My husband.

I was thinking about what happened a few days ago, when I wrote the last entry.

I had called my main dope dealer of late, the one who delivers a bundle for mere eighty bucks, in a state of agony induced by stupidly shooting Suboxone (hey, alliteration! Fancy that.) After I finished the phone call, my husband, who was laying next to me and looking at me writhing with pity in his eyes, asked, "Why did you do that?"

Husband: Why did you do that? You know Narcan* (Naloxone) will wear off and Sub* (Buprenorphine) will kick in a little while. Why couldn't you just deal with it?
Me: I can deal with it just fine. But I'm a fucking addict.

He sighed.

(* Having an addict spouse will get you real familiar with commercial and/or pharmaceutical names for various medicine. If you meet a non-medical professional who knows the difference between hydrocodone, oxycodone, hydromorphone, dilaudid, fentanyl, buprenorphine, naloxone, naltrexone, etc. good chance is the person is either an addict or a former/current partner of an addict.)

Poor baby. My poor, poor baby.

My sweet, beautiful, patient angel-husband.

I consider myself incredibly lucky that I was already married when I became a heroin addict. And that my husband loves me enough to stay with me, not to give up on me. I have implored him to assess the situation as objectively as he could and make a decision before it's too late - NOT because I wanted him to leave, of course not. I consider him my soulmate and I've been desperately in love with him for many years now (if you took one look at him, you'd understand. He's fucking beautiful.) But because I didn't want him to look back on his life and think, man, I've wasted my life with this hopeless drug addict when I could have been building my life with a non-addicted woman who's just as beautiful and smart, perhaps even more so, and who can actually function in the society and is gainfully employed and - the list went on and on, in my insecure mind. He could do so much better, in short.

But he loves me. He loves me so much, and he's determined to stay with me. Like the marriage vow said, till death do us part. He tells me to shut up when I tell him he could do better. When I feel like I'm giving up the battle and losing my courage, he holds me tightly and whispers to me, "It's you and me, kid."

So yeah, I'm one lucky girl.

I mean, can you imagine trying to get a boyfriend when you're a heroin addict, let alone a husband? What sane, sober guy would want to date a heroin addict? The amount of baggage that an active addict brings into a relationship is simply not worth it unless you are 1) already in love with the person or 2) absolutely convinced that he/she is THE ONE. Fortunately for me, both apply to my husband when it comes to me.

Doesn't mean it's easy for him - in fact, I know it's really hard. It's really fucking hard to be a spouse of an active addict.

Exhibit A:
Sometimes I have to ask him to hit me. Give me an injection. I'm a "tough stick" as what they would call at the hospital - it's hard to find my vein. So I only have a few veins that I can access easily, and most of those veins have been tapped out. Even the ones that are not, I have track marks on them. I usually cover them with concealer - it's a good enough cover that you wouldn't really notice, unless you were really staring. But I don't always do that when I'm at home, and seeing them while he's looking for a good vein elsewhere makes my husband sad. Look at what happened to my baby's arm, he would say. What are you gonna say when your kid asks, Mom, what's that on your arm?

He knows how to get to me.

"That's why I'm asking you to do it, so I don't shoot it at the same site over and over again." I say, with my eyes casting down. "I don't WANT to have track marks either, you know." And with another sigh, he would give me the injection. He would say "ripcord" to remind me to snap off the tourniquet when the injection is complete and every single drop of liquid inside the syringe has been injected into my vein. As in, releasing a parachute when skydiving. He has a rather wry sense of humor, which I love. And it's also his way of dealing with the messed up situation.

But I did push him a little too far one time. About a month and a half ago, I had a personal tragedy that affected both me and my husband very much. Of course, how I coped with it was with drugs. I think when you become a drug addict, drugs become an answer to every challenge in your life. Well, actually not an answer, but an aid of a sort. Everything will be better and/or easier with drugs. So when things are going wrong in your life, you're gonna reach for drugs. I'm gonna reach for my bag of dope and a syringe like someone else might reach for a cigarette when he/she is stressed (another pet peeve of mine - I'm one of those crazy people who think cigarettes are the worst drug out of all. I mean, what other drug has a direct correlation with cancer? That's another entry, another time.) And things had gone really fucking wrong this time. Like, it was one of the biggest personal tragedies I've ever experienced in my life.

Sadness. Big, heavy chunks of despair. Sense of impending doom. Deep, deep depression on the way.

And I couldn't get in touch with any dope dealers. Beautiful timing, isn't it? I've got four connects, and no one was answering their goddamn phone.

So what did I decide to do? I decided to hit the street.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends on how you look at it) by now my street smarts have vastly improved - especially considering I started out pretty naive. Heroin gave me a crash course in street smarts, and I think I can say I have at least a bachelor's, maybe working on my master's. So it didn't take me long to locate a group of guys hanging around a deli in the neighborhood who were obviously selling something - what, I didn't know yet, but at that time it didn't really matter to me. I simply needed to escape my head, and any mind-altering chemical would do.

Turns out the corner boys were slinging crack. Now I had smoked crack before. One of my dope dealers also smoked crack (which is rather common during heroin addicts who have been addicted for a long time - heroin no longer provides the high, so they add cocaine to feel the rush) and I had done it with her a couple of times. Another time, I'd met this rich-girl-from-Connecticut type at a bar who was jonesing for more coke badly. But it was almost 4 a.m. and she didn't know anybody in NYC. She asked me for help - she wanted another eightball. So I called up the aforementioned dealer and asked her if she could help me. She called a coke dealer she knew, and then called me back with a ridiculous price, at least $60-80 more than normal (a hefty commission for her, I'm sure.) But it was by then almost 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, and the rich girl wanted her coke and didn't give a fuck. So we took a cab to Brooklyn, and while Miss Money waited for me with her then-boyfriend at a 24-hour deli nearby, I went to cop. Then suddenly, the coke dealer stopped answering the phone! My dope dealer kept dialing and dialing, but his phone just rang and rang.

You motherfucker - you nameless, faceless cocaine dealer.

I knew I couldn't return empty-handed, so I returned with a good amount of crack instead and told them it was freebase - which is pretty much crack, just a nicer way to say it. My dope dealer felt bad that we had traveled all the way from Manhattan to not even get what we wanted, so she threw in a bunch of crack pipes. She shouldn't have felt so bad - the kids liked crack just fine. I taught them how to smoke it, and they took to it like water. We took turns smoking crack in her parents' multi-million dollar pad in a luxury high-rise.

So anyway, the point is I had a crack pipe leftover from that episode (the girl took all the others.) So I purchased forty dollars worth of crack from one of the guys. I came back to the apartment, and my husband asked me what I had in my hand. Rocks, I replied. He was immediately aghast. I couldn't be in the apartment while you do that shit, he told me, and true to his words, he bolted out of the apartment to take a walk in the park while I sat on the toilet and smoked crack for about half an hour.

I won't go much into the experience itself. To me, it was a poor substitute for shooting cocaine. I hated fussing with a lighter, the toxic smell and aftertaste. It definitely wasn't something I liked. However, at that time, it did the job. It blasted those sad, depressing thoughts out of my head and filled it with intoxicating cocaine fumes. And since the effect of cocaine doesn't last and I wasn't ready to come back to the harsh reality, I was calling the crack dealer again for another order by the time my husband came back from the walk.

As soon as he realized what I was doing, he snatched my phone with one arm and held me tightly with another so I couldn't move or try to get the phone back from him. Then he started SCREAMING into the phone: "You talk to my wife ONE MORE FUCKING TIME, and I'LL KILL YOU! STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY WIFE! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

Then he hung up, and promptly broke down in tears while holding me. He couldn't handle losing me to crack, he said. He could handle me being a heroin addict, but not a crack addict. Now I really don't think that would have happened - I really didn't care for crack, and had I been able to cop dope instead, I would've much rather done that and none of this would have happened. But I understood his fear. I knew he had friends whose lives were ruined by it. Yes, heroin ruins lives too, but crack seems to ruin it at an exponential speed, and you definitely don't come out pretty (this is in comparison to recovering heroin addicts, many of whom actually look younger than their real age. We joke that dope preserves you.)

He was so brave, so crazy - threatening to murder a drug dealer! He was like a lion fiercely protecting his girl cub. So I didn't try to defend or explain myself and quietly accepted his hugs and wiped his tears and just promised I'd never touch that nasty shit ever again.

And I haven't. Haven't had any desire. Couldn't care less.

So why can't I stop dancing with Mr. Brownstone?

I still have hope. Actually, I finally made it to the meeting I was talking about in the earlier entry, and I absolutely loved it. It was so different from NA. Since I've only been once and this is getting too long anyway so I won't get into detail, but I have a feeling that this program might really be able to help me and be my support system.

'Cause my husband can't do it all by himself, as wonderful and patient as he is.

My husband truly is an angel. His wings just fell off when he came down to earth.

I swear.

Another day, lost.

I want to be clean.

I do. I really want to be clean.

I don't want to be a heroin addict anymore.

Yet I bought another bundle (ten bags) of heroin today.

How did that happen? Let's see.

So I went on somewhat of a binge last weekend. Not the worst one I've ever been on, not even close, but I definitely did way more than what I needed not to feel sick, which at this stage of my addiction is not much. Probably more than what I needed to feel high too, especially since I added a small amount of cocaine for a good measure. That's a classic addict logic. Gotta stay awake, I'm tired. Most people would think, let me grab a cup of coffee, a can of Red Bull. An addict will think, let me cop some coke. And coke in NYC is EVERYWHERE. Walk into a bar or a club, and there's a good chance that there's a resident coke dealer, or someone knows a coke dealer who'll deliver, or someone is willing to share his/her coke. Hell, you don't even have to leave your house - just go to Craigslist and look for people who want to ski tonight. Ski instructors looking for snow bunnies or vice versa. It's a lot harder to find heroin, especially since these days kids are more into prescription opiates like Vicodin or Oxycontin. Me, I went straight to heroin. I have tried my share of prescription opiates since then, and I like them fine, but heroin is way more economical, especially if you are like me and can get a delivery of a bundle for eighty dollars. Today he came quickly too - he was here less than twenty minutes after the phone call. Quicker than Domino's.

(Food snob in me feels the need to explain that I do not actually eat or order Domino's - it's truly a shame that Domino's exist in NYC.)

And I digress. Anyway - I sing with a band, and our monthly gig was last Sunday. After that, I was to be at a club as a prominent DJ friend was visiting from out of town. Since I became a heroin addict, I've lost the ability to go out and have fun without being high, especially if there are people drinking - which is everywhere since the society not just condones but encourages alcohol consumption (yes, I have an issue with alcohol - that's another entry in the future.) But I'm not a drinker, and I've always been uncomfortable around drunk people, which probably stems from growing up with my alcoholic mother. So I thought, I'm gonna need some dope on Sunday if I want to have any fun at all. Then my logic went, if I'm gonna get high on Sunday, I might as well get high all weekend. It'd be my last hurrah.

Now I've been trying to get clean for past month or two. But the truth is, I haven't been able to put more than three days sober together. And I've had a number of "last hurrah" that didn't turn out to be the last one, obviously. Would this one be the one? I certainly was hopeful.

For those who can't understand the logic, here's an analogy. If you've struggled with weight and/or been a chronic dieter, you will understand. Have you ever thought, tonight's the last night that I will eat however I please, then from tomorrow, I'm gonna be on a strict diet! Since you're gonna start that strict diet tomorrow, you'd probably want to eat everything you won't be able to eat TONIGHT so you don't miss it tomorrow, right? Since you're going to be so virtuous for a long time, what's wrong with sinning one last time? So you have a pizza AND Chinese food delivered, a pint of ice cream AND a box of chocolate-coated donuts. You think, I'll start atoning tomorrow. Hey, I'll even take a laxative tonight, double dose.

It's kind of like that.

