by J. R. Helton
That first Lortab in West Texas gave me a pleasurable floating feeling of warm, buzzing contentment. I was pretty sick with my flu or cold and it also completely killed my aches and pains for the duration of maybe four hours. When it wore off that evening, I went back to the medic for more and she gave me a couple. I took them both and felt even better. Hydrocodone, from the very beginning, was also an invigorating high for my system. For some, Vicodins or Lortabs make them drowsy, or even nauseous. They made me talkative and friendly in addition to killing my pain. Over the next two days, I went back for more but was cut off when the company doctor figured out I was getting better and just wanted the drug for pleasure now.
I had roughly the same brief experience with another opiate called Percodan in the early 1980s as a college freshman. I had had my wisdom teeth yanked out by a cheap dumb-ass back alley dentist down in Houston. The bastard had butchered my lower jaw, spilling blood all over the place, swelling my face to the size of a volleyball. He gave me a bottle of Percodan with one refill. It did nothing to kill my pain for several days, no matter how much I took. I was staying with my mother, who worked in medicine and who was wary of me, or anyone else, being around any drug whatsoever. After refilling the script, she took to hiding the bottle from me in the kitchen. I got irritated with her for doing this and she gave me back the bottle but said she wanted me to be careful. Slowly the pain subsided, with or without the Percodan, I couldn’t tell. I was still more interested in going up than down back then and didn’t even finish the bottle.
Years later, when married to Karen on The Farm, a friend of hers named Ricardo who was also a chef came out to stay for a few days in the country. He lived in San Antonio and was still my main pot connection. I didn’t smoke very much weed and basically just asked him for an extra ounce whenever he scored something good. This was difficult in San Antonio at the time, as there was a lot of what Ricardo called “Mexican Shit Weed” in that town, lousy pot that came across the border in large volumes. Ricardo had brought something extra with him this time and he called me into our little kitchen.
He took out a small gumdrop of what looked like hashish or tar, pinched off a bit, and put it on the end of a large, lit joint we’d been smoking. He held a flame in front of what he told me was opium and mentioned the smell as he inhaled. He also inhaled the smoke coming off the opium and told me to quickly do the same. It reminded me of freebasing coke, letting none of the smoke go to waste. He handed me the joint with a new dab of opium on the end and I repeated the process. I inhaled the opium smoke deeply through the marijuana and noticed the pungent aroma which I liked.
“It’s almost like burning pine,” Ricardo said and I agreed.
He told me it had been hard to get the opium. We both took a few more hits and he saved himself the rest.
We went outside to sit in chairs beneath the stars with Karen but she had already gone to bed. I slowly melted down into my chair and felt a newer and deeper type of relaxation unlike any I’d ever felt. My fights with Karen suddenly no longer mattered; they’d left my mind. I looked above me at each individual star and became transfixed by the sky. Ricardo had been talking to me but I hadn’t been listening. He talked a lot anyway so it didn’t really matter. I soon felt very tired and went to sleep in my own bed which was now in a different room of the farmhouse. My little single bed had never felt so comfortable and inviting, nor my dreams ever as beautiful or anxiety free as they’d been on opium. I had had a problem with nightmares and bad dreams all my life but with opium, I entered a new, pleasurable, and imaginary—but seemingly real—landscape in my sleep.
