DOSE:		IV	Cocaine
		IV	Heroin
			Alcohol
			Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

I first met Tyler the night I died. It was November 2001 and back then I used to hang out with a bunch of people in an old boarded up warehouse which was great for me because I could crash there all night which solved my housing problem and there was always people going in and out with whatever my drug of choice was that day.

I’d first been brought to this place 3 years ago by one of my shady coke connections one night, and I was seriously doubting whether getting more coke was even worth it at that point, as he had insisted we take the bus. “You don’t want to leave your car in that place dude.” The minute I went in I thought I’d found nirvana. The kids who lived there had smashed through the partitions in the whole back corner, save the rooms that looked out onto the street, who’s windows were draped with blackout curtains. This left a series of rooms that were carpeted in mismatched pieces I guess that were salvaged from back alleys all over town. There was a plug in lamp in each room and what seemed like millions of candles and battery lamps. An old dinosaur of a TV (no idea how they managed to get it up there, we moved it once and it took four of us) There were rooms with mattresses and couches and every room had cushions strewn on the floor from what seemed like every couch ever made between 1964 and 1987. One of the back rooms was hooked up with guitar amps and even a drum kit and kids would jam in there sometimes.

That first night there must’ve been 30 people scattered across the various rooms, stoners, people playing acoustic guitars, coke heads and street kids with nowhere else to go. At the time I was sleeping on friends couches or in my car and those winter nights especially were cold shitty lonely times when my appetite for destruction meant every day was a party and I always stayed at the party long after my real friends had gone home, leaving me staggering down dark streets with total strangers fried out of my skull looking for the next place to get fucked up, invariably being left on my own when the last gig closed shop and I would remember too late I was supposed to sleeping at whoever’s and I’d lost them at about midnight, leaving me to crawl off to my car or (if I’d was lucky) the worst dive hotels you’ve ever seen.

Rinse and repeat.

I ended up staying there after we scored the coke and the Den became my by default place of residence for the next three years. After my life started to collapse 8 months before I found the place, I had found my only reliable source of income was drugs. I would never stoop to being a thief at that point and all my friends got high so it was an obvious choice.

And the Den was a perfect place of business. The only reason I ever went out was to buy chemical essentials and re stock my supply of food, pot, tobacco, those big bottles of mineral water for the whirlpool machine and of course TP (we had one of those mini camping toilets on floor 2 but mostly we would ride the bus to the swimming pool and use the showers and toilets there twice a week.

Anyway. I moved from being a pot and (real, not research bullshit) Lucy dealer who sold a bit of coke on the side to a guy who could get you anything overnight, and I expanded. I gave the Denizens what they wanted, and being the musician/street kid crowd we were what they wanted was mostly Coke Mary Jane and Heroin. Those of us who lived there were real careful about who found out about the place, as we didn’t want the place turning into a dive filled with the sort of junkies we looked down on (ones who couldn’t keep their shit together at least part of the day, come on!) so we didn’t have (at least for a time) the normal problems of being ripped off, bad H etc. Our connections were golden, a couple of big time guys who only sold in bulk and only sold the best of whatever you could imagine. They could get Pharm grade if you wanted, as much as. Good times!

So there I was, king of my particular hill. I’d be a fucking liar if I said I regret a thing about those early years there if I could go back there now I would. It sounds trite, but you really kinda had to be there. I was a kid who’d grown up on rock and moved onto grunge and this place was a dream for street kids like me, a total hangout that doubled as a jam spot and everyone there was a kindred spirit, we were all there to party and there was ALWAYS a party going on. And did I mention all the drugs you could afford right there on tap? Having found the Promised Land I had no motivation or reason to go back to the “real world” the world of our parents we all looked at with scorn.

Anyway the first time I saw Tyler I probably would’ve fell off my chair if I wasn’t glued to it by the Great God Morpheus. I’d just finished my foil when she came into my area to roll a doobie under the lamp. Tyler was 17 that year. She’s the same height as me, 5:8 in bare feet but she wore these huge black platforms that made her like 3 inches taller than me. She had these faded ripped jeans the color of her eyes and a loose low cut green shirt under a biker jacket. Hair so platinum it was almost white And these huge soul striking eyes that still make me feel like the first time I saw her. My fucking traitor eyes kept drifting into hers and I knew I had to quit it before she noticed.

She walked through to the adjoining room with this other girl I used to date and then eventually drifted back in and started talking to the stoners sat round my bucket smoking huge rips from a bottle of Jack with the bottom busted out and even through my opiate haze I was uncomfortable and totally baffled as to what in the hell had gone wrong with me. I was suddenly feeling things I started doing the H to kill, and I felt like I was 13 all over again for an instant. She was so pretty a part of my soul I thought was dead and had rejoiced because it was flipped over in my stomach and suddenly I wasn’t enjoying my high. What the Fuck!