So I ended Sunday night with a shot of speedball, which is I guess a drug addict's equivalent of ice cream and donuts. I admit that felt pretty damn good, so it felt fitting for a last hurrah. Of course, I'd saved a bag for the next morning, which is not nearly enough to get high but would be enough to keep me functioning for a lunch I'd scheduled with a friend. Then I'd planned to attend a meeting in the evening. Not NA (Narcotics Anonymous) which I have tried and didn't care for - I might go into it some other day. I know it will piss off those addicts who think AA/NA is the ONLY way to get sober since the organization seems to produce loads of them, but hey, it's my blog and it's my opinion. Anyway, this meeting was for another kind of recovery program. I'm reluctant to disclose it since it's a fairly small organization and anonymity is extremely important for me. But I fell asleep in the late afternoon and never made it there anyway. Probably because I didn't sleep much the night before (speedball might do that to you) I stayed asleep throughout the evening and night and into this morning, when I woke up with what's commonly called "dope sickness" or more formerly, "opiate withdrawal." By this time I've experienced this hundreds of times and I even had something that would make me feel better, a miracle drug called Suboxone. I have a cache of it to be used to ease the withdrawal symptoms after I get clean so that I can make a smoother transition into sobriety. In reality, I've been using it to stave off withdrawal symptoms inbetween heroin usage - but that would change, TODAY, since I'm gonna be clean, right?

Then I made a mistake of shooting it instead of taken as prescribed (sublingual) or even plugging it (simply said, putting it up your butt.) Why? Because Suboxone tastes like SHIT. It's like Tang but so much worse. I always hated the taste, but now I have an intense taste aversion to it after throwing up after taking it once. Why couldn't they make it taste good? Probably 'cause we're drug addicts and don't deserve anything nice. Which is how the society seems to think - am I right? Another reason is, well, because I'm an addict. Part of being an addict is being addicted to the ritual. The ritual of preparing it, shooting it, all that stuff, if you are an IV drug addict. Your brain is used to being rewarded after a sensation of being poked with a needle, so it connects the two together. Only this time, the shot threw me into a state of intense withdrawal as naloxone component in Suboxone took effect. It's very, very unpleasant. And that was the understatement of the year. I was shivering under a down comforter, sweating a bucket a minute, with bad stomachache and legs that wouldn't stop shaking. When it wouldn't get better after ten minutes, I surrendered and called for the only thing I KNEW that would make it better - heroin. I was only going to get four, but the addict in you thinks, for forty more dollars you can get six more bags!

So that's how I ended up with another bundle. No, it's not an excuse. Yes, it was incredibly dumb. But that's what addiction is - if you have or ever had active addiction, you would agree that addiction makes you do some really stupid things. Some of us learn more quickly than others. Some never learn.

And I don't want to be one of those people who never learn. I've already spent two years struggling with addiction, and I really don't want to add one more year to it. I'm better than that. My husband deserves better than that. My family and friends deserve better than that (those who have stuck by me to this point anyway - not all of them have.)

I deleted all the phone numbers of dealers from my cell phone today. I gave them to my husband. I know that won't stop me from copping if I really, really wanted to - when there's a will, there's a way - but that's an extra step and effort that I have to put in if I want to cop, and I hope, extra time that will make me think - do I really want to do this? Do I really want to start this all over again?

So here's to hope, here's to tomorrow.

Hello.

Wow.
This is strange.

This isn't my first blog. My Japanese class in college made me keep a blog in Japanese, and I had a short-lived baking blog that documented my amateur baking and my even more amateur photography.

But I've never had a blog that was personal.

Oh yeah, I had a LiveJournal in my late teens, like many teens in early 2000s. I wrote mostly about my boyfriend, school, going to concerts, and hanging out with bands. But I only shared it with a few selected friends.

But this is going to be public, yet I am about to share some really personal stuff.

That I am a heroin addict.

That I have been for the past two years.

And I used heroin recreationally for about three years before that.
(I know some people don't believe hard drugs like heroin can be used recreationally - I believe you can if you are careful. Not for long though, for most people - unless you are super-disciplined. I'll write more about this someday.)

For the most part, I have been able to lead a double-faced life. A few of my closest friends knew, but that was it. It's not something most people would associate with somebody like me. Though by now, you would think people know that addiction affects everybody, regardless of gender, class, education level, whatever. I think it's a great equalizer - rich people don't have it any easier than poor people, college graduates don't have it any easier than high school drop-outs, famous celebrities versus civilians, etc. Sure, people with money can afford more plush rehabs, more number of stays at those rehabs, but they don't have a better chance of beating this addiction thing than a poor guy at one of those places that are a touch above prisons, all the amenities being three hots and a cot.

So a brief summary of who I am, at least on the outside: I came from a upper-middle class family. Comfortable, maybe even affluent, but not so much that I didn't feel poor next to my posh, private elementary school friends who came to school via chauffeured, expensive cars and had movie theater and elevator in their houses. Don't worry, I've come down to earth since then. I went to three different boarding schools in East Coast - I was expelled from the second one, which had nothing to do with addiction but with severe depression coupled with my lack of respect for authority (both common traits in addicts, no?) I managed to graduate from the third one with decent grades, went to a small liberal arts college in New England for a year, then transferred to an Ivy League university. Graduated from the said university with summa cum laude, double major. Guess you could say I'm kind of smart, plus I was a good test taker and report writer and brown noser when I wanted to be. While I was in college, I got married to a beautiful, intelligent husband who adored me. Life seemed good and easy - and I was deliriously happy most of the time.

I certainly didn't THINK I would be a heroin addict. I hated alcohol - still do - I couldn't have more than two drinks, even then something weak and girly like peach schnapps. Pussy drinks. Frou-frou drinks. If it were vodka or rum, I could barely finish a single one. I didn't like being around drunk people, most likely because I grew up with my alcoholic mother (a topic for another day) and more importantly, I hated the feeling of being drunk. Nor did I care for weed - if there was a joint or a bong being passed around, I'd take a hit, but that was it. I've certainly never bought it or paid for it. One time I got very stoned on it (after underestimating the strength of "magic brownies" and ate piece after piece because - because I'm a sugar fiend and I love brownies!) I absolutely hated it, couldn't get out of it. I had to catch a flight the next morning to Wisconsin, which I barely did, and couldn't do much other than laying down for a few hours after arriving because I was still stoned. After that, I would never take more than a puff or two.

So for me it was never, I took a sip or a puff and it was love made in heaven from then on, that seems to be so common among addicts' stories. "Gateway drugs" didn't attract me. Even my first encounter with hard drugs wasn't pretty or alluring in any way. My long-lost friend, I'll call her Erin, laced her joint with angel dust and passed it to me without telling me. This was at my first high school, which came complete with a smoking room for students, where most dutifully smoked cigarettes, but some smoked weed. Erin smoked weed there all the time, and sometimes I accompanied her. As soon as I started feeling the effect, I knew something was wrong. Really fucking wrong.

Me: Erin, I feel really weird.
Erin: What?
Me: I feel really fucking weird. Oh my God. What the fuck is going on?
Erin: Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you I dusted the joint.
Me: You WHAT?!@#

She explained to me that I was feeling the effect of angel dust, also known as PCP. Not that I could comprehend what that meant at that point anyway. But the effect of it was really fucking horrible - sorry about all the French, but I just can't express it any other way. I couldn't see, I couldn't walk, I couldn't understand me or other people, and I barely knew where or who I was. I was yelling, "Call 911! Call Hospital! I'm going crazy! This is fucked up!" And poor Erin, who I don't think meant to do me any harm, trying to calm me down for the next hour or two. Just loads of panic, confusion. Sounds like fun, huh? To this day, I cannot believe some people actually take that for pleasure. What's wrong with those people?

I'm kidding, but not too much.

But hey, different drugs act differently with different people (something I've said many, many times over the years) and everyone has his/her match in vice. Mine was definitely heroin. I was introduced to it by my male best friend who used to be a heroin addict. He was one of rare people who used to be a hard core heroin addict for years yet could have a drink, a tab of Ecstasy, a line of coke and/or dope casually, once in a while, without going crazy, after a rather short period of sobriety (about nine months, if I recall correctly.) So of course I thought, hey, it can't be too hard, even if I did get a habit. I wouldn't get a habit anyhow, to begin with - it would take doing it for days, for at least two weeks. Besides, I'd done my share of coke lines by then, and I didn't crave them the next day. I only did them when they were around.
(My casual attitude about cocaine lasted for years, until recently, when I started doing speedballs. Again, another topic for another day, but thank the stars THAT didn't last too long.)

And I could and did use casually for about three years.

Yet here I am, most definitely a heroin addict by any definition.

I'll wrap up here for now. Guess I wanted to provide a summary, a back story of some sort, and I hope I did that. I don't even know if anybody will ever read this. I certainly won't be showing it to friends since I intend to stay anonymous - the only way I could be this honest - but who knows? Someone will come across it and like it and want to keep reading it. That would be nice.

But ultimately, I'm writing it for me.