DOSE:

IV

Heroin

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

What the hell is going on?!!? What the hell is happening?. Everything is so far away. I can’t really make out what is going on around me, but there is a bunch of shit happening. There is movement and noise, I just can’t quite tell what it is. Who is that? What is that noise? I am confused, like coming to after an all-consuming psychedelic experience. I can see, but I am not quite sure what is real and what isn’t. Everything has a strange feel to it and I can’t quite recognize where I am. Hell, I can’t even quite put my finger on who I am.

After a few more moments of this- or maybe it was minutes, hours even- things start to come in a little more clearly. I am in a room, a bed room. There is a bed, but I am not on it. I am on the floor. What the fuck? I don’t even know if I am sitting or laying. Everything is so God damned far away it is hard to make sense of anything. There are people here, one, maybe more, I can’t tell yet. There is a woman. She is crying. Sobbing hysterically would probably be a better description. Oh my god! It’s my wife! Honey! What is wrong? I can’t figure out why she is crying. Oh God! Did I hurt her?? I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, would I? What the fuck is going on? What have I done? Who the hell is that?! I realize that there are other people in the room. They are bustling about talking. Talking to me! What kind of uniforms are those? It starts to dawn on me that these are paramedics.

I can remember a bit about who I am now. I try to tell them everything is all right, I am all right. There seems to be a disconnect between my brain and my mouth. Everything that they are saying sounds as though it is coming through water, through a reverb pedal. Everything is coming across a great distance. The sounds that I am making are far away. They don’t make sense, even to me. The reverb effect between my thoughts and my mouth are too intense. I am babbling about being all right and these paramedic people are talking into radios about possible seizures. What the fuck? I don’t get seizures. .

Then it dawns on me. Christ! I did a shot earlier. These people must think I did too much. honey, I am ok!! Honey! “I am ok” I manage to say. This doesn’t seem to have the desired effect of calming people down. The paramedics are asking me easy questions. They are difficult to answer, though. I can’t even form the words, much less think of the answers. What day is it? What the hell kind of question is that? It’s. . . Oh shit.

I manage to sit up. Or stand up. I am really not sure which. Now I am starting to put things together. I was getting high earlier in the day. What time is it? I did a shot in the morning, just a small one. I did another shot in the afternoon. It was another small one. Christ, the one twenty-dollar balloon was good for four or five shots like this. After the second shot, I began to feel a little bit nauseous. A little too warm was all. I figured I would grab an ice pack and lie down on the bed. Laying on one’s back always helps with opiate related nausea (nicotine too, if I remember right from my teen years. . .)

Shit, I realize that where there are paramedics and firemen (who I now realize are also part of the bustle), there are also cops. They must not be here yet. I gotta dump this shit! Bad enough to get everyone all worried for no reason, but possession charge could really mess things up! I tell everyone that I have to use the bathroom and they seem to think this is ok. There is a bathroom attached to my master bedroom, which I have now realized is the location of my current situation. I get in the bathroom and close the door. Quickly, at least I think it was quickly, I unscrew the lid to my key-chain pill container (the current housing for my stash) and dump it into the toilet. Unfortunately, to keep my stash from bouncing around out of it’s corner-baggie, I had secured my little blob of tar-in-a-baggie with a piece of tissue paper stuffed in on top of it to keep it separate from my advil and flexeril. The pills fell right in, but the black tar was held in place by a baggie that was held in place by a little bit of ass-wipe stuck in the container. This turned out to be particularly difficult for my mind and hand disconnect to navigate.

I am reminded of a Pink Floyd song, my hands felt just like two balloons. . . People in the room started to get worried and wanted me to open the door. So I cracked it, and managed to get the dope out and into the toilet. FLUSH!!. Some of the advil stuck to the inside of the toilet and did not go down, but I did not care about that. The dope was gone.

Seeing the pills, and not knowing what they were, was my wife’s first realization that this might be something other than her seemingly healthy husband nearly dropping dead from a seizure out of the blue. She did not say anything at this point though.

I have by this time realized that I am probably in bad shape. So, I let the paramedic people accompany me down my stairs and out to the waiting bus. They still don’t know anything about any drugs. Since I am alone with them in the bus, I know that patient confidentiality applies at this point (not to mention I still have not seen any cops, not that this is a bad thing) so I level with them. I had done some dope earlier in the day. But the amount!! The amount was really small! And it was. The dealer had said “Be careful with this stuff,” but they all say that, you know?

The medic doesn’t know that this was an overdose or whether it was just a bad reaction to something that was in it. However, I am informed at this point that I had quit breathing and that my wife had done CPR to keep me alive. Oh my God! Oh God, I am so sorry honey! What have I done? That poor woman. Oh God.

I didn’t let the paramedics or doctors at the hospital say anything in front of my wife. I did not want her finding out this way. She needed to hear it from me. So I told her. There at the hospital after the doctor had left for a little while and we were alone. I know that about broke her heart. She knows that I had a past with this kind of thing. I never did have any truly close calls with it before. She also knew that I was done with this part of my life. And I was done. Right up until the day before when I decided to score some. I don’t know what brought that choice on, but that doesn’t really matter now.

She told me that I died in her arms. That I took my last breath and died. Right there with her holding me.

Apparently, after I had gone up to lay down she had stayed down stairs. By some lucky, amazing chance she decided to walk upstairs to use the other restroom, which is outside of the master bedroom where I was. She happened to walk by at the right time to hear me groan. Not knowing what this was about, she went in and found me laying on my back with my arms outstretched straight over my head, eyes rolled back into my head, and emitting a choking, groaning sound. Unable to get me to respond, she called 911 immediately. It was soon after that that I stopped breathing altogether. I stopped breathing and my lips turned blue.

She began CPR. Luckily she had done a lot of babysitting as a young woman and had taken a CPR class then. This went on for a while. I don’t know how long and neither does she. It’s not something that I care to ask her about, because I am sure that reliving it is something that she will do enough without any help from me to remind her. I guess that I came back and became responsive again right about the time the firemen arrived.

To make a long story less long, I ended up spending the night in the hospital. I had a low blood potassium level which concerned them with the whole lack of oxygen, muscle shutting down thing that I went through. I am writing this several hours after getting home the next day. I have been taking care of my wife- this ordeal has made her physically ill. She is finally resting peacefully. To think of how close I came to not seeing this new year. To think of how much pain I caused my loving and wonderful wife. To think of the devastation that my death from something so meaningless would have left behind. To think of not being able to do the little things, like pet my cat, savor a glass of ice water, or to pass another boring and stressful day at work.

I have too much about this life that I love to give it all up over something that is really so meaningless to me in the end. My days as a chemical warrior are over.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 58570
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 25, 2007	Views: 41,161
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