Smack

by Melvin Burgess

  Gemma’s sworn she’ll be clean while I’m inside. We were both off it for nearly two weeks before I came in here—well, nearly off—cut down. We want to have babies and they’re going to be clean babies. Lily was still jacking up when she was pregnant. She always used to go on about being a good mother and so did everyone around her. But how can you be a good mother on smack? And jacking up when she was breast feeding. I’ve seen her. All the veins in her arms and behind her knees have gone where she’s poked around with the needle so much, so she injects into the veins between her breasts. I’ve seen her sitting with the baby on the breast poking about to find a vein.

  “Nice fat veins when your tits are big and milky,” she said. And no one said a word.

  That’s junk. You think, if you don’t say the truth, the truth somehow doesn’t exist. You fool yourself. If anyone suggested to Lily she was doing a bad thing to her baby she’d go mad. But she knows.

  Smack makes it all distant. It doesn’t matter, it’s not real any more.

  But it is.

  Gemma says that if we can’t give it up together this time, we’ll have to split up. She’d do it, too. That’s why it’s so important that I succeed this time.

  Gemma’s been so strong. She’s given up the parlour, she’s given up heroin. That’s really hard because I’ve had a hell of a job in here, but she’s still out there with Lily and Rob and Sal and the rest of them. She writes me twice a week. Actually, she’s honest about it, she cracks up every now and then. I can understand that. I value the honesty more than anything else. When I come out we’re going to move away from Bristol, get our own place. I’ll have been clean for a month, she’ll have only been taking a little. I know she can do it because she doesn’t tell lies, like I did. I always made out I was taking practically nothing. I even believed it, even when I was doing it two, three, four times a day for weeks and weeks.

  The first thing that happened when I came in here, they got all the new intake together and told us what was what. There were about ten of us sitting around in armchairs waiting, and this lanky-looking bloke—I thought he was one of us at first—suddenly started talking.

  “No one’s keeping you here. Any time you feel you’ve had enough, there’s the door.” He nodded at the large green exit sign in the corner. “But while you do stay here, no drugs of any kind are allowed. Not even aspirin.”

  We all laughed nervously. He smiled.

  “Not even hash,” he added, as if that was the ultimate in mildness. “I like a smoke and if I have to go without it, so can you.”

  Everyone shifted around in their seats and laughed more easily.

  “If anyone is caught with drugs of any kind, you’re out. No questions, no arguments—the door. That goes for me too. So. Anyone who doesn’t feel that they can do it, you’d be better to go now. Really. Go now and you can come back another time. Wait until you get caught—you’ve blown it forever. If you get caught taking drugs here, you’ll never come back again.”

  And a couple of people actually got up and walked out. I was tempted myself but—it was a choice between that and a young offender institution.

  Then came the bad bit—withdrawal, cold turkey. I never had it so bad. I suppose the truth is I always had a little bit here and there to help me through, or methadone, or something. It was awful. I nearly cracked. I would have done, if I was on my own. I was sitting in my chair moaning, I felt so bad, and everyone was saying, “Come on, Tar, you can do it, just another few days and you’ll be clean.” But all I wanted was smack. In the end I told them I couldn’t go through with it and I asked them to fetch one of the counsellors to tell them I wanted to leave.

  It was the lanky guy—Steve. He sat and watched me for a bit; and then he said, “Do you want something to help you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t give you heroin, but I have some methadone for severe cases. I can get you a prescription.” He held out a key. “This is the key to the medicine cabinet. You can have it in two minutes if you like.”

  Methadone is the heroin substitute they give addicts to wean them off. Actually, it’s worse than smack in some ways. The withdrawal symptoms are worse and it’s more addictive. But heroin is illegal and methadone isn’t. So…I was gasping. I said, “Please, yeah, anything.”

  “Okay, I’ll go and get it. You pack your bag.”

  “What?”

  “Pack your bag. If you want some you can have it, but you have to leave.” He held out the key. “Two minutes, Tar.”

