Junkie Love (14 page)

I once read, or heard somewhere, that it was invented by Nazi scientists during the Second World War, under orders from Göring and other high-ranking officers who were themselves strung-out on morphine. Worried about maintaining shipments of opium from the east, as they began to lose the war and supply lines were cut, they ordered research to be carried out as a matter of urgency. The docs. came up with a synthetic, opiate-like painkiller, which they called “Adolophin”, in honour of the Führer, and which could be used as a morphine substitute in military hospitals. And though I’m not one hundred percent sure of the accuracy of this story, and it may be just part of junkie lore, methadone (as it was sensitively renamed), is like some kind of final solution to the problem of bodily and mental pain: a living fucking death that makes you more like a zombie than a human being, the ultimate drug of social control, and one long-favoured by the government and medical establishment as a way of dealing with a rising junkie population while keeping the crime rate down. It takes away your energy, your desire to live, and you will sit quite happily all day long in a darkened room, watching a flickering
TV
screen without a thought or idea in your head. And methadone,
far more than heroin, kills the human sex drive, numbing your body and mind to the point where you don’t feel anything at all. True, it “stabilizes” you, and in conjunction with counselling and support can do some good; but if this is the aim, then why not administer exact doses of pharmaceutical heroin and clean syringes to those junkies who either can’t stop using, or want to come off and reduce gradually? Obviously, because the media would have a field day with politicians having to answer difficult questions over “Junkies Getting High On The NHS”. Methadone, as part of a closely-monitored drug rehabilitation programme, is better than nothing; but as junkies are expert liars, they will always manage to con doctors into giving them larger amounts than they really need, selling the rest on the street to buy more smack. Certainly, that’s what I intended to do when I took a bus ride over to Kilburn one day to register with Doctor Mitchell.

Doc. Mitchell was actually a nice guy who believed sincerely in the efficacy of the methadone reduction cure. He wasn’t only in it for the money, like a lot of these private quacks, and he was basically a liberal with a social conscience who thought he was doing some good. But I’d heard from other junkies that he was a soft touch, and easy to con, and so I went there fully intending to hit him up for as much methadone as I could possibly get.

During the interview, I exaggerated the extent of my habit so that I would start off on a high dose, and I said all the right things about manic depression, a troubled childhood, emotional problems and difficult relationships that social workers and shrinks love to hear — confirming, as it does, everything they’ve read in books and studied at medical school or university. I also convinced him of my heartfelt and sincere desire to come off drugs, that I’d had enough of all that, that I’d finally met a “nice” girl who wanted me to get off gear and move in with her. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that such a girl had
come along at a moment in time when I was ready to stop using, and if I didn’t seize this chance now I could envisage myself sliding ever deeper into a life of substance abuse and crime, probably leading to severe health problems and an early, ignominious death.

“I don’t want to end up like that,” I told him with tears in my eyes, almost believing my own story. “She’s a wonderful girl, and I really think she can give me the emotional stability I need to kick the habit once and for all. If I don’t do it now, then I never will — I really want to stop, but I realise I need help and counselling, and I want to go on a methadone reduction cure so that I can move in with her and distance myself from the drug scene altogether. I don’t want to let her down — but even more importantly, I don’t want to let myself down.”

Doc. Mitchell searched my face closely with his soft brown eyes, and for a moment I did feel a pang of guilt — but only for a moment. This was an open-and-shut case of survival, a way back into dealing that I couldn’t afford to waste, and I wasn’t about to blow it. Finally, the doc. seemed to make up his mind that I was on the level, telling me to report back in ten days for a second appointment, just to show that I was really serious about wanting to embark on the programme (boy, was I!). He would decide then what dosage of methadone I should start on, after the analysis of my urine sample had come back from the laboratory. (Knowing this was coming, I’d gathered all my resources and had taken a particularly large hit that morning.) We were both pleased with the results of the interview, and as I walked back towards Kilburn High Road I felt strangely purged, and not a little holy, as if in confessing my sins I had somehow liberated myself, even though my whole spiel had been a pack of lies from start to finish.

