Heroin Makes Me Happy

Okay, before you all throw a fit because of that headline, let me explain it a little.

Heroin doesn’t make you happy per se. You have to take it first, of course.

But no need to rush. This is not supposed to be a paean of praise about a drug that many people blame for ruining their own or their friends’ lives.  This is a tale about my personal experiences with drugs consumed and my ability to not let it get to me to the point of being addicted.

The story begins with an innocent kid without any experience with drugs whatsoever. At 13 I’d been drunk a couple of times and I thought of myself as a huge rebel listening to heavy metal and punk rock. My first encounter with drugs came about when a childhood friend obviously wanted to out-rebel me by teaching me how to smoke pot. At first I was shocked.  I imagined myself lying in the gutter, dying from a weed overdose even as I took the first few tokes of my rather triumphant drug career.

I didn’t feel shit that day but it became the cool thing to do so I stuck to it.

That year of my life also marked my first encounter with the big H. It happened at some big town fair. I was pretty drunk and happy to score a joint from some shady, sad looking but funny smelling guys. It wasn’t until three weeks later that I discovered what had caused me to pass out later that night behind some tent a KISS cover band was playing in. (While feeling oddly good despite the fact that I was puking my guts out.)

If I hadn’t been scared to death by the name of that evil substance back then I would have started my relationship with the brown queen right then and there.

Obviously, what’s cool enough for a 13-year old isn’t cool enough for a grown-up 14-year old anymore so I soon discovered a new way to get high:  Speed (or crank, meth, crystal or whatever the cool kids call it nowadays).

I spent a good part of that year trying to find out how many days my body could go without sleeping, eating and other redundant crap like that. I have to admit I felt kind of superior hanging around in school, wasted from being awake four nights straight, excusing myself to go to the bathroom all the time to snort a line while the other ‘rebellious’ kids were merely secretly smoking cigarettes during lunch break.

Let me add that I went to an elitist French school that gathered the worst geeks you can imagine; millionaires’ kids and the likes. I got booted some years later for being absent every other day, for wearing shirts that were banned by the principal, for getting caught with a joint once and stupid crap like that.
 
During that same year, I also got in touch with some acid and shrooms but my next groundbreaking achievement was made on Christmas. I threw a party when my parents were away, invited everyone I knew and even printed flyers and stuff.  That night my home was packed with at least 50 people I had never seen before. Needless to say… the place was destroyed, the cops came several times, and by the time the sun came up I was fucking shitfaced. We sent someone to go downtown to score some drugs. An hour later he actually came back. And he had cocaine… I’d had enough of speed anyway and was more than ready to take the next step so I snorted a rather big line of some surprisingly good coke. I remember feeling better than I’d ever felt - but according to some guests I did nothing but stupid shit like cutting my forehead with a huge knife before trying to jump down from the banister of the 10-story building I was living in.  Some party-poopers prevented me from accomplishing that fun act though.  I apparently decided to pass out hyperventilating instead. I don’t remember shit afterwards but people told me they had had to reanimate me after I stopped breathing for half a minute. But who trusts his drug buddies anyway??

After having tried basically everything else I could get my hands on by the time I was 16, I got curious about that Heroin again. What was it about this drug that terrified people? Needles? I knew you could smoke it and snort it just the same. Was it a “fact” that you became an addict immediately? I didn’t believe that for a second. And if that should indeed be the case, I certainly wanted to know what it felt like getting addicted in a heartbeat. I figured there had to be something about it if there were people willing to die or whoring themselves out for that shit.

I knew enough people on the scene that I didn’t have any problems scoring junk, so I fooled around with it for some time. After smoking it a couple of times I realized I didn’t have the slightest craving for Heroin when I didn’t have any; it was more like a good wine you get out of the cellar on special occasions. I remember tumbling through the city high on H with a shit-eating grin on my face slowly understanding why this was the drug people kept ruining their lives for. Some junkies compare it to sex but I’d say it’s better. None of that hurry, the constant pushing for the climax, just a steady feeling of satisfaction that wears off gently without even leaving a desire to make it last no matter what, like is often the case when you’re drunk. If I had to compare it to something else I’d say it’s a weed high, an orgasm and complete drunkenness rolled into one.

It didn’t take long until I completely switched to snorting because it was so much more intense than I had ever imagined. There was a downside to it though. When you snort, you have to throw up.  I never felt sick in the slightest. It was no big deal. Some days when we were hanging out in someone’s apartment snorting H, listening to music and smoking hash, it was the most common thing in the world for someone to get up at least once an hour and puke their guts out in the bathroom. Sounds gross, but you don’t really feel it anyway and it’s actually quite relieving.

Now people might think “what a fucking loser” (and that was indeed what most people were thinking), but honestly, I can’t see a reason why this attitude towards me would be justifiable. It didn’t affect my “normal” life at all.

I was still living with my parents and they didn’t notice anything, although they knew I smoked hash and drank a lot. I had a girlfriend who had no clue, and I went to school almost every day. I didn’t do shit but got decent grades.  I even had the best grade point average when I finished school. The idiots who looked down on me couldn’t believe it. Just because it’s not your way to do things doesn’t mean it can’t work for someone else, morons. I used to study a few hours in the morning when I was kind of sober before written tests or something like that and it worked. Common schoolyard conversation: “I’ve studied 2 weeks for that exam yet I failed. How did you prepare, Sebastian?” – “I only stuck to drinking yesterday.”

Some dipshits also used to talk about how hard they were partying, always trying to impress me with some bullshit about what they drank and how much they smoked and shit. I mean… do what you want but don’t try to brag about it. Big deal, you had a case of Bock, what a cliffhanger. I thought I’d die after snorting heroin with rat poison yesterday. But I digress…

When I was 18 I went to a different school that was even easier.  This gave me the opportunity to party even more every day. I had a very good friend who had been into Heroin a little longer. Under his guidance I was ready to take it even further. I was drinking and smoking every day, snorting speed or popping pills at least throughout every weekend.  It started to bore the shit out of me.

I don’t even know exactly when I injected for the first time (I think I was 18 though) but I know it was in my buddy’s apartment which he shared with his wife. We didn’t think she’d notice what we were doing. I had already drunk at least half a bottle of Scotch and I regarded all this as a big joke. I had bought a fourth of a gram, which is usually the dose “professional” junkies inject at once, and he asked me how much I wanted to take for the first time. I figured if I did it at all I might as well do it right, and decided that with this whole having someone stick a needle into your vein I wasn’t comfortable enough to have him do it several times in a row. So, I heated up everything and watched the whole fourth going up into my veins at once. I immediately felt a rush like I’d never felt before. As soon as the Heroin kicked in, my plans for the night suddenly changed from going to a party or a club to lying on my back on the floor hoping someone would put on some decent music because I sure as fuck couldn’t do it myself.

Needless to say, his wife knew everything the second she saw me staggering around the room with eyes resembling those of a Chinese guy who met a swarm of angry bees. But I felt so good I couldn’t care less about her going apeshit over this, beating up her husband. I think she got over it eventually.

The next day I got up, felt a little hungover, but nothing worse than what I had experienced with alcohol alone.

I didn’t see a reason to stop there since that first time went so well.  After that, I tried to shoot up whenever I had the chance (that shit is quite expensive after all).

Some highlights in that rather short part of my career included:

- Shooting up in a phone booth in the middle of the day before going to a rehearsal. I was supposed to play drums but I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. On the way to rehearsal, I walked in the middle of the street not paying attention to traffic.  I finally made it there alive. Those idiots even believed me when I said I was just really drunk. Somehow I could still play the drums, although I passed out mid-song more than once.

- Shooting up speedball (that’s cocaine mixed with heroin for you healthcare pansies) downtown behind a McDonald’s restaurant, not realizing we were being watched by customers and bleeding all over myself because I was horrible with syringes. Naturally I didn’t want to lose the good stuff, so I had to cover the wound for a good while although it meant everyone could see what I was doing.

- Almost (still not sure about that) overdosing once. I had drunk about half a liter of whiskey, downed a couple of valiums and decided it wasn’t enough.  Next I intravenously added a fourth of H to my system which almost knocked me out right away. I remember falling onto a couch, unable to raise my head or open my eyes. There were people around. The last thing I remember is some stupid drunk chick fooling around with a knife in front of my face. I was so out of it that I wanted to take it away.  I grabbed it by the blade and cut most of my fingers to the bone. I started to bleed like hell but I couldn’t move at all and passed out. I don’t know what they did to me, but the next day I was lying in a bed with a bandaged hand and I felt pretty bad. That was the last time I ever shot up heroin. I think I could easily have died that night and, unlike Nikki Sixx, I don’t believe in that “light at the end of the tunnel and angels pulling me back into my body when I’m dead” crap.

You’re probably thinking that all this doesn’t really explain the title I gave this article. Well, I didn’t tell all that to warn about the risks of drug abuse by any means. I didn’t mean to brag about the things I’ve done either. I know it doesn’t take special talent to do what I’ve done.  I hope to make some people rethink their prejudices about drug consumption. It just pisses me off what most people think of Heroin users. It’s perfectly okay to smoke pot (well, maybe not for some ultra-conservative retards who think even that is dangerous) or be a raging alcoholic, but moderate Heroin users are “junkies”. Thieveing, disease-ridden, addicted scumbags. All of them.

Even those phony Bob Marley wannabes sporting cannabis leaves on every piece of clothing they own freak out when they realize you’ve done heroin in the past. Fucking hypocrites. Illegal drugs are illegal drugs.

“But, no! We only smoke it! And it’s natural! Mother nature yadda yadda yadda.” So fucking what?! Smoking a gravity bong is to smoking weed joints - as shooting up Heroin is to smoking Heroin joints as far as I’m concerned. It’s just maximizing the effect, nothing more. And it’s natural just the same, dipshit.

I believe that everyone who gets addicted and lets it fuck up his life is just weak, stupid or both. That may sound harsh but it’s true. I’ve lost friends to hard drugs as well but I can’t deny there’s noone to blame but them.

The only mistake I made was being dumb enough to use it drunk. When you’re doing stuff drunk that you’re not supposed to do it might become dangerous. Look how many people die every day in car crashes caused by drunks. That’s no reason to ban driving cars now, is it? As I see it, the same goes for Heroin. Use it moderately and you’ll be able to enjoy it as long as you want. Notice how I wasn’t addicted to it at any point. I sometimes went weeks without taking anything without a problem. I thought of it as a recreational weekend trip, just much more potent and exciting. To quote a former good friend of mine: “Heroin is not dangerous – it’s a passion”. I agree with that. He was just a little too passionate about it, wherever he might be now... dead, in jail or shooting up cheap smack in a dirty little room dreaming of Hong Kong Rocks.

Give it a shot, my friend...


Read a later follow-up to this article from Sebastian, HERE!


Comments? Go whine at my Guest Page.