I had obtained them with more ease than I thought. The day before I had picked up an addict off of the street and asked him to get the dope with me. At the time on the West Side they were called “blows”. I called it “H”, as I had heard it called on TV and the Internet, but this didn’t seem to be the term used here. We did end up in an altercation with a street dealer that could have ended in more violence than it did, but we eventually found our prize: ten bags of heroin for $100. I had told the addict that I entrusted the money with that while it was easy for him to rip me off in this situation, and I was extremely aware of this fact, he would be provided for in the future if he aided me in this transaction. I gave him a bag and some money. While putting myself in such a dangerous place was reckless, I had stopped caring about existing over the weeks that led to copping the dope.
We were in his place, and I did some; things got a little strange after that. What is now politely called a sex worker had been brought over with us, and I tried to enjoy this, but the dope often had a “curious effect” on one’s reproductive organs that prevents their use, and it had such an effect on this occasion, and I gave up trying to obtain any pleasure except for the dull bliss of the drug itself. I sort of zoned out, glancing at them going at it on the bed every once in a while. We went into a place that sold fish and I bought the addict a large meal, and a man came in. He rattled off a list of DVDs he had to the customers in the store, movies that were still in the theater. I wandered in this environment a bit, got threatened by the addict’s brother, still high out of my mind. I drove home, not caring in the least if I crashed or got pulled over.
What was I thinking? I had stopped thinking. I wanted to stop thinking, to just feel the temporary euphoria that came with new opiate use. I knew they could lead to addiction–horrific addiction–overdose, or death and I wasn’t afraid. Temporary reprieve from my mental state was all I cared about. I decided to do the line by opening up a Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedia. This was around 2008, so encyclopedias had just lost their usefulness, but I had not yet removed it from my room. There was a biography of a dead white male and a painting of him. I laid out the point. I thought to myself about the rumors circulating about extremely powerful dope laced with fentanyl, a new phenomenon at that time.
I took my rolled up one dollar bill and railed a line into my nose. I think I laid back in my bed, and that was all I remember before I heard the voice:
“What did you take?!” bellowed the voice.
Even though the transition from being in a bed to hearing this voice seemed immediate and to most would have been confusing, I knew exactly what had happened and a flood of understanding came through my mind. I knew I was in an ambulance, I knew that it was known that I had taken drugs, and I knew that I still had eight bags of heroin in my pocket, individually wrapped. I said nothing.
“What did you take? You have to tell us, now!” came the voice more urgently.
I paused, weighing my options. I could lie, I definitely could lie, but I didn’t. I decided to tell the truth.
“Heroin.”
The voice shifted into a matter-of-fact tone. “That’ll do it,” came the response.
I was more angry at having been caught than having overdosed; at least death would save me from having to deal with whatever complications this incident caused. But as they took me out of the ambulance and took me to the hospital, and the nurses who barely concealed their disdain hovered about, I knew I still had the dope. I waited around for a few hours. My mother came in.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“What the fuck do you think?” she asked in a venomous tone.
There was an IV hooked up, they didn’t like users in this suburban hospital. I knew from having been there for other, similar reasons. Those kids who would go to the city and bring drugs from the West Side back to their suburban homes occasionally came in, and the response was always cold. I really didn’t blame them for not caring; even I didn’t care about my predicament.
At the first opportunity, they told me I could leave. I had been shot up with Narcan in the ambulance, it did its trick (saving my life). My father had forgotten something and came home, found me in my room, blue from not breathing. Opioids suppress breathing. The cops who arrived with the ambulance drivers were nice enough not to search me or the room for drugs; it was probably a routine overdose. Maybe they felt sorry for me. I was shot up with Narcan, and I didn’t die.
From what I understand, Narcan was a sort of new thing to have on hand at the time; but things had come together just right for me, I had done the wrong amount of drugs but I did them at just the right time not to end up dead.
When I got home, my mother asked where the heroin was. I told her it was in my pocket. She instructed me to hand it over. Then, as if trying to hold feigned disinterest, opened up the foil of one of the packets and looked inside. She nodded, walked over to the garbage can and threw the dope away, much as the dope had almost thrown me away.