Every ones rock bottom is different. Mine personally consisted of an absolute love affair with needles and a thing called “the rush”. This is the feeling of absolute euphoria, induced by a substance, injected directly into ones bloodstream. Now at the peak of my relationship I was using upwards of two hundred and fifty dollars a day and still could not outrun “the sickness”.This went on for years and financially it was amazing that I could keep it up, considering I rarely had a job of any sort and when large amounts of money did come my way it was gone in mere days if not hours. On numerous occasions Ive consumed close to five hundred dollars worth of the good stuff in just under twenty four hours.

The sickness I’m referring to is something that one soon finds out about with any worthwhile experimentation into the heroin lifestyle. This consist at first of a strong mental need or uncontrollable urge to get the drug. I would do anything to acquire my fix, this ranged from working hard at a well paying job and quickly progressed to petty thievery and the manipulation of any situation that I could see myself benefiting from. Soon after the mental dilemma of having no way to acquire my love comes the physical attributes, the skin crawling, restless legs, aches to the bone, terrible headaches, inability to sleep, night-sweats, nightmares, which were and still are the worst part for me, the vomiting, irritability, irrationality, and utter complacency for the way I had ended up. My selfishness and absolute inability to live without my drug knew no bounds, the petty theft I speak of escalated further and even drove me to steal irreplaceable heirlooms, such as the family silver, loved ones jewlery, trading stolen fire arms for extremely small amounts of my true love, but most inexplicably was the notion that I truly believed I would return these things sometime soon after relieving them from their rightful owners and that the only person I was hurting was myself. What a fools paradise it is to be high and narcissistic. A true sociopath at his finest one might say.

In my addiction I have been able to escape diseases of death commonly associated with the “junkie” lifestyle, definitely not due to my prestigious harm reduction or clean needle policy. Those sorts of things never existed for me, simply the desire to keep myself inside that warm blanket the dope provided me with. I reused needles until they simply pushed my vein out of the way. Cleaning a rig with alcohol was a simple enough solution to sharing needles with someone. Along with heroin, which in its purist form is a drug processed for injection, I also have a long history of injecting pills such as Oxycontin, Roxy, opana, the list of opiates goes on and on, benzos like xanax, ambien, amphetamines, subutex and suboxone, some of these things sound terrifically terrible to me now, but in the moment, when I was low and out of options, the simple prick of the needle and a full rig of benadryl would cure my needs if only momentarily. Now that fits more into my terms of how to truly define a junkie, “you may be a junkie if… check any from the list above”. A sick joke to say the least, but when given the option to laugh or cry I reserve the right to revel in the fact I’m still alive despite my most ingenious decisions.

Now when I say junkie, I don’t mean the recreation user, the chipper, or even a person thats daily use at times gets in the way. No, being a junkie to me meant that the day got in the way of my using. That for long periods of time the only thing that could rouse me from my bed would be the prospect of scoring my fix. Showering and bodily hygiene became a nuisance, though I tolerated it, it truly became a rarity if I did not have my drugs. My need to care for my surroundings and living quarters was absolutely laughable and at times I found myself discarding dishes and cookwares to relinquish myself of the duty of actually washing the weeks plus old food that had become a permanent fixture upon them. In one of my darkest moments I remember constructing a sort of fort in the middle of my already small apartment, and became more comfortable sleeping on the floor, sheets obstructing my view, of the pit of disgust and despair that had become my home. To be truthful, my home was not where my body was, but it was within the warm metal spoon that at times seemed immense and bottomless to the amount of money and emotion that could vanish so simply with the additions of water and heat.

Through those dark times and the days of present I’ve always had my best friend, my dog and at times my protector, Nina, an 80 pound, blue eyed, snow white colored, pit bull whose ability to make me feel terrible was only slightly diminished by her need to make me feel loved. At my sickest moments I did neglect her, only slightly, but its truly something I still think of on a daily basis. I would always walk her several times a day, and food was never an issue. But my need to get high came before all else, at times, even her. To say these things out loud and put them to paper makes me taste a bitterness in my mouth and a terrible intense nausea, so to sum this faction up a little quicker, she always let me know what I was doing was wrong. When I would arrive home, exstatic from the score, and head directly to the bathroom, she followed, and sat several feet away piercing me with her blue eyes, as if saying ” you know this is wrong, do not do this to yourself”. There were times I listened, sometimes wasting a good thirty or fourty dollar hit out of sheer guilt and disgust of my once current state. But like the cries of family, and loved ones that came before, this feeling of guilt was soon overcome by the too powerful need to make myself “well” again and forget, if only for meer moments, of the pitiful state I had become.

Ive written quite a bit for now, we’ll simply note this as an unfinished topic, hopefully I get to some more positive aspects that have come toward the end of my battles. I have yet to win, though i have come a long way, the war wages on.