DOSE:	repeated		Heroin
	repeated		Pharms - Dihydrocodeine
	repeated		Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

75 kg

Total madness. I agreed to go on a week long interstate car trip in the middle of winter with my father while sponsoring a 2-300 dollar a day injecting heroin addiction, can't get enough gear for the trip and to top it off I also lose my wallet before departure so my resources are extremely limited. I got a gram off one dude and a bunch of balloons off these other guys (about thirteen fifties) and I'm on my way up. As I was also on a buprenorphine program at the time which my father knew nothing about, I could not transfer my treatment, and the state we were off to (QLD) was really nazified about these things anyway, as my clinic told me I had no chance. That's what all the gear was for, to tide me over.

To start off with and also put off the inevitable madness, I did take my three day dose of 24 milligrams, which put me into instant withdrawals from all the smack I'd been doing, so before I even set off for my fathers place on the train I had the worst sickness as all the heroin was kicked off my receptors and the bupe did it's thing. After four hours of agony the dose held me and I was o.k. for the train ride and all of the next day. I don't think I used my first bit until the second night, or it may even have been the morning of day three, but it was a good start. And boy, was it good. Cruising and chilling, I started on the gram bