Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

(A true story from my memoir…)


December 2009




     "Honey, can you help me… ?"
     The straining voice of my mother startles me awake as she struggles to hold the front door of the apartment open with a dozen overstuffed grocery bags. How could she be home this early from shopping? I leap off the couch, glancing at the clock under the TV. She's actually right on time, I'd lost an hour. The consequence of my generous impulsivity I don't realize yet, that is, until I reach my sleeveless arms out to help her with the grocery bags.
      My mom freezes in place. "What is that?"
      "What?" This is my initial, naive reaction before I see what she's looking down at. Oh, shit. 
      I don't even have a second to hate myself with insults for not waking up merely one minute before the door opened to throw on a long-sleeved shirt. Goddamn track marks—
      "What is wrong with you?!" 
      I can't answer. There is no answer. I can't say, Well, I'm a drug addict. This shit happens. She wouldn't accept that as a viable answer. She's not an addict, therefore, she cannot possibly understand that this is the truth. However, my mom does know a lot more than most people do about addiction. She knows—at least, she says she knows—that it's not me getting up one afternoon thinking, I'm going to take everything I've worked so hard to get back, such as my mom trusting me to stay in her apartment, and throw it all away so I can shoot dope and get high. Fuck everybody! Ha Ha!
      That's not how it is, at all. I wish others couldn't understand that. I wish this more not dying. If I die, then at least my friends and loved ones would know it wasn't my choice. 
      "I thought we were passed this…" Her voice trembles. "How many times is it going to take, son?" Now, she's in total cry-mode. "Just tell me what you need? I can't do this anymore…"
      She can't do this anymore? She can't do this anymore?! The red heat burning in my stomach should be directed towards myself, but thanks to the dope I injected not two hours ago misplaces it, aiming all of it at her. My poor mother who never deserved any of this. 
      The situation has become a bittersweet routine for my mom. She hates that I've relapsed and had been lying about it, but having once again stopped it before it could take my life, is a short victory. Short because the odds of it being the last time are strongly against her. If my life was a game, the dope house would always have the edge. 
      I'm a little bit more ambivalent to getting caught by my mom. Better her than the police. Fortunately, this run was short-lived. Otherwise, something horrible might have happened. I'll never get over what happened a few months ago. 
       After I gazed down at her lifeless body, my feelings were drowning in a flood of remorse because...
       She wasn’t there anymore.
       Ever since I can remember, I've been able to pick up other people’s vibrations and can sometimes see their vibrant auras when I close my eyes. But when I closed them and looked towards her body, I sensed nothing.
       No vibration.
       No colors.
       Just a dull emptiness.
       It’s an eerie feeling when someone is lying right in front of you and you can’t feel their warm presence. Her body wasn’t but an empty shell; a cocoon harboring nothing but the residue of a departed soul.
       I knew it after I found her lying there, ice-cold to the touch. She had passed away in her sleep. She must have since she made it to my bed instead of passing out on the floor. Shit, or even worse, with him. It may have been an accident, but he's the one to blame. my dealer who had somehow become my roommate a few weeks before.
       It's the strangest thing, though. I can't, for the life of me, think of what he looks like. I had described him to the cops after they finished rummaging through my apartment, looking for evidence, but afterwards, while in rehab, I forgot. The only things I can remember are that he's an African American who's taller than me with a crooked, or lazy-eye. I remember that I couldn't ever steal from him, because he always had his eye on me, and the other eye watching his dope. 
      Bubba still might be out there. The police never contacted me if they caught him. I know I may be a punk for ratting him out, but if anyone saw the shit I've seen him do and has gotten away with…, shit. Nobody would have kept their mouth shut. 
      He's an evil son of a bitch. I'm glad I can't imagine his face. 
       


