Weasel's Addiction

Weasel’s Addiction – (Spring 2010)

broke'n is a book I have been working on since December that deals mainly with the problem of addiction to synthetic heroin, a drug that is now one of the most widely abused. I have numerous inter-connected  characters, of which several are junkies. This excerpt is a flashback to Spring 2010 (six months before TOSS = time of story start, an abbreviation I use quite a bit); when Weasel a 42 year old man who has spent about half his life in jail/prison has just been released again, and has come back to stay with Monika a friend he met seven years before. They are both junkies, and he is eager to get back to doin pills. Monika has been on methadone during the time he was inside,and is not wanting to be left out. Just to clarify, when he says "' 'done" about half way through, he is abreviateing the word methadone, a common practice with any word used regularly. (In the same way, 'script is the accepted way to say prescription in the drug culture).Both characters have lost contact with their biological family, and see the others as their kin.  For many people, a great deal of the appeal of drug use is community & belonging. Knowing the cause of a problem is often the key to finding the solution. Written January in 2010

He smiled as he remembered a wonderful night last spring just after he got out of jail. He had only been out for a week, and he an Monika had been sitten around in their small and filthy apartment tryna figure out how to get enough cash to get some shit.

“We really need to get another fifty bucks”, said Monika.

“Or we could just get another ten; an I could just go get some shit”

“Oh for fucks sakes Weasel!……….If you’re gonna be stayin here I can’t just sit here an watch you do it!.............. .Jesus! ……………..Like think how you’d feel!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re sayin”, he answered. “It’s just that lets face it Monika, you got your ‘done. You could just go get it. You know that.”

“Yes I fuckin know that! ……………….But Weasel. Now really, if you’re shootin up you know I want some. An don’t use that excuse on me. Man you just got out of the fuckin joint! You’re not even addicted!”

“Maybe not yet……But I will be soon!” he smiled as if relishing the prospect of yet another period of addiction. The only times in the last twenty years when he hadn’t been in active addiction, were the times when he had been inside. Even then he did all he could to get a pill. Mind you, in jail that stuff was even more expensive then out here. But everything had its price, and even in jail it could be found. Many times he and a few others had spilt a 6 or even a 4. In jail every bead in a pill, like in a 6 or a 12 went for a dollar! Just getting a fuckin lighter to cook it up was $100, and a mini bic went for $50! It blew him away sometimes to recall just how much money he had spent in jail on the tiniest amounts of drugs, amounts that out here he wouldn’t even consider to be worth doing. But there was something about the hunt for drugs, finding the cash, doing them secretly, even down to hiding the rig, the one rig that everyone used……No wonder everyone he knew had Hep! That excitement was pretty much all that kept him going on the inside. That, an planning just how much he would do when he got out. Once he got out it was usually just a matter of a week or so till he got back into the addiction. Sometimes when he was nearing the end of a stretch inside he’d talk himself into actually believing that when he got out he was gonna stay clean. It did sound good when he was in jail talking to the chaplain, or one of those damm shrinks who always liked to ask him why he was always addicted within weeks of getting back out side. But once he was out, and back with the same people or ones just like them, the junkies, the ex cons, the people to whom he was somebody, not just a fucked up waste of life, it was inevitable. He’d be out just a few days and someone would hook him up with a shot to celebrate his freedom. And then he’d love it so much that he’d find the money for more. And more, and then would come the morning when he’d wake up feeling hot and sweaty, and sick……and he’d know that his longtime mistress, the beautiful and seductive heroin was back. And nothing would please her but another shot. And then of course it was just a matter of time before he’d be back doing what he did best - crime. The only thing he had ever been any good at. It was a vicious cycle, but one he was now so used to that it was normal. And normal is good; in this mixed up world where his possessions were often just the clothes on his back, heroin was the one constant, the one thing that never changed.