November 14

April 21st 1998: Coming Clean

I’ve had this feeling lately, like I’m coming to the end of my rope. I mean I’m pretty sure that I can’t take anymore. Anymore of all this, this shit that comes with the life I live. This fucking stereotypical bullshit junkie lifestyle, I feel like I’m living in some fucking bad movie of the week every single day and its weighing heavily on me.

With that, I know now that it is a necessity for me to come off smack. There really is no way around it; I have to get myself straight. There is the problem of kicking, something that I really don’t think I can handle, not now. In the last three years, I’ve kicked numerous times but my mind hasn’t lived outside these fuzzy edges that come with heroin in what must be more than a year straight and it scares me to be any different.

But I know it; I know that I cannot continue living like this any longer. I could feel myself this morning, getting desperate and scared. Scared because I don’t want to continue living my life like this, dependent on a fucking narcotic substance, not being able to function for shit without feeling its caress, to feel trapped in this cycle that never, never ends, helpless… hopeless.

And in my panic, I think of the exquisite pain that comes with withdrawals, the sheer agony. I’m torn, I really can’t decide which of the two is better.

It is with this that I have devised a plan, a half assed one if anything, but a plan nonetheless. At least that’s a start. I going to stay on the smack, that’s a given, but I’m going to put myself on the maintenance program. Doing enough to not get sick, not doing enough to catch a nod, maintenance. I’m not exactly going to be clean, this I understand but I guess it’s sort of a step in the right direction.

I booted a decent shot home early in the morning and that’s it, that’s all the dope I’m going to have until late in the evening or hopefully, and I’m pushing it, tomorrow morning. It’s as simple as that and it’s a whole lot more difficult than that. Cause all I have is will power fueling me and a big bag of dope in my pocket to tide me over, it kind of makes for a tricky situation.

Granted, I haven’t worked out all the logistics of it yet. I don’t know what I am going to do with myself. Today, I was miserable walking around all day, knowing I had dope pumping in my veins yet I couldn’t catch a buzz. I wanted to, believe me, I wanted to. I spent half the day pacing, trying to con myself out of going back into the commode and finishing up the job good and proper. But I didn’t do it, I can’t do it, I know that now, I’ve known it for years. If I don’t come clean now, I fear that I may never be able to do it. And that thought scares me more than anything, carrying out the rest of my existence in a state of perpetual darkness, trapped behind this wall of… I don’t know what this wall is made of, nor do I really give a damn. At this point, I only know that I’m in a state of urgency and I’m trying to give it an honest shot.

 

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November 18

April 23rd 1998: Absolute Failure

The initial results from my attempt to get clean are not good, no, not good at all. Well, all right, it actually isn’t going that bad, but it’s not as successful as I had initially predicted. I’m only supposed to be having one hit today, instead in decreasing the number of hits I have each day each day by one. This method will work, but it will just take a bit longer than I had anticipated. I don’t mind though, as long as I can eventually come clean…

Over there on the other page is the start of something,  a poem?  some sort of incessant rambling  of a fool? I don’t know,  I want to finish it but I can’t now, my head is way too clear. Yesterday my brain was a total blur; I could feel it, the fuzzy edges around my brain when I wrote that thing at the height of my hit.  When I get back to that mind numbing state, maybe then  I will continue to write.

Having only allowed myself  to fix twice today, they had to be timed out in Swiss precision as to get the maximum high gravity each. It’s 1045 now, I have 30 min. till I can have my first hit.

I’m writing this on the train from Yau Ma Tei  station, I had just been to  score.   My hit of the day was unsuccessful to say the least. I ended up finishing off all of the dope  just to catch a buzz.

I don’t really care for talking about this right now, in fact, I’m going to stop discussing this whole situation with smack.  From here on out  there will be no more talk of scoring, fixing or anything else remotely associated with heroin. I reckon it just makes me sound pretentious. Mark my words,  “no more talk of smack!”  At least not for a few days.

 

 

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November 25

April 28th 1998: The Magic Number

So today is the day. The day where I take the first baby steps towards change. As I mentioned before, numerous times, I am starting to hate the person I am becoming and I need to change. Today I began that process, today I took my first steps towards quitting heroin for good. Today I started methadone.

After school I went over to meet Chris, he said he would come and keep me company over at the clinic. And you know sometimes I forget it but I’ve got some pretty good friends. I mean who wants to spend their evening waiting by the methadone clinic, seriously? Who does that? Oh I also ran into Pash but he was just there to cop.

At 6pm We arrived at the Yau Ma Tei Methadone Clinic and I began the registration process for treatment. It seems ironic to me that the methadone clinic, my main source of dope for the last 2 years is, from now on, going to become my place of recovery.

For the next 45 minutes I went about the procedure for methadone treatment. Signing consent forms, speaking to the social worker and taking the always-fun urine test. After going through my drug history with the social worker I was supposed to go and see the doctor but he wouldn’t be there for another hour so I had to wait.

Sitting on the awkward, splintery wooden benches in the main reception area I ran into Phil Mcghee. Phil was one of those old school junkies (well as old school as you can be at 19) who had been in the methadone program for years now. After catching up with the normal, boring chitchat we decided to split a bag. Since I still had to wait a while for the doctor, we decided to go pick up.

