OF ALL THE AILMENTS which with I've been "afflicted" ~ mental, physical, whatever, including OCD, depression and paranoid "episodes", the one whose "diagnostic criteria" I've "fulfilled" most fully and directly without question is OPIATE ADDICTION.... Click here for DSM (American doctors') diagnostic criteria for opiate addiction.
"unable to control intake despite numerous attempts to stop"... etc etc. There is no question, no matter from what angle you choose to view it, or what slant you put on it or what spin you put on my past that a heroin addict is what I am and a full-blown one at that. I don't go along with many I've heard in groups who declare they've been a lifelong addict even before they found drugs. That is not me. It took heroin, which is arguably the most potently addictive substance of all, to make me an addict. But I am an addict now ~ no question.
I have not troubled to research my condition too thoroughly because I know all about it from the inside. What reading I have done, however has left me with a few choice nuggets that stuck with me. One such pearl (mixed metaphors ahoy!) is that opiate addicts have an exaggerated concept and experience of suffering". This wording is typical of one viewing the condition from the outside, who is forgetting one basic fact ~ that all suffering is relative. It has as much to do with background and expectations as experience. Plus it is apt to bear in mind that opiate addiction, far from being a chase for some long-lost "ultimate high", has more to do with escaping pain and suffering than anything else. In this respect the heroin junkie has perhaps more in common with the outright alcoholic than addicts to other drugs which tend to be uppers like crystal meth, other sorts of speed, cocaine or crack that do provide some experience of "excitement"... empty as that might turn out to be in the end.
This is an aspect of life (I was going to say "addiction", but once you get far-gone addiction and life become interchangeable because addiction is your life... but I was discussing the following with my old friend Lee, who gave up heroin after a 30+ year habit and stayed stopped despite liver cancer (had a chunk of that chopped out), nasty interferon combination treatment for hepatitis C and the death of one of our closest friends who I called Lucky (she and he went back a long long way)... through all this he may of wavered, but he did not use. But when he WAS still using I described the experience of going out penniless it felt like I would never make the money. But I sat down and stayed resolutely there no matter how inclement the conditions and made my money. Then I hit the phone box (never had a mobile in those days), got the best dealer I could (there was always a shopping list of descending preference...) waiting there, often in the dark, the cold, the rain, feeling like he was never going to come. When he did I was still not happy. I'd wait what seemed an age for the bus back, stewing: "it had better not be small, or crap..." and the bus seemed to take a lifetime, stopping every hundred yards, to drive me the two miles or so home. All this time I was telling myself the experience was intolerable. Even the couple of hundred yards between bus stop and front door seemed too much and I'd half walk half run to get there. Keys already sorted for when I hit the door. In twist bang. I wasn't meant to slam the door but never had patience to do anything gracefully by this time. I'd barge into my friend's flat: this was a friend who I'd literally met, who'd picked me up off the street... I'd barge in already stripping off clothes to get body and needle together ss rapidly as possible. Shoving into the bathroom I'd answer queries about how I was how the day had gone in a yeah-yeah way, rapidly breaking fresh works from the packet, cursing the water for not filling it up quick enough, pouring on citric acid. The lighter flame was never fierce enough (but I hated cooking up with those alcohol swabs). I'd watch the dried-mud-looking gear alchemizing under water into mahogany-coloured solution, not happy, not relaxed but telling myself again how intolerable it was to have to wait. As far as I was concerned, it even took too long to draw up into the spike. And then damp, sweating and desperate I'd plug the needle in (at least that in those days didn't usually take very long)... blood rushes back: BINGO. Push in. Half a minute later I felt it: like life itself running into my veins. It was never a strong feeling, even when I took enough to overdose. Heroin just does not feel strong. But it did feel beautiful. And though I told myself the drug didn't work for me any more it reduced every evening to a haze of food, lost hours of television and falling asleep on the couch. I had long forgotten how to sleep like a normal person. And no matter how much heroin I had bought ~ unless it was several grams it was all too often gone by morning.
What was that rant about?... "Intolerable!" Even life's pettiest annoyances took on that description. Intolerable! The fairytale of The Princess and the Pea could have been written about a junkie.
It was only today that I realized, mental excrement passing through my brain and a plethora of reasons (focusing around the fact that it was cold) WHY it was a totally unreasonable idea that I should go without heroin today.
I'm afraid I did ring the dealer around 10am. By the time I'd walked the length of my road he was calling back to say he was there. So I did use and today should be totally tolerable. Except I've all this to say...
People have applauded my blog (sometimes) for being so "frank" and "honest". I do try to be these things. Yet I'm a full-blown junkie who's still using... I do try to be straightforward and truthful.
Yet it follows that if I fulfill every other diagnostic criterion of junkiehood then I must be deceiving myself in some way ~ if not in every way.
This much stands to reason: those who are deceived cannot know it.
... So what is my blind spot? I've no idea...
And there I had better leave it before I do start muddying the waters...
