So, how did I, a middle class girl from convent educated background become addicted to two of the most deadly drugs available?
I was very much anti crack and heroin, until it became a part of my life. How does someone anti crack and heroin become a crack and heroin addict?
Well you see, I'm guessing you can already tell from my previous posts I have an addictive personality and introducing an addictive personality to an addictive drug is just asking for trouble.
It all began late 2005 when I was heading for an audition up town when I bumped into an old friend.
As I made my way down the stairs to the tube at Vauxhall, I saw a shadow of a girl I thought I knew.
'H****?, H****!' I called, and much to my surprise the girl looked up at me.
H**** and I used to be friends from 1999 until around 2003. Although that wasn't the longest of times, we had bonded deeply over a love of drugs. Preferably cocaine, but funds dictated pills most of the time.
I've already explained the type of bond two people who are both pilling make with each other. H**** and I were definitely pilling partners with a strong bond.
We worked together doing telephone market research and very soon spent every weekend together. In fact, we lived for the weekend rushing home from work to get changed only to head out as quickly as possible for some serious drinking and even more serious drug taking.
We fell out over some stupidness. We both met two guys, she liked one and me the other. I was out with another friend one night, and bumped into the guy she liked. I also ended up joining a stripping competition, watched by the guy she liked.
H**** was quite jealous of me being thinner than her, so the route of us not talking sprouted from this. H**** was seriously not impressed with her man seeing me in the nude. Although, H**** was too proud to admit this at the time.
It was her, but not as I remember. H**** was always larger than me. Size 14 at her slimmest, but more likely a size 16. H**** used to have the blondest of blond hair, in her natural curly cork screw and perma fake tanned, but weren't we all (I still was).
The girl I was looking at now, who responded to H****'s name didn't look like this at all. She was skinny, very skinny, much smaller than my size 10 frame, her dark hair scrapped back into a pony and she was very gaunt. Almost a deathly pale.
We said our brief hellos, and it was clear that H**** was in no mood for chatting in the street. We swapped numbers, but before I could let her go, I needed to know her secret. How did she get so thin? My mind never processed the detrimental aspects of H****'s appearance, just the fact that her jeans where a good size smaller than mine.
'How comes your so skinny?' I asked as H**** was beginning to turn to make her way,
'Oh, it's the drugs' she replied.
My mind began to race... What drugs was she on? One thing I did know was, I bloody wanted some of them!
I hurried to my audition, stopping in a pub for a quick drink and a cheeky line of coke. I had saved some from the weekend especially for this, hoping it would calm my nerves and enable me to perform better.
Funnily enough it did the opposite. However the audition was the last of my concerns. As soon as I finished I texted the number she had given me.
I started with the niceties, hi, how are you? Where are you living? Do you have a boyfriend? Until I had made enough small talk to ask the real questions
'So, what drugs have you taken to make you so skinny?'
'Crack and heroin' she replied.
I was astounded. Shocked. I didn't want my friend to be a crack head and smack addict. But H**** was in way too deep to take heed to my pleas, and before I knew it, I was going to be dragged down with her.
The first time I saw her smoke was the day I helped her move back to London. This was around March / April 2006.
I had already helped her move out of London away from her abusive boyfriend, and now she was moving back to Brixton. Brixton also happened to be the area her drug dealer lived in.
Of course, she wanted a celebratory smoke. I cried as she blazed from her pipe, quickly constructed from a plastic bottle and smoked her B spliffs.
I did not want her to be a part of this. She was my friend, I loved her, and she was better than this.
However, my rose tinted glasses where soon to be smashed. By March 2006 my world had crashed. My boyfriend of 3 and a half years dumped me for some barley legal girl (honest, she was 16) who lived down his street.
He had been fucking her behind my back. What makes it worse is the fact, he had known her since she was about 8-9 years old (and him 17-18) and had been playing with his younger brother in the street.
However, as with all my boyfriends he came crawling back. In fact, he hid his relationship with her for ages until I happened to find out myself.
During this time he was still very much wanting to get into my knickers telling me I was the best he's had in bed and can he have some more. Just to make myself feel better I'm also going to add, she was UGLY! About 5'2-5'4, size 12 which makes you chubby when you're short and a face that could rival Domino's Double Pepperoni Pizza, yes, she had really really bad acne!
