DOSE:

1 line

insufflated

Heroin

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

For such a nasty, cheap street drug, heroin has held a glamour about itself, or maybe in my own mind. My favorite singer Janis Joplin died on the stuff. Maybe because I so idolized her, that’s why I developed the rock star mentality concerning illicit substances. Of course, I always connected Heroin with needles, so if anyone asked me to try, I was quite prudish in my decision to say no. Very condescending, having no respect for anyone playing with this AIDS drug. I was the D.A.R.E poster child when it came to this. That would all change one night though. For a drug I connected to viral and staph infections, later I would soon be begging to molest my senses. Never in a month of decades would I have ever thought I’d exchange this set of values, just to know what Joplin experienced in the last few hours of her life.

At the time, I was a dabbler. I had only smoked weed and snorted Cocaine. I was green broke at best, but heroin is in a class by itself. I heard one Junkie say, “You have to need heroin.” And he’s probably right. In my experience, boys love “The boy.” And this morphine bastard has a greater appeal to the opposite sex. Being a girl, I naturally loved Coke, and stimulants. But the picture heroin users portrayed at the house I was at the first night I tried heroin made me abandon my preconceived notions about this drug.

Unlike cokeheads, there was no impatient twitching, apparent paranoia and suspicion. I always felt uncomfortable doing cocaine with people I didn’t know. But at the heroin house, it looked like everyone had the greatest beer of their life. So much so, I didn’t think they were on anything except some really dank weed. By all accounts, that’s what I thought it was. I inquired quite excitedly, “Can I smoke some of that shit?” One Junkie, a girl and her crooked dope dealing boyfriend looked at each other lazily, in that weepy-eyed junkie nod and let out a small mutual laugh. I was quite embarrassed, feeling condescended by the two experienced users. I was not “in the know.” I was even offended. God, I didn’t need their weed, fine.

I saw my new boyfriend disappear with my fifty bucks into the bathroom. He said we were going half in on a gram of powder. Except I’d soon find out he was cashing it all in on a few stamp bags of heroin. We’re not together today if you’re curious. Being ignorant, not understanding the junkie/bathroom connection, I was baffled when I saw the dealer escort him in and the doors close. I didn’t move as suddenly I was getting a little smart about the whole thing. My concern was apparently showing as I stared at the black door, hearing feet shuffling around and almost mute conversation. It looked like lazy gay sex to me, though the dealer’s girlfriend didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I was frozen, and I started to remember those lifetime original movies about drug-users and their clans. Dear God! I didn’t want to walk in and have my fears validated by the reality taking place. I was in a junkie house!

Another Junkie I had met a week prior, around the time I had met my new love, cued me in. “He’s not getting powder you know, he’s robbing you!” The girl junkie and the boy junkie did that same mutual laugh. Glad they found it funny, I didn’t. I could have cared less whose house I was in at that point. Let them shoot me, I was pissed. From the other side of the door, I was screaming. “You effin’ Junkie, I’ll kill you.” The two junkies floppin’ on the couch could care less, finding it amusing. The crooked dealer came out. “It’s ok girl, you’ll get yours.” Here comes the DARE poster child, ready and poised as I was. “Oh no, I don’t mess with needles. Screw that shit!” Giving me little attention, he brought out a bag of China White, which is I guess, snort-able heroin. “You can snort this shit, you know,” he said. Oh! Suddenly my temper was hampered by the prospects of experimenting with what had killed my favorite singer. I had always wanted to know what this Rock Star murder weapon was like, and I had a desire to feel as good as them.

Now, I should have took my friend’s advice, “Never let a dope head cut your dope.” But in the excitement of dousing my senses with this guarded, mystical drug, I wasn’t thinking about anything else, except my handy-dandy coke straw. I switched on to a new mood like a young kid with a few dollars to spare at a Toy Store. “Yeah! I want to try! Cut me some of that stuff.” I was smart enough to let him know that I had never done this stuff, and my drug use to date was sporadic. I didn’t have enough tolerance to hold two beers, let alone heroin. And either this guy was so doped he didn’t know how big that line was, or he was just a smart ass. Later I learned the latter was true. He liked cutting huge lines for new users in the spirit of fun. It’s a wonder nobody died on his account. In the back of my mind, I thought the line was pretty big. But what the hell did I know about heroin. It looked like dirty snow to me. It had a brownish color, and the crystals, which didn’t look much like crystals, seemed bigger. Not like the fish-scale fine powdered coke I was typically getting. It looked like a line of sand from a beach. I shuffled around for my coke straw, while he rolled up that fifty dollar bill my boyfriend had given him moments before. Cool! I was itching to try. Pardon my pun, you know what I mean if you’ve ever tried this stuff.

Well, I snorted the line. The effects were slow. I sat down on the couch, impatient. “When’s it going to hit?” I kept asking. Like cocaine, I got the drip in the back of my throat what seemed like fifteen minutes afterwards. It wasn’t like the cocaine drip where it has the metallic taste, kind of bloody almost. It was weird, like a dude shot a load off in my mouth. It was warm like, though I can’t really describe it by words, and my memories a bit fuzzy. I didn’t like it though, and that I do remember. I kept swallowing back, like my tongue was trying to wash away the drip.

