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I never saw my dad much as a kid so the times I saw him I remember completely. I saw him shoot up when I was little. Then in the fifth grade we were doing that whole nancy reagan dare bullshit and were assigned a research paper on a drug, we were assigned the drug too, at random. I got heroin. So through my research paper I learned what my dad was prolly doin that day I saw him shootin. While reading I was getting turned onto the heroin, thinking hey this must be pretty nice shit.... I hadn't smoked weed or really drank yet but it wasn't because I had the FEAR, or because of nancy's brainwashing... I just hadnt had a chance to yet. I still dont think drugs are wrong, there isnt much that I do think is wrong.... After the report was over I tried to read Naked Lunch but it scared me and I didnt understand it at all. Heroin wasn't an everyday thought until my junior year of high school. before then though I would notice that people I'd like, authors or actors or musicians... they always turned out to be junkies. And I would find this out AFTER I'd already liked them. It was such an impact because it was like ok what is this thing that all these great people and great minds use.... so the obsession was starting.... and then my leg/knees fucked up and I was on all the pain pills. when the `scripts stopped I tried looking for h. I'd only smoked weed a few times up to that point, though I was already on the road to alcoholism. I wasn't able to find any H connections, which isnt surprising cuz I was in small-town ohio and had no way of getting to the city. One day in chemistry this guy I'd had a "crush" on (Randy #1) said to me "I heard you do heroin...?" and I didnt know what to say, cuz I hadn't but I HAD asked around to find it so I can see where the rumors started but I didnt answer Randy and he said "that's awesome" and I never denied it after that so for the next year and a half everyone thought I was a former junkie or something. I kept looking for H, when I fianally got to spend some time in the city I never was able to find any. I dont think it was around Columbus until the gutter-punks started coming around in 2000 (but I'll get to that later) I did manage to become addicted to chrystal meth accidently. We'd gotten a bag of weed with grains of salty lookin stuff in it, didnt notice till after we got it home so we were like lets smoke it anyway. we didnt care what it was ya know.... it was the best weed EVER!! eventually we started just smoking the chrystal stuff at the bottom of the bag after the weed was gone. Then we started separating the shards as best we could and finally we just asked the guy if we could get it without the weed. this is about when I tried to shoot it, not knowing how to cook it or ho wmuch to use or how/where to inject etc. well I learned the hardway cuz I broke a vein or something and blood leaked out all under the skin of my forearm, right in the middle of creative writing (we were sent outside to get creative so me and "dude" went into the parking lot and shot up) so I'm flipping out in class and others are noticing, I run out, "dude" runs after me. We end up in the guys room, he slices my arm open a bit with his knife and we bleed my arm out into the sink. my inner-elbow was way fucking bruised for a long time. so anyway after that I dont think we even smoked the meth.... that was my senior year. my first year of college on my birthday I walked to the main post office to see if I'd gotten any packages and I hadnt so I was depressed and this older (40's-ish) hippie lady asked me what was wrong so I talked to her for a little bit and it turns out she was just getting back in town from Garcia's memorial. I say "didn't he die in august?" (it was november) and she said "yeah but I ran into an old buddy I hadnt seen in a long time and I stayed around for a while" "oh that must have been nice, was it an exboyfriend or something?" and she says "no, actually I'm being fecitious, it was black tar heroin..." and I was like eyes all lit up "REALLY? sweet!" and she said "you've done that?" so I lie and say "well powder, not tar, it'd be nice to try that though" and then she tells me that that night shes having a get together with a couple friends and they were all gonna try it cuz she'd brought back a bunch. she gave me her number and address and said it was totally cool for me to drop by. I went nuts the rest of the day cuz I knew what this meant, I've always known it: I would not stop at one. I would be shooting up for the rest of my life, and that was fine with me (and still is). so I was flipping out cuz I wasnt sure if I was really ready to do that and I wasnt in the best health mentally (see tuna noodle casserole/coker entries) so I circled