Life in the World of Heroin
Most of you have probably seen the film Trainspotting – a black comedy about heroin addicts in Edinburgh. It’s a shocking film, but it offers a raw and honest look into heroin addiction: the massive internal highs and the devastating lows. Early deaths from overdose, or slow, chronic decline as the drug eats away at the body. Once they put the spike in their arm, life is never quite the same again.
This story is also about heroin addiction. But it’s about a different kind of addict – one of the rare, long-term survivors. Functional users do exist. They often pass for “normal,” holding down jobs, maintaining appearances. You’d never guess. This is about one of them – Ed. He’s still alive at 65, still injecting that poison into his veins. Ed was my introduction to the world of heroin.
He’s been using for over 40 years. I remain a friend to this day. I’ll tell you what I experienced living with a heroin addict, and I’ll tell you about his wedding – an event as soaked in heroin as any part of his life. Heroin is both psychologically and physically addictive. Your mind craves it, and your body needs it. The withdrawal symptoms are horrendous: fever, muscle spasms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, delirium, and a desperate, obsessive craving for another hit. Watching someone go through it is terrible. Living it must be hell.
I witnessed Ed’s highs and his lows. I sat with him through countless attempts to quit. I watched him scream, sweat, tremble, hallucinate. It’s painful to watch someone you care about unravel like that. But I learned one thing: I never touched the stuff.
From Public School to the Shadows
I was 17, freshly out of a fairly prestigious private school. My background was rugby, cricket, and a life mapped out in the English upper-middle class. I was a bit of a rebel, though, and ended up finishing school in the state system. That’s when I met Ed. He was a few years older and worked for my dad as a mechanic. A really good one. He seemed cool, kind, and when he offered me a room in his flat, I jumped at the chance. What I didn’t know was that Ed was a heroin addict. Six months after leaving school, I found myself living in a dingy apartment surrounded by junkies.
Life Among Junkies
I grew close to Ed and did my best to support him. Every addict wants to quit. I made endless trips to the pharmacy to pick up his methadone – the legal alternative to heroin. Ironically, methadone is more addictive than heroin and doesn’t even get you high. It just stops the cravings. I watched him “mainline,” injecting heroin directly into his veins. He’d prepare the hit meticulously – dissolving crystals in water on a teaspoon, heating it with a lighter until it bubbled, drawing the fluid into a syringe. Then into the arm it went.
Some nights, I’d listen to him ramble, totally out of it. Heroin’s not a social drug. Users retreat into themselves, into bliss.
This was before AIDS. They shared needles like it was normal – licking them, sterilizing them with boiled water poured into dirty mugs. Their little boxes of “works” (syringes and needles) were revered, passed around with an almost religious reverence. They were resourceful too. I saw them make “stash cans” out of beer tins, with hidden jars inside to conceal drugs. Looked and felt like real beer. Even the police wouldn’t have known.
My Exit
Living with Ed, discovering weed, sex, and motorbikes – it all led to me failing my A-levels. I left, went traveling, came back, passed my exams, and eventually earned a degree. Later, I moved to France and became a paragliding instructor. But that’s another story.
Prison Visit
Years later, I saw Ed again – in Portsmouth prison. He’d been convicted for “conspiracy to deal.” I’ll never forget walking through those heavy prison doors, down echoing hallways, into a sterile visiting room. He had that rye smile, like a naughty boy caught stealing cookies. We sat across from each other. I was among other visitors – some probably future convicts themselves.
Back in Touch
More years passed. I recently reconnected with Ed again. I asked about his wife. “She died a few months ago,” he said. I asked how. “One pill too many,” he replied, casually, as if saying, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.” I asked the obvious question: “Are you clean?” “No,” he said. So there goes my theory that you either get clean or you die. Ed is neither. He also told me he’d recently been stabbed. A methamphetamine user he had tried to help turned on him – stabbed him in the chest and the eye.
The Wedding: A Trainspotter’s Affair
Then there was the wedding. Ed called me out of the blue, asked me to come. His bride, of course, was also a junkie. He was in love, and that’s all that mattered. I was his only non-junkie friend, which somehow made me the “sober wrangler” for the event. The apartment was dark, dingy, filled with people in varying states of intoxication. That morning, I watched Ed inject heroin into his femoral vein and Ian, the best man, into his jugular. They had no usable veins left in their arms or legs. There was a strange grace in the way they injected each other – precise, gentle, almost loving.
Ceremony of Contrasts
At the wedding, everyone was impeccably dressed. All of them junkies. They could’ve passed as doctors or executives. Meanwhile, I – long-haired, barefoot, grubby – looked like the actual addict. I was running a paragliding school in the French Alps at the time. The irony was lost on them. Most of Ed’s old circle are now dead – overdoses, AIDS, Hepatitis C, suicides. Dirty needles. Squalor.
Neil’s End
The last time I saw Neil – the best man – he was “monging,” a term for being so high you can’t speak, move, or even think. Just conscious, barely. He sat on a couch at his ex’s place – Cathy, now clean. His veins had left dark lines on his arms. He was kind, never hurt anyone. Could build a fireplace or fix a garden. But his life revolved around getting as high as possible, for as long as he could stay awake. I tried to scare him straight, warning about embolisms. A week later, he died from one. A dirty clot. Don’t you hate being right sometimes?
Epilogue
Today, Ed is still alive. Still using. Still trying to quit. His world is smaller, darker. But he’s still here. “I’m Ed,” I can imagine him saying at a drug group, “and I’m still a heroin addict.”
Addendum: From the Horse’s Mouth
Ed once wrote this:
“In the beginning, you’ve found the answer to all your prayers. You feel like God – wrapped in cotton wool. Warm, fuzzy. What a buzz. Better than sex. But in the end, you take heroin just to stay well, to stop the horrors. The worst flu you’ve ever had – cold chills, hot sweats, runny nose, dripping arse. You beg God for one more shot, swearing it’s your last. After a lifetime of cheating yourself and others, you pray to a God you swore didn’t exist – just to make it stop. You beg for death. Suicide isn’t an option; you promised your kids you wouldn’t.”
Another friend once summed it up simply:
“When you’re using, it’s bliss. When you’re not – it’s hell.”