I was on a blue sea, a sea that glowed a phosphorescent blue, and the horizon was a liquid purple that melted into gold. Three purple pyramids slowly turned in the sky atop silver and blue mountains, some ancient alien symbol or sign of intelligence that I was just now realizing in my dream. I was in a flat bottom boat with my late grandfather. We were supposed to be fishing but we’d stopped to enjoy a soft rain that was falling on us from a blanket of low gray-blue clouds. I remember listening to him talk, his calm, even voice, a warm, gentle and humble man. When I looked at the rain droplets hitting the water on which I sat, wide concentric circles of a deep indigo blue formed atop the lighter phosphorescent blue with each drop. These circles emanated out across the pond all the way to the water’s edge with an audible, low, visceral hum. I remember moving up and above the boat to watch the rings grow but felt none of the worry I usually felt with my extreme heights/anxiety dreams, from which I usually awoke in a panic. This time, I was soon in space and looking up, where I saw a large circle of blue light. Pinpoints, stars of white light, moved toward this glowing blue circle in the very center of an otherwise black universe. The lights moved up to the circle, which had another circle moving inside of it. All of these pathways of white starlight moved into and around the inner perimeter of the circle, and as I watched them it came to me that I was seeing life after death, and that I was now one of these white stars of light, moving into this circle and going around and out of it onto another lighted path that stretched into another infinity of deep, dark blue. I woke up the next morning from one of the best sleeps I had ever had. I felt nothing but reverberations of warm comfort for most of the morning until it grew hot outside and the opium completely left my system. By mid-afternoon the dream was gone, as well as all the opium, which Ricardo had smoked when I went down, and I started drinking Bloody Marys with Karen.
-12-
Not long afterwards, I suffered a life-threatening injury on The Farm and was bedridden for weeks. I was given Vicodin—7.5/500s, the mid-level strength—to take as needed for pain. This relatively low dosage, this medication, was completely inappropriate for the serious nature of my injury and no matter how much I took, the pain was constant and only mildly dulled by the pills. After going through several large bottles of Vicodin, I found myself mildly sick one evening in the middle of the night. I explained my symptoms to Karen’s older brother Tommy, the sweating followed by sudden cold shivers, my muscles aching, as though they were trying to push out past my flesh, my bones hurting. Tommy laughed and shook his head.
“You still feel it?” he asked.
“No, it just lasted for maybe . . . a couple of hours last night.”
“You were getting hooked, man.”
“No way,” I said. “I only took these things for a few months.”
“How many were you taking a day?”
I told him it was well up over a dozen or so and he said that was enough to do it maybe but that I wasn’t really “hooked” yet since the withdrawal was so short.
He was right. It takes some time to get a real habit, not just on heroin but pills such as Oxycontin, Vicodin, and other synthesized opiates as well. After leaving Karen and moving to San Antonio, I took small handfuls of over-the-counter pain pills like ibuprofen and Advil or extra strength Tylenol, which was really only 500 mg of acetaminophen. This 500 mg was the same amount of acetaminophen I had gotten from one Vicodin, Lortab, or generic hydrocodone before. Much as I had done in high school, I even began to look in friends’ medicine cabinets for stronger drugs while using their bathrooms. These were small, easy steals, some non-user’s long expired script above or below the bathroom sink. I wasn’t going to be an idiot or an asshole and lift a pill or two from any friend of mine who actually had some current script or injury, who still needed their pills every day for either pleasure or pain, and who would notice their absence. Regardless, even though I did feel legitimate pain, I was also still seeking the tangible, long-lasting high that the opiates gave me as well.
When I first began dating my new girlfriend Patricia in San Antonio, she gave me access to some old Percodan she had left over from having her own wisdom teeth pulled years before. She was under a lot of stress then and used to occasionally come home from work with a bad migraine. She’d take half of one of these opiates to help her sleep and
get some relief. She’d had the same small bottle for four years. Before she knew it, I had taken almost all of her pills. She discreetly hid the rest from me and we said nothing.
I wasn’t then, or ever, a full blown, out of control “addict,” one of the people who uses so much that they lose their jobs or ruin their own lives by stealing merchandise, taking from the till, turning nasty tricks, cheating their family and friends on investments, stealing their spouse’s or children’s savings, all primarily to then get more money to buy more of whichever drug they think they need. These after the fact actions are in fact called “crimes” and the drug is often used as an excuse to do them.
I had yet to become “dependent” on these powerful drugs, that is, physically dependent, so that one becomes ill with withdrawal symptoms when the drug is removed. I went on this way for months, in pain, until I finally just went to a doctor and told her of my injuries. She was a low-rent doc on San Pedro in San Antonio, a long ugly street of blatant commerce that cut a straight line between the more wealthy center of the city and the beginnings of the mostly more impoverished West Side. San Pedro is lined with pawn shops, used car dealers, old dying restaurants still hanging on with marquees from the 1950s and ’60s, new fast-food joints, window tinting and car alarm businesses, abandoned strip joints, grocery stores, dentists, doctors, nail and toe salons, tanning shops, and beauty supply stores, as well as anything else you could cram into a decrepit strip mall.
Her name was Dr. Christianson, and her sign said she was a family clinic MD. I could tell she thought I was maybe conning her, as I refused to have an MRI done with her partner in the clinic, a quacky-looking guy from Africa, Dr. Kungwale, who was mainly in charge of physical therapy for her. I didn’t want or have time for physical therapy; I just wanted some hydrocodone, half for the back pain, and half for the high the drug still gave me. I didn’t mind getting an MRI, in fact I wanted one to see what was wrong. But I had no insurance yet and couldn’t afford the expensive procedure. I didn’t fit the profile of her usual con artist, at least not yet, as Vicodin was just beginning to become one of the most prescribed and popular middle- and upper-class drugs in America, and one that millions would be soon taking.
Hydrocodone, in all its forms, is a legal prescribed high that is ten times as strong as marijuana, and, if taken for long enough, it will lead to physical dependence due to the body’s growing tolerance to its effects. I was a well-educated forty-year-old professional with a respectable job and position in society. My girlfriend Patricia was also a professional, both of us living in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city. Dr. Christianson had pulled all of this info out of me before prescribing 60 7.5/500’s a month. I was to take two a day and then call her for any refills. At that time, I would take three of them a day, which was about 22 mg of the opiate and 1500 mg of acetaminophen, that is, not much at all. I got a nice buzz out of this amount, and because it mostly masked my back pain, at least throughout the day, I was able to live like I had before my injury, going on bike rides with Patricia or swimming with her, walking our dogs, working in our yard. Patricia and I even joined the nicest health club in San Antonio where she talked me into doing mild Hatha yoga. I would take one Vicodin before one of our long Sunday morning yoga sessions and between the calming, meditative workout, swimming laps in the pool, a steam in the sauna, the whirlpool for my back and a final cold shower, I felt better than I had in years. The Vicodin only added to this good feeling of health and exuberance. I’d take another pill in the afternoon and another in the evening before the soreness could set in.
Eventually, Dr. Christianson insisted I go to Dr. Kungwale for physical therapy. I had insurance now for the first time in decades due to my new job, and I was able to get the MRI that he insisted on before any further treatment. Dr. Kungwale did refill my existing script one more time on that first visit. After I got the MRI on my back, he and Christianson both seemed relieved. They pointed out I had two broken vertebrae, compression fractures that had healed improperly and fused together at an offset angle in the middle of my back. This was the reason for the lumps, scar tissue, and pain in the middle of my back, they said. As for my even more constant lower back pain, they chalked that up to sore muscles from years of hard physical labor. Dr. Kungwale prescribed a muscle relaxant for me, 10 mg of Flexeril once a day along with two of the mid-strength Vicodin which I bought as the generic hydrocodone at 7.5/500 mg.
I was teaching at community colleges during the day and at night, six classes to try to make a living. I hated my three-hour evening classes. I tried as hard as I could to keep the class interesting, but it took it out of me, giving out all of this energy to just have it sucked up by the black hole that was my tired, unenthusiastic audience. I began to take an extra Lortab as well as bring a tall closed mug full of two shots of vodka and a little cranberry juice and soda that I would sip on throughout the night. Planned properly, the one Vicodin kicked in at mid class and the euphoric high, enhanced by the alcohol and the muscle relaxant I’d also taken, sharpened my focus and made me more energetic. My body, mind, and mouth were fueled by the drug combo. I ended up putting on a good routine for these guys, who came to enjoy my class year in and year out.
I figured what worked for me in the evenings would work for me during the day as well when I began to take on more day classes than nights. I started taking one 7.5/500 in the mornings before my first class and it made the next two or three hours of lectures bearable. I also started taking more in the afternoon and evening, as the drug made me more personable through the night. I could visit easily and gab for hours with people I’d normally clam up around, nodding my head and pretending to listen to their conversation. Soon, I was almost running out of Dr. Kungwale’s script within two weeks. I would then have to cut pills in half to spread them out, drink more, take more of the muscle relaxants, anything to give me some sort of energy to get through my three-hour lectures at night. I felt little if any withdrawals at that time since I was taking such small amounts.
At first, I asked Kungwale for more, and he upped my dosage to two 10/500s a day, the strongest HC I could get from most doctors beyond Oxycontin, morphine, Demerol, or special patches and pumps, massive hardcore doses for the terminally ill or severely injured. I also asked him to up the number of pills per day, but he gave me some extra Ultram instead, a non-narcotic that only made me drowsy and did nothing for the pain, nor did it get me high. I started going to other doctors then to get more Vicodin. I hit up one guy who was obviously some very anti-drug asshole who looked at me with great suspicion and would only give me Soma, which despite its promising name turned out to be another mild, non-opiate, pain-killer/muscle relaxant that did little for me compared to HC. I went to another suspicious doctor who didn’t seem to like it at all that I knew what I wanted. He gave me Darvocet, a nominal narcotic that did absolutely nothing to mask my pain or give me a high.
I found another general practice guy at random in the phonebook, a Dr. Garza, who had an office next to a run-down inner city hospital. Dr. Garza was a younger man than Kungwale, probably in his late thirties, near my age. He had a mostly lower working-class client base at the time, his waiting room full of sick crying children and their tired out mothers, sick old men and women with walkers and canes. I had just had some sort of strange, new, extremely painful episode with my back, something that occasionally happens to me that is frightening and debilitating. I still don’t know what it is exactly, maybe a muscle spasm, but it feels like something has slipped, or a nerve is pinched, a knife in my spine that then has a vise clamped around it to ensure that the pain stays. These episodes or spasms, whatever they are, happen with no notice, always in the morning, and can come from something as simple as reaching for a pen on the floorboard of my car, or picking up the cat’s litter box, or bending over to feed the dog. There was no reason or desire to fake these debilitating spasms; when they happened, they scared the crap out of me. I was partially be
nt over, could not straighten up my spine, and could barely walk. It took about three days to get back to normal when it happened. I would also take more Vicodin when one of these rare back seizures came on but it didn’t help much.
The seizures only happened a couple times a year, but one had just hit me when I went to see Garza. He interviewed me briefly about my job, where I lived, past medical history, the usual. I could tell I was going to score easily with this guy, that he needed me as a good paying patient. He prescribed me two 10/500s then a day, sixty a month, with one refill. I also told him I had to take a plane flight and needed some alprazolam, one of the benzodiazepines, for anxiety. Patricia had turned me onto this drug, also known as Xanax. She got it from her grandmother who in turn bought it in Mexico where it was sold over the counter. Her grandmother, along with many others, crossed the border from Texas to Mexico regularly along with thousands of other older Americans to buy the exact same pills from the exact same manufacturers for a fraction of the price that they were sold to the suckers of United States. The senators and congressmen of America at this time were still completely in the pocket of the large HMOs and drug companies who partially financed their campaigns and perpetuated this gigantic con on the citizens of the country, milking out every last extra cent with some bullshit song and dance routine that they needed to fleece us out of this extra cash in order to find even better drugs for hard-ons and allergies, never mind curing cancer or Alzheimer’s, something useful.
I’d taken a blue 1 mg Xanax of Patricia’s one night after dinner when we were first dating. She had advised me to take less, as she only took them by the quarter or half, one prescription lasting her well over a year. She used it wisely, and only when she really needed it for mild anxiety or to get some sleep. An hour after taking the pill and two glasses of wine, I was standing up and talking to Patricia when suddenly it seemed as though I had lost a segment of time, or my train of thought. I couldn’t remember what I’d been saying. I was still standing, swaying. I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the floor. I looked up and saw Patricia’s worried face.
