Addicted to You!

This week I had the good fortune to be in the company of a truly amazing woman. I won’t mention her name, for reasons that will become quite obvious as you read on.

She was born into a respectable middle-class background; her mother was a teacher, her father a doctor. She had a good education and a loving family and a good social network of friends. That was until a new boyfriend introduced her to a friend she couldn’t get rid of for years and years, Heroin, Smack, whatever you want to call it.

This drug took her to places only the depraved of mind can think about. She robbed those she loved, sold her body and aborted many unwanted pregnancies because of this. She lied to and cheated everyone she had contact with, but ultimately she was lying and cheating herself!

One morning in a cold public toilet she awoke with her skirt and pants around her ankles. Urine and vomit covered her hair and clothes, most of it not hers. She weighed six stones and was on the verge of death due to drug, malnutrition and hypothermia. 

Many people have said that to cure your addiction you have to first reach rock bottom, though she carried on with her best friend Heroin. Nothing could separate these two lovers, but this was the most abusive of relationships.

Her moment of realisation came by the strangest of ways. It wasn’t a drug-fuelled fight. It wasn’t a divine epiphany, or the loss of dignity. It was boredom! 

She said she just became bored with the routine; it was harder than having a proper job being a junkie, smackhead, user, whatever the term is now.

She was bored with the people she hung about with, bored with going nowhere, doing nothing. Bored with the need to score. Bored wth her punters, who pitied her, but still had sex with her. She was bored with people trying to help her. She was just totally, utterly bored. So she thought she fancied a change. Honest, I’m not being flippant, that is how she put it! 

She admitted the road to getting clean is not that easy, but she said it was easier to come off smack than it was to give up smoking. She also said (now she’s a drug counsellor) that there was so little heroin in the wraps she bought that she was addicted to the idea of taking the drug more than the drug its self.

I asked why she started to take the drug in the first place. Did she really think she was going to be the only person in history not to get addicted to it? She replied, “Yes”.

Like all drug users, they don’t realise the slow descent. There are of course recreational drug users, but like her smack that was cut with bleach etc, all drug users don’t really know what they are taking.

A group of friends of mine once went to Amsterdam for a ‘Stag’ party. One of the group went off to buy some cannabis; he found a man selling various products and purchased a block of resin. When he tried to smoke it, he couldn’t help but comment on the peculiar smell - he had in fact been sold a small block of dried dog shit!

This remarkable woman, who, if you spent any time in her company, is someone you would find it very hard to believe the life she used to lead. She is the three ’a’s’  articulate, academic and attractive. She speaks matter of factly about her experiences, and doesn’t stand in judgement of any person. She listens to what is said to her even if its an obvious pile of bullshit. She told me, “That is reality to them”. she also said that, “We are all addicted to something but we are not aware of it.” She is, of course, correct. It doesn’t have to be a mind-altering drug, or smoking, it can be a sport, politics, and religion, sex, saving the world, travel; we are all in one way or the other obsessives about something.

I have to admit in one way I’m a bit like her  - I do become a bit obsessed about things, but then I just get bored with them. Alcohol is such a thing: when I was younger I loved to drink, I could drink for England at national levels, but now I just can’t be bothered with it!

No doubt I shall find something else to fill the void, but I can guarantee you, it won’t be heroin!