Confessions of a White-Collar Dope Fiend
Where is the cave where the wise woman went
And tell me where is all the money that I spent?
I propose a toast to my self-control
See it crawling helpless on the floor
Someday there'll be a cure for pain
And that's the day I throw my drugs away
--Morphine, ''Cure for Pain,” 1993
Sunday afternoon, June 6. I am going to kill myself. No kidding. This time I mean it.
I'm sick. So sick. My last fix was 45 hours and, let's see, 20-odd minutes ago. Ancient history. Not a wink of sleep last night. Jumping out of my skin. No way to get comfortable. Every hour is a day. Every minute an hour.
Marrow sucked from my bones. Ice water in there now. Aching legs flailing. Why do you think it's called kicking? Snot streams from my nose, tears from my eyes. Rancid sweat pours everywhere. Shivering. Shaking. Every hair standing on end. Goose bumps on my goose bumps. Why do you think it's called cold turkey?
Sick. So very sick. Something even sicker? One shot, one lousy shot of dope would set me straight. OK, six hours later, I'd need another. Then another. Then another. So the dope-fiend day goes. In Junktime, though, six hours is a lifetime. (...)
As violent as the abruptly junkless body's revolt can be, the psychic pain vastly exceeds the physical. Think on it. Sick as you've ever been, and two hard truths remain front and center: 1.) This infection is self-inflicted, and 2.) it can be cured only by the medicine that caused it. Hair of a very savage dog, indeed. Every dope fiend suffers withdrawal symptoms guaranteed to drive him or her uniquely around the bend. Stone insomnia was my personally homesteaded circle of hell. Marinated in misery, I am blinklessly awake for every single second of the ordeal, hundreds of thousands of seconds over a half-dozen or so nightmarish days.
Junk sickness boasts a powerful psychosomatic component, which makes its ravages no less a horrifying reality. Aging metabolism may be partly to blame, but every time I have run up and then kicked a jones, the withdrawal has worsened and the next habit has come on all the more quickly. These days, 48 hours of use, and I am helplessly hooked. Even clean, the dope fiend must sometimes endure the bizarre phenomenon of smack-agony flashback. Protracted conditioned abstinence syndrome, it's called. Returned to the cages in which they became addicted, lab rats are plunged into writhing withdrawal. Those junkie rodents had been drug-free for months. Months! Once the junk receptors have drunk deep of the poppy's nectar, it seems, they develop a crafty monomaniacal mind of their own. I've suffered torturous twinges of this situational sickness myself in New York's Penn Station, through which I passed again and again on copping missions to Manhattan's ghettos, feeding a secret habit none of my colleagues could ever even have guessed at.
by Anonymous, Washington City Paper | Read more:
Where is the cave where the wise woman went
And tell me where is all the money that I spent?
I propose a toast to my self-control
See it crawling helpless on the floor
Someday there'll be a cure for pain
And that's the day I throw my drugs away
--Morphine, ''Cure for Pain,” 1993
Sunday afternoon, June 6. I am going to kill myself. No kidding. This time I mean it.
I'm sick. So sick. My last fix was 45 hours and, let's see, 20-odd minutes ago. Ancient history. Not a wink of sleep last night. Jumping out of my skin. No way to get comfortable. Every hour is a day. Every minute an hour.
Marrow sucked from my bones. Ice water in there now. Aching legs flailing. Why do you think it's called kicking? Snot streams from my nose, tears from my eyes. Rancid sweat pours everywhere. Shivering. Shaking. Every hair standing on end. Goose bumps on my goose bumps. Why do you think it's called cold turkey?
Sick. So very sick. Something even sicker? One shot, one lousy shot of dope would set me straight. OK, six hours later, I'd need another. Then another. Then another. So the dope-fiend day goes. In Junktime, though, six hours is a lifetime. (...)
As violent as the abruptly junkless body's revolt can be, the psychic pain vastly exceeds the physical. Think on it. Sick as you've ever been, and two hard truths remain front and center: 1.) This infection is self-inflicted, and 2.) it can be cured only by the medicine that caused it. Hair of a very savage dog, indeed. Every dope fiend suffers withdrawal symptoms guaranteed to drive him or her uniquely around the bend. Stone insomnia was my personally homesteaded circle of hell. Marinated in misery, I am blinklessly awake for every single second of the ordeal, hundreds of thousands of seconds over a half-dozen or so nightmarish days.
Junk sickness boasts a powerful psychosomatic component, which makes its ravages no less a horrifying reality. Aging metabolism may be partly to blame, but every time I have run up and then kicked a jones, the withdrawal has worsened and the next habit has come on all the more quickly. These days, 48 hours of use, and I am helplessly hooked. Even clean, the dope fiend must sometimes endure the bizarre phenomenon of smack-agony flashback. Protracted conditioned abstinence syndrome, it's called. Returned to the cages in which they became addicted, lab rats are plunged into writhing withdrawal. Those junkie rodents had been drug-free for months. Months! Once the junk receptors have drunk deep of the poppy's nectar, it seems, they develop a crafty monomaniacal mind of their own. I've suffered torturous twinges of this situational sickness myself in New York's Penn Station, through which I passed again and again on copping missions to Manhattan's ghettos, feeding a secret habit none of my colleagues could ever even have guessed at.
by Anonymous, Washington City Paper | Read more:
