The best piece of advice I never took was from a guy who, on reflection, wasn’t that much older then, than I am today. But from my nineteen-year-old, university-student viewpoint, the thirtysomething junky seemed to have decades of dark wisdom.

At the time I knew him, he was on methadone. He lived in a sharehouse full of about eight or ten people, some of whom I knew vaguely from Melbourne’s gothic/alternative scene. Everyone in this house used needles, it seemed. Often I’d find myself in a room full of people shooting up – I never knew where to look. The needles themselves didn’t freak me out, though. My only brother has been an insulin-dependent diabetic since I was ten, so I’d already seen hundreds, probably thousands, of the orange-capped, disposable little needle-and-syringe sets.

Needles never freaked me out all that much, to be honest. I myself, though, at that stage did not inject drugs. My junky friend, Dugald, thought that this at least marked me out as a nice girl (read: one worth saving? I’m not sure), and he took me under his wing. We did hits of acid together, and sometimes he’d score me speed.

I’d also listen for hours to his tales of the dark side – I was studying journalism at university, but I also just liked listening to people tell their stories. He had some hair-curling yarns to relate, but 13 years on from our time together, the details of those stories grow hazy.

The only piece of advice he ever gave me, though, is burned deeply into my brain. It has come back to haunt me in some of my lowest hours; those minutes that drag on like days because of the junk sickness.

“Peri,” he told me once, “Do any drug you want. Speed, acid, pot – whatever. But don’t ever try heroin. You’ll like it too much, and it will fuck up your life.”

My nineteen-year-old self nodded solemly. Less than four years later, I had broken that promise with a vengeance, and the prophecy was beginning to come true.

Hi Fiona. I’m so glad that you did this! I’ve always felt that writing serves as one of the best purgatives of pent-up emotions, thoughts, etc., etc… I don’t know if you’ve ever read “Man-child In The Promised Land”, by Claude Brown, but you should check it out, if you ever have the opportunity.

It’s essentially a recollection of a writer/professor’s early childhood in Harlem. Of course, this was before Earvin Johnson set up shop there, and “Slick Willie” relocated his post-presidential offices to the main thoroughfare of 125th St. Back then, it was basically a neighborhood teetering on the verge of entropy.

There’s this one scene in his memoir, when-as a young man-he’s urged to take some heroin by a much older-presumbably, more mature-hoodlum. Anyway, he becomes profusely sick the moment he ingests it, which is the main reason-according to Brown-that he never became addicted to that one drug.

It’s an interesting book. By the way, I love that Audrey Hepburn graphic. Very classy! :0)

-good times, Gerard.

Welcome to heroin blogging - I really love the direction you are taking with this blog peri , I’m going to put up a brief in Heroinegirl about it.
Well done - I’m hooked.

(no pun intended)
Your friend,
Heroinegirl

When i was 16 maybe 17 and new to this whole drug thing. I asked a friend of mines girl who had taken that plunge.. i asked whats heroin like and she told me.. she said heroin cheapens all other drugs.

i found out four years later she was right