So, You Want To Be A Junkie...

[This is an incomplete draft of a work in progress- it is being edited and amended daily, and I'd be interested in any preliminary feedback readers feel compelled to forward... J.K. 26.02.06]

No, you don't want to be a junkie: get real. No one, and I mean no one knowingly chooses social pariah status and all its attendant worries and camouflaged consequences, but by the same token no one becomes a junkie by accident, either. The descent to junkiedom falls somewhere inbetween: not a result of conscious will, and yet not pure misfortune either.

One unavoidable bonus of becoming a junkie is that one has cause to meet many other junkies: we tell each other from fifty paces. A certain look in the eye, a tell-tale aura of hunger, forget the confirmation of banal physical signs, the exposed tracks or satisfied nod on the subway bench. We find each other, compare dealers and product, notable highs and ripoffs, and generally bitch and moan like anyone who shares a common occupation. I've known probably well over 50 junkies with various degrees of addiction during my career, and I can report two facts unequivocably. First, again, no one ever set out to become a junkie. Second, once the needle goes in, it never comes out. Ever. And the consequences of each relapse seem to increase, it may be imagination by I sense with each shamed surrender to the seemingly inevitable an increased intolerance. Initially it takes much less to get high as it originally did (and anecdotal evidence is ripe with the tales of ODs occurring in tandem with relapses too often to be accounted for by mere chance), and the cost is immediately higher. Each descent is more rapid, and each kick is just a bit longer, more despairing.

"Why?," straights reasonably bleat. Why in God's name would anyone play with the one substance that has claims notoriety as the most addictive of them all? Well, you have half the answer right there: the reputation of heroin as a dangerous life-killer, a stinky theiving bum-maker, its rep as the worst of them all attracts those experimental souls who have exhausted the menu of other recreational drugs and been on the whole unimpressed, and through a serendipitous coincidence of curiousity and access another virgin samples this most forbidden fruit. There, of course, exists a whole mythos of heroin use and abuse that goes a long way to romanticizing the drug, to establishing appropriate dingy context and supply what skimpy codes and myths accompany dope & its abuse: Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground (they were actually speed freaks), William S. Burroughs (who famously considered heroin a "third-rate tranquilizer" (preferring the concentrated effects of synthetic pharmaceutical substututes), Steely Dan, Kieth Richards, jesus, Clapton, even John Lennon when you get down to it. Bird. Miles, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins. Ray Charles. So the subtle, yet pervasive background effect of bohemian romanticization combines with heroin's positively diabolic reputation, and inevitably the curious will stumble across a surprisingly presentable user, and it should be obvious even from even the most naive shores that every user is ipso facto a dealer. So: proximity x curiosity = virgin usage.

You'll probably smoke it (or if you're on the E Coast of America or Greater Europa snort it)- needles are a whole 'nother Rubicon- and discover, shit, 'taint that heavy at all. Downright pleasant, actually, facilitates a nice dreamy state, sort of like that sweet relaxed time in bed before sleep has taken hold, thoughts come and go with a rare and pleasing liquidity. Get enough into your brain bloodstream and you might even achieve the vaunted "nod," which, contrary to appearances is not pure unconsciousness but rather an almost total surrender to whatever stream-of-consciousness dreamscape your cranium can cook up (see DeQuincey, Baudelaire for reports back from this front, plus some of the more hallucinatory Burroughs) while still being connected by however tenuous a line to a actual physical reality: one can dream & trip beyond description, and yet still react cogently to one's name being uttered next to one's supine form... best of both worlds.

But probably not. You'll probably just take a little sea cruise, loosen up the mu receptors a bit, find the experience not unpleasant but not the be-all end-all you had been led to expect. And then you'll recover from your maiden voyage, your tabboo-shattering Rubicon crossing with no ill effects at all. If anything there might be a certain pleasant hazy hangover, lingering effects, but no sickness, no "withdrawals." Shee-it! you think, I've just hacked one of society's biggest no-no's, and there ain't shit to pay! Congratulations: you're now offically "chipping."

Chipping is any use of heroin (or related opiates or opiate substitutes) that is not associated with a habit. All addicts get their start chipping, and there is a certain number of lucky users who are able to walk the fine line and chip successfully for years on end without acquiring an actual, physical habit. As a very general rule of thumb if one uses heroin for a period of one or two days and then refrains from using again for a period of at least a week (better a week and a half, still safer two weeks) it is theoretically possible to avoid developing a habit. A mutual addict once made what seemed to me to be a piercing observation, to wit: most chippers do not recognize the effects of withdrawal even as they're experiencing them, and so are not so much immune as they are blissfuilly ignorant. Before a user has enough experience under the belt to recognize dope sickness for what it is it is easy to mistake the symptoms for a mild cold or onset of flu: the sniffles, hot flashes, and mild muscular discomfort are initially nothing close to unbearable and, as I say, are frequently mistaken or unnoticed altogether. It is only later when a user has used enough consisently (say for three or four consecutive days, or twice with only one or two days between usages) and suffered a taste of full-blown withdrawals that these preliminary symptoms are recognized for what they are: proof that the check, so to speak, is in the mail[1].

So most users and future addicts motor along in this fashion for months, if not years: using when heroin happens to be near or convenient, but not missing it when it is not, and certainly not seeking it out. Heroin, then, is seductive, but not in the way conventionally thought of (for if it were it wouldn't be genuinely seductive, now would it?). It allows the casual user the illusion that it can be picked up and put down with relatively little to pay and no serious adverse consequences. The happy chipper looks with disdain on bona fide junkies and wonders how they could be so stupid. After all, even the stupidest libertine knows that if one plays with heroin one is playing with fire, but the casual chipper can't see how one could wilfully allow oneself to use so often as to develop a full-blown habit.

And therein lies the root of the inevitable descent: wilfullness. I know of no junkie who at some point didn't acknowledge on some level that they were crossing a line, and yet for whatever reason or reasons kept on going. Usually it is some emotional pit, the effects of a recent romantic break-up, for instance, or the death of a close family member or friend that precipitates this foolhardy decision. True, the heroin does mitigate (or perhaps more accurately obliviate) any and all emotional pain, but the decision to go on ahead and acquire a habit requires another impulse. It requires a level of self pity coupled, or perhaps complemented by a contempt for society and its mores that feeds what is in essence a nihilistic decision. One knows one is fucking up, and one fucks up anyway. It is an impulse that is , paradoxically, a misguided attempt at control in a situation where otherwise all control is lost. One says, "well, she left me, or so-and-so died, and there is nothing to be done about that, and the bromides and sympathetic words and advice of well-wishers only serve to infuriate, but here, finally, is something I can do that will at once cure the pain I suffer under and give the finger to the bitch fate that says such suffering is inevitable." And so the casual user piles two, three, four days, maybe a week of usage up, a real binge, and only then, belatedly, decides to take a few days off and discovers what is now at the end of their fork[2].

And lo! A new junkie is born. Immediately the neophyte apprehends the dismal advantages of his or her new position: the most rudimentary program of personal hygiene is strictly optional, apparently, and short of the scurrying inherent in hustling, scoring, and fixing, it is a tranquil existence.



[1] Nod to Roddy Doyle, screenwriter (and originally author) of the essential brick in the junkie canon "Trainspotting" for this usage- "the check is in the mail" describes aptly the recognition of the onset of withdrawal symptoms- the yawns, the irritablility, and the body's incredible increase in the production of all fluids- eyes water, nose runs, spit accumulates- it's unmistakeable.

[2] Similar credit where due to W.S. Burroughs, or more accurately Kerouac, I guess, who gave the title for Burrough's seminal work "Naked Lunch" which Bill liked because he said it described that moment where maya and illusion lift and the casual midday diner sees with alarming clarity what it is exactly that is at the end of his or her fork... which one either gets or not.