❤️ What Is A Junkie

This was written during my addiction to crack and heroin. I spent a year using crack and heroin daily. Prior to that I spent a year becoming addicted to crack and heroin.  I never injected at all during this period.

Let me ask you a question what is a junkie? A heroin addict? A smack head? I can answer this for you with guarantee that what I initially write, will be exactly the answer you would give me. 

The guy sitting by the cashpoint. His bony hands are no longer white or black, but tinged  grey. His hair is lank and his worn clothes hang from his emancipated body. At first he seems asleep, his head bobbing rhythmically. As the day progresses be insatiable appetite for drugs begin to show. Kill breakout in what appears to be a flu or fever. His expression now encompasses one of panic and urgency. You all avoid the cashpoint for fear of being robbed.

Or the prostitute who works in the rain, wind or snow. Her skinny legs protrude from her tiny skirt. Paler than white, the life she once had has evaporated. Her eyes are glazed and her pupils are tiny.

A heroin addict will sell their TV or steal yours for another sweet heat of smack. They’ll sell their bodies, rob the old lady coming out the post office or break into shops. They don’t care for anyone when they need their fix. Their only passion is brown.

But there is a second type of head heroin addict. One you didn’t know about. Me.... a functional addict. A functional addict’s has a job, pays her rent or even her mortgage, she uses the latest mobile phone (thanks to her free upgrade) and always pays her bills.

Functional addicts blend into society. You may be able to tell something is not quite right, but are more likely to assume she has an illness or a drink problem. This is because, smack heads belong in a Trainspotting world, not the real world.

Heroin addicts don’t work or contribute to society. Smack heads don’t have jobs. Crack, along with numerous other stimulants, before I was introduced to crack was always my drug of choice. To pacify crack’s insatiable come down I smoked heroin.

I’ve never IV-ed, nor really smoked off the foil. I use heroin in a spliff.

The absence of needles, scars or tinfoil only helps me to blend into society, fabricating normality. Only ex-users may have cottoned on to my dirty secret I have had for five years. Even today, I will always notice the person in Boots the chemist, looking slightly sweaty, impatient, waiting with their blue prescription. 

I am the girl in your office whose size 6 trousers hang from her emancipated hips. Face often make up free and hair scraped back. The girl who’s often late in the morning, as mornings aren’t her forte. She is positively drowsy at her desk, eyes glazed. Even in the heat of summer she’s cold, moaning AC is on too high. Occasionally she breaks into a sweat, stripping her layers of clothes off, only to put them back on 5 minutes later.

She frequently visit to the toilet to vomit or due to diarrhoea. Around 11 AM she begins to frequently dial the same number, from her phone, slamming the receiver with more and more frustration upon hearing ‘the number you have dialled is currently unavailable please try later’.

Finally, her caller (dealer) switches on his phone and hearing it ring alone is enough to send adrenaline pumping through her veins.

She makes an excuse to take her lunch early. The bank before it’s busy, doctor’s appointment, a friend has run out of electricity or some other emergency.

Upon returning she now has a surge of energy, as she rushes to her desk, only to return with a renewed sense of life. Blood begins to pump through her veins, opposed to the sluggish pace she demonstrated before her break

Her tiredness evaporates, no longer dozy and on the verge of sleeping, she’s suddenly engrossed in her work, typing ferociously, inbetween her hourly trips to the toilet. She only stops, for what you believe to be a cigarette break. Little do you know that her roll up contains heroin as well as tobacco.

You may notice her being sick. When you only smoke heroin, the withdrawals are not as intense. Upon getting your fix you’re likely to throw up as soon as you take your first few pulls. She’ll make excuses that she is hungover or ill or perhaps she’s even pregnant. You believe her. Like I said heroin addicts don’t work and you’ll reason there is no scars on her arms from injections.

She’ll work hard all afternoon, staying at work till 7 PM to make up for the two hours she spent sleeping in the morning at her desk. Maybe later. She definitely catches up and exceeds the work you expected her to accomplish this morning. How late she stays  all depends on how good the crack is and when it runs out.

Heroin smokers, especially the crackhead variety, don’t wake every eight hours for the next shor of heroin. Smokers can easily pass out for hours upon hours, waking at 4 PM in the afternoon. She’ll continue to doze in bed until the requisite to use over rides the intoxicating need to remain almost unconscious. By 6 PM the dealers have been called, she throws on a tracksuit and drives like a Formula One driver.

Traffic lights, buses and cautious drivers are treated like Satan himself in disguise. Once she arrives the 10 minute wait feels like 10 hours. Restless and horny (heroin suppresses sexual urges, she’s orgasumed on a bus before when sat near the engine) she will constantly check the street until the dealer’s car finally pulls up, parking infront. Scoring, she gets angry as her dealer attempts to make small talk. Her shaky hands are already tearing the small clingfilm covered rocks before she’s even left his car. Once back in her car she drives for 2-3 mins before parking in another residential street. The rocks are almost open even though she was driving too. She can skin up within 30 seconds flat. The urgency does not subside until she takes her first pull on a b spliff.

