"2 bags please"

As the words of Curtis Mayfield are on an endless loop in my head...the thought of heroin is the only competition it faces for my attention. Days blend into nights, night blend into weeks, and it all becomes a blur until you're staring at yourself in the mirror trying to figure out your life. How can such a small pebble of joy cause such a reset in my brainwaves...the joy of having the dopamine production of a dopefiend...joy is only found in a pile of brown powder.

I check again to make sure I still have my score...a black ball about the size of a large marble, portable pitch black onyx love measured by the gram. This 3 grams won't even last 3 day before I'm back in the endless rat race of copping. I am best friends with the devil and he feeds my addiction happily..a sick twisted friendship of mutual self destruction, our bond is heroin and his habit is worse than mine.

The feeling of hopeless addiction sets in deeper as I look through my call history for the day..15...maybe 20 attempted calls that went straight to voicemail. He's not picking up...he's probably nodding off peacefully while I'm dialing his number like it's a radio station holiness and I'm trying to win tickets to a concert.

I feel soft and squishy like an OP80 that won't dissolve in your mouth. Oxycontins new formulas fucked off the joy of OC's, instead and breaking down and dissolving they become a ball of gel that you could spend 20 minutes trying to chew up.

Imagine trying to chew up an indestructible gummy bear...only to have to wait and hope you feel something in an hour or so. A smart move to curb the abuse but you can't stop a determined addict from finding a way.

Addicts can become resourceful as Macgyver at Home Depot...and where there is a will there is a way....

The lyrics continue to echo in my mind

" Silent life of crime

A man of odd circumstance,

A victim of ghetto demands.

Feed me money for style

And I'll let you trip for a while.

Insecure from the past,

How long can a good thing last?

No, no, no

Got to be mellow, y'all

Got to get mellow, now"

Everything will be ok as long as I have my bottle of brown sugar..filthy heroin tarnished coins scattered throughout my room, something only another addict would recognize as a dead giveaway of a hop snorter. I feel the mixture of heroin, xanax, and benadryl drip down the back of my throat, the sweetish aftertaste of the mannitol lingers. I savor the flavor like I'm doing fucking wine tasting in Napa..

."ahhhh subtle hints of opium interlaced with back notes of psuedophedrine, a light wave of folgers with a smooth solid black tar finish"

I daydream of a opiate convention at the Cow Palace where all the finest of opiates are sampled and sold....the entire place turned into a opium den with Persian rugs and hookahs filled with tasty blobs of black gold...Curtis Mayfield hymns playing over and over as heads bobble left and right in and out of conciousness, harm reduction seminars for the shooters...hey we all can dream right?

Happiness for me is sold by the gram in exchange for pieces of your soul. Yes, I'm an addict, but I'm a functioning addict that works 110+ hours every 2 weeks to earn that check. OVERTIME EQUALS LESS SOBER TIME..more money equals more dope....it's funny how motivating heroin can be, if I show up at the office with a a gram or two in my pocket I become the most productive and helpful employee you could imagine.

My paycheck pays for my dope, my dope keeps me motivated to keep working, I keep working so I can I can get a bigger paycheck, I get a bigger paycheck so I can buy more dope, I buy more dope to keep me happy and motivated to keep working, so I can get more money for more dope, more dope equals better days at work, which means more overtime...it's a sick and vicious cycle and the gears on this hamster wheel are wearing thin.

My father died in September of 1998 and was dead for awhile before his body was found..he had a heart attack while getting high and they left him to die is what I was told by my dad's junkie friend who heard the story after it happened. While listening to his old answering machine messages there was a guy that kept calling and I felt the need to let him know my father was dead. When I was able to get the words out I remember this guy's tone became so serious it scared me...he said he had information on how my dad died and gave me a spot to meet him in Hunters Point..and told me specifically not to drive my father's Cadillac El Dorado since it was well known in the hood...I didn't know how to take this news, and I was already fucked in the head from his death. I got shit faced he night before I was supposed to me him, I cried like a baby all night to my girlfriend at the time and she was worried about what I was planning to do...I woke up the next morning hungover as shit and drove to the Point to meet with the man that would tell me in detail how my father died.

He drove me around and showed me the crackhouses they would get high at, told me the name and description of the dealers and how much dope they'd have on them at any given time, and we began to plan revenge. I wanted to kill everyone in the house and didn't care if women or children were there, in my eyes they all deserved to die for leaving my father to die by himself. I was able to find 2 grenades for sale and planned to blow up the main house. I mapped out the route, selected which will windows would be best to throw them through and he told me the best time to hit them. After weeks of plotting my revenge, I found myself sitting in my dad's empty apartment smokin crack alone..as I was leaving the building I heard a voice that sounded like it was coming from my dad's apartment. I froze and couldn't move, my legs would function and tears poured from my eyes...it was the sound of my father arguing with someone about something, which he usually did after getting drunk..so clear and distinct it scared the shit out of me.

Here I am crying my eyes out and trembling, while high out of my mind and paranoid. I put one ear to the hallway way outside his apartment and heard my father's last argument...and I was hearing the last moments of my father's life being replayed back to me somehow. My father had heart problems and a crack habit, and the argument and stress combined with the drugs and drinking just was too much. He was found collapsed on the bed in a pool of blood..I remember seeing the brown stain on the mattress and knowing it was my father's blood...and the smell of his decomposing body that still haunts me to this day.

I never purchased the grenades I was offered, and fell so deep into addiction that there's several years around that time that are still just a blur..maybe it's better I don't remember them.

As I make my way down 16th st. ..I catch a whiff of good dope getting smoked..and for brief second I miss the mouth numbing taste of a fat rock ..a tweekin latina girl walks up to me and asked me if I want some crystal...I've seen her plenty of times out here, and meth has fucked her world. At one time you can tell she could have passed for model out of Lowrider magazine..but meth has robbed her of her youth and beauty, I know she's younger than I am, but she's had it rough and now she's probably turning tricks to get high and looks closers of 45 than I do.

If I was still tweakin this would have been a goldmine to come across...I would have bought the dope, got a room and fucked her until there wasn't any cum left. She's just the type of whore I would be fielding for after hitting the pipe...just wants to smoke and fuck the day away.

No time for dopefiend dreams...it's time to get to work, a I've got maybe half a gram to get me through the day and keep me motivated..a bump here, a line there and the day will simply disappear into nothingness, only to be repeated again...life in the endless cycle continues on.

"Two bags, please

For a generous fee

Make your world what you want it to be

Got a woman I love desperately

Wanna give her somethin' better than me

Been told I can't be nuthin' else

Just a hustler in spite of myself

I know I can break it

This life just don't make it

Lord, Lord, yeah"

Got to get mellow, now

Gotta be mellow, y'all

Got to get mellow, now