  I stared at that key, and I stared at him and he smiled. “Just…fuck off,” I told him.

  It was a near thing.

  I was furious at the time but they know what they’re doing. They’re ever so supportive but they make you fight every step of the way. They know it’s not easy. I discovered later that Steve had been an addict for fifteen years. Fifteen years, and then he got off.

  So it is possible.

  There’s one of the counsellors here who used to be an alcoholic, a really bad one. He used to eat his own sick in the morning, so’s not to waste the booze. He used to wake up, and he’d always make sure he had a bit of booze right by him so he could have a drink as soon as he woke up. So he’d drink it and his stomach would reject it at once—vomit it up. But he couldn’t have that because that was all the booze he had. So he’d catch it in his hands and drink it back down…

  You wouldn’t guess to look at him now; he’s a perfectly ordinary-looking bloke. Anyway, he gave up for ten years, ten whole years. And then one night he decided he was past it, he could relax a little bit. So he had a drink.

  “That was it—skid row. I woke up the next morning in the gutter. I knew there was only one thing would ever make me feel better again. So I did it. And I was on the booze again for four years…”

  I remember Dev and his girlfriend once deciding to give it up and they booked this holiday to the Canary Islands. And you know what? They actually met a guy on the plane who was a dealer and had some on him.

  That’s one of the things they teach you. You can never touch the stuff ever again, whatever it is, fags, booze, smack. No matter what happens to me, no matter what I do or don’t do, I can never touch heroin again. Not once. Because I’m not strong enough. Because it’s stronger than me. That’s the important thing I always have to remember…

  They teach you things like that but most of the work here is therapy. We all sit talking to one another, about one another. You have to show everything. People listen. They don’t judge you. They’re not full of the bullshit you normally get from people who’ve never had the problem. And the other thing is—perhaps the main thing is, unlike all the addicts I know—they all really want you to get off.

  We have all sorts here—speed addicts, heroin junkies, people on barbiturates, people on Valium. There’s a woman here about the same age as my mum and she’s been on Valium for thirty years. Imagine, stoned on Valium all that time. Her name is Nancy. Her doctor has a lot to answer for. There’s a lot of women like that apparently. Actually it makes me think better of my mum. At least she found a drug that was more interesting than Valium.

  Nancy has a son about my age she doesn’t often see. They took him off her when he was eight. And, of course, I have a mum I don’t often see. So we have something in common. We go for walks around the grounds, and she asks me what it’s like being the son of an addict, and I ask her about what it’s like being a mum. Actually she doesn’t much remind me of Mum but it makes me feel good because I think it helps her. If her son hadn’t been taken away, he might have ended up like me, you see. So somehow, I’m useful to her just by being useless, if you see what I mean.

  Nancy sticks up for me. Sometimes the other people pick on me because of Gemma. I’ve told everyone our story, so they know that she more or less ran away because of me. She’d never have gone if I hadn’t been there, so in a sense it’s my fault she’s a junkie. A lot of people say I ought to leave her. There’s this thing about junkies
supporting one another’s addiction and making it harder to give up. Even Steve says couples nearly always have to separate.

  But we love each other…that can’t be a bad thing, can it? How can love be bad?

  Nancy says, “If you love her, stick with her, Tar.” She split up with her husband over her addiction, and it didn’t do her any good. She’s in as big a mess as ever.

  The point about therapy isn’t that what everyone says is necessarily true. It makes you think, that’s the point. It makes you challenge yourself. All that stuff about Gemma has made me really think about me and her, and the more I think about it, the more I know I love her.

  There’s this bloke there, Ron. He’s Scottish and he’s been through everything. Sometimes he gets aggressive but he’s actually a very warm sort of bloke. He’s been on booze, on heroin—he’s even been on cough mixture. That’s the first cough mixture addict I’ve ever met. It’s funny because…I mean, he’s a weak person. We all are, that’s why we’re here. But he’s helped a lot of people see things about themselves. He’s so perceptive. And yet when people say things about him, he just can’t handle it.

