A Heroin Diary

Note:
So I know Nikki Sixx has his biography Heroin Diaries. I never bothered to read it. This here is for me. It's my horror stories. To be quite honest, I don't even know if anyone will ever have the full story. Some people have different parts of the story and might be able to piece it all together if the combined their information, but I am the only one that has it all. I'm going to do my very best to not hold back. I'm scared to lat it all out, though. This may be the most incriminating thing I will ever write. I may lose the respect of people I love. I may lose the friendships of others. I hope that if this is read, it may be seen as my past. One should realize that things that were done were purely out of pure desperation. A sick junkie trying to get his fix so her would be okay for another day. Consider it a disclaimer to a graphic insight into the world of an addict. Do remember that not every addict's story is the same, though there may be some similarities. I will not discuss price or quantities. I will not mention names of where I got it from. This is complete honesty. If you doubt anything you read or don't believe it, that's fine. I'm not seeking your approval or anything like that. This is my story. I was there. This is me coping with my past. I have been clean since the first day of December, 2012. No one is going to change that. Not me. Not you. I am not proud of some things I have done, but I do not regret anything. A wise man once told me to live my life with no regrets. The only reason I can do that is because I can learn from my mistakes. I am proud of who I am today. If it wasn't for my mistakes, I wouldn't be who I am now. I suppose this was a brief introduction to things you will not be able to look past once you read.

Note to a note:
I wrote these pieces while I was in Parker County Jail for about six months. It's the story leading up to the arrest in April 2013. When I have time I will add the pieces I wrote from TDC. Thank you.

The Downward Spiral.
I used heroin as a form of self-medication. I know it wasn't right--believe me. I wanted to stop before December First, 2012, but I couldn't. Shit, I know I could have, I just didn't want to do what had to be done. I should have left Julia in may, but I was lost. There's no one to blame but myself. Mom and Dad were looking at a divorce, all my friends were doing the successful college thing, I wasn't working, and I had established a "home" in Dallas with Julia in the recent months prior. Naturally, I went back to my "comfort zone." That wasn't the first time that I should have left. I ignored the relapses. We were "getting by" until we almost lost it all. We had no income to pay the office after we pawned all the valuables I had left. The office started telling us we had to leave and no one would help with rental assistance. We started working at Sears at Valley View Mall. One day, when I was scheduled and she wasn't, she decided to surprise me by meeting me at Park Lane station (my last stop before the walk home). Well not only did she surprise me by being there, but she was also loaded. I assumed it was just a relapse, but I soon realized she was not about to quit. Later that week, we were arguing about her using. I told her to quit, she told me to accept her or leave. I did love her. She looked at me and said, "You should just do it; it will give you the courage to finally leave." Sold! Unfortunately, it took six months. I know she didn't force me to do it, but if it wasn't for her, I probably never would have done it. I'm glad that I've learned, but I'm truly sorry that it took these experiences to teach me what I knew was wrong. Sears quit scheduling me and she quit going in. Money became more scarce than it already was. It stared off with us having to travel to Carrolton to score, but then we fond it incredibly close to home; a couple doors above us. Dates are incredibly hazy through that period of time, but I would guess it was August or September. Soon after we met the guy upstairs, his girlfriend's mom kicked him out. We happened to have an extra room and saw a golden opportunity. We didn't have electricity and still weren't paying rent. He offered to help. Of course his help never came. Instead he paid us off with a little bit of heroin each day. You might start to see how ugly it really was. Julia started working at QT Kitchens and I got a job at Gamestop. We definitely started to see a silver lining. One dat, I skated up to work for my shift. It just so happened that I hit a crack, lost control of my board, and watched it roll into the street to get run over by a passing truck. I shrugged it off as just a bad day. Within thirty minutes of beginning my shift, Julia calls the store to tell me that the office is kicking us out the very next day. Talk about a shitty day. Julia's mom had won five hundred dollars on a scratch offand planned on helping us get into a new apartment. Turns out, we barely had enough time to get a storage unit, a couple weeks at the Suites of America in Addison, and some heroin. Things actually started to look up. We were maintaining our addiction and making rent each week. So much for hopefulness... While I was being denied a court appointed attorney in Denton, Julia was getting fired for her third strike for tardiness. She was "late to the morning metting because she was in the restroom." Oh, she was in the restroom, but she couldn't find a vein to shoot up in. Now shit really started to fall down the mountain faster than an avalanche. So, after losing the apartment at the beginning of October, I celebrated my twenty-first birthday by getting kicked out for not being able to pay the weekle rent. I'm not sure how or why, but her parents helped us out by putting us in the Guest Inn off I-35E and Valwood in Farmers Branch. A couple days into our second week, payment in advance, we got kicked out for having cats. Violation of policy meant absolutely no refund. That was her absolute last check, too. We pawned a couple of my rings and had enough for a night next door and just a little bit more heroin. We moved in just to be kicked out--again. Brad helped us move the rest of our stuff into the storage unit. We were officially homelessm but we were more mobile with only a backpack and clothes on our backs each. We wandered around our old stomping grounds in Dallas, but quickly realized we had a better chance in Carrolton-Farmers Branch. Mid-November, just before we got kicked out of the Guest Inn, we met another couple addicted to heroing. They helped us score and let us crash on the floor of their hotel room. With few options for money, we began panhandling. When we could afford both heroing and a hotel room, we got booked into the EconoLodge off I-35E and Valley View. We were counting on unemployment to hit my account. My balance would not show on my ATM receipt, which I took as a sign of an incoming deposit of money. Little did we know, unemployment wasn't coming and I had only overdrafted my checking account. When we noticed this glitch, we really robbed me. Can you say triple-digit overdrafted savings account? With a week paid off at the EconoLodge, and a substantial amount of heroin, we started to relax. We took the week off instead of trying to get ahead. We continued the homeless-hotel tango until the end of November when she got stopped, searched, and arrested for less than a gram of heroin and warrants. This is when I realized, "I can get sober. This is my chance at saving myself." That night, I talked to Davis and he set up sanctuary for me at his parent's house, even though he was in Colorado for school. December first, 2012. I went to their home and began getting my life together. They helped me more than they will ever know. I started working seasonal for UPS and finally got my court shit in Denton County resolved. I really started to get my life on track. Sure enough, something went wrong. Julia got out of jail just before Christmas. My seasonal job ended and my last couple of checks kept us afloat back at the EconoLodge for a couple weeks. Because it was in between Christmas and New Year's Day, there was no chance of getting a job. We lost the hotel and headed for the Samaritan Inn in McKinney via Lauren. That did't pan out for us. The women's side was full and since it was a family shelter, I was not allowed in with an assault-family violence arrest. McKinney didn't have public transportation, so we figured Dallas was our only option. Coincidentally, The Forest Fire was playing in Deep Ellum that night. Julia and I got into an arguement and I decided to go see my friends' show. She decided to eaat a bottle of sleeping pills. She refused to go to the hospital, so instead of dealing with her drama, I went back to Danielle's with the Forest Fire and she went to her friend Nicole's house. I later found out that she took this time to relapse. We planned on going to the Dallas Life Shelter together, but my family rescued me. Mom drove to Farmers Branch to pick me up and she and I moved into her friend, Corey's, home. Things were looking hopeful, yet again. Mid-January, I worked for Southwire in Mineral Wells who decided to let me go mid-February. Also, Julia's "pregnant." I'll never know if it was a plan to get me back, or I was going to be a father. By the end of the week, I had a new job in Weatherford at National Shotpeening, INC. Julia and I got a hotel off I-20 and South Main Street at the Super Value Inn. This would be my home for the next two months. Work was great, I was sober, we were surviving, and Julia was prostituting herself out on Craigslist. But that's what I get for thinking things might be alright and finally start to go my way. April first, 2013. Julia shows up at work work lunch as usual. She tells me she just left the hospital. Apparently, she had a miscarriage. I'm not going to be a father. I was crushed. I went home and mourned until work the next morning. April 13, 2013. Welcome to Parker County Jail.

Bad Cravings and Needle Games.
