I have a confession to make.
I introduced a friend to heroin recently; I am not proud. Rather, in fact, I am very, very worried.
Geoffrey (let’s call him that) is a friend of mine whose usual drug of choice is alcohol. But foolishly, I gave him his first taste of heroin a few weeks back. Once, and then once more. And now, I fear I have unleashed the demon in him. He asks me for a taste several times a day now whenever I see him; I tell him no, so then he asks me if I know of anyone nearby from whom he could score.
“For the last time, no.” But he isn’t listening.
“It makes me feel really comfortable. I felt so calm after that one last little taste…” I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. My stomach sank, in fact, because I knew too well how he felt, how seductive that calm can be… and how much I wanted to shield him from the cycle of destruction which almost inevitably followed that glorious feeling.
“So, can you fix me up?” he asks again.
“No,” I tell him.
“But I can keep it under control.”
“Oh, we all think that. In the beginning, anyway. Few of us ever can keep it in check, though, in the long term…” I trailed off, took a long drag of my cigarette, and sighed loudly. “It fucks up your life, Geoff. You will like it too much, and it will fuck up your life. Best advice I never took.” I pulled a wry face, and looked at him sadly. “I should never have said yes to you in the first place, actually. It was stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Actually, if I’m sick at myself now, it’s nowhere near how sick I was at myself - with panic and remorse - the night I gave Geoffrey his first taste. I guess I should have known that he, as a non-user who wasn’t completely freaked out by the fact that I used now and again, was going to ask. Sooner or later, they nearly always do. Which probably explains why I like to use alone.
Needles didn’t freak him out. “I’ve done speed intravenously,” he told me. “It was a while ago, but yeah…” I sipped my beer cautiously, waiting for what was to come next. “You know my son’s been doing it. I want to know what the fuss is all about.”
“Once, Geoff, and no more.” Goodness knows why I caved in. Was it the mention of his son, a kid eleven years younger than myself, whom I’ve never met? Who knows. But I nodded, and dug in my bag for my kit.
He hovered about me while I got out what I needed and set to it, intent on mixing up our taste. (Okay, I’d done one a few hours previously, and didn’t really need another. But there was no damned way I was doing him up without a little shot myself, to steady the nerves and so on… besides, I’ve never known anyone who’s a user who can mix up a taste for someone else, and not have one themselves. I mean, there’s self-control but nobody has that much cool… really!)
“Gear’s been really… rocky, lately,” I muttered, busy with plunger-end and spoon. “Could you pass me the lighter, Geoff?” He passed me what I asked for, wordlessly. Good, I thought. Someone who respects the sanctity of the mix. That silent time when one is mixing up, be it in a car, a park, a public toilet, or the relative safety of a friend’s kitchen (where I was now) - that mix-time is a form of junkie meditation, a time I hold sacred in some special sense, even if it lasts just thirty seconds.
Wordlessly, I held the spoon up, and gestured for Geoff to run the lighter underneath. “Okay, that’s it.” I said after a few seconds, and put the spoon down again. I worked the plunger which I had separated from its syringe, back into the barrell, and dropped a tiny piece of cotton into the spoon. Deftly, I drew the heroin solution up through the cotton, tapped the barrell, and levelled off the plunger.
Forty-five units, give or take one or two. (The syringes are 100 units large; 100 units equals 1 cc.) I drew out a fresh syringe, pulled out its plunger with the now-familiar *THWOCK* sound, and pushed forty units into the new barrell. That was my “taste”; after all, I’ve been doing this for nine years; Geoffrey, by comparison, had no tolerance at all. What was left, I reasoned, should get him nice and high.
I reassembled my syringe, wrapped a belt around my arm and started tapping up a vein. Hmmm, that one doesn’t look too bad… I plunged the point into my arm, and with relatively little hide-and-seek, I found my vein. Bingo, I silently congratulated myself as I slid the syringe home. Sliding the belt off my arm, I licked a drop or two of blood from the injection site and savoured the feeling of the hit for a few seconds, while telling Geoffrey in a sepulchral post-heroin whisper to get his own arm tied off so I could shoot him up next.
“Guys’ veins are so much easier to get than girls’,” I said as I knelt beside him with the loaded syringe. His arms were a contrast to mine - fresh, unblemished, the veins full and fresh and simple to use. “What a time I could have with veins like yours,” I chuckled, mostly to myself. I ran my hand up his inner arm… there. I slid the needle home; drew up a little to make certain I was in, and pushed the plunger down. Done. I watched his face intently.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He nodded, bliss shining through every pore.
“Yeah.”
I turned away, busying myself with putting the used needles in the disposal bin… chatting away to him idly, it could only have been ten seconds when I turned back, and the words died in my mouth.
“Geoff?” He’d gone blue. Oh, SHIT. I knelt down to his motionless form on the kitchen chair, and started pinching his arm. “Geoffrey. Come on, now…”
No response. With one arm, I started slapping his face, softly, while with the other I reached down to feel the pulse in his wrist. Faint. He was turning purple now, and still not breathing. Oh shit shit shit shit SHIT…
“Geoffrey!” My slaps became stronger, as my voice, quiet but panicked, cracked from the strain. Nothing for it. I’d have to call the ambos. I grabbed his cellphone from the table, dialled triple 0, and shut my eyes as the call connected.
“Emergency. What services do you require?”
“Ahm… I need an ambulance at…” my mind went blank. Where was I? What the hell was Geoff’s address again? I started babbling. “Oh Jesus, I just walked in and my friend… I think he’s overdosed…”
“Are you on his phone?”
“Yes, but it’s a mobile…”
“We have that registered to a…” and the operator listed an address in Kelvin Grove. Of course. He bought this phone when he moved to Brisbane. That’s his LAST address. Damn, where are we?
“No, no, it’s Red Hill, it’s…” quickly, I walked outside the flat, looked at the door. Something in me freed up and I suddenly knew the address. “Red Hill. Flat 18, 132 Musgrave Road, Red Hill.”
“Okay, what has he taken?”
I’ve been pacing the floor; I walk back to the kitchen. “He’s not breathing… I… I think it might have been heroin.” (Disingenuity is always the key. Don’t admit anything until you have to.)
“Okay, the ambulance is on its way. No, I have not dispatched the police. Stay with your friend and put him in the recovery position, do you know how to do that?”
“Yes.” I disconnected the phone and again took Geoff’s pulse. Weaker. Damn you… stay with me… “Stay with me, Geoff.” I pinched off his nose and blew into his mouth, hoping to force some air into his lungs. I was rewarded with a ragged breath.
“Yes… that’s it. Stay with me. Come on. Ambulance is on it’s way. Breathe.” I heard him breathe a few times more, then I heard the sirens outside. I decided it was safe to leave Geoff where he was, for the time being, and I raced downstairs to show the ambulancemen up and go through the barrage of questions with them.
“What’s he taken?”
“Heroin.”
“And have you had any heroin this evening?” The paramedic looked into my eyes and I shrugged; I have pale blue eyes, so with people in the know, there’s no point in my lying. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
The kitchen was cramped and small, the men dragged Geoff out onto the livingroom floor. “What’s his name?”
“Geoff. Geoffrey.”
“Wake up, Geoffrey.” He was breathing, but only barely. I saw them prepare a shot of Narcan, and shuddered. Well, you ruined my shot by nearly dying, said a selfish part of me, and dammit, nobody dies on my watch. I knew I shouldn’t have given you that taste. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
“Are you going to have to take him to hospital? Because he really doesn’t like hospitals.”
“Probably. In fact, it’s very likely. How much did he use?”
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “I don’t think he’d had any for quite some time… I was out of the room, and I came back and found him like this.” Damned if I’ll admit to a bunch of paramedics that I nearly killed someone. They look down on users enough already. Junkys, the modern-day lepers…
In the end, Geoff came around enough for them to trust me to watch him for the rest of the evening, as an alternative to them sending him to hospital. We were both pretty quiet after the ambulancemen left, each thinking our own thoughts. I was mainly thinking about what an idiot I’d been.
A week or so later, Geoff asked me again for a taste. “Only a TINY bit,” I told him. “And only because that first time was such a fucking disaster. But that’s it, Geoff. No more. And I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that nobody sells to you, either. Although I know I won’t have to, really. I doubt you’d bother going looking for it, not that it’s easy to find in this town anyway.”
I did him up again, probably only giving him half what I had before, and watched him like a hawk until I was dead certain he couldn’t have overdosed on this gear. Needless to say, he enjoyed it. But I hope like hell he sticks to beer.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Opiates on their own can sometimes cause overdose, especially in opiate-naive individuals; however, opiates mixed with other central nervous system (CNS) depressants, such as alcohol or benzodiazepenes, can be far more deadly. Alcohol and heroin were used together in this story, and I mean it when I say DO NOT try this at home. Anyone. Please.