  Anyway, it was last week. We were in therapy; it was my turn on the spot. We were talking about my mum. We often end up talking about my mum. It’s the obvious thing because she’s an addict same as me, and because she’s a victim same as me, getting knocked around by my dad. Then suddenly Ron sat up and said, “All right, we’ve been talking about your mum and how she’s a victim and how she’s made you a victim and all the things you have in common with your mum. Right. What about your dad? What have you got in common with your dad? What about a bit of sympathy for the old man?”

  That really threw it up in the air. There was a real argument that day. I just sat there and listened to start off with. Some of the women were really offended.

  “We’re talking about a man that beats women, we’re talking about a man that beats his own wife and son.”

  “Aye, but what did she do to him? She was a dab hand at the old guilt, I bet…I bet she knew how to wrap him round her little finger, because I’ll tell you, I’ve met women like that before and, I tell you, they’re not helpless. In fact, I’m willing to bet she was the one who wore the trousers in that house.”

  “It’s not the same thing!” shouted this woman. She was getting really angry. The guide kept trying to bring it back to me, but I just couldn’t answer. It was true. I’d never thought about it but my mum was the boss. He used to knock me around and she used to live in fear of him coming home. But she was the boss, all right. She used to wrap me round one little finger, and she used to wrap him round the other one.

  “How about it, David?” said Ron, leaning across and grinning at me. “How would you like to go back there and give the old woman a good kicking…just like your da? Eh? Perhaps he had the right idea…eh?”

  You should have heard the screech when he said that!

  “That’s no way to solve his problems.”

  “I didn’t say it was. I didn’t say he ought to do it. I just asked him how he’d like to do it…Right, listen…I’ve hit women before now and I may even do it again.”

  “Are you threatening me? Are you threatening me?”

  “No, listen…no, I’m not…I’m saying…” It was getting really loud, people shouting and roaring. “No, look, I expect sympathy, so why not Tar’s dad? Why shouldn’t he have a bit of sympathy? I mean, it’s worth a question, is it not? I mean you don’t stop being a human being if you hit a woman, do you? Or am I not allowed to ask questions? I understood it was a free therapy session…”

  This woman, her name was Sue, was getting really upset. She’d been beaten up over and over again by her husband. I felt sorry for her because she was just learning to stand up for herself and here was Ron coming out with all this.

  He said I ought to ring up my dad and find out how he was and how he felt.

  It completely blew my mind.

  “All right, he’s got the muscles, he loses it every now and then and lashes out, but why? How is he being abused? Hey…here’s a thought. Maybe she wanted him to hit her. Maybe it suited her…”

  It really upset some people. Including me. I was sitting next to Nancy and I looked at her to see what she thought but she just shook her head. Afterwards she said that she thought Ron was just stirring things up but I don’t know. I don’t know if what he said is true but it showed me one thing: I never really thought about me and Dad before. One day when all this is over I’ll ring him up, go and visit him…maybe. And my mum. But not now. It’s all there. It’ll wait. At the moment I need all my strength for Gemma.

  I don’t believe in anything any more. I don’t believe in me, I don’t believe in my friends, I don’t believe in Gemma. But I don’t mean that in a cynical way. The thing I have to remember is that I’m weak and that they’re weak. I can’t do it alone. If you have an addictive personality, you have to have help from outside yourself. Not a person, or an organisation necessarily. Something deeper than that. Some force outside you and stronger than you, that you can turn to when you feel weak.

  I don’t know what they mean when they say that, but maybe I’m getting some kind of an idea about it. That thing outside yourself is different for everyone. I know that I can’t trust myself ever again. I know I can’t trust Gemma either. She’s stronger than me but she’s still weak. But what about love?

  I was looking at a letter she wrote to me the other day and those words on the bottom she writes—“Dandelion, I love you…” And I thought that was magic. Loving someone. It’s not you and it’s not them. It’s not in you, it’s between you. It’s bigger and stronger than you are.

  That’s what I have. That’s all I have, when you think about it. My personality almost disappeared when I was on heroin. I’m off it now but I still don’t know who I am. I only know that I’m weak, and Gemma’s weak, and that I love Gemma. And I know that she loves me.

  Dandelion, dandelion. That’s what I believe in. It’s the only thing can help me now.

  Steve said to me, “When you go home you’ll know in the first day whether you’re going to get through the week.”

  “I will,” I said.

  I’ve said that before. This time I know I’ve got nothing to be confident about.

  Sally

  It was gonna be a wedding party, it was gonna be a honeymoon, the way Gemma was. She was jumping up and down, and kissing him and hugging him. He was blushing. He’d definitely changed, definitely. He looked so much better. I was pretty cynical about the whole exercise, but you’ve gotta keep an open mind or nothing ever changes.

  Later on, he started going on about all that stuff they’d taught him—how he couldn’t do it on his own, how he needed help from outside himself, wherever that is. Lily was really sneery. She said, “Brainwashed. Yeah, what a drag. They took him off one drug and they put him on another. They done a good job on you, mate…”

  Well, she was right, but she didn’t have to say it. Maybe he needs brainwashing. Poor old Tar. I gave her a nudge and I said, “Leave him alone, he’s doing all right.”

  “Yeah, they put you in prison all right. They locked you up inside your own head and then they gave you the key and how do you get out of that jail? They made you your own jailer, it’s cheaper for ’em that way…”

  I was pissed off with her, she was being really nasty. He needed that stuff. He just sat there drinking a glass of fizzy wine and said, “You can think what you want, Lily. You’re on smack and I’m not.” She hated that. Later on she went into the bathroom and came back with all these broken up little bits of soap and started trying to push them in his ear and up his nose.

  “Get off, Lil!” He was getting annoyed now.

  “That’s to keep your brain clean,” she told him. You had to laugh. Poor Tar! Lily’s a bit of a missionary. She doesn’t like any other religion but her own.

  Gemma was her old self that day. Bouncing about. She wanted to show the world how please
d she was to get her hands on him again. She was all over him.

  It was a bit different the day before, I went round to help her get the party ready. She was doing rice salad and she looked really awful. I didn’t say anything. You know, your boyfriend’s coming out of detox and someone walks in and says, “Christ, you look ugly this afternoon.” I had a bit with me, because I thought she might need something to steady her up and I offered her some, but she said no. She was making a big thing about not doing any, but we all knew she was cracking up every now and then. The thing is, people say that your friends stop you getting off but you’re gonna pack it in when the time is right. If you push it at the wrong time you only wear yourself out and make it worse.

  But I didn’t say anything. I got a knife and helped her cut up the peppers.

  I was watching her. I kept my mouth shut as long as I could but finally she hangs down her head and starts weeping. I put my arm round her. “What’s up, Gems?” I said.

  Out it all came. “I’ve really let Tar down, I’ve really blown it for him. I made all these promises and…” And she cracks up all over the rice salad.

  I was really surprised because, you know, she’d been doing so well. She’d turned over a new life. She’d stopped doing jumps at the parlour, saving herself for Tar. She’d cut right down on the smack.

  “I’ve been doing more smack, I did some today and he’s been keeping himself clean and look at me…”

  Off she went.

  “How much have you been doing?” I said.

  “I did some again today, I was feeling so rotten…”

  “And when did you do it before?”

  She shrugged and wiped her eyes. “Day before yesterday.”

  I mean, she used to do stuff every day. Twice a day. Three times. She used to do more than me. And now she’d cut right down, just taking a little bit when she was feeling low, and here she was blaming herself and turning the brilliant effort she’d made into a mess, just because she wasn’t bloody Superwoman.