How can your body become so dependant on something that it never even needed in the first place? Before I even dove into the horrible world of heroin, I had heard the horror stories from one of my best friends. I watched the daily battle of addiction. I was aware of three different ways of dealing with it. There's the Methadone program, which has sort of become outdated. Ultimately, it is a pill you take to "block" the euphoria from opiates. Unfortunatelym if you take that route, you become physically dependant upon it. It's not a life I wanted to live. Another option is finding a new vice. Most common for opiate-addicts: Alcohol. It's a lot more scoially acceptable and it's the closest you can get to mind numbing. I've been around alcoholics all my life. It's in my blood. Honestly, I just don't like it enough. Another way is quitting cold turkey. Results may vary. If you're on the wrong side of the results, expect constant relapse, possibly even death. Grandted, relapse is always a possibility. Luckily for me, When I quit cold turkey, I knew I was done with the shit. Up until I was introduced to the hideous lifestyle of addiction, I was completely blind. Whoever said, "Ignorance is bliss," knew what they were talking about. JD explained sick to me. I didn't believe him. It sounded so surreal. I had never experienced withdrawals at the time nor knew what it meant to be truly sick. One night, I woke up to someone I loved punching a bath tub because they were craving heroin. Julia explained cravings to me. I couldn't, at that point, comprehend how anyone could want something so toxic and destructive that badly. I never understood any of it until I lived it. I'm still living it. Now that I have first-hand knowledge and wisdom, I can't imagine watching anyone I love go through what I've been through. Looking back on it now, I'm wondering how Julia can live with herself knowing that because of her influence, she had subjected me to this life forevermore. I know she didn't force the needle in my arm at gunpoint--it slid right in and she pushed the plunger. People, Places, and Things. That's what Narcotics Anonymous calls a trigger. I've tried getting rid of all of them. I left Dallas, I left Julia, I do my best to avoid things I did on heroin; but it doesn't stop the cravings. Let me explain a craving. It's not that I want or have to have the heroin, it's more like a post traumatic stress disorder flashback. It could be as trivial as looking at a used book. Suddenly, my mind taked me back to Half-Price Books where we sold books, CDs, and movies to get cash for heroin. It seems as if the fuzziest time in my life produces the most vivid memories, complete with colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. I feel I've always had a great memory, but now it's haunting me. If I look down at my arms and my veins are bulging from a blood-pumping workout, I practically lose my breath. Half of my addiction was shooting up. With veins like mine, how could I not love the Needle Games? Looking for the perfect vein to tap like a tree for sap and pushing the plunger to say goodbye. If I even touch my veins now, I get a tingling sensation up my spine. An imaginary spider crawling under my skin. It could be pure disgust or just another trigger. The reason I think it could be a trigger is because when I was sick and we would mix a shot, I would get anxious and tense. I would feel the spider crawl all over my spinal cord, teasing me. As soon as I shot up, my entire body would decompress like a balloon on the verge of popping that you let all the air out of. Heroin acts on the spinal cord. It also has a tendency to give you a shortness of breath. That decompression, to me, was like a breath of life. Icy-cold and straight through my entire body, flowing effortlessly like my blood--with my blood. In the end, that what every junkie is chasing. And they're trying to keep from getting sick. "I feel like dying only once the drugs are gone."

Living Dead in Dallas
Have you ever looked a heroin junkie in his eyes? Have you truly seen the complete lack of care? The true desperation?
The pilled out smile and the junkie eyes? Imagine Hollywood's representation of a zombie. That's what I looked like. That's what I felt like.
"I want to be alive again. I want to really be alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through me - hot, and salty, and real. It's weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know. You know why dead people only go out at night? Because it's easier to pass for real, in the dark. And I don't want to have to pass. I want to be alive."
