by Tony O'Neill
19
ROUTINE
For the first three months I had to attend Homerton at 9:00 A.M. every morning (except Sundays). I would have my urine tested randomly and would have to drink my entire dose on the premises, supervised by nurses. Then, following the three-month trial period, I was allowed to take a prescription to the chemist. I still had to attend the chemist every day and drink the methadone in clear view of the pharmacist. I had to do it in a chemist more than a mile from my flat, as they were the nearest location that would allow junkies to take their methadone on-site. I learned quickly that administrative quirks like these were the things that could drive an addict to relapse—or insanity—while trying to clean up on methadone. Kids would stare at me as I’d gulp the stuff down, shaking and sick every morning. Their mothers would pull them close. They’d whisper: “Don’t stare—he’s a drug addict,” if the kid’s gaze rested on me for too long. The chemist, an old Indian guy called Sanjeep, used to enjoy my discomfort.
“You don’t look so well today, my friend!” he would boom as I walked in.
All of the eyes in the shop would turn toward me as I staggered in, pale and unsteady.
“Mary!” he would yell to the old bitch in the back.
“We have another one here for methadone! Fifty milliliters of linctus please!”
I would smile halfheartedly. It does you no good to raise your voice or complain. That is the game they are playing. One angry word from me and he could ban me from the shop with a single phone call. Then I am back to going to the hospital every day for six months before earning the right to attend the next closest chemist who would dose me on-site. It is best to shut your mouth and act with the correct amount of subservience.
After I swallowed the linctus, I would return the bottle.
“Please to leave the shop,” he would say in mangled English, “and not to return until tomorrow. Thank you.”
Liquid Sky’s Peel session finally aired on Radio 1. We all got together at Elektra’s house and listened to it go out live. I left Susan back on Murder Mile, nodding in front of the television. We drank cheap champagne and cheered whenever one of our songs was played. It felt like maybe things would start happening for the band now. I was convinced that after this victory record labels would start calling us with offers. But they never did. The band limped on, waiting for another break, playing gigs in half-empty pubs around North London. Performing such preprogrammed, regimented, electronic music live was a bore, though. I missed the spontaneity of my old bands. Liquid Sky’s onstage routine never changed.
Then one night I went over to Elektra’s house to work on writing some new songs. She was drunk when I showed up and insisted on pouring me a glassful of vodka. She was already messy, and I could sense that she was working her nerve up to something.
“I like you,” she said after an hour or so as we sat around on the floor, programming the new songs on the synthesizer. I looked over at her.
“Yeah…I like you too.”
“No but…I really like you.”
“Uh-huh.”
I felt my stomach turn to ice. Elektra was my age, but pretty naive. No one in the band knew about my drug use. I knew that it would be a disaster if I started something like this with her. I’d realized that half of the reason I didn’t just leave Susan was that she was an insurance of sorts against my having to get emotionally involved with another human being. For someone who didn’t like being around other people, Susan was the perfect wife. Our conversations were limited to the bare essentials of our existence: where to find drugs, where to find money. There was no need for any further interaction. I didn’t have to hold her, I didn’t have to kiss her, I didn’t have to fuck her, I didn’t have to engage with her on any other level than maybe helping her find a vein when she was too sick to do it herself. But at least I didn’t have to consider how alone I was, because when I walked into the apartment there she was—nodded out on the bed or sucking on a cigarette waiting for RJ to call back. Susan was my routine, and now that Elektra was threatening to disrupt it, I felt nothing but unease.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I told Elektra, as nicely as possible.
“Why?” she said, pouting. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
“Well, yeah…but you’re married!”
She laughed. “Yeah right! That was to get into the country. I don’t love him. He fucks other people. He likes screwing boys in dresses for Christ’s sake!”
“Well…I’m married,” I bleated.
“And you love her?”
I didn’t answer. That lie would have been too preposterous, even for me.
“That’s what I thought. It’s funny how I’ve never seen you together. Do you keep her in a box?”
Elektra stood up and said, “I’m going to go freshen up.” And then she walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Fuck! Shit, fuck!
As she lingered in the bathroom, my mind whirled. I hadn’t had sex in a long, long time. The heroin had killed any urge I once had to fuck. The last time I did it was before Susan and I even got married. With a heroin and crack habit, there was no time for the luxury of having a sex life. I absently wondered if my prick still worked properly. There was something appealing, yet terrifying, about the thought of having sex with Elektra.
But no, it couldn’t work. Elektra was a problem because I would have to see her the next day. And the next. And the next. And it would either be incredibly uncomfortable because we’d both regret it the next day or, even worse, she would want us to form some kind of relationship, which was absolutely out of the question. I had too much to hide. Too much that had to remain private.
I needed a shot.
I had a methadone ampoule in my jacket pocket and a new syringe. I went over to the coat rack and retrieved them, stuffing them into my pockets. The bathroom door opened and Elektra stepped out. Before she could say anything I said, “You mind if I go in there for a moment?” and she nodded me through. I closed the door behind me and stood there for a moment, listening to her walk away into the living room again.
For a minute there was peace. The bathroom was cool and quiet. In the other room I could hear indistinct music playing. I sat down on the toilet, pulling the belt off of my jeans and tossing it onto the floor. I retrieved the needle and the ampoule, snapping the glass neck off the top of the little bottle and sliding the spike into it. I drew up fifty milliliters of clear liquid. Then I had a brain wave.
I had a Ritalin tablet stored away in my jeans. Genius! I squirted the methadone back into the ampoule and retrieved the tablet. I looked around the bathroom for something suitable. There was a glass tumbler by the toothbrushes, so I dried it off with toilet paper and wiped down an area of the tiled floor. I placed the pill on the floor and used the bottom of the glass like a mortar and pestle to crush the pill up into rough white powder. Then I used an old underground ticket to scoop up the powder and dump it into the cup. I sucked up the methadone once more and squirted it into the cup, swirling the solution until it turned thick and creamy.
This was a dangerous practice. Shooting pills can really fuck up your veins and cause all kinds of nasty medical problems. Normally I would take the time to filter and refilter the solution, but I realized that I was taking a long time in the bathroom, so after a quick swirl with the plunger of the syringe, I sucked the creamy, lumpy solution up, clasped the needle between my teeth, and started wrapping my belt around my upper arm.
I went in by the side of my forearm. I slid in the needle in and poked around under the skin, drilling for blood. There was nothing, but when I withdrew the needle a great glob of crimson bubbled out of my arm and started running toward my wrist. I wiped the blood with my hand, smearing it all over myself in an attempt to stop it from dripping on the floor. Then, flexing again, I pointed my clenched fist toward the floor in an attempt to increase the blood flow and inserted the needle into my wrist.
This was a tricky operation. Sh
ooting anywhere around the tendons is a problem because if the needle accidentally sticks one you know about it. An explosion of pain and even the loss of sensation in one or more of your fingers for an anxious half hour can result. But there are a lot of decent veins hiding there, just under the surface. A thin strip of blood shot into the barrel, turning the solution pink, and I started to feed it in slowly, but the needle immediately jammed.
“Fuck!” I hissed. This was the problem with injecting inadequately filtered crushed tablets. I pulled the needle out and more blood gushed from the wrist, this time splashing the floor. I had blood all over my hands and my forearm now, and a little pool of it at my feet. I slid the needle in the same spot again, knowing that if I didn’t get the hit straight away now the needle would clog and the entire shot would be wasted.
I said a silent prayer to the God of junkies, and by divine intervention, a plume of scarlet flooded the barrel and I started depressing the plunger and feeding the shot into my vein. I was so caught up in the process that I didn’t even hear the bathroom door open. The Ritalin and methadone hit my bloodstream and almost exactly on cue Elektra screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?!?”
I looked up and saw her standing there wearing just a T-shirt. I sat stupefied by the sight of her bare legs, the tuft of pubic hair sticking out from under the shirt, and the look of horror on her face, before I jumped up, with the needle still hanging out of my wrist, and yelled, “Close the door!” She slammed it closed, and I was alone once more. I put the cap back on the needle and stashed it, gathering up my things, looping the belt back into my jeans, and cleaning up the blood with a thick wad of wet toilet paper. All the while the blood was roaring in my ears from the shot and my vision kept blurring in and out.
“What kind of person doesn’t have a lock on their bathroom door, anyway?” I thought bitterly, flushing the toilet and straightening myself up in the mirror. When I left the bathroom, Elektra had pulled on a pair of tights to cover herself a little and was sitting on the couch, shakily drinking another vodka. I popped my head in and said: “Look, I’m sorry. You really didn’t know?”
She looked up and shook her head.
“Well, I’m sorry you had to see that. I’d better go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She nodded. She looked completely freaked out by what she had just witnessed in her bathroom. I grabbed my coat and got the fuck out of there.
20
DR. IRA
Tuesdays—I meet with Dr. Ira in Hackney, East London, to ensure that the flow of methadone remains uninterrupted. Methadone gives and methadone takes away—rather like God, in a way. If methadone is God then Dr. Ira is His gin-soaked St. Peter, sitting at the gates, checking boxes, deciding if I have been naughty or nice in the week since he last passed judgment on me.
Sterile, airless atmosphere in the waiting room. Smell of detergent and junk sickness wafting out from aching muscles and creaking bones. Old woman behind the reception desk with a white, starched, severe face eyes me with obvious condescension. The good doctor owns me, for all intents and purposes. I am sure the pursed-lipped old receptionists and nurses are in love with Dr. Ira’s twisted pipe-tobacco-stained old bones in their own dried-up, pent-up way.
Dr. Ira is a repulsive old specimen.
Stink of professional arrogance and brandy all over his sweating, leering, ruptured old face. After thirty years in the service, junkies are his life now. He has the same love-hate ambivalence toward us as we have toward the drugs that constitute our lives.
“Fuck Hannah,” a male voice says from behind me.
“Martin,” says a shrill East End harpy, “she’s pregnant. We can’t leave her wivout nothing.”
“That fucking cunt will take all of our fucking gear and leave us sick. She’s a fucking liberty taker. Fuck her and that fucking fetus she’s dragging around.”
“Martin—she’s all right—you’ve got her all wrong.”
“No I fucking don’t! Tell her she can’t fucking crash with us. Who knocked her up, anyway?”
“Denzil.”
“That paki cunt? Tell her to stay with that fucking bastard then!”
“He fucking raped her. She can’t stay wiv him.”
“Raped her, my arse. She fucked him for rock. She’d fuck anyone for rock.”
“I know she would. But that sick cunt raped her.”
“Did he give her a pipe?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Then she fucked him for rock. End of.”
The East End harpy has her blond hair, black at the roots, tied back in a severe bun. It is pulled back so tight that it accentuates the harsh contours of her skull. She has a black eye that has faded to the color of autumn leaves. Her boyfriend is a skeletal old jailbird, bathed in sticky coagulating withdrawal sweat. He nervously clenches and unclenches his inked fists and stares at the polished tile floor.
Last night I had a dream that Dr. Ira told me to suck my methadone out of a rubber phallus protruding from the fly of his dandruff-sprinkled brown slacks. It was part of my treatment plan, he told me, laughing.
In the dream, I did it.
Wouldn’t you?
“Now,” Dr. Ira is saying to me, rustling his papers up and down and coughing phlegm into his palm, “take those child molesters, hum? They say that they can’t help it. Chemical castration doesn’t help. It’s a medical condition that they have. There aren’t many reformed child molesters out there.”
The child molester speech. I hate the way his lips seem to grow wetter and thicker, redder and mushier, when he talks about child molestation.
“There is evidence to suggest their claim that they can’t stop what they are doing. But your claims that you can’t stop…well, frankly my boy…they are contraindicated.”
“And how is that, Dr. Ira?”
“Well, because there are innumerable ex-addicts out there. They are legion.”
“You mean the God-botherers.”
Dr. Ira smiles his practiced old predator’s smile.
“Well, yes, the Narcotics Anonymous people, of course. But others also.”
“And how long do they stay clean?” I ask. “I mean, when do you consider them clean? After a year? Two years? Five?”
“Any time away from drugs would be considered a period of clean time.”
“But how long do they stay clean for?”
It is the old chicken-and-egg scenario that we always get into. This is the game. Dr. Ira wants me to reduce my methadone. Even if I were to reduce it by just five milliliters, he would be happy. In reality, if I reduced by five milliliters a day I would not feel the deficit. But once I reduce, there will be no way—bar buying the methadone off the black market—for me to ever get my dose put back up. It will never happen. The inflexible authority of the clinic can never be overexaggerated.
If I remain at Homerton Drug Dependency Unit for twenty years on a methadone program, never again use street drugs, hold down a job, buy a house, start a family—all of that kind of happy shite—I will still be considered a failure for Dr. Ira. For me to qualify as a success to his superiors, I must reduce my dose over a period of time until I am opiate-free, allowing me to leave the program. If I do that, but then return to using street drugs and eventually kill some old bastard for his pension money so I can score, I will still be considered a roaring success by the hospital’s standards. There is no follow-up treatment. As soon as I walk out the door—clean, for however short a period—I am judged a success.
So we carry on this dance, week after week. Dr. Ira gives me his little speeches. I listen, respectfully decline his offers of dose reduction, and walk out with a prescription for one week’s supply of methadone. And then it starts all over again.
My daily routine has evolved over the past year. Today I receive my prescription once a week, take it to a chemist, and then return every morning to the same chemist to pick up a bottle of sticky, sickly sweet methadone linctus. I can take the bottle home and use it whenever I ne
ed it. I can save it up and use heroin instead. I have approximately two thousand milliliters, stored in medicine bottles around my flat. It makes me feel secure. The King of Purgatory, with all of his adornments.
After six months at Homerton I underwent my review. No dirty urines. This was quite simple to achieve. For that whole period I was piss tested regularly, observed by a nurse. So I injected black-market methadone, the kind that comes in ampoules specifically for that purpose. It is impossible to get by prescription unless you have a private doctor. The only way most junkies can afford a private doctor is to play up their habit and sell the excess ampoules. It was a shitty high, but better than nothing. After three months I was allowed to piss alone. Then I used other people’s piss.
Most opiates are out of the bloodstream in three days. At the clinic people would take turns using heroin or staying off. After three days off, they were pissing good, clean urine again. Then they filled up a bottle and distributed it to everyone else they were friendly with. Everybody involved could use heroin most of the time and pass the urine test all of the time. After the first six months, the piss tests became less regular, so as long as I was careful I could do as I pleased. It is all about working the angles at the methadone clinics.
