Bodily Functions

This is one of my favourite posts from my old blog: http://gledwood.blogspot.com

START TAKING HEROIN, it'll do little for you at first. Except for the unfortunate likelihood you'll end up with your head down the loo, you may well wonder (as you puke your guts up) what all the fuss is about. Heroin - the ultimate high?

Let me set one myth straight right there. Speaking as one who's tried everything going I can announce that heroin is not the ultimate high.
Heroin kills pain, so the more pain you're in the more it kills. (It might also kill you - so if you must experiment, go easy.)

One less well-publicized fact about heroin: it will only give you its full effects once it's got you hooked. Yep, there's a short-lived honeymoon phase when the drug is stealing your natural endorphins (the brain's feelgood chemicals) so you feel worse without it and without them. And yet every dose you do take fills you right up to the brim.

Then the law of diminishing returns kicks in. I barely noticed until it was too late, that everything it gave me with the one hand it was theiving back with the other.

I can't deny that heroin appeals to the susceptible with its inverse glamour. (It appealed to me as the one thing my druggie friends considered taboo. They said it was uncool: I just thought they were scared of it.)

Somehow, though, grainy photographs of mashed-up rockstars and hollow-eyed models can't quite capture the daily growing misery that no amount of drugs can ever quite cover up - or the bleak reality of withdrawals at dawn. (No-one ever seems to be around to photograph them.)

That's right - ten years on and your head is still down the toilet. Only now you're retching when the drugs aren't there!

The end result of heroin (not counting lost veins, abscesses, overdoses and half your friends having died over the years) is nothing more exciting than an added bodily function, one that costs money to relieve. Imagine waking up in the early morning busting for a pee. You are forced to wait till well past nine o'clock when the man has troubled to get himself out of bed, taken his kids to school (maybe - drug dealers breed like cockroaches, they're always laden down with babies), had breakfast, made himself feel okay, bothered to make his way to your neck of the woods - ie add another hour at least and cross your legs because it's probably going to take longer than that. Once the dealers realize a junkie will wait as long as it takes because they need their dealers (in the short-term) more than the dealers need them. Then imagine you're charged TEN POUNDS sterling (€15; US$20; Aussie $25; Rs Indian 700 etc etc) well I mean a lot of money - it's all relative.

Twelve hours later - tops - the entire situation repeats itself over again. So if you ain't got more money, you'd better think fast and smart and get moving...

So your happiness goes into the hands of criminals. As does every spare penny you've got.

Heroin? I don't recommend it.