Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (31 page)

The success of our investigations have caused the smugglers and dealers to become more cautious, as was to be expected, and we, in turn, have become even more vigilant. But the more visibly we penetrate the areas where drug addicts and small dealers tend to gather and do business, the deeper into the underworld they go, and the harder they are to find and track.

Whatever we as a police department accomplish, and whatever means we try—whether we use quiet surveillance and undercover cops or conduct obvious patrols and raids—the drug market will always find a way to endure. More and more often, heroin is being sold in private homes, where addicts can evade the eye of the police.

To give just one example, twenty-four of the eighty-four people who died of heroin overdoses in Berlin in 1977 were not known to us as users of the drug—and these people most certainly didn't die after just one shot. Even the most persistent drug user often doesn't come to the attention of the police until he gets admitted to a hospital—usually while unconscious.

Otherwise, a person can abuse heroin for years without coming to our attention. To put it bluntly, the police department can't solve the drug problem by itself. As the United States discovered during Prohibition, wherever there's an intense demand, the suppliers will find a way to meet it.

I could, of course, hire another twenty officers and arrest more of the small-time dealers, but the problem would then just shift over to the prison system, where heroin already has a strong presence. Imprisoned addicts are willing to do anything to get their hands on some dope, and imprisoned dealers will do almost anything to supply them. Everyone is corrupted in situations where the profit margins are as high as they are with heroin right now.

Heroin addicts don't care about anything but their next score. Preventative education is the only thing, in my opinion, that has any chance to stop heroin's rise in our community.

I first met Christiane while working as an administrator in the drug addiction department. She had been summoned to respond to a normal police filing and came to see me with her girlfriend Stella. This was the first of six or seven visits we would have together.

At the time, I was spending most of my time interrogating addicts who had come to the attention of local police, with the idea that they might give up the names of some of their dealers. The police file an incredible number of reports, and that leaves me with more interviews to do than I really have time for. As a rule, there's not much time to spend thinking about the problem as a whole. But I still try to get to know the people who are summoned, and I try to establish some sort of relationship with them because otherwise it's just not possible to conduct a successful interrogation.

When we first started to talk, Christiane was quite open and very willing to supply the information I was looking for. I was struck by her humility; she gave the impression of being a child who was raised the right way. During the first interrogation, she still seemed like a little girl in many ways. She always spoke well of her mother, and I have to say that her mother was very concerned about her compared to many of the other parents I see. I spent a lot of time on the phone with her.

After a few more interviews, Christiane began to act much more insolent and rude. It was hard to believe she was only fourteen. I gave it to her straight and told her that addiction was a one-way street, even if she was able to get clean occasionally. We had a few blowout fights on that score alone.

But I don't want to say anything negative about Christiane. She wasn't one to carry a grudge.

But it's simply impossible to help these addicts. They always feel tricked and wrongfully accused, as they don't understand why they should be punished. In my opinion, these young people are just plain foolish and much too reckless. They start using heroin out of boredom and curiosity and then are surprised when faced with the consequences. I hope that for her own sake, Christiane gets the most severe sentence possible, as I believe that the shock of being in prison could motivate her to want to become sober. At least that's my hope.

IN THE SUBWAY I WAS SO
angry it was hard for me to keep it together. I couldn't believe I had let that policewoman wrap me around her little finger like that—with just some hot chocolate, cake, and her revolting, fake friendliness.

After I serviced two clients at Zoo Station and scored some more dope at Kurfürstendamm, I went home. My cat was lying in the kitchen and could hardly get up. He'd been sick for a few days. Now he looked so emaciated and meowed so pitifully that I thought he would die soon, too.

I was more anxious about my kitty than I was about myself. The vet gave me some medicine for him. But the cat wasn't eating anything. He lay in front of his small bowl and didn't even lift his head.

I was planning on shooting up, so I took out my needle, but then I had an idea. I drew some of the medicine into the syringe and used it to squirt a little into his mouth. He was so worn out that he didn't resist. After that, it took me a long time to clean out the needle again, prepare everything, and finally get my fix.

Heroin didn't give me the kind of high that it used to anymore. My fear of death ruined everything. I didn't want to live
anymore, but at the same time I became incredibly anxious when I shot up, about the next shot being my last. Maybe it was also true that my cat's illness underlined how really sad and dark death is—especially if you haven't really lived yet.

I felt completely hopeless. I hadn't had a single meaningful conversation with my mom since she discovered that I was shooting up again. I screamed and fought about every little thing, and she just kept giving me that sad, dejected look of hers. The police were after me for real now. The statement that I'd signed at Schipke's office was enough for them to put me on trial and enforce a juvenile court sentence. I also got the feeling that my mom would've been glad to relinquish some of her responsibility for me. After all, she must have realized by that point that there was nothing she could really do for me. She was always on the phone with drug rehab counseling centers and other government agencies, and at the same time she just kept sliding deeper and deeper into despair. It didn't take long for her to get the picture: Nobody thought they could help me, and nobody wanted to anyway. At that point, she decided that the only other thing she could do was probably just send me off to her relatives—so that's what she threatened to do.