Ok J, lets get back on track. Not only had I finished with my boyfriend, but the guy I was meeting for a date had blown me out.
Tipsy, with a gram of coke, I headed to H**** to cry on her shoulder. Once I arrived at hers, we drunk wine, snorted coke and generally had a good time.
That was until one of her smoking friends texted her phone. J****, one of the crack heads from her past. He had been in prison, and recently released. Whilst in prison he got clean and fell madly in love with H****.
H**** was obsessed with male attention and ALWAYS had at least one guy she was in love with and could fall in love with a new guy each week. So, falling for J****'s love letters from prison hadn't been hard.
It didn't take me long to realise her £35,000 salary and good supply of crack and heroin was the only reason he was around. My warnings fell of deaf ears and unfortunately H**** didn't realise until a month later.
Once he practically moved in and cleared out her bank account so he could smoke while she toiled away at work.
Needless to say J**** was soon on his way for his free smoke. I have to admit, J**** was looking very very buff! In prison he had been working out all the time, so although he was only 5'3, he had a body like Fiddy Cent and it was very pleasing on the eyes.
It wasn't long after J**** arriving did H****'s dealer turn up with four light and two dark. I was happy with my coke at the time, but as the night progressed the mood turned from a happy, party vibe to a more somber, chilled out scene.
I skinned up a good 3-4 spliffs, trying to calm my cocaine buzz. However I don't think I had really drunk enough alcohol, so I wasn't going to pass out any time soon.
Both H**** and J**** were beginning to nod. Eyes closed, head slumped forward, dropping further and further down. I certainly didn't want to be lying here awake while they were both sleeping, especially as all three of us where sleeping in a double bed (not a King sized one either).
I knew the impending come down was waiting to incarcerate me and I wanted to have passed out before that.
Cocaine come down was evil. If you didn't pass out before it hit you, that was it. You wouldn't sleep, you'd be restless and you'd want to slit your wrists and lie in a warm bath. By the next day, after a good sleep it wasn't so bad, but you were still teary.
'Gimme some of that please' I asked H****, looking at her B spliff which had fallen out of her hand. H**** passed it over to me along with tokes of the next 3 spliff she billed up after that.
At the time I found it rather bizarre that I felt little effects from my first B smoke. Eventually I began to feel a little more drowsy and we went to bed. H**** and J**** up one end, and me up the other end on the edge of the bed (I have to be within easy access to toilets as I always wake up!)
It was around 12pm when the music studio, situated about 50 yards away from H****'s window woke me up. I felt queasy and my head was cloudy. I opened my eyes, only for my head to explode like fireworks due to the bright light streaming in from her bedroom window.
The make shift bed sheet / curtain kept out almost no light and with only one cushion to rest my head on (not even a pillow), I was without my usual light barriers.
All of a sudden I knew I had around 10 seconds to get my head down a toilet bowl. I bolted for the bathroom, having to unlock H****'s door as I went. Thankfully there was a bathroom down stairs near H****'s room. As I slammed the bathroom door shut I could feel liquid rising, filling in my mouth while I was lifting the toilet seat. I just managed to keep in contained in my cheeks until the toilet bowl was clear.
I chucked my guts up until my stomach was completely empty, including the bright green bile. Once I was sure there was nothing left to be thrown up, I had a quick wee (two birds with one stone, or should I say flush!) and turned on the cold water tap until it ran cool.
I now refilled up my stomach with cool, refreshing water. Each mouthful rehydrating my alcohol shrunk brain. The sickness didn't immediately cease upon being throwing up, so I crawled back to bed and lay there not moving for some time.
Eventually H**** and J**** woke up and I was soon on my way back to my parents house. After my first experience I can honestly say I didn't understand heroin at all. I didn't really get that fucked from it, it didn't taste that nice at all and it certainly made you feel very very sick.
Plus, I definitely wasn't addicted and began to think what a load of crap the hype about heroin was!
Of course I was being slightly naive, but honestly you don't get addicted as quickly as the anti drugs people make out!
So that was my first taste of B and what was once a drug I really didn't like that much, became a drug I loved even more than the white sometimes! It takes a few tries for you to begin to appreciate the wonders of heroin. Nearly everyone I know was violently sick when they first tried it.
Anyway peeps, I'm going to go but please pop back for more tales.
Love J** (reworked from Diary of a Crack Princess)
