Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

Introduction      

           I don’t believe many people can imagine what it’s like to wake up to your best friend lying next to you, dead; I don’t have to imagine, it’s there already, on the front lines of my mind. Laying next to her, I could see our two bodies, but only felt one heartbeat. 
           Of course I hadn’t known it when I had come home from scoring dope and saw her lying in the same position. I jumped back on the bed attempting to wake her but to no avail. I had closed my eyes and felt like the only one in the room. With my window shades drawn, shadows moved in the dark. An eerie and almost black atmosphere became of my bedroom. Fear had grabbed ahold of me when I couldn’t feel her presence, lying beside me. 
        I believe love does conquer all, for my love for her had overpowered that fear with ease. I allowed my slender fingers to gently brush along her chilled, colorless face. 
       *Oh, how I had come to love that face, and still cherish it, even after its liveliness had departed.*
       My feeble heart had skipped a beat or two. Whatever had been yanking at my strained heart-strings had then wrapped its cord around my neck. I became flooded by the suffocating sense of drowning. My equilibrium had been thrown off—not being able to tell up from down. For all I knew, I was swimming in the wrong direction. Descending into a madness I’d barely seen once before, with Scarlett. 
           That unforgettable morning had stayed with me ever since I felt her cold face and the taste of saline as I realized what had transpired throughout the night. I’ll bet what little money I have it will always be there. Following me during the day alongside my shadow. And at night, lonesome without its shadow companion, it pokes at me like a neglected child. 
           I had known it was heroin that took her last breath from her. There was nothing in her purse that showed she had taken too much of anything else. I remember her drinking, then popping a pill or two—nothing different from what we were used to doing every other night. 
           Though, before that night, I hadn’t seen her in two weeks. I kept thinking, maybe something had happened to her during those few weeks that I wasn’t aware of. 
           I had known I was deep into my addiction and I wanted her nowhere near that. So for two weeks, I stayed downstairs in my frozen, flea-infested cave with Bubba.
           Bubba. This had been his fault. He would’ve been the one to give it to her. I knew I hadn’t, nor my neighbor, Annie. 
           Bubba wasn’t just my roommate, he was moreover my drug dealer. In other words, I did nearly everything he wanted so I could have my fix. He’d supply me with dope—a.k.a. heroin or smack—for his share of rent money, while I was still one of his biggest customers. I would spend whatever money my parents had given me for food and emergencies on more dope. 
           We had a nightly routine that we would never miss: As I would come home from class at the Art Institute of Austin for audio engineering and production, he would come home from whatever it was he did—hustling, he said—we would blast off into sweet serenity. He would always bring home a couple bars, a.k.a. Xanax, with a gram or two of crack, and most importantly, plenty of dope. 
           We would first ingest two Xanax each then proceed to smoke all the crack we had. The crack would usually last about an hour at most. It would be enough to almost, but not entirely, cancel out the Xanax that we’d taken, which took away any anxiety that the crack would induce. 
            I would be on top of the world, feeling just right until, the crack/cocaine feeling would wear off.
           When you run out of crack, or cocaine, a depression begins to set in, next to an awful sense of paranoia. The doors and windows were always locked and the blinds were always kept closed. Just in case the Feds outside tried to get in, with or without a warrant. 
           Of course, there was never anybody outside watching us. But cocaine—and other uppers—will make you so delusional that you will think the feds were outside in the trees and behind the bushes, watching your every move. Like the ‘Neighborhood Watch’ program families have, you become the ‘Watch the Neighborhood’ program.  Addicts go completely insane over this pulse-pounding paranoia.
           That’s what the Xanax was for, to keep us grounded. Like we were chained at the ankles to prevent us from flying away. So, when we finished all the crack we had—and yes, we would always finish it, there’s no such thing as leftover crack—we’d both inject The Devil’s Juice… a.k.a. heroin.
           Heroin was my favorite way of escaping reality. It was my drug of choice because… 
           1. There is no comedown from smack.
           2. It overpowers any other drug that you take. And…
           3. It is simply the best feeling one can ever experience.
           It’s not just the drug alone that people fall addicted to, though. It's the whole process and ritual of cooking the dope, and then shooting it.
           People who say they’re afraid of needles are far better off staying that way. But of course, I used to say the same thing.
           I fell in love with sticking myself. I loved it so much, I even loved sticking other people if they couldn’t do it, but only if they had done it before. I was, in no way, going to let another person be addicted to this shit. Even when I was dope sick, I’d still inject myself with warm water. I wasn’t just addicted to the smack, but the needle too.
           Scanning up, down and around the arm, looking for that thin bulge protruding up from the skin.
           *Bingo.*
           And once you find that sweet spot, you hit it with the needle. Once you see the blood jolt up and register into the syringe…
           *There she blows!*
           Slam it all home.
           Almost immediately, after the whole injection, you feel a ‘pins and needles’ reaction on the top of your head, streaming to the back of your neck. The euphoria is like no other thing you’ve experienced. The slight vinegar taste crawls up your throat and exhausts through your mouth. 
           This sweet, overwhelming sense of relief hits you and floods your veins like a warm blanket covering your previously cold body. You have not a care in the world now. It wraps you in its arms—better than any mother’s—and protects you from any and every negative thought you could have. In fact, there are no negative thoughts. You are filled with breathtaking bliss and heart-warming harmony. And that is just the rush.
           After the rush hits, you’re stuck in a friendly dream-like state known as “nodding-out.” I’ve heard many people describe it as the feeling you get when you wake up ten minutes before your alarm goes off, knowing you have that little extra time to sleep. I believe it is like that, but more gratifying because you’re high and there is no alarm to wake up to. So you have the pleasure of feeling this way for hours. And like I said before, there is no awful comedown. This is why it is so damn addicting.
           When the high wears off, you just want more; however, not in a cocaine or crack-fiending way. You just want to feel that awesome high again. So much, that you will want to do anything for it. Anything to feel that first high again, but you won’t. You will never feel as high as the first time. That’s why they call it “chasing the dragon.”’ Perpetually, chasing that first high. Then, if you don’t end up dead in a decrepit ditch, you’ll discover yourself in jail or rehab. Both, a hell of their own, now that the dragon chases you.
           *A little ironic… don’t you think?*
           Now, I don’t want you to think this is just another story of addiction—a cautionary tale about all the messed up things I had done or how messed up I had been. 
            Of course my story does follow my addiction, but it’s about what had fueled it. The reason how I became an addict and how—when I discovered that drugs and alcohol weren’t my problem, but a solution to my real problems—I learned how to address and eliminate those flammable issues. 
            I thought it had been my social-anxiety and insecurities—which led to my depression—that had opened the manhole into the underground world of addiction. I was close, but not entirely correct. These teenage issues fall under a worldwide, adult epidemic, that millions suffer from. I’m talking about my actual drug of choice—I had thought was heroin—is actually the strongest drug for a human being—

            … another human.