once again left to my own devices... to enjoy the tranquillity of the afternoon. I did what I had to do and I laid down on the sofa. I closed my eyes and opened my ears to the noises of the day. I listened to distant sounds and voices... to the chipping away and shouts of workmen. I listened to the afternoon screams of school children and to the echoes of high heeled shoes . I let this day wash over me as I sunk in & out of a self-induced sleep. Today I had been lucky - it had been a close one, but I had made it home with my gear, my methadone and free of any drug convictions. This means I can still get a US visa... that I can continue to dream New York dreams. It means that I can still make good on certain promises.... that I can still one day visit my homie sKILLz and kiss the Brooklyn Dogs.
Best wishes everyone & stay safe, Shane.