Sometime in May of 1977, even I understood (with what was left of my drug-addled brain) that I had two options left: Either I gave myself the “golden shot”—a fatal overdose—as soon as possible, or else I had to make a serious attempt to get off of heroin for good. I knew that I was all alone in making that decision. I couldn't even count on Detlef. But even more important was the fact that, whatever I decided, it had to be my decision, and not Detlef's.

I went to the Center House back at Gropiusstadt—back to the youth center where my drug career had gotten started. It turned out that the whole place had been shut down since by that time the drug problem in the area was totally out of control. In
its place they now had a drug-counseling center. Seriously, a real drug-counseling center, just for Gropiusstadt. That's how many heroin addicts were there now, only two years after heroin first cropped up in that area. When I went in, they told me exactly what I was expecting to hear: that the only way I would ever get clean was by going into genuine, serious therapy. They gave me the addresses for the two rehab clinics, that had had the most success in dealing with addicts.

I was pretty apprehensive about these kinds of therapy programs because the word on the street was that they were really pretty brutal. That's what I'd heard anyway. Some people said they were even worse than jail. In one of these clinics, they even shaved you bald first. I guess that was supposed to be a demonstration of the fact that you were ready to begin a new chapter of your life. I didn't think I could let them shave off all my hair; I didn't want to be turned into some cut-rate Kojak.
³⁴
To me, my hair was, in a way, the thing that was more me than anything else. It protected me. I could even hide behind it. And so I thought, If they cut off my hair, I might as well just kill myself.

But then the drug counselor said that I wasn't very likely to actually get admitted to either of these two programs because they didn't have any open spots right then. The admissions requirements were incredibly tough, she told me: You had to still be in pretty good physical shape and be able to prove to them that you still had the willpower to get off of heroin. The drug counselor said that since I was still so young, not even fifteen, that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to meet their demands. And for kids, there really wasn't any drug therapy available yet.

I said that I actually wanted to go to Narcotics Abusers Anonymous anyway. Narcotics Abusers Anonymous—also known as Narc Anon—was the rehab center for the Church of Scientology. There were a few addicts I'd run into who had already spent some time at Narcotics Abusers Anonymous, and they all said that it was actually not that bad. They didn't have any admissions requirements at all so long as you paid in advance. They let patients wear their own clothes, bring their own music, and even keep their own pets.

The drug counselor responded by saying that I should think more carefully about the organization. She asked me why I thought so many junkies said the program at Narc Anon was so great—was it because it worked or because they could enjoy themselves for a while and then keep shooting up when it was over? She said she couldn't call to mind a single case where Narc Anon had helped a person really get clean.

I asked her if she could think of any other place where I could go if I didn't stand a chance of getting in at the other places we'd talked about. At that point, she gave in and passed me the address for Narcotics Abusers Anonymous.

When I got home, I used that same trick again and dribbled some more of that medicine into my cat's mouth with my old syringe. When my mom came home, I told her that I was going to get clean for good at Narc Anon. “I'll have to stay there for a few months,” I told her, “or even a year, and then that will be it. I'll be sober.”

My mom acted as if she didn't believe a word I said. But still, she went straight to the phone and tried to find out more about the new program.

I was totally into this rehab trip. I felt like I had a chance to start fresh, to start a whole new life. I decided not to see any clients that afternoon, and I stayed away from dope, too. I wanted to get sober before even showing up. I didn't want to have to start out
in the “cold turkey room.” I wanted to arrive totally clean and get a head start on the others. I wanted to prove right off the bat that I had ability to quit.

I went to bed early and laid the cat (who was sicker than ever now) on the pillow beside me. I was proud of myself. I was withdrawing all by myself, all alone, and it was all my own decision. How many heroin addicts could do that? When I told my mom that I'd stop using right away, all she did was respond with a dubious smile. She didn't even take any time off from work to help me. All these withdrawal sessions seemed hopeless to her now, and she couldn't muster much excitement for them. So yeah, I had to get through it all by myself.

The next morning I felt the full brunt of the challenge I was up against. It was just as bad as ever—the withdrawal symptoms— and maybe even worse, but at no point did I lose my self-belief. When I felt like the pain was going to kill me, I just told myself, That just means you're getting the poison out. You'll survive, and when you're done that will be it. Once the poison's gone, it will never come back. You won't let it.

The one good thing was that when I passed out, I didn't have any nightmares or start tripping in that old kind of horror landscape. Instead I had these beautiful glimpses of my life after the rehab.

When the pain let up after three days, my imagination went wild, and I started creating these idealized scenes in my mind. As I settled into these visions, they seemed almost real. In one of these fantasy worlds, I had stayed in school and even taken the university entrance exams. I had my own apartment, and a VW Cabriolet was parked in the driveway. When I took it out, I drove with the top down.

The apartment was on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by lots of trees. Maybe it was in Rudow, or maybe in Grunewald. My place was located in an old but still elegant building. It wasn't
decadent though. It wasn't like all those gaudy old apartment buildings near the Kurfürstendamm—the ones with high ceilings, decorative stucco, huge entrance halls, marble floors, red carpet runners in the hall and up the stairs—the ones with mirrors everywhere and the tenants' names printed in gold leaf on their doors. My place wasn't like that at all—it wasn't poisoned with the stench of money and power. It was already clear to me that wealth on that scale came from a life spent lying and stealing—a high-stress life spent running back and forth on a high wire. That wasn't for me.