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The bags filled with dark, coal-like lumps of black tar were sitting in front of me, teasing me—it was like they were calling my name, and I couldn’t help but look. I could almost hear the pure heroin screaming at me, promising me the world—I had no idea how hard it would be to ignore such a sweet promise after three weeks of sobriety.
I had already been through Hell and back from all my previous relapses, but four years of drug abuse is hard to stop. It’s only an excuse, I know, but that excuse keeps me alive and sane. Sane enough, anyway, I felt crazier than I usually did, which typically meant it was time for another relapse.
I didn’t plan on buying all that heroin—a whole gram-and-a-half, all to myself!—but things don’t always turn out the way you plan them. It was one of the things they drill into your head at rehab, that things don’t always turn out the way you want them to. It’s like they think drug addicts are perfectionists, but from my experience, they’re anything but.
Or maybe, we’re such perfectionists that we grow to live with it and don’t realize it anymore. Kind of like a mental disease, you just grow used to it and eventually feel like it’s a normal thing.
I feel the same way about perfectionism as I feel about addiction. You just live with it for so long that you end up used to it. You never really feel like your normal—just look into another person’s eyes, you’ll see a different shimmer to them—but you feel like everyone has it, secretly hidden underneath their skin. But you know it’s not true by the lively shimmer in everyone else’s eyes.
You’ll know a drug addict when you see one: just look into their eyes and see dullness, lifelessness. Their drug of choice owns their liveliness now, it owns their life now.
No one will ever know what an excited rush I felt when I slowly melted down the tar into a dark, gooey liquid. It looked as yummy as maple syrup, but I knew better—instead of pouring it on pancakes I filled up all my needles, until all the heroin was gone, and injected myself needle after needle. I didn’t stop when I felt my body melt and relax, I only stopped when all of the heroin was running through my veins.
I didn’t think three terrible weeks without my drug would lower my tolerance, I still don’t think it would. But when I stood up to move up and off my drug dealer’s couch (I had overstayed my welcome and I knew it) I could tell I was in serious trouble.
I took one footstep before collapsing on the floor, legs folded underneath me. It didn’t worry me too much—I had taken more than I should before, I could never walk when that happened—so I just looked up at my dealer for help.
He knew what to do; dealing hard drugs out to helpless teenagers and letting them inject and snort and smoke in your home has its disadvantages. He held out his hand for me to help myself up with, but I found my arms stuck limp at my side.
“Kat, you okay?” I don’t know why he would bother asking; he wasn’t worried one bit and I knew it, but I don’t blame him for checking up on me. I mean, if I wasn’t okay, he’d just have to carry me and throw me out onto the cold cement instead of lending a helping hand.
“Yeah.” I didn’t feel like talking much, but it was comforting that I could hear him quite clearly and still speak.
My vision started to fade, first going blurry and then everything was black. Blacker than my heroin, blacker than anything I had ever seen before. Within seconds, it returned—and a few more seconds and it was gone again.
I didn’t scream or say anything when my eyesight started failing, but I did feel my chest tighten up and my breathing become shallow.
“Kat, Kat, snap the ******** out of it.” He said. I don’t blame him, either, he was probably afraid I was going to die on his own living room floor. But no one knew I was here, in his tiny house—though getting rid of a dead body is fairly difficult, and I wouldn’t want him to have to go through that.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” I told both him and myself, grabbing hold of his shirt and forcing my jelly-like legs to hold all one-hundred-and-twenty pounds of shaking skin and bones I had turned into.
“You better damn be. I don’t want a mess in my house.” I didn’t know whether he was referring to anything that might happen to me (like death), or if he was just calling me a mess. “Can you walk?”
Even though a black screen was covering my vision again, I grabbed his arm and tried to move my legs. I stumbled over something and fell on the ground again. “What’d I trip over?”
“Nothing, get the ******** up.” He sounded panicked now, like he was afraid I was absolutely losing it. But I felt even saner than I ever had before; it felt like people were always supposed to feel this way. It felt like home.
Despite the inability to walk and short breaths I had to force myself to take, I felt amazing. Like I was on top of the world, like nothing mattered. If it hadn’t been for my drug dealer there, pushing me along and non-verbally reminding me to breath, I would’ve sat on that very couch and let my lungs and legs stop working so hard.
“Okay Kat, stay with me.” He whispered into my ear, picking me up with his strong, muscular arms and walking towards his front door. Of course.
He kicked open his door and dumped me outside, on the cement sidewalk a house away. “Here.” He got down next to me, in broad daylight, with a needle filled with a clear liquid, pricking my arm. “It’s Narcan. Good luck, I have to run.” He dropped the needle next to me and backed into his house—probably cleaning up all evidence of me ever being there. “And remember, you were never here.”
“I know.” I told him, closing my eyes and leaning back on the hot summer sidewalk. I was only sixteen, but why would I care if I died? I didn't.
I could feel the sun cooking my light skin, but I didn’t care: I wanted out of this Hell. I could feel people around me, whispering things and stepping over me carelessly, like this was something they saw everyday. And for all I knew, it might’ve been, if they happened to walk through this neighborhood every day.
I heard an ambulance in the distance, ringing in my ears, getting louder and louder every second. By the time I felt the medics hoisting me upward, I decided it was a nice time for a nap. I knew everything was going to be okay in the end, anyway.
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