When I returned ten days later, Doctor Mitchell put me on a script of 60 mls. a day, which I could collect from the Kilburn branch of Bliss’s Chemist, one week’s supply at a time.
This was to be reduced at a rate of 5 mls. after the first fortnight, and thereafter at one-weekly intervals — which didn’t bother me too much: I felt sure I’d be able to arrange a little relapse when the supply got too low, and convince the good doctor to reinstate me at a higher dosage once again. And so, half an hour later, I walked out of Bliss’s Chemist with over 400 mls. of methadone in my hands, ready to be sold and converted into smack.

• • •

Somehow, she didn’t look the same anymore. Outwardly, yes, she was the same beautifully wasted Cissy that I’d last seen in the West End only a few weeks before; but inside, something indefinable had changed, as if some part of her essential spirit had been sucked out, leaving only a hollow facsimile, a fragile and brittle shell.

When I’d arrived home, after returning from some dubious mission, to find her sitting on the bed in our room, for an instant I’d failed to recognise her, so different did she seem; and the weary, listless way in which she’d greeted me made me feel like I was speaking to her ghost, not the real Cissy at all. She looked worn out, and there were big, dark circles under her eyes as if she had not slept for days. Everything about her seemed somehow shrunken — not in a physical sense, but as though something inside her had given up the fight and was now collapsing inwards, silently and invisibly. True, I’d seen her depressed and withdrawn before and, like me, she often had black moods that went on for days at a time — but this was obviously something different. It was as if her energy had changed — not just the level or intensity, but rather the quality itself was different, and I felt intuitively, with a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, that from now on it was all over: not only for the relationship between us, but for Cissy
herself, as a person.

I tried to draw her out and get her to talk to me, tell me about what had happened, but she wasn’t interested. All she kept saying was how tired she felt, that we’d talk things over in the morning, and eventually we both fell asleep — not in each other’s arms as usual, but on opposite sides of the bed, cold and remote, each of us in our own separate, darkly churning worlds.

The next day it was the same: she didn’t want to talk. She just sat around chain-smoking all day, only breaking this routine to take a shot, one in the morning and one at night, from a bag of smack that I reckoned must have weighed at least five or six grammes. The champagne-hustling business must be kicking, I thought to myself sarcastically; but to be fair, she did offer me a hit each time, and I did accept. I certainly wasn’t going to turn down the offer of a freebie …

Again we went to bed without talking, and each time I tried to make contact Cissy brushed me off, finally turning over and freezing me out completely just as she had done the night before. It was driving me crazy: for weeks I’d been looking forward to having her back with me, but now that she was, she seemed even more remote and unreachable than she had been when she was physically absent. I felt like just grabbing her, taking her against her will if necessary. Sex was actually the least part of it — I felt angry and frustrated at being unable to break through the silence that enclosed her, and the tension between us was unbearable. I wanted to puncture it, to bring things to a head by some gross act of physical or sexual violence; but I realised, at the same time, that something pretty cataclysmic must have happened to make her act in such a way, and that perhaps a little sensitivity on my part was called for. I ended up in an angry sulk on my side of the bed, unable to sleep and with murderous fantasies flashing through my brain, imagining all the things that she wasn’t telling me. I knew that patience
and understanding were the qualities I most needed right now, but instead I felt like throttling her.

Finally, on the third day, she seemed to come to some kind of decision, shaking herself out of her torpor and coming over to sit next to me on the bed. We’d been dipping more and more deeply into the bag of gear, and we were both pretty loaded — looking back, I guess this was the only way she could handle telling me what was in her mind.

“Look, I guess we should talk about all of this …”

“Yeah, I guess we should …”

“For fuck’s sake, don’t go all sarcastic on me, I just can’t take that right now — either we’re gonna talk straight, or not at all.”

