The following is an excerpt from my memoir, "What's Left of Us." It's how I lived 25 years ago. It's also a perfect example for somebody struggling with addiction. Bottom-line, if I can do it -- anybody can!
It may be longer than my usual blog, but it moves fast. Print it or email it to somebody you know struggling with this insidious disease.
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I am a heroin addict. My life is limited to three concerns. The first thing I gotta figure out every morning is how to get a bag of heroin into my arm no more than ten minutes after I wake-up. If I fail, I’m dope sick. The cramps inside my lower stomach go on a full-scale attack. I can’t stand. I can’t walk. The diarrhea squirts out like a water hose. But I’m damn good at getting high now. I hardly ever stay dope-sick long.
The second issue is drawing a “hot shot” or a “beat-bag.” The majority of heroin in Lowell originates from New York City. Puerto Rican gangs bring it here by the kilo. The drug dealers on Adam Street who package the heroin from one pound bricks into grams and half-gram are no Einsteins. They cut the heroin or add fake shit to stretch quantity for profit. Some dealers cut it in half and double their money. Most use quinine, which gives the bitter taste, and an Italian baby laxative called Manatol because its fine white granules have almost the identical weight of pure heroin.
So picture this, four of five Puerto Rican males in a poorly-lit room with the combined education of maybe the 8th grade, whacked on heroin or cocaine, drunk on port wine, with about fifty or sixty small piles of white powder lined out on a old door top propped on two twenty-gallon plastic paint containers being used as a cutting table. You don’t have to be a fuckin’ rocket scientist to figure out they ain’t gonna be able to get the proper distribution of cut to heroin every time. Too much pure heroin in a half-gram package equals a “hot shot.” You’re history, because five minutes after the rush your heat stops. Too little or no heroin in a half-gram package gets you dope-sick.
But my major concern on Adam Street is “cotton fever.” I’d rather be dope-sick all day than get what the Puerto Rican junkies down here call “cotton shot rush.” It’s when a dirty piece of cotton fiber used to filter the heroin makes it into your bloodstream. The sweats and shakes that ransack your body are nothin’ compared to the fire under your skin. I’ve watched junkies do everything imaginable, cry hysterically, beg to die, boot two additional bags of heroin and overdose just to kill the sickness. A doctor in the emergency room once told me it comes from bacteria or fungus on the cotton, and not the cotton itself. To me the argument is pointless, you get “cotton shot rush” —it doesn’t matter from where it came from.
Heroin is not a cold-shake like cocaine. The impurities used to cut heroin need to be cooked off in boiling water before you shoot it intravenously. Down here we all do it the same, bite the heroin package open carefully, taste it, gag or dry heave on the bitterness, empty the heroin into a cooker, (either a spoon or the bottom of a tonic can), draw 50cc of water into the syringe, fill the cooker until the heroin drowns, and light a match.
After you see tiny bubbles dancing in the cooker you place a small sliver of cotton or a piece of a cigarette’s filter into the liquid. With one hand firmly steadying the cooker, the tip of the needle is guided into the cotton or filter with the other hand. The plunger is moved upward slowly by biting firmly on to the tip and moving the head upwards. If all goes well the syringe fills with about 20cc of heroin. The task of hitting a good vein is next. And nobody down here takes the time to wrap a belt around their arm and whack the skin over a vein. That’s fuckin’ Hollywood. If you make it to where I am-- you’re an expert at veins. After contact, you watch your blood snake into the syringe, you pull the trigger, hot liquid moves quickly up your arm, your heart tingles, and you feel an immediate rush of adrenaline guzzle your brain in one swift sip.
From there it’s a crapshoot. Most addicts don’t carry sterile cotton balls or Q-tips in their back pocket. If you’re lucky you have access to a clean filtered cigarette. But most of the time you have to find a cigarette butt on the ground, in an ashtray, or a garbage barrel. “Cotton shot rush” is perfect example of life as a heroin addict. You live for the moment. If it happens, it happens. But there is no mistaking it when it hits. Ten to twenty minutes after you pull the trigger it whacks you like you’re in the third day of the flu virus. The ears give it away: if they start to ring you’re fucked. Pressure begins to mount on each side of your temple like a vise squeezing slowly together. Sweat pours off your brow but at first there is no temperature associated with it. The shakes progress quickly to trembles. Chills hit immediately after and the body’s temperature spikes to over 102. Sometimes the brain fogs and things appear that aren’t there. I’m not sure why some cases are more extreme than others. On occasion it can last only an hour, most times it resolves itself within 12 or 24 hours. But if the bacteria takes up residency in your heart and you don’t seek medical attention, you’re dead. I roll the dice about a dozen times a day.
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