Chapter 7: Barry’s Revival
Heroin withdrawals are in a league of their own, but withdrawing from meth is no picnic either. There’s virtually no physical pain, but the emotional throes and suicidal emptiness can be more disturbing and less methodical than that of ceasing heroin use. You actually fight to not kill yourself, whereas with heroin, the amount of pain is simply too distracting. You still want to die sometimes - trust me - but you know that you’re just too brittle to pull it off.
I had just turned twenty-three, had no contact with family, no foreseeable future, was a college dropout, full blown drug addict, and possessed no will to try to get my life in order. Things weren’t good by any measure, but they were so bad that depression would have been a luxury. Depression takes hold when you have something to live for, but the confines of your own mental instability prevent you from moving forward.
This wasn’t that. I was waiting out the days until Alex kicked me out of his house, and I would go back to living on the streets until I wound up in jail or dead – either from an outside source or self-inflicted. I accepted all of this, and it left me to only dwell on the present. With no concern for the near future - or even the next hour – I was at peace with the gradient of my downfall; I knew that I had already been dredging myself along the bottom of my storyline for quite some time. This is freedom in reverse. Of course, I was wrong about this notion, but a drug addict usually is. You can - and will - always sink deeper, and you’ll most certainly find death before you dig your way to sovereignty.
Had it been available, this would have been the perfect time to commit to long-term treatment. I had hit an emotional bottom, was scared shitless from the repercussions of my drug use, and would have been willing to go into any program. But upon going to the social services office all they offered me was information on a methadone clinic. Fortunately, I didn’t take them up on this suggestion, and returned to Alex’s house to wait out my eventual relapse.
Meth, it turned out, was not easy to quit. Although it lacks the physical addiction of heroin, the obsession is monolithic. The noise between my ears grew louder with each day, until a fortnight had passed and I sold one of my spare bikes on Craigslist. Now with cash in my pocket, the noise grew deafening, vibrating down into my torso and steering me back to San Francisco.
The street heroin in SF was garbage in those days – it would be more accurate to call it shoe polish cut with heroin, than heroin cut with shoe polish – so I wasn’t going to buy any tar until I could find a reliable connect. However, crystal was relatively decent across the board in the city, and could be purchased on the street without much concern of getting ripped off. Downtown San Francisco was filled to the brim with cheap, mid-quality meth, so there wasn’t much need for anyone to sell fake shit.
Being a heroin addict at heart, I can deal with sub-par meth, but when it comes to my drug of choice, I either want something of superior quality or nothing at all. This was mostly due to the fact that I was still smoking it; when I eventually started to shoot heroin, I became more open-minded towards inferior product – at first. In a needle, even low-quality heroin can provide some amount of a head change. Eventually this levels out and you go back to being a snob.
The relapse commenced, and so did the same old loathsome behavior. After traversing back alleys in hopes of finding a decent pile of trash, I lurked across the intersection of Eighth and Market around dawn. Just as I took a seat at the bus stop to gather the chaos, I heard a genial voice hollering to get my attention. Darting my eyes across the four-lane road, I made eye contact with a very small human. A person of unknown gender waved at me, I responded with a nod, and then they motioned with the same hand for me to cross the street and approach. Normally I’d be cautious, but this tiny person posed no foreseeable threat.
He was no more than five-foot-two, had long gleaming black hair, and was dressed in a style that could most easily be described as ambiguous. I assumed he was going to offer me money to have sex with him. This assumption wasn’t made with prejudice; I was offered money and/or drugs for sex on a near daily basis whenever I was in San Francisco. Believe me, I’m not trying to brag; I was far from a stud. Realistically I was nothing more than a scraggy young kid who looked desperate– which is apparently all you need to get laid in that city. Of course, a woman never made this offer to me, and although flattered in a way, I never accepted any of the hundred or so proposals I received from men while roaming the SF streets. Fortunately, I was able to sustain my drug habit from other means, but sometimes I think about how much easier it could have been if I were willing to cross that boundary. I know a lot of people that did, and I have nothing but respect for them. I was just never man enough.
The mystery person introduced himself to me as Jme – pronounced Jamie, but I would later find out that he spelled it with just three letters – and asked me if I had any crystal for sale. I didn’t want to sell the amount that I had, but one thing led to another, and he invited me to his apartment to get high. It turned out he had quite a bit of crystal himself, and eventually admitted that he was merely lonely and looking to make a friend. Shit, so was I. He was clearly gay, and I told him that I was straight and had no desire to even discuss sex. This wasn’t out of bigotry, but rather out of paranoia due to my recent run in with the world of human trafficking.
After the trauma of the suitcase situation, I was overly cautious in the realm of mixing meth with strangers. In the drug world, discrimination is an ugly yet necessary safety precaution – especially if you’re in San Francisco and dealing with meth. Going into the wrong hotel room or following a person down the wrong alley could mean the sacrifice of your manhood. Trust me, I’ve had to jump out of a window once or twice to keep mine intact. When you enter some unknown tweaker’s apartment, you never know how many depraved fiends might be lurking. You always keep one hand in your jacket pocket, clutching a knife that’s ready to slice a jugular just in case a first introduction goes south. Jme’s apartment, however, turned out to be quite orderly, absent of any additional people, and devoid of potential threats.
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