~Not Benjamin Franklin
The waning of the harvest, temperatures drop, leaves turn and fall. I speculate that more relationships end during this time of year than any other, and so do more people die. The change in weather reminds me of a good friend, a few years passed now.
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I was 21 years old
when I saw someone inject heroin for the first time. I was working in a factory that made steel security doors
between bouts of narcotic
medication at Hopkins for a childhood condition that perniciously persisted
into adulthood. I was 95 pounds,
life had not been easy on my frame, illness had taken its toll. Don was the friend who got me the job,
picked me up and drove me to work every day. He painted the doors after I built them. He lost his job to his habit, an all
too common occurrence. His brother
fired him frequently, and then rehired him.
Don was 23 and had been shooting up
every day for more years than we knew.
He had become expert at secreting his habit. Why did he have this habit? Lady Opium’s worshippers seek her out so she may destroy and
obliterate pain, usually physical pain, but other pain as well. Think about the last toothache you
had. That hot electrical pain that
starts at the bottom, right at the jaw line and explodes like a mushroom cloud
into the rest of your head. It
oozes into your brain, cancelling all other impressions except the sound of
nerves desperately screaming. The
entire body directs its attention to this one single signal.
Don’s
teeth were bad, they were worse than bad.
He was poor growing up, lived in a trailer. Heredity, a steady diet of soda pop and cheese doodles had
destroyed his mouth slowly and painfully.
His smile was a row of grey stumps that should, by all rights, have been
pulled out of his head years ago.
Painful grey stumps, for this reason his lips seldom left each other
when he smiled, unless he really let go.
He was very quiet, afraid, and ashamed of opening his mouth unless
someone see his teeth, or smell his breath. The result was a painful self-awareness to match his
physical pain in severity. He sought relief at Opium’s altar. In this respect Don was no different
from the typical user. I could no
longer demonize him then myself.
One toothless smile is all you needed to see to know he was in pain, and
it was bad.
We
went to a bar after work one evening.
We had both been working late, 10 or 12 hours. It was raining on our way to the city, the sun had almost
gone down. The sky was purple.
Don’s car smelled like old vomit and was littered with empty cigarette
boxes and old pop bottles. We stopped in the parking lot, the pitter-patter of
rain on the windshield. He reached over me into the glove box of his 1978
dinosaur and pulled out an alligator skin glasses case. Inside was a hypodermic needle, like
the ones they give to diabetics, orange plunger, orange cap. Clear and skinny and straight like a
dead snake with black measurements on one side. Without looking he deftly plucked a black change purse
with a skull and crossbones from the center console, his hand went under his seat
and retrieved a spoon, then to his pocket for a lighter, these three objects he
laid in a ritualistic row on his lap. Don knew about my history with Hopkins
opiates, so he must have felt comfortable. Like attracts like.
First the change purse opened, a red-topped glass vial came out with a
brownish white powder illuminated by the streetlights. Next a small amount was tapped onto the
spoon. Water was pulled into the sharp from a bottle in the cup holder. This then squirted into the spoon and
the resulting mixture was heated underneath with the lighter, a spark in the
darkness. This was in stark contrast to the dosage I received from doctors at
Hopkins. My dose was controlled
and measured, they told me what to take and how to take it and here was a good
friend of mine eyeballing who knows how much heroin onto a spoon in the dark.
When it was cooked, a small piece of cotton was thrown onto it to filter as the
needle greedily slurped it up. He
was ready now.
I remember he
asked if I wanted to leave like he hadn’t noticed me there for all his
concentration on this elaborate ritual.
With a break in the action he was aware of his environment. It was raining so I stayed; mostly I
felt the need to see this thing through and maybe call 911 if it went south. I
wanted to see the end, I told him as much. He told me I was a good friend for that. He put all the
players away except for the needle, and took a tourniquet out of the glove
box. This strip of rubber he tied
tight around the bicep of his right arm and he began to look for a good
vein. I could tell the needle was
dirty from having been used so often.
In retrospect I’m surprised he never got sick from an overused needle, I
don’t know that he shared, but he never cleaned them either. He told me that he often injected
directly into his arm if he couldn’t find a vein, playing with an outside
chance of gangrene and amputation.
I have since seen leaking pink and white abscesses on other friends who
used. They look bad, but smell
worse. Considering how often Don injected, he was very fortunate to still have
all his body parts.
He found a vein on
the soft underside of his forearm, made a fist and drove the needle home with a
gentleman’s precision and delicate attention to detail. It was in, and he pulled the plunger
back, a red cloud surfaced and exploded in the needle, he pushed the plunger
down a little, his body visibly relaxing.
He pulled the plunger back between his fingers again; another red
jellyfish swam up into the needle. This time he pushed the plunger all the way
down. A silent sigh escaped his
lips as his mouth opened. His body
slackened and in the light, his pupils constricted, his eyelids lowered. He looked relaxed and content. Time stood still as he stared out of
the windshield. I don’t know how
long we sat there, quiet. He
turned and suggested we go in to the bar now. I agreed and we walked out into the rain.
The average
picture of the dope fiend stands in stark contrast to my good friend. He was kind and gentle. I never saw Don raise a hand to another
person, unless he was defending someone else, he always treated me with honor.
He was always generous with what he had, and considering our consistent close
proximity while we worked together, he never stole, at least from me. He was commonly lawful, except for his
habit. It was clear even to the
casual inquirer that Don was not in the mud for kicks, he was there so that he
could scrape together some semblance of comfort from an uncomfortable
life. He was too poor to see a
dentist, and at this point in his life his mouth was so far gone that it would
have cost him a small fortune to fix a lifetime of damage. He was too poor to see a doctor.
A few months later
Don had decided to get clean. He
looked like a new person for a few weeks, but quickly became very dour, his
eyes turned down, constantly rubbing his jaw. The push of society seems to get
the addict to recognize he has a problem with drugs without recognizing the
underlying condition that causes him to take them, many people who undergo
detox for pain killing drugs still suffer from pain 24 months after the detox
period which suggests that their pain has some other biological origin besides
simple withdrawal (Larson, 2007).
About a year later, presumably because he couldn’t take the pain any
longer he took his last shot. This
shot killed him. He was found dead
in a hotel bathtub.
My friend died
because he didn’t have access to medical care for his chronic pain
condition. My experience with Don
was that his thin, ropy frame contained a mountain of kindness but he was still
subject to all of the derision an addict faces. Intravenous heroin addicts tend towards sporadic employment
and social withdrawal, and wind up missing the net when they fall out of the
window. The picture of the doctor
supervised opiod user is in stark contrast. The dosage is regulated, they tend to hold jobs and maintain
social networks and normally regularly attend psychological counseling (Sigmon
2006). My friend Don had access to
none of those things, just the drugs, and it is the drugs that killed him.
Larson, Mary Jo. "Persistent
pain is associated with substance use after detoxification: a prospective
cohort analysis." Addiction. 102.5 (2007): 752-760.
Sigmon, S.C. "Characterizing
the Emerging Population of Prescription Opiod Abusers." American Journal
on Addictions. 15.3 (2006): 208-212
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