Opium Poppy - "Papaver somniferum"

Heroin

I have been clean for 6 days now. The saying from rehab is you will end up one of three places: Death, Jail, or an Institution. The title of this piece of work is actually the name of the poppy from which opium and all the refined opiates, such as morphine and codeine, are extracted. The name of the poppy means "sleep-bringing poppy", referring to its narcotic properties.

I have been using Heroin for close to one year now. I know, some of you may be thinking that that is not very long, especially if compared to others. It was definitely long enough for me. They say that a person has to hit rock bottom before they will be ready to actually quit. Every persons rock bottom may be different. I will give you a brief summary of how I met my best friend "Heroin" and what my rock bottom was.

I met a new guy, seemed perfect. But don't they all?! We starting dating and the entire time I knew that he had problems with Heroin. I was that girlfriend who said "Oh I can fix him!". He never pressured me into trying heroin, it was my curiosity that got me started. The first time, I only snorted one bag, but I did not feel anything. Meanwhile, all of my friends are nodding out in the backseat and drooling all over themselves. So not fair! I want to be like that, I thought. After that first "experiment" our lives went back to normal as girlfriend and boyfriend. You know, going out to eat and seeing movies and stuff.

The next time a big paycheck came around we decided to get enough bags so that everyone would get high, even me! The routine finally started...waking up in the morning and if we had money then we would have to hurry and find a dealer that was awake to see us, if we did not have money then we would have to go out and hustle first before we could get the bags. We considered this a full time job, especially if we had to go out hustling money. That was stressful work. Now remember by this time I was at the point where if I did not have my dope everyday I would get sick. I am not sure if you know how bad dope sickness is but I would rather die, put it that way. It is like having the flu but 100 times worse. Your bones ache, you puke, you get the chills and have seizures, you can't even move.

I consider us to be junkies because we did not work, our entire days consisted of getting bags, then getting high. Our family only had contact with us if we were over there asking for money. After a while they caught on and hid any valuables if they knew we were coming. I never resorted to selling myself for money, but I know quite a few girls in my small town that did. Looking back now, I realize some of the "symptoms" of Heroin. I would not shower for days, I would wear what ever did not have a blood stain on it from when I was shooting up, my make-up bag now consisted of needles, Q-tips, tweezers and a spoon, but no make-up.

Let me give you an example of an average day in the life of Danielle, a junkie:
I set my alarm for 8am everyday. The reason I get up at 8am is one of my dealers has kids so he is always up very early. Most of my other dealers do not start answering their phone until around noon. On the days that I already have money I will hit the road about 8:30 and go straight to my dealers about an hour away. Sometimes I will pick up some friends if they are going to give me a bag for letting them tag along with me. If I do not already have money I will either call around to see if anyone needs a ride or I will go "shopping" for money. The reason that I call around to see if anyone needs a ride, is the because the rule between addicts is if you are driving then the others all have to give you a bag plus come up with gas money. So, by 10 or 11am, at the latest, I am at my dealers. I very rarely buy any less than a bun. That means a bundle, which is 10 bags for $90.00. I will get the bags then get back in my car and find somewhere to do my dope. I will go different places, but I usually stop at Wendys. I grab my tools; spoon, cigarette or Q-tip, water, needle, and sometimes a tie-off. I head to the bathroom. I remember this one time there were people in the bathroom so I couldn't get water out of the spicket...I got it from the toilet. I get out my spoon and open the bags. Depending on how good they are, I usually only do two at a time. I pour them both on the spoon. I keep the bags because they usually have a little bit left in the corners so I will scrape the bags later when I am starting to get sick. I tear cotton from a cigarette or else from a Q-tip and put in the middle of the dope on the spoon. I put about 20cc's of water on the spoon and use the end of my needle to mix it. My stomach is in knots by this time, and my hand is shaking while holding the spoon because I am getting so excited. Into my arm the needle goes. The best part is seeing the blood come back into the needle because then you know that you hit the vein. The rush is incredible, that is what most people are addicted to. Okay, now it is time to clean up. I get all my tools back into my purse and head to the car. I wait for everyone else then I start my drive back home, high as a kite. Now, if I have some bags left then I will stay in the rest of the day and just get high, but if I run out of bags then  I have to start this all over again. Even though I have a boyfriend I never have sex. The only thing I think about is being high so I really don't care about anything else. I use to like going bowling but now that is too much of a hassle and I don't want to waste my money on anything other than the dope.