-Laura Moon in American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Julia joked about how she looked dead, especially under florescent lights - but then again, everyone does. I guess I was lucky to not have the ugly track marks and visibly blown veins she had, but if you had a tourniquet around her bicep, her forearm looked like a cadaver's. We became mostly nocturnal because we had no electricity and it was too hot during the day to even sit in the bath. We would wake up in the evenings and stay up until late morning or sometimes early afternoons. The only time we would be up during the day was to get on DART to go get more. And that changed completely when a dealer moved in with us. If we woke up early enough, we would go to Half-Price Books to enjoy the ambiance and air conditioning the offered. From there we'd go to our local QT and hang out with the night shift. Depending on whom was working, we could end up with free drinks or even the dead dogs from the grill. We would go to Whataburger and play Monopoly in the corner booth until the morning shift started to arrive. When it started to cool and we had candles and couches, we would read at home. Sometimes throw the football in the dimly lit parking lot to stay awake. Closer to the end of our stay at the apartment, we had a zombie get together. Almost ten dope fiends hanging out in the living room with no electricity, shooting and snorting by candlelight. I think that's when I realized how uncomfortable I truly was with the lifestyle. The place I called my home was a God damned shooting gallery. People I didn't know were knocking on my door to see the guy living in the bedroom to score some dope. I didn't want to be a fucking zombie anymore. I was finally done being numb. There were only two problems though. I couldn't quit if I was with Julia because she didn't want to quit. Also, I was scared of being sick. i knew what sort of pain I was going to go through to come back to life. it wasn't something I was entirely ready to deal with.

Traveling Junkies
At first I wasn't comfortable leaving the house when I was loaded. I was paranoid someone would know or I would nod off somewhere. Little did I know, the fine patrons of Dallas did not care. They were off on their own shit. I was super against shooting up in public. As the days of my growing addiction turned into weeks, there was a tolerance that was developed. It took more to get high. This meant what would last a week lasted four or five days between us. Then a couple days. Et cetera, et cetera. Because we were building a tolerance, we ran into the problem of dope sickness. If we didn't have any or enough, we would start going through withdrawals. Of course, the symptoms were only minor in the beginning. Not having a car meant we had to depend on public transportation to get us around the block and back. What should have taken an hour turned into an all day journey, even if we planned it perfectly with schedules. "Time and the train wait for no man." If we weren't waiting on our guy, we were waiting on public transit. Buses broke down, train's crossing signals went haywire, weekends ran less frequently. One giant hassle just to feel better. Because I was against public shots, I would have to wait to get home to feel better. As time went on and withdrawals got worse, we couldn't wait. First we would make pit stops at gas stations and use their bathrooms. Then we'd stop to get a bite to eat, but first we needed a shot, so we adopted fast food restaurants' bathrooms. Soon it was the isolated bus stop, or the empty part of the station, or the hidden corner on a bus. Before I knew it, we would hide under a jacket during rush hour on a train, or walking down a quiet street, or in a stairwell. After a while, it was almost a game of morbid curiosity to see where we could get away with it at next. To my knowledge, through observation and experience, there isn't a junkie that thinks ahead. The situation is always the same: "I'll get more when I need to." Sure, when you start running out, you might limit how much you do at a time, or dilute your last syringe to make it last a little bit longer; keep yourself from getting sick, you know? Even though we did dilute it, I think it was a placebo. Say you have a full one hundred-unit syringe that's honey colored and a ten-unit shot that's molasses colored. Each syringe has the same amount of heroin dissolved into it. Theoretically , they should give you an equal amount of intoxication, right? Does your mind believe that because the shot is darker that it is more potent? Or is your mind manipulated into believing the longer you spend pushing the plunger, the more "fucked up" you will be? Since we're speaking hypothetics, let's do some hypothetical economics. A ten dollar a day habit is an annual expense of $3650. That's no room for tolerance. Do it with a friend - $7300. Meet Harry. Harry works forty hours a week at about nine dollars an hour. Roughly $16,000 annual income after taxes. Harry tries heroin for the first time on January first. Harry loves it and keeps using. He starts off at ten dollars a day. He builds up a tolerance. April; fifteen dollars a day. Again, he's building a tolerance. Three months late. July through September; twenty dollars a day. October through December; twenty-five dollars a day. Basic math. Every three months he adds five dollars a day to his habit. (10X91.25)+(15X91.25)+(20X91.25)+(25X91.25) That's going to be 912.5+1370.25+1825+2282.25= $6390. This does not include the cost of living, or bulk prices, or dealer specials; straight drugs. So out of Harry's $16,000, he spent $6390 on heroin. That's almost half his annual income to his addiction. He only has $9610 to live off of. If he pas $500 a month for rent that's $6000 accounted for. Twenty dollars a week in gas to get to and from work and his dealer; another $1800. Harry's funds are around $800. That's car insurance and maintenance. What kind of life is that? "There's no junkie out there with a happy ending." Julia and I thought that we could be functioning junkies. HA!