Like a monthly check-up at a doctor's office, my mom starts giving me the routine third-degree. She fires away with question after question and I tell her the truth—I've learned there's no point in lying, it'll only slow the process of me getting help. The truth always comes out, anyway. 
      My mom reads off her invisible checklist. Her words come at me like rapid-fire. "When did it start?"
      My answers come right after. "About two, maybe three weeks ago."
      "Heroin?"
      "Yes. But not at first." As if this makes a difference.
      "God, son." She shakes her head and continues. "What started it?"
      "OxyContin."
      She sighs. "When did you go back to heroin?"
      "I bought like three Oxy's, but they got way too expensive." I pause. "And I knew a cheaper way to get that same high."
      "How much are you doing now?"
      I take few seconds to think before I answer. "I don't know. Not as much as before, but my tolerance grew faster this time."
      "How much?" I can hear she's growing inpatient. 
      "Umm, maybe half a gram?"
      "A day?"
      I nod, watching the floor go up and down, up and down. 
      "Jesus, son. Are you gonna need detox?"
      My eyes move lower, past my white feet and up to where I'm looking at the wrinkled shirt I'm wearing. Slowly, shamefully, I nod again. 
      There's a pause for a minute, but I know it's not over. Mom always slips in one last question, hoping I accidentally slip-up and answer. 
      "Who'd you get it from?"
      This time I meet her gaze, and shake my head. "I'm not gonna say."
      Her nostrils flare while the blood seeping to her head turns them a shiny red. "Who are you trying to protect, huh? Do they mean that much to you?"
      She is right. It wasn't a friend who'd given me the Oxy this time. He was a total stranger. 
      I'd spotted him on the corner in front of the 7-Eleven downtown wearing a white-brimmed hat that rested on top of black sunglasses that covered half his face. The typical crowd of druggies surrounded him and watched the exchanges. They always wear a sweater with a hood that looks like it's never been washed. Even when it's a hundred degrees outside, they'll be hiding deep inside the cave of their hoody. 
      I walked up towards them with my phone out, and gave one of the dudes a nod as he walked past. He turned around. 
      "Sup," he said.
      "Yo, what's your guy got?" It was stupid to ask, but since he turned and asked What's up? I knew he'd be cool. 
      His eyes darted behind me and across the street where I'd came from. "You a cop?"
      "Fuck no, man. Look…" I lifted up my sleeve up to my elbow, enough to where he could see what I do. Then, slid my shirt back down. 
      "Shit, man. You crazy." He kept looking around for anything that told him I wasn't cool, that I was 5-0—a cop. Showing my track marks usually was all the proof they needed. But, the number one rule in this game, Don't Trust Anyone. Based on my experience, this is universal knowledge, but in my case it's Don't Trust Anyone, especially myself. 
      "Say then, what you need?"
      I almost said I wanted some dope, but stopped myself in time. Dope means different things to different people. To junkies, dope is heroin, clearly. To tweakers, aka meth addicts, it's meth. And to the stoners who only smoke pot—and shouldn't be using the term at all, but do occasionally—it's weed. Of course, group number one is correct. Dope is heroin. I wished other users knew this, but I really couldn't give a shit less. 
      Instead, I asked, "Got any of that Brown?"
      Down here in the Lone Star State and it's surrounding shit-holes, our dope comes from south of the border, and when I say 'dope' here, I mean every kind of dope—besides meth which comes from the closest trailer park. Instead of the white or cinnamon sugar-like powder they get up in New York, we get a black, sticky substance known as Mexican Tar. I've had the powders before and I hate saying it, but Yes they are better, with a cleaner feel to the highs. Don't get me wrong though, the tar that comes around here can be downright deadly—


      …that's enough about that. 


      The guy I was talking to introduced me to Todd, the dealer in the white hat. He didn't have dope, but he had something else. The closest thing to heroin: OxyContin. They are usually tiny, green circles of 10, 15, 30, all the way to 80 milligrams containing the main ingredient, Oxycodone HCl. Basically, it's synthetic heroin. It's the same high as heroin, but if after you shot up, someone scrubbed you down with bleach and detoxified your body making you feel fresh and clean, but still floating in a warm cloud of relief. 
      So I told Todd, "Yes." We had a deal. The pills he had were the typical 30 milligram pills and street price, if you didn't have a connection, or 'hook-up,' you paid a dollar per milligram. I bought three from him. He didn't hook me up with any deal though, since he didn't know me, but he promised he'd get me next time. We exchanged numbers and met up nearly everyday after. 
       Until, the third or fourth day when the inevitable happened: He had run out and couldn't get anymore because his dealer's phone was off. That meant either his guy was tired of people calling so he shut off his phone, or he got popped. Arrested. Taken downtown. Behind bars. Either way, Todd was already experiencing withdrawal, going through hell and begging me to spare a pill. 
      "Why do you think I came to see you?" I asked him. I had taken my last one and now I needed more, otherwise, I was going to be sick too by nightfall. 
      "C'mon, bro. You ain't nothing?" His voice was trembling. "Don't you know anyone else?"
      I did, but did I really want to go back down that road? Before I could answer my own thought, I told Todd to hold up, and was calling an old friend, Judy. 
      Judy was a drag-rat who lived underneath a bridge next to campus. Fortunately, she still had the same phone and picked up on the second ring. 
      Todd, Judy, her friend, and I were shooting up the next hour.