the university scratching my neck (used to scratch myself compulsively when stressed) for almost 8 hours until some lady came out of a mental health center I kept passing and asked me to come inside. she found it hilarious that I was debating whether or not to become a junkie. so she kept me occupied all night, took the number and addy away from me. so ok about the same time I start writing to Territorial Pissings nirvana mailing list and make friends with Lon. I played up the heroin stuff on there, I never said I'd used but around the time I joined they'd been discussing the heroin referrences in nirvana songs and I was all like "you missed these 500...." I mean they hadnt even mentioned aneurysm, um hello are you a fucked idiot or what.... so then all of a sudden I was the heroin expert and that MUST mean I use so Lon thought I was. I never told him I didn't cuz I didnt wanna lose my credibility to the list plus I was beginning to really like Lon and didnt want to scare him off. So I didnt tell him that I'd never used dope until 6 months after we'd met in real life. I expected him to dump me but he understood. but then he got really nervous cuz I was totally obsessed with it and he was worried I'd find it. well I finally found it in february 2001. I was in a sociology class where we had to do a huge like 50 page case study report that took up the whole quarter doin research. it had to be about a problem a columbus minority group was either having or causing. most stuck to the whole rising HIV rates in women/hispanics, or the common young black males and crime etc well I chose to study the gutterpunks that were suddenly hanging around all over the campus area of OSU. I call them gutterpunks cuz thats what they called themselves. basically they were homeless punk rockers/anarchists who migrated along with the weather (and concerts perhaps). Columbus was never a stop on their tour until someone heard that Columbus was a kickass "little" town (which it is...). With the punks came a huge surge of hardcore drugs, and a significant rise in graffiti and small crimes on campus. so I befriended them, got in with their "gang" and wrote one fucking good case study. too good.... Noodles scored for me first. actually his friend sold me some bunk shrooms and I ended up selling them for double what I paid so I wasnt so mad. I was also supposed to get some H with the shrooms but they "had to go get it and would be right back"... I saw noodles again a week later, he was dope sick. I asked if he wanted to split a bag, he said no$ so I said I'd pay. we scored and he got high in the bathroom of a coffee house. he didnt have any extra rigs so I never did any that night but I managed to buy a whole box (100) needles the next day before I tried to find him. and I couldnt find him for four days. It was Feb 20th, Cobain's bday. I didnt wanna do the dope myself cuz was scared of fucking up like the first time with the meth. so I found him and he was sick again and I said "hey I still got that bag we got last week" and he got all happy so we drove over to this goth bar and got high in the parking lot and then went in and did "scarey-okee" then he spent the night at my house and had decided to try to get into rehab the next morning. so I had him score for me again before I dropped him off at rehab. I saw him a couple days later and he was wayyy high and I was too.... and we stayed that way for about two months then he disappeared cuz he'd robbed a coffeehouse and took everything from a mutual friend's (Kyle)apartment.... Kyle scored for me a few times and didnt expect any of my bag which was a nice change but then he's the kind of junkie that gets clean when he's got a girlfriend then relapses when they break up. so he'd quit cuz he'd met "the girl of his dreams" and wouldnt score for me but he set me up with Griff, who I'd met once through Noodles. They both had the same dealer while Kyle had a different one, Kyle's dealer sold weaker shit so even though Griff would steal half my bag and not let me come with him to score it was still worth it. and then it became not-so-worth it and finally I found some other gutterpunk (Kelly) desperate enough to trade me a meeting with a dealer for a shot... so she intro'ed me to her man and he became my man.... that was in June. everything was fine till Lon lost his job after 9/11 cuz the plant was closing and our money ran out. we were doin about $150 a day at that point. My brother flipped out and called my mom and told her what I was doin and she made us go into rehab, me in NY Lon in Ohio. we stayed clean two months then started again. blah blah I've told this part already go read reintroductions!

Always remember to quit while you're ahead.

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