In my first book I wrote about a heroin addict and have now found the original notes that helped flesh out the character. Notes intended for a novel, but never used, found in a long-lost file dating from 1997. Recollections of far too many hours spent in squats or shooting galleries watching junkies shoot up. Not the happiest of times, even as the only non-user in the building.
It was work and the job had its moments, but seeing the misery of addiction at close quarters has to be among its lowest points.
Here’s an eyewitness view of a smack addict. I got to know him as well as anyone knows anyone under such conditions. Middle-class family, father a barrister, went to a good school, very bright and yet his moments of lucidity were rare. Our only topic of conversation was Class A drugs and their availability. His street name was Dog-Boy as he had a dog when I first met him and the two were constant companions. The dog wandered off one night when he was dead to the world and never came back, but the name lingered on.
His real name was James and he’d managed the transition from a detached house in Wilmslow to a sordid squat in Cheetham Hill within eighteen months. A waste of a life? Absolutely.
I liked James, but seriously doubt he’d have survived the next winter. Here’s those original notes…
His works, his most important possession, no, the only things that really mattered to him, were always close at hand. A twisted and blackened spoon, still bearing the crest of a fast food chain, the stem bent at right angles allowing the bowl to remain level, a syringe and needle in a metal cigar case, the same needle used repeatedly, a cheap disposable lighter, a cotton wool ball and, most important of all, the precious powder in a small twist of foil.
His torn and bleeding fingers, like filthy blackened claws, remain rock steady, as sure and tender as the hands of a beautiful woman with her infant. The act of shooting up transcended pain, suffering, deprivation, all that mattered was the release and the needle was the key.
Remembering the routine taught to him and mumbling aloud his mantra, always the same, always the same result, he scoops pooling water from the floor with the spoon. The water’s far from clean, but boiling would make it as sterile as it needed to be. The rhythm, smooth and precise, never changes. He transfers the powder to the bowl of the spoon, never, ever, spilling a single grain, his cupped hands shielding the precious cargo from a non-existent wind. Safely transferred and the bent spoon hooked over a protruding nail, he flicks the lighter, adjusting the flame to make it burn clear and straight. He can afford to torture himself now and the bitter sweet pain as he delays bringing the flame to the spoon brings a nervous giggle to his cracked lips.
This is the moment of sweet agony knowing he has the power to end his pain, his longing, for a few precious hours. The flame held under the bowl is rock steady. No surgeon ever brought more concentration to his work as he watches the pale, greyish mixture bubbling with the heat.
He looks at it longingly; the delay now unavoidable, remembering the cardinal rule of main-lining – shoot that stuff while it’s still hot, and it’s fucking goodnight.
No gritty residue in the cooling liquid is a good sign. Heroin at street level is cut many times, adulterated with baking powder, cement dust, ground up chalk, even Ajax, whatever is handy at the time. The absence of obvious contaminant is good, but ultimately irrelevant. At this point, he will take it no matter what it looks like; regardless of the debris that accompanies it, he’ll take it all.
He removes the hypodermic from its container, the needle still blackened with scabs of dried blood, pushes the needle into the tight ball of cotton wool and lowers it carefully into the bowl of the spoon, soaking up the liquid. No need to dull the needle by drawing straight from the spoon, this needle is blunt enough already.
He mutters the words of some long-dead mentor who’d taught him the routine. ‘Make sure you’re in the vein, always check for blood. Miss the vein, it’s a downer. Smack in tissue takes a fucking age, it’s a fucking waste. Look after yourself, look after those veins ‘cos when they’re shot, you’re really fucked. Remember that boy with the gold tooth, rent boy, somewhere up north he came from, arse saw so much action he had to wear pads all the fucking time or he’d shit himself, you know who I mean? Yeah, well him, he’d no fucking veins left and started to use arteries. That’s a fucking risky business, that. Block a vein, no problem. Strip an artery and infect it, you’re in deep shit. Infections that can kill you, gangrene, whatever, and it’s only a matter of time before they have to chop off your fucking arms and legs, and that’s if you’re lucky. What good are you then? To score as much shit as you need, you’ll want as many limbs as you can get.”
The veins in his arms and legs are already useless, covered in scabs and ulcers. He had started with the small veins on the soles of his feet, hoping in those innocent early days to avoid the obvious bruising and heavily tracked arms of the addict, but all these were useless now. Needle tracks on arms and legs, the veins receding from the threat of the invasive needle and retreating into flesh.
One last resort. The stage every male junky reaches, eventually. The last taboo.
He removes his shoelace and ties it round the stem of his penis, pulling tight, wincing as he slaps the prominent vein to make it stand proud, ready for the needle.
Will this be the one, the O.D. that pulls the plug on his life? Even if the question comes to mind, it will be disregarded. What choice is there? Not risk it? He knows, with absolute certainty, that even if he knew for sure, no question, that this will be the one, by this stage he’ll still do it. Stick that needle into a vein and press the fucking plunger down. We’ll all go one day, right? A heroin addict will go earlier than most, but that’s the way of it.
Gulliver Smith 