Then that heavy feeling washed over me. That’s how I describe it, heavy. But it’s pleasant. I felt weighed down like. Time hit’s a stand-still. Every thing that mattered, my anger, my fear, my impatience, kind of just disappeared. There was an overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility. I felt in tune with the whole room, and on the same playing field as every junkie there. It felt like they were all my best friends, as if I had known them all my life. I was surprised to note that the high lasted hours. Though it doesn’t seem all that long when I start to sober up. It probably had more to do with my zero tolerance and that gargantuan line that ass of a dealer cut. Though I have no regrets.

For a while, I was nodding off, and insulting my boyfriend. “I’m done with you,” I said in a pleasant proclamation of freedom. “That’s nice,” he replied, both of us on the nod. To an outsider, they might have thought we were exchanging vows for all they knew. Even if I was angry, everything seemed OK. This is a cure-all for people full of piss and vinegar. I liked this stuff, or so I thought.

Then I started to get sick. At first I thought I wasn’t going to blow chunks, but a knot was balling up in my stomach. I felt like my intestines were swimming. I had chili before I came. I was trying to unlock the door to the house which had what seemed to be about four locks. I called the dealer over. “I’m going to vomit all over your place if you don’t open this up.” He complied.

Out in the yard, I was making a mess. My stomach was emptying itself violently. The dealer made me go inside to the bathroom to throw, and I wasn’t going to argue. There were floaties in the toilet, because for some reasons, junkies’ toilets never work. The plumbing’s always backed up or some shit. Maybe they throw needles in there, I don’t know. So I was just vomiting bile into the sink, cleaning up the chunky stuff with toilet paper and throwing that into the trash. With all the vomiting, I was starting to sober up. Still high, and weighty, but not as high. I swear if I weighed fifteen pounds less, I’d have died. Lucky I was 145 or so at the time. It was going on three hours, and I was still too high to drive. My then boyfriend, drove us home. I was nervous. I thought he was as high as I was, which wasn’t the case since he had the tolerance of an opiate fiend. I couldn’t go home, so I crashed at his place forgetting that I had given him the shaft hours before. I couldn’t sleep even though I felt tired and weak. He gave me a breath mint, and I vomited that up. One tiny mint swimming in a puddle of vile. I thought it was funny for some reason.

Then the high started to leave me. I don’t know if it was power of suggestion, but he started itching himself crazily. And I started helping him out, itching his back and beard. Then I started getting itchy all over. My legs, my belly, everything. And he’d itch me, I’d itch him. And we threw the covers off the bed because they were itchy. Then I was real hot, sweating like a pig. I knew heroin had withdrawals, but I never thought they were so apparent for a first time user. The palms of my hands were itchy, beads of sweat rolling down my body, and my armpits. Then I got cold, then hot, throwing the covers on and off. That whole night, we would both wake up and go back to sleep, fighting over covers or itching ourselves. We were loud too, so the people above us probably thought we were doing something kinky, though he, nor I, had any desire to have sex. Even though I noticed he was really hard down there, neither of us initiated the act. It was all heroin at that point.

The morning after, I drove home. I felt washed out. So I slept for sixteen hours. He had the audacity to call me back, though I never returned the calls. For some reason, probably due to the withdrawals, I had no desire to pursue heroin, especially not with him. On the plus side, heroin has a lasting effect, a much longer high, mostly for those with low tolerance. I wouldn’t consider it fun, but like hard narcotics, it’s a feel good drug. There’s a certain quality a bout it though you can’t get from speed. It’s that opiate quality of course, and I liked the high. Weighed against the withdrawals, which mine probably pale in comparison to hard-core junkies, I just didn’t feel like trying it again. I played around with the idea of managing it. Due to the long-lasting effects, it’s incredibly cheap. A twenty dollar line kept me high for a couple of hours. Twenty bucks worth of coke couldn’t keep me high for fifteen minutes. That’s where heroin seems worthwhile in the face of disease and social taboos. I’m even apt to say I like the heroin crowd better than the coke tweak-geek coke crowd. But I never stayed long enough in both groups to draw comparison and make notes. I suppose one isn’t better than the other.

After trying heroin, I realize coke is pure robbery in the sense of longevity. Then again, it’s like comparing apples to oranges. Two totally different highs, and I like speed. Due to addiction and withdrawal, I can’t champion it by my own experience since I don’t possibly understand the whole Heroin paradigm that exists with adaptation and tolerance. But I can see where level-headed individuals learn to balance the drug within their own life, like a pop of aspirin for a nasty headache. I do have in some way, respect for the drug that I can’t shake because I liked the peace, calm and the sedation of all my fears and anger, that coke only exasperated. It calmed a beast within me, and I can’t say coke ever did that.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 60311
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 10, 2009	Views: 171,962
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Heroin (27) : General (1), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)