We were trapped, once upon a time.
Years, we spent in this way. Trapped, in various types of prisons, first by our parents - abusers in their own way, although they did the best they could, I’m sure… or did they?
Then, later, we were trapped by prisons of our own making. Because we didn’t know what freedom felt like, it didn’t feel like we were doing anything our of the ordinary - we became drug addicts, prostitutes, bulimics, anorexics, problem drinkers and secret bipolar battlers… and we were again locked away from the everyday world, numbed by the coccooning unreality we lived our lives inside.
Opening the prison gates takes time; holding them open takes a little more.
Walking through the gates of that prison, and truly living life on the outside of those walls… that takes time, self-belief, and a helluva lot of courage.
To those who made it out, and are living their dream in the sun, a salute from those of us still in the shadows, working on walking out of those prison doors for the last time.
It’s late afternoon in Brisbane; the humid air collects into sweat which rolls down my back as the grey clouds above threaten rain. I sit on the back porch, typing idly into my laptop, a plume of smoke from my half-smoked cigarette curling lazily into the heavy atmosphere. I am reading a few of my favourite blogs, and reflecting on the nature of the addiction we all share…
And suddenly, a refrain from an old sixties protest song the aging hippies I had as teachers taught us in primary school, runs through my mind.
“When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?”
I think of the behaviour of my fellow junkies and I, and I have to wonder. Will we ever learn? Or are we doomed to forever be haunted by the memory of the opiates… the kiss of steel and the opiate rush which seem, by now, so much a part of who we are?
Yoshi asked me this the other day. He is the age now, that I was when I started using heroin. (Lesser opiates had been part of my life, on and off, since my teenage years. But once heroin got its hooks into me, it’s been a rare week I’ve been without - except during my year in the United States. Ten years already, and it shows no sign of easing up.)
“Will this longing ever go away, or is the sweet rush of that opiate pleasure burned into our soul for good?”
As I told him, I’m older but no wiser… well aware of the tens of thousands I’ve shot up my arm in my pursuit of a little peace, or perhaps just peace of mind? But no wiser as to why the allure still remains. Regardless, I should know better these days.
Word is there’s a heroin drought all up and down the east coast - people getting ripped off, even the best of dealers reduced to selling stuff much sketchier than they’d ever push at another time. The gear is, in a word, shithouse.
Those of us on maintenance therapy, or without a severe habit, are the lucky ones. But something in us still screams for the score, for the hit, for the few precious moments of bliss… even if we know the price is too high in the end.
The price is too high, to keep seeking the high. But do we learn? Not easily, it seems, and none too well. Why?
“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
When I started this blog, many months ago, it was not my intention to leave it so long between posts. I was going to write often, and I was going to write well.
Hmmmm. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, isn’t it? (Perhaps it’s a good thing that I don’t subscribe to the traditional Judeao-Christian belief system, then.)
Mea culpa, folks. I screwed up. To the five or so of you who still read this, I apologise and ask your forgiveness.
As I was so sarcastically reminded the other day, putting up one post in three months doesn’t constitute blogging on a regular basis. Then again, I had my reasons, including the ever-increasing paranoid delusions held by the webmaster of the site where this blog was previously hosted. Sadly, this young man felt threatened by any of his bloggers who dared to “step out of line” by not bending over backwards to kiss his Hepatitis C-ridden arse on a daily basis. To this same someone, who felt justified in terminating his blog-hosting agreement with me for no reason whatsoever, earlier this week, I say: Get over yourself.
Anyway, in line with my New Year’s Resolution to post more often, I’ll be updating at the very least once a week from now on, in addition to the other writing work I’ll be doing for this site.
I appreciate your patience, readers (and fellow HeroinDiarists), and I do hope that you’ll find something here of worth, a little more often than has been the case in the past.
Thanks and, once again, sorry for the extended silence.
The other day I got a parcel from bi11i, the digital maestro responsible for both junkylife.com and opiophile.org.
In the parcel were a few things, notably an opiophile t-shirt (I’d post the link but it seems to be down right now) and a DVD of, to quote the man himself, “a film you might be interested in.”
Last night, I slid the DVD into the player, finally found my remote control amidst the detritus of my room, and gave it a whirl.
The film turned out to be the documentary Union Square (2003), a documentary following the lives of seven individuals living and shooting dope on the streets of New York City.
What I saw during the next 95 minutes was an arresting look into the lives of people not too far from my own age. They were articulate and incredibly self-aware - and it was this, even more than the graphic depictions of shooting up in public restrooms, which made me sit up and take notice.
The director, Stephen J Szklarski, not only gave us an unflinching glimpse into the daily routine of these young people, but also made the viewer care about them and their lives in such a way that by the end of the movie you wanted them to be better (even though you knew the prospects weren’t good). Therefore, it was good to see the “special features” section of the DVD held follow-up interviews with many of the participants of the original film, and even the mother of one of the guys.
I must admit, I dozed off during the Director’s Commentary (by that time it was about 1.30am, and the benzos I’d just swallowed probably didn’t aid in the whole keeping-awake thing) but what he had to say wasn’t as important, anyway. In fact, I kept thinking Shut the hell up, you pompous bastard. You’ve never shot dope, in fact you’ve admitted that you have no idea about any of this stuff, you’re in no position to judge. Who are you to say what’s what? STRAIGHTIE!
It was the central characters themselves - in particular Cheyenne (the only girl), Rob (the chatty depressive dude from a good family) and James (the kid from Long Island) - who made me care about the film; I could see elements of myself in all of them. I cringed when Cheyenne spoke about her and her boyfriend Mike being “functional addicts” before they lost their house… There but for the grace of God go I, I thought to myself.
Time after time, there were moments in the movie like that. The shooting-up scenes made me wince with the familiarity (my own arms, after a fairly extended run, are not pretty either) although the lifestyle these junkies lead is not a familiar one to me. I’ve only been to New York City but once in my life so far; even though I lived just two and a half hours away in Connecticut for almost a year (although CT could have been a different planet for all it has in common with the city.)
As much as the scenery changes, though, some things stay the same: the zero-sum equation of junkydom. The more you shoot, the more you want; more is never enough. It’s an incredibly limiting life where the sphere of reference keeps getting smaller, and you’re so busy staving off the sickness that you don’t even notice. The same holds true whether you’re on the streets of The Big Apple or in a rented couple of rooms in Brisbane.
As a documentary, Union Square was real, raw, and gut-wrenchingly good.
As an anti-drug film, it served its purpose too. I woke up this morning and didn’t even want to get high.
