We stood in the kitchen screaming at each other.  I was on my side, he was on his.  It had been over 48 hours and we were so sick.  Joy had called an hour earlier using the code.   One ring, hang up, call back.  Answering machines weren’t that common back then, and the code was the only way to avoid the bill collectors, his probation officer and the parents.    Joy lived across town in a typical, suburban, brick home.  A 50 year old mother of grown children, her husband had a good job with the city and she had been addicted for decades.  She called us her babies.  Sometimes she would let us use at her house and then we would visit a while, but today was all business and she sent us away.  No relief yet.  It was years later when I realized the irony of a drug dealer named Joy.

We took our positions.  Our backs were to each other as we carefully laid out the tools of addiction: spoon (not a teaspoon but a soup spoon); water (supposed to be distilled, but tap will do);  lighter (thank God we have two today so I don’t have to wait for him to finish);  stripped cigarette butt to filter the impurities (hated to waste a Marlboro Light, but could smoke it without the filter later if I ran out);  syringe (insulin with an orange cap- most of them were so dull from multiple uses, but I found the newer one- he didn’t notice). 

The screaming was about how to divide the brown powder in the little pink balloon.  I always thought I should get more than he was giving me.  He always argued that I should not.  

“You don’t weigh enough- you’re 105 lbs and that amount isn’t safe!”

There was that episode last week when he had to make a pot of coffee at 3 in the morning to pour down my throat because I wouldn’t wake up… 

 “And, by the way," he added," I paid for it, God dammit!” 

Oh yeah...

“This batch is different! It’s cut more!”  I yelled back. 

I hated him at that moment.  I made enough of a fuss to get a little extra scraped into my spoon. 

The race was on.  He had shown me how a few months earlier.  Bend the spoon so it would lay flat.  Draw up the water in the syringe and squirt it slowly, gently saturating the powder.  Hold the lighter underneath, not too close, and heat the metal until the liquid starts to bubble and becomes the consistency of the brown sugar my mother used to put on my oatmeal when it melted.   I gagged from the smell, not because it was bad, but because my body was having a visceral reaction to the bondage of physical addiction.   I rolled up a tiny piece of cigarette filter into a ball, put the needle deep into the middle and started to suck up the liquid: medicine and poison, the ultimate paradox.   

It didn’t matter if I got mine ready first, he always went first.  Secretly, I didn’t mind because I had learned that delaying my gratification meant that I could sit and enjoy the rush and not have to jump up to take care of him. I felt some sort of perverse superiority that he was more of an addict than I was because he couldn’t see the value of this tactic.   He sat down and I injected him.  I pleaded with him to hurry up and do me.   I sat down on the toilet and held my arm tight the way he had shown me.  I remember questioning him in the beginning.

“Don’t I need a tourniquet?”

“No, this works just fine and is faster.” 

I had always hated shots, but had discovered that there are different kinds of shots.

The instant the heroin entered my body, I could feel it.  It tingled, almost stinging, as it traveled up my arm, into my chest, up my neck, into my other arm and then down my legs.  My entire brain was on fire, behind my eye sockets, my ears, my teeth.   The first time, the feeling had terrified me.  Now I just leaned back and let it go, feeling it course through my veins as it healed me and made me well, denying that it was killing me at the same time.  I jumped up from the toilet, threw open the lid and vomited.  That was the norm.  I could never do a shot without puking right after. I had always hated vomiting, but had discovered there are different types of vomiting.  This type of vomiting was the proof that this was good stuff. 

Then it was over.  Withdrawal:  sweating,  nausea,  tiny little knives stabbing my bone marrow- all gone, all better.  I was normal again. 

It was 1984 and I was 18.  What happened to me?  Straight A student, 3 sport athlete, Student Council Treasurer, French Club President, National Honor Society, heroin addict???

One of these things just doesn’t belong. 

That was 24 years ago.  I have been clean and sober since August 1985.  I have two amazing sons who have always had a sober mother; I returned to school and have a master’s degree; I have a successful career and am respected by my peers; I have loving relationships with my family and friends; I am a productive and contributing member of society; I am a PTA volunteer and was even the den mother. 

 I should be dead.