I told Chris he could take off since I was just waiting around anyway and walked downstairs with Phil. The bag was pretty shitty. But then again the neighborhood has been dry for weeks now so what can you expect?

Phil and I copped and walked a couple of blocks down; we squatted down and fixed behind a giant cement column that held up an overpass. I could hear the cars whizzing above, people going places, doing things. Maybe I could be one of those people some day.

I stumbled back to the clinic, taking my time as wandered the streets that I frequented so regularly. I stopped at a guy I knew to buy some bootleg Marlboro Reds that had just come in from the Philippines.

The doctor was in by now and he asked me all the medical questions associated with long term intravenous drug use. Questions about AIDS, hepatitis and any multitude of disease you can get by shooting heroin. It didn’t take as long as it should of, I feel that the doctor was really just half-assing it. He spent the prerequisite amount of time with me and sent me on my way.

That was it. They gave me my card and my first dosage of my “medicine.” I’ve got to say that methadone tastes like absolute shit. But I downed that little 80mg cup like the big boy I was. I walked downstairs and sat on the stoop just waiting for the stuff to kick in. I have to admit I was fixated with my little membership card. It made me feel special, like I was now part of some elite junkie club and this was my all access pass. I fondled the card for some time, the number of it bring up some unexplained emotions in me #49089, the key to success? The magic number? I hope my feeling is right, I hope this is the magic number. My winning numbers that allow me to get clean… I just hope I can quit.

 

 

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November 28

April 30th 1998: Cutting It Close

So this is day three of my methadone treatment so far it has been moderately successful. I haven’t touched any junk in two days so far and I haven’t had any symptoms of withdrawal. As long as I have had my daily dose of mojo juice I may just be able to keep this up.

Since being in the methadone program I have found that this elixir, created by the Nazis as a cheap morphine substitute at the height of wartime, has left me with a feeling of complete and utter… I don’t know, emptiness? It’s like for the first time in a year I feel almost normal, almost. It’s not the normal that comes with being clean and sober, this is different. It’s different because I know its fake, it feels fake and it’s inexplicable. I feel normal like I’m clean but it just doesn’t feel natural. And it’s this fallacy that has left me empty inside.

This evening when I went to the clinic to get my magic potion I found myself having to dodge dealers left and right. Having been a regular on this scene for the last few years, I was pretty well acquainted with a lot of the guys on the street; most had taken to calling me “white boy” since I was the only non-Chinese guy to cop with such frequency. I must have shaken my head to about eight guys, the head shake being the universal signal of “No, I don’t want drugs, thank you have a nice day.” Though that shake can very easily change to a nod, the universal symbol for “Yes I do want buy your illegal substances.”

By the time I reached the clinic there were about a hundred angry patients all eager to get their serving for the day but the clinic doors were shut. At this point I had already begun to feel the signs of withdrawal creeping up on me, my nose was sniffling my legs were starting to hurt, I was in dire need of my juice.

After thirty minutes or so the gate to the clinic swung open, the hundred people in front of and behind me started shoving their way up the stairs. Once some order was gained I realized I would be there for well over an hour before I got my hit of refreshment. This was going to pose a problem; I was now past the point of eager as my withdrawal grew into a full-blown hunger.

My mother had already been paging me for well over an hour and I had to get home, I don’t think I could have pulled staying for another hour, what was I to do? “FUCK IT!” I was desperate, I did the only thing I could think to do, I walked down stairs and crossed the street and picked up a bag.

As I sat in the stall of the McDonald’s bathroom preparing my shot all I could think was that I didn’t want to score, this was the last thing I wanted to do. I justified to myself in a multitude of ways, saying I had no other option, I was at the end of my rope, and it’s not my fault.

Now my efforts over the last three days were all in vain, I would have to start this cleaning process all over again, I was cutting it close. I graduate high school in a couple of weeks and if I time this three week detox just right I will be able to be clean once I go on to work, or maybe college, I don’t know. What I do know is if I don’t clean up now before I move on to the next phase of my life, wherever I went, I would die there. Well, at least I’d feel like I was going to die.

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December 5

May 11th 1998: The Second Attempt

When I tried to get clean the last time it was, to say the least, a miserable and utter failure. Today I am going to give it a second shot. I realize now that the reason I failed the last time is because I was quitting for a whole bunch of reasons other than to actually want to be clean. I was quitting because I knew it was the right thing to do, or for people like James and Chris who kept pressuring me about it every day but it was never because I wanted to quit.

Well times have changed, now I think I genuinely want to quit. And not for anyone else or because I society tells me it’s the right thing to do but for me. I don’t want to live my entire life dependent on some chemical, not being able to any normal, inane daily activity without it. No, I don’t want to live my life like that, not anymore, having to do heroin just so I can sleep at night and wake up in the morning… no.

Also, am I so weak? Am I so weak that I can’t stop taking this fucking drug no matter how much I want to stop? I think I’m stronger than that, I should be able to take control of my life, not hand it over to some fine white powder. It has to stop. I have to be able to live some semblance of and to take part in its routine activities without this drug.

So today I am heading back to the methadone clinic for my dose of sticky green punch and I am going to keep going every single until I’m off this shit forever.

But first I need just one more hit. `

 

 

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