life

feels like i've been bumping from one withdrawal to the next for my entire life. i don't want this anymore. it's making me sad. i don't know what normal is. it's definately not how i feel right now. I've spent 14 years in oblivion, just scrounging around doing what i could to firstly get so out of it i couldn't feel anything, then just getting what i could to stop the withdrawals. methadone eased that a bit, before methadone it was like being trapped in a wind tunnel, where nothing really stuck in my mind except the burning and screaming to get more heroin into myself. and boy, was that a feeling close to insanity. i never ever want to go back there. there just is no room in your life, no breathing space, for anything but feeding that addiction, running to dealers, hurrying to mix up, quick quick quick, get it into your arm.

it's sad, it makes me cry to think of it. i was a still so little when i found it, barely 18. and that was it, within a month i was hooked. i just wanted it, it eased my troubled mind, my feelings of low worth, my despair over what happened when i was 14. i was a beautiful healthy girl, a little shy, with feelings of never being quite good enough, probably a bit lost in myself. And it just took hold of that part of me with such force. It felt like I had come home, to a safe place, when i first started taking it.

and then it just took off. i didn't look back, i didn't want to. I liked it. Even through the next years of just feeding it to feel ok, i still loved it. I loved the ritual, the mixing, the shooting. the feeling when it hit a second or two later. the warmth. shoulders relaxing, a warm flow of ease all over the body.

there is really not much that compares to it. i even liked the needles. At first i was scared, my first few times, Needles and Heroin. how much worse can one get? but it's the only way i ever did it, and i liked it. i loved it. i loved those little orange capped needles. i loved the pierce into my skin, the pull back to watch the blood mushroom. the beautiful push. and pull back again a tiny bit. i worshipped this action for so long. my whole life revolved around it.

before heroin, i was pretty normal i suppose, as far as drug taking went. the odd bit of speed. the occasional trip or egg. drink every now and then. but heroin, oh my god, that just took hold of me.

then methadone..... second go.
after living for a while in india (last shot of smack before getting on plane- hung out whilst in singapore, first week in india, got to puri and discovered the government drug shops where they are allowed to sell ganga and opium because it is one of the four holy cities of india where this is legal- but as a foreigner you still do not wanna get caught with it on you!), and taking opium resin every day to feed my monster (yeah, no big desire to score indian smack and have to use not so great needles- no needle exchanges!- swallowing opium was fine), then the 3rd degree burn, the pethidine, morphine. going back to australia to avoid a skin graft in a third world country, pain, limping around to score more smack, feeling utterly hopeless and bereft of any desire to continue living. i purposefully od'd. i convinced my ex to bring me a half weight, saying it would last me a few days. i went straight into the disabled toilets, by myself, mixed the whole lot up and bang. the next thing i knew i was waking up to people over me, breathing into me, pushing my chest. apparently, some person wanted to use the disabled toilet in the dead of night (train station) and waited for ten min then went and got the station manager. they called the ambo's. i don't know if narcane was administered. i think a little cause suddenly i was awake and not stoned. apparently the needle was still in my arm. later my drug hit me again hard, the narcane had worn off. i could barely walk straight, my ex had to half carry me home. but i survived, and the next day, once i had come to a little, i realised what i'd done and how desperate i was.
i didnt like methadone, i knew that from last time, but to me it was that or die. so i went to sydney, got on a program, and stayed on it for 9 years. i still abused heroin for the first half a year. then i snapped awake again one morning, realised i couldnt stand my life, i was faking it, i disliked my ex-partner who i'd moved in with again, and this was no way to show a child how to grow in to a loving adult. so i left, with my daughter, and we moved up the mountains, where i lived for the next 8 years, a "successful" participant of the methadone program. Meaning: i didn't dabble in other drugs, clean urines, had a job, supportive relationship etc.

so methadone probably saved me. i didn't have it in me whilst being in the midst of a soul crushing heroin addiction to go through withdrawals. I knew methadone was just going to make it worse in the long run. but i was fairly resigned at that stage to stay on it for life. i didn't really care. the only thing i really had to live for was my 4 yr old daughter, and all parents know, children can be difficult when you are a normal person, let alone when you are an addict of heroin. so i went back on it.

looking back, i wish i had had the strength at that point to just stop heroin and not go back on m'done. but i didn't. i think in my whole time of being a heroin addict, i'd spent 2 months off it, and not too successfully. during that time, i drank too much alcohol, trying to obliterate myself, trying to get from alcohol what was missing in me from no heroin. then i started endone whenever i could get them. then i started using smack again. and then india, opium and etc etc.

i don't know why i'm writing all this. probably there's a part of me that hasn't been uncovered for many many years, and the only way i can cope through this day, and whatever is ahead, is to get it out.