I had about 3 dealers that I dealt with on a daily basis. It usually went pretty well and pretty quick. I would call them up and they would meet me on the side of a street. Probably the kind of street that you live on, with kids playing outside in the yard and dogs running around. This was less obvious than at GetGo or a car wash. I remember one of the times I shorted my guy for $30.00. I thought this was nothing since I brought them around $300 dollars a day. He was pretty upset, he followed me and tried to run me off the road. We got to a stop sign and he showed me his gun, I hit the gas. I truly thought I was going to die that day. I am not sure why, but instead of shooting, he threw something at my car. I would much rather have damage to my car than be shot.

I do not want to give any examples of how I got my money for dope because I do not want to get in trouble. I am sure you can only imagine. It is so sad, when was bored one day and cleaned out my car I found all kinds of paraphanelia. There were needles, empty bags, caps to needles, all kinds of stuff. I was pulled over this one time and even though I didn't have anything on me there were empty bags in the backseat and since I owned the car I got the charge. I am still waiting to go to that hearing.

It is hard to explain the feeling I had when I was high. Heroin is totally different than other drugs. When I am on Heroin, I have absolutely no worries. Half the time it is not even about the high, I just love it because I don't care about anything. I don't care about the bills, or about my problems. It makes you forget about reality. I think that is why it is so addictive, especially for people that have problems that they want to forget about. When I first starting doing dope, I would get high and be so energetic. I would do a bag and go wash my car, or do a bag and go for a walk. Towards the end it changed, I would do a bag and go to sleep. It is crazy the excuses addicts make for themselves. I would get in a fight with someone so that would make it okay to go get bags. Or, I would stub my toe so it was okay for me to go get bags. Are you seeing what I mean? It was always everyone else's fault or it was because I was having a bad day and stressed out. It was never my fault, of course.

Fortunately, I did finally hit my rock bottom when my boyfriend went to jail (that is what usually happens, like I said earlier "death, jail, or institution"). My family stepped up and took me in, thank goodness. I am still not trusted, but at least I still have my family. They give me food, shelter, love, everything I was missing before. It is not worth it. At the beginning I loved the high, but after just a few weeks that high is no longer there. You have to keep doing the bags just so that you do not go through withdrawal, or "dope sick". I went through Detox. It wasn't that bad. I detoxed for 5 days then went to an in-patient rehab. I got discharged the next day though. They said that I had benzo's in my system. I did have them in my system, but it was because that is what I detoxed with. I detoxed with Subutex and Librium. I tried telling them that but their response was that I must have done something between the time I left detox and went to inpatient. See, once a junkie always a junkie.

I still stay in touch with some of my friends, most of them are on methadone and smoking crack. That is there new drug because there excuse is methadone makes them crave crack, whatever. I try to stay in my house all day long because everything is a trigger. As soon as I get in a car, I want to go to my dealers. I get craving 24 hours a day. My body shakes uncontrollably at night. Night is the worse. I will lay down to try to sleep and dope is all that I think about. That is why I nap during the day and never sleep at night. I am scared to sleep, everyn night I have dope dreams and dreams of the needle. Writing this actually helped, I kind of took a deep breath while writing it because I realized I do not want this anymore.

It is not worth it, once you have that high for three days you are going to be sick from withdrawel. I hate this addiction, I hate the things that I did and the way my life was. I will give anything not to have to come back and tell this story again. I hope that my parents will never have to set up a foundation in my name because I died from an overdose and my parents want to get the word out.

Just remember that there is no such thing as a "functional junkie".

I originally wrote this when I was 24 years old. Today I am 26 and clean and sober. I rarely hear stories like mine that end in a happy ending, so I wanted to check in and tell everyone thatnk you and give an update. I have been clean since June 22, 2009. That was the best and worst day of my life. Between the time I wrote this and now, I have had many ups and downs. My addiction got to the point where I could not support it anymore and I started stealing. I only stole from stores and never from a person. I used to tell my self that because I was only stealing from stores that it was okay, at least I wasn't hurting anyone. When I started out I had a clean record and today I have around 11 misdemeanors. I am exceptionally lucky because those misdemeanors should have been felonies. My lawyer worked really hard to get everything moved down for me, however, now I owe around $10,000 in fines.I will also be on probation for a few years of my life. I honestly believe that if I had never went to jail then I would never had gotten clean. The most important thing keeping me alive today is meetings. I go to both AA and NA meetings. I remember always hearing from other recovering addicts about praying and having faith and I used to think they were crazy. Now I am that person lecturing others. I have found God again, and he is helping me through this. I am not necessarily religious but I am very spiritual. Now, please don't critisize my writing to quick because I am just jotting this all down from the top of my head and I will have to come back with a fresh mind to revise and edit!

I finally realize what a lucky person I am. I used to think that my life sucked and I was the only one in the world that had problems, but I finally realized that wasn't true. I just want to remind everyone to stay humble and appreciate the little things in life. It sounds corny, but try it :)