If she’s left it too long and her withdrawal is more severe, her precious be spliff acts as a catalyst to make her insanely sick! Projectile vomiting through the car window, or if she's quick enough, out of the door. Yet she continues to inhale her poisonous spliff, safe in the knowledge she will feel normal again soon. 

Once she begins to feel slightly better, she’ll undo a rock of crack, using the ash from the b spliff, she’ll place that on the foil. Breaking a large rock, she crouches into the passenger side and inhales quickly. Holding the smoke in for as long as she can. Before exhaling as slowly as possible. Now she feels normal.

Although she can blend into society, people that are close to her will notice many changes in her personality. Her afternoon nap now consists of a four hour deep sleep, opposed to a 30 minute snooze. As she becomes more and more addicted on the days where she is withdrawing her mood can be volatile. 

Instead of wanting to stay, relax, watch TV and chill with you she is eager to leave. She’ll tell you this is because she needs to have a bath, do her tan and then get ready for work tomorrow. But the truth is, she needs to drive to her dealer and score because it is the only thing that will make her feel better.

Because she has a job earning £30,000 companies are happy to give her extortionate credit cards. £20,000 worth. Due to this, her addiction grows as her tolerance increases. £25 per day Smoke becomes £50. £50 becomes becomes £100. Soon her attempts to withdraw money are declined and her dealer, out of pity, gives her £40 Of brown for free, so she’s not sick over Christmas.

Soon she starts utilising quick approve short-term loans. This only enables her to continue her addiction. The addiction which is slowly killing. She puts a £200 debt from her £2000 take-home salary before payday has even arrived. 

Non-drug users would be disgusted and even other drug users looked down at her. Because until it happens to you, you’ll never understand. She’s not stupid. She knew the consequences. Yet she never intended to be a crack and heroin addict.

It’s a sneaky addiction. It tricks you into believing you can control it. But even when you only smoke once a week, it’s already controlling you. She wrote off the poor sleep on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and even Friday after a night out drinking and snorting cocaine. With each week the craving to use grows. Waiting for Saturday gets harder and harder. She knows that even though b makes her drowsy and not necessarily fall straight asleep, when she does sleep, she’ll sleep the most deepest, most comfortable, intoxicating sleep. And Sunday she’ll still be glowing. By Sunday evening she’s getting tired and grouchy. She’ll sleep well again, but on Monday she’s still exhausted. Cold, yawning, tired and achy, she’ll struggle to make 5pm. 

Yet come 8pm her back and calves will ache. When she does fall asleep at 1am, she sleep fitfully, sweating so bad she’ll wake up and need to change her bedclothes in the middle of the night. Tuesday through to Friday, she’ll sleep better and ache less, but she’ll still exhausted from the lack of sleep at the beginning of the week. 

Then one day she’ll think, I’m exhausted, I know it’s Wednesday but having a smoke will give me the energy to tidy my flat and enable me to get a decent night’s sleep. So, now it’s Saturday and Wednesday. Then add Monday. Pretty soon Tuesday, Thursday and Friday too. By now she feels sick in the morning if she doesn’t save a spliff at least. 

The length of time between using, before getting sick decreases daily.

She was a cocaine user originally and constantly  refrained from the invites to inhale the sweets smoke of crack the pipe. She felt proud of her abstinence.

However, as the crackheads progressed to smoking heroin. Eventually their heads slump, as the B overpowers the energetic dopamine from crack. She tries to stick to weed and alcohol. She continuously smoks spliff after spliff, drinking and drinking. Attempting to join her companions in the world of slumber. But the Coke is still in control she downs another drink desperate to come down

Finally, intoxication lowers her inhibitions. She finally reaches for the heroin spliff, as it smoulders upon her friends duvet cover, leaving a small burn. Her friend is gouching and so is her friend’s companion. So she takes the heroin spliff inhaling 8 pulls and she falls asleep.

It is true heroin, will cause an addiction from the first time you use it. You  do not get addicted the first time you use it. You do not notice any negative consequences from using heroin. It leads you to believe the are no real bad consequences. It’s nothing like Trainspotting. You think you can use it again, so stupidly your day. 

It took me a whole year ago from trying heroin, to being reliant on heroin. It Could happen to you . It could happen to anyone. Whether it’s heroin, codeine morphine, painkillers or benzodiazepines. In fact many doctors illegally prescribed their own morphine and are addicted to opiates. They live in permanent fear, afraid that their colleagues will notice track marks and their  pinprick peoples.

I never got on with AA or NA, but I know people that have, in affluent areas such as Chelsea, the meetings are filled with solicitors, judges, senior police,  CEOs chief executives, company directors, millionaires, TV celebrities and music stars.

Drug addiction does not discriminate.

And I know one not one person, when they’re younger, thinks, when I grow up I want to be a drug addict.

We are all here because we have used drugs to mask are the problems in our lives.

Mental health is serious and is real. You would not tell someone in a wheelchair to start walking. So why tell someone who is depressed to cheer up. Or from my own experience, tell someone who has ADHD to stop fidgeting.

I have had many a psychiatrist tell me, should I have been medicated earlier in my life, it is highly unlikelyI would have used drugs to a stage where I am now a junkie who is addicted.

#itsnotaboutthedrugs

@Gemma_Stalked