So I shook it off (after all I was no highschooler and I had a mini 4 man dope ring to keep on top of and a monster H and Coke habit to boot, I had no business getting her involved in the one way train to pharmageddon I felt I was on.) Hold on, wait What the fuck! A minutes conversation and 4 eye contacts make me think like this? I need more Heroine.

Now I was pretty strict with myself with the H (unlike the coke, which I would shoot grams of left to my own devices) and I only smoked it (mostly) I was one of those rare people who could take or leave that huge fucking rush as long as I was getting a nod from tooting. This night being already high from the 4 grams of white I’d snorted over the afternoon and early evening and thoroughly pissed off with myself for allowing myself to feel this thing I had run from since I was a nerdy kid in seventh grade with a crush on the prettiest girl in the school. I was like “Fuck it, this’ll put this shit back in the box where it belongs!”

So I get up and float into the shooting bar at the back, so designated because of the access to water (from the whirlpool machine with the big 5 gallon bottle and the comfy gouch couch. I sat down and preceded to get my shit ready. I took out and unzipped the hard leather case with my works, a real glass “jobby” I’d stolen from my Scottish grandfathers house. He was a retired shrink and old as shit but still rocking the morphine and listening to CCR and Hendrix everyday. He had 2 of those antique WW1 or 2 glass babies and I’d lifted one after eyeing it for weeks. I just used replaceable needles and he had loads literally boxes of them. I snagged a shopping bag full and I still had some when I smuggled this works back into his house years later.

I laid my stuff out careful and got a plastic ampoule of water from my pocket. No mineral water for me. The H I got was white rock, slightly off white colored and compressed for sale into solid chunks. This stuff varied between 75% to 80% pure and was never (at least according to my smack and gun selling supplier who had never let me down or bullshitted me to my knowledge) below 75%. That is ridiculously pure, but the advantage of having loads of customers some of whom had real jobs meant I could cut out the middle men, and I had to cut the gear too before I could sell it because it was literally lethal.

So I rig a shot big enough to chill me out and make me forget the tormentress who keeps passing through my field of vision and seems to be deliberately catching my eye. Oh fuck she’s smiling at me.
“She is so fucking hot” says Benny, a good but fucking crazy friend who’s sat across from me.
“Mmmmfff” I mutter, trying to concentrate on the important things. The advantage of this type of white rock is I don’t need something to break down the dirty additives, it just dissolves as it soaks, but I always cook the shit to sterilize.

“Oh man, she’s coming over”
I glance up, to see Tyler wing in with the bottle of Comfort I’d left in the other room. Another in that nights near miss fuck ups, drinking. I normally hate the stuff but had been talked into it by some friends I hadn’t seen for over a year.
“Here”
she tosses the bottle onto the couch next to me with this sublimely cool underhand motion then slumps down on one of the floor cushions and flips me a wink then starts talking to Benny. Now thoroughly put off my game, I break off another piece of gear and drop it onto my cooker to join the already dissolved (and forgotten) lump I’d weighed out before.

And then it happens, Benny leans forward with a big grin, the same mad light in his eyes he always got when contemplating getting fucked up and says “hey break me off a piece, my man and I’ll make it a speed ball for you” Benny was a huge coke head.

“Whoa, hey you sure you wanna do that?” Tyler says sounding slightly amused with a hint of wariness and shock “You know how many people have died like that?”
“Fuck it” I said, passing over my cooker
“That’s what I’m talking about, lets cheer you the fuck up” says Benny, dumping a decent amount on. Benny who’s known me long enough to know EXACTLY what my problem is. You see, since my fucked up time in 7th grade I had found it increasingly impossible to relax around a girl if I felt anything for her. I had no problem with getting laid, that’s not what I mean and I was a real charmer with girls if it was clear we both just wanted to fuck, but my confidence crumbled if I was in anyway invested in the outcome. In his defence, Benny was just trying to help.

It wasn’t my first time dancing with Mr Mixedstone and every time I did it I felt like GOD HIMSELF and everyone became my years long friend. The perfect cure for my sudden case of Bettyphobia and a chance for me to loosen up and maybe even talk to a girl Ben could see obviously had me in some kind of dilemma. Benny was all about getting you in a good mind space, he’d say he couldn’t enjoy his high if I was stressed and he knew what a different man I was fucked out my skull on the rockstar trainwreck cocktail currently occupying my cooker. But I only shot speedballs rarely because they are so fucking scary if you go a tiny bit too high. I’ve had times I thought my heart was going to burst and I loved every minute of it. And I’d only ever done them at the start of a night. I was already most likely way over a normal lethal blood level of coke or smack and only my huge unholy tolerance meant I was still conscious and functional.

So I cook it up over Benny’s cackling hysteria (that guys death trip was WAY deeper than mine) and trying to ignore Tyler’s increasingly worried looks and my own churning soul. When I got it ready she actually knelt in front of me, I’d only just met her a few hours before, and asks if I “really need to do this?”

OK this is too much for my damaged social skills and I mutter “fuck it” and push the plunger. I close my eyes as it hits me and open them to hey! scared eyes! and my hysterical laughter. OK NOW WE’RE GOOD! My ego bounces back and I’m me again.
“You wanna go for a walk” I ask her with zero fucks given for her answer and am pleasantly surprised by my warm feeling to her saying yes. Now it’s freezing outside so we just walk round the building, and soon between the electric tingles running from my eyes to my balls and back, coupled with the opiate calm and the sheer fucking wonder I felt at the pale grey of this amazing creatures eyes I’m soon whizzing her round the building, up onto the roof to look at the stars, all the while talking her fucking ear off. Shit most girls I pull that shit on them they’ll walk but Tyler actually seemed interested in my randomly changing babble and I was interested for the first time ever in listening to her stories about how she grew up, where she’d lived, how she got here. Things were going great, we decided to walk the three miles to the nearest drive through place cause she was hungry.

We walked snuggled up to each other against the minus degree weather and made our way through urban decay, stepping over and around the wasted and the burned out, swearing we’d never be like them. But the further we walk, the more I seemed to trip up. My legs weren’t working properly. “I need to shit down” I mumbled and then collapsed, bringing us both down. Tyler started laughing at first but then bent down to look at me and that’s when everything faded out.

Tyler said my eyes were just rolled up in my head and then I tried to get up and fell over and convulsed. She was terrified, we were in a totally dead neighborhood, no one to help and over a mile from the Den. So she starts to drag me. Fuck. Tyler gets me by the arms and starts dragging me through the snow towards the Den. She said I kept waking up and trying to talk to her but my head was rolling all over and I couldn’t finish a sentence without nodding. I’d start to talk then nod out and wake up in 5 minutes apparently finishing my sentence. I remember trying to tell her my phone, it was in my pocket but everything was either a huge black carpet wrapped round me or stinging, needle like electric shocks. Every time these happened I would fit.

And Tyler keeps dragging me. She gets to the fence blocking off the lot where the Den was and only then realized she’d never get me over the wall. The reason I’ll die loving her is that she kept trying. This is a girl I’d known at this point a total of 9 hours. I’ve known people 9 years that would’ve left me in the street.

It was during one of her hopeless attempts to get a nodding, seizing Junkie who outweighed her by 30 pounds over this fence my phone fell out. Tyler snatched it up and phoned Benny’s number, hurriedly explaining the situation to him. No tears now, for the rest of this whole fucked up experience Tyler was cool as Clint.

So Benny comes down, takes one look at me and says we gotta get this guy to a hospital. Now good luck getting an ambulance to go there during the day let alone at night so he goes to get the car. That’s when I stopped breathing. Tyler had been crouched by my side holding my head on her knees when she notices that and I thank the gods of stupid that she was smart enough to start the whole CPR deal. Not that it was easy. She was breathing for me for 5 minutes before Benny comes back and together they got me going again. I came too when they banged my head getting me into the car and I was me again. Tyler said I slurred out “no fucking hospital” and wouldn’t let them take me, so somehow they got me through the maze, and by the time I was at the stairs I was ok to walk myself. I just had a huge headache. And two broken ribs from Benny pounding me on the chest then kicking my comatose body in desperation as Tyler breathed for me till I could. They both say it was the kick that finally brought me round with a gasp and sobbing moan.

I know how lucky I am. I was supposed to die that night. Somehow a girl I barely knew and who had no reason to care and every reason to walk away was there for me. That night, and every night after. I live for and because of her. The fact I breathe now is because I am the single luckiest son of bitch alive. Because despite all my faults and all the fucked up things I’ve done, she chose me. I am humbled to my soul by this.

I sat up talking to Tyler all the rest of the night. I don’t have a clue to this day how she could still be interested in me after I put her through that but I talked and she listened, then she talked and I listened. She said she she’d stick by me as long as I got off the needle. I said she was crazy. But turns out she was right. Tyler’s a way stronger person than me and at that time of my life she gave me the one thing I’d always been searching for.

Hope

Don't get me wrong we still get high together but no IV or any hard stuff and we have a place instead of a crash (that place got closed down by the town 6 months after we left after we'd lived together there for 5 years.) I'll probably always get high but I'm off the daily coke and smack diet and I'm one of the few I still know to have survived our anarchists paradise and I'm not on a death trip anymore.
Tyler is my Heroine now
The only one I need

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 101932
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Apr 5, 2018	Views: 3,577
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Cocaine (13), Heroin (27) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Relationships (44), Overdose (29), Addiction & Habituation (10), Combinations (3)