I am going to preface this by saying that a friend of mine previewed this and said I should say very clearly  up front that this article is a graphic description of shooting up.  Some might find it disturbing.   Please read one of my happy posts instead:  2009, Grace to you and Peace.

A friend of mine had eye surgery yesterday and on the way back, I ran into the drug store to pick up her prescriptions for antibiotics and percocet.  I remembered the following story and told another friend of mine.  He has known me for many years and was stunned.  This is one example of how desperate addiction can make a person.  The anonymity of OS has allowed me to write about events that are not really fodder for my office parties or friendly get-togethers. 

I have been clean and sober since August 1985.   I was 20 years old.  I am very aware that I had nothing to do with getting sober; that it is only by the grace of God that I was able to quit.   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.

We got the call and headed over to Brenda’s house.  Brenda was probably in her late 20’s.  She seemed old to me and was kind of trailer parky, but she was our only source for drugs that we had found since we relapsed after Menninger’s.  Neither of us liked her very much because we knew she was cutting it and there was something shifty about her.  J  kept telling me he would figure out who she was getting it from so we could bypass her.  That was how we ended up finding Joy. 

Brenda had a kid.  Real skinny, always kind of dirty looking, stringy hair, maybe 10 or 12?  I always felt sorry for her and would think about how terrible it was that her mother was such a drug addict.   Her mother would shoo her away when we came to get something, but she was still there.  One day we arrived to find Brenda running around the yard looking for her kid.  The kid came out from behind a shed crying, looking scared and anxious.  Brenda was screaming and screaming and screaming at her, chasing her.   The kid ran inside and shut herself in her room.  D.A.R.E had come to her school and talked about drugs and how bad they were.  The kid came home and threw some of Brenda’s drugs away.  My buried conscience tugged at me bad that day, but I shoved it down deeper.  We bought what we needed and left.

This day, Brenda had some percocet.  Heroin and dilaudid, the drugs of choice, had been hard to come by the past week.  When we got there, Mike, the taxi driver, and that Dan guy were there.  They had everything laid out on the table.  I was new to all this and was told that percocet is hard to turn into something you can shoot up.  It wasn’t a matter of crushing and cooking.  There were these enormous syringes- they looked like turkey basters and had needles on the end that could have come from my mother’s sewing machine.  They explained that you had to crush up the pills and mix them with water, then put it in the turkey baster syringe with cotton and shoot it up that way.  J gave me my share and said I could just swallow them- that I didn’t have to shoot up.  Not shoot up? The girl who would never shoot up, who had just started shooting up 2 months earlier, had to shoot up.

I set to work, copying the big boys.  The guys were done fast and I was still trying to get mine ready.  God it looked so big.  It was all mixed in there, little particles floating around.  A lot of water.  Like three tablespoons.  I remember hearing that the particles could get in your heart (that was why the cotton is in there, they told me.)  I was all ready and that Dan guy said he could do me.  J was doing something, I couldn’t tell what.  He was the only one who had injected me but I went ahead.  I held out my arm and squeezed off so my vein started to rise up.  Dan took the syringe and poked it into my skin.  A thread of blood rushed back up into the syringe, so I knew he had found the vein.

“Shit, that is killing me. Wait up!”

He stopped, the needle hanging out of my arm. It hurt so much! This hadn’t happened before. It was stinging and felt all heavy. He started to push it in.

“Wait up man.  This doesn’t feel right.”  Where was J?

”This is how it is- it is different than the insulin syringes.  Just be still.”

He pushed some more.  Nothing was going in. My skin was starting to bulge a little.

“Pull it out, pull it out!”  I was getting panicky.   He was annoyed.  J was freed up and came over.

“Here, you have to do it.”

He sat down and I got my other arm ready.  I wanted to get high so bad.  He poked it in again.  He started pushing. 

“Stop, stop, STOP!” 

I was so frustrated.  It was hurting so bad.  J had told me when I first shot up that I had really good veins.  Why won’t this work?  The guys were already starting to nod.  Their eyes all pinned. 

“Are there any more that I can just eat?” 

 “No, that’s all of them.”  He tried again.  It seemed harder to break the skin because the giant needle was getting dull.

I pictured myself falling off the chair, convulsing, particles on their way to my heart, too much water in my body.  I pictured myself dying in this crummy house around this dimly lit kitchen table with a middle eastern taxi driver and some Dan guy, both almost twice my age.  But, I wanted to get high. I wanted to shoot up.  I wanted to feel what they were feeling.

“OK. STOP, take it out, take it out!”

I sat there.  My arms were aching.  They were all high.  I was sick.  There wasn’t any left.  The turkey baster syringe was filled with bloody percocet water. 

So.... I drank it.

*****

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