I’d wanted truth and honesty, but now I wasn’t so sure …

“So, let’s talk …”

“Look, I know it’s been tough on you the last few weeks, an’ I’m sorry, but believe me, it’s been a fuck of a lot harder for me. When I first heard that Dougie was out of nick, I went a bit crazy, I suppose … You know the way it ended between us, it was so fucked-up, an’ we never saw each other after the bust, except in court — nothing was ever really resolved …”

“So now you want to go back to him …”

“Shut up and listen, will you! At first, I was shit-scared he would find me, that’s why I took off and stayed with Ali — I thought he blamed me for the bust, and was on some kind of revenge trip, especially when I heard he was askin’ after me all over the place. Anyway, you know this part of the story, an’ you probably think I was doin’ all kinds of fucked-up things to get money for gear … but really, I was just pushin’ champagne to these sad, lonely old bastards …”

“Mmmm …” I couldn’t help myself. I knew the scene too well, and about how the girls who worked in it could make a little extra money if they wanted to. Cissy shot me a murderous look, but then carried on regardless.

“Anyway, that isn’t important — you do what you have to do, you know that as well as I do. An’ you also know that I fuckin’ love you, so just leave it alone. What is important, is that in spite of the way I feel, I can’t be together with you anymore, it’s just not gonna work out — I’m sorry, but there it is, I’ve said it now, an’ there’s no turning back. Jesus, you’re better off without me anyway, you were doin’ okay until you ran into me again. Christ, why am I doomed to have this effect on every guy I’m with?! I either turn them into psychos, or destroy them, or both …”

She looked as though she wanted to weep, but no tears came to her eyes. Maybe she had cried them all already; or maybe it was just the smack, insulating and deadening her emotions. For myself, in spite of sensing what was coming, and in spite of the gear, I felt like my stomach had dropped into my boots. I looked at her closely, but it was as if she were on automatic pilot now — her eyes were wide and unseeing, staring vacantly at the floor in front of her, and she spoke in a flat, dull monotone, without feeling or inflection.

“So, anyway, after goin’ round the twist for a few weeks, thinkin’ he was looking for me to do me in, I decided to go an’ see him, sort things out one way or the other. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I seem to have been runnin’ all my fuckin’ life … plus, I was worried about you as well, believe it or not …”

“You’ve told me this bit already …”

“… So, I finally tracked him down, livin’ in this crappy little bedsit in Somerstown. It’s like a rabbit cage, small an’ dark, hardly room to move, an’ we talked an’ talked about the bust, an’ what went down after — an’ it’s true what I thought, it was ’cos of me an’ my big fuckin’ mouth …”

“Or he’s tryin’ to guilt-trip you back to him …”

“… he knows who it was tipped off the Ol’ Bill, it was someone I was blabbin’ on to, an’ I guess he got well paid for his trouble — but anyway, Dougie’s not goin’ after him or
nothin’, to him it’s water under the bridge now. It’s just so sad, that’s all, an’ it’s all my fuckin’ fault that he’s gonna die …”

“Hang on a minute, you’ve lost me here — who’s gonna die?”

“Dougie is — basically, he got
HIV
from sharin’ dirty needles while he was in the nick, an’ his T-cell count is up an’ down like a yo-yo — it could go into full-blown
AIDS
at anytime, an’ it’s all my fuckin’ fault, don’t you see? God, he used to be so strong, an’ now he’s like an old man, scared but resigned, not even bitter about it all, it’s just so horrible … I wish he would get violent, at least I could understand that …”

I felt shocked and sad, angry, hopeless and confused, all at the same time. I looked at Cissy sitting there beside me, with her pale skin and her dark eyes drained of all expression, and I wanted her back with me, like it had been before everything got so fucked-up. Maybe it had been fucked-up all along, but I wanted to make her see that it wasn’t her fault, that it was just life and the way the dice fell; but I also knew her paranoid way of thinking, and that it would be impossible to ever convince her of this. I’d never met anyone so frightened, so convinced of their own culpability as she was — like she said, she had been running all her life, and I could see that at last she had gone over the emotional edge that I had been trying to pull her back from for so long. I felt the hopelessness of it all, and I felt the evil rising in me, like a poisonous snake in the pit of my stomach; I could feel it coming, maybe I could even have stopped it if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to: if it had to be over, then it had to be really over — if I couldn’t get Cissy back, then I’d give her one final push and jump right after her into the stinking pit myself. The snake came into my mouth, opened its dripping jaws, and spoke: