I am posting a tiny excerpt from the book...let me set the scene.
This scene is in Rhode Island, after I have been evacuated from New Orleans. I am just starting to feel the dope sickness once again...
Weed can take away the pain for a while, as it helps you relax, and you kind of slip into a semi-nothingness…the uncomfortable sinking Sickness is mellowed slightly around the edges. Sedatives are good for kicking, too because they help you sleep. A kicking junky wishes he could just sleep for three days, but that is impossible as the Sickness is looming over your bed. Seroquel and Phenobarbitol were what I liked to take to help me sleep. It would only let me rest a couple of hours, but anything was a relief in the pits of hellish withdrawal. We had all three strengths of Seroquel in this cooler, and several bottles of each. But, that wouldn’t quite do it. Benzodiazapines are good for kicking, and a xanex can really mellow out the rough exterior of the kick…making it just a little more comfortable. There was a huge bottle of T3s, Tylonel 3 with Codiene. But, those are really weak…and a shit ton of them would not help as much as it would hurt my empty and rumbling stomach. There was nothing in that cooler full with hundreds of bottles of pills that could help me. I took a couple of Vicodin, and a handful of T3s, and I tried to relax.
I could not sit down. I left the apartment, headed out to just walk. I could not think about anything but the Sickness, and I could not sit down because the old, familiar foe that was pure discomfort was creeping back in. Dope, dope, fucking dope, the circular dance in my head begun, and its disparaging damage sank deep down in the dark crevices of my dead, and dying spirit. I was crumbling. My stomach was grumbling that empty grumble from the Sickness.
That empty grumbling is what eventually drives me crazy. As the Sickness sets in, my stomach is almost always empty. The stomach of a junky is completely empty at least 70% of his existence. The Sickness, which creeps in daily in strange and untreated hours in a junky’s world, hurls up everything you have eaten, as you puke and wretch, with this disgusting yellow bile seemingly emmitted from every pore. When the dope man finally shows up, your veins are quieted, and your body is longer screaming and wretching. But, you are not hungry. You are still weak, and shaking, and the last thing you could handle is food. But, it would make that grumbling come to an end.
Oh, that god awful grumbling. Stomach just flipping, and skipping, and nipping at your insides. Collapsing inward, hunger cries turned into a call for nausea. Fucking empty stomach is what starts it all, it starts the first bits of nausea, and then it just escalates in my mind and body…until the constant wretchhing starts. Wretching, gagging myself…trying to puke. Trying to eject all this fucking poison out of my system. That is what it is like, your body is trying to eject all the poisons and toxins from your body, and the Sickness is wringing your entire body out like a wet towel, with liquid bile and leftover poisonous toxins squeezed out from every possible hole. I just know I am not going to be able to take this fucking shit.
Not again. Not here. Not now. I just can’t do it. I cannot handle puking and shitting and walking around like a mad woman. Lying in bed and moaning and groaning. Hours in the bathtub, when we share a bathroom with these random people, anyway? Hell no. I am not kicking in this foreign land. I just do not have the strength to go through that shit again. Grumbling, grumbling madness gets a grip on my gastrointestinal track as well as on my fucking mind. Hell no. Hell no…I can’t take this fucking shit now. And all the while, that fucker Liam is just sleeping his fucking ass off. And I am wallowing in the mire and muck of this painful madness. Hell no. Fuck no. I just cannot. I just can’t.
Still in a bit of a frenzy, I dig through the kitchen drawers in search of a phonebook. My mind reeling back and forth, no phone book in the drawers. I look on the table. And I look with the books, and by the TV, and by the stereo. Back into the kitchen again, digging through the drawers once more. Until, I look by the phone….
Ahhhh, the fucking phonebook. Methadone. I flip through the pages, fingering the corners of the pages, reading the tabs. A, B, Cs floating by with alphabetical listings of everything from here to Providence. M…Maintenance, McDonald’s, Mechanics, ahhh…there it is, Methadone. See Drug Treatment. Flipping back once more, with a grumbling stomach driving me to panic and Sickness. D…Damage Repair, Debt Consolidation, Dirt, Docks, Driving, and ….Drug Treatment. I only hope they have a methadone program near here. I hope there is something available to me here. I hope that I will not have to go to Providence…that would be a real pain in the ass on the fucking bus.
Hey I put your main link and the 2 book links up.
ReplyDeleteAre methadone programs state sponsored? I've never been sure. Here they are, but Anna said she had to pay $15 a day for her juice. Surely you can score heroin for $15..? To be quite frank if I was in that position I'd have done that. £10 of heroin, which is about $15 held me easily better than 60 or 70mg methadone, no question. Well I suppose it depends what your dose is, how worthwhile it is. I suppose I shouldn't be saying this, what with my new clean head and all, but that's what I'd do if I had to pay. Pay for Heroin!
Why is junkie-puke always the same. Yellow bile! I made it worse by drinking. White cyder. Which is like fizzy alcoholic sink scourer. I doubt it has ever seen an apple in its miserable lifetime. Even the street drinkers told me not to drink that!
Gled...Methadone programs are not state sponsored, although some insurance will cover it. I spent about 70 dollars a week on Methadone, which was about ten dollars a day. It was much, much cheaper than heroin, though. I spent at least a hundred bucks a day on heroin in my final junky chapter. Often times, I spent much more. I could have NEVER maintained on 15 dollars...Part of it could be due to the strength of the dope, but I also had a huge tolerance. Early on in my dope career, I sole dope...getting a "uncut" gram for 300 bucks. I could cut it with two grams of manitol, and I still had some of the best dope around. I, of course, was doing the uncut stuff...and I really built up a tolerance. Of course, I shot coke a lot in those days, too. If I could not get dope, it took at least 80mgs of oxycontin to keep me well, and twice that to get high. If I could stay high on 15 bucks a day...well, I am not sure if I would have gotten clean!
ReplyDeleteAs for the yellow bile...I think it is just pure toxins that your body ejects from you when you are dope sick. It is all that shit, flushing out of your liver, through any means nessacary. I drank a lot in those days, too. Hell, I lived in New Orleans, and all we did was drink. I worked in bars, clubs...I drank every night. I would often throw back a fifth of liquor in a night. That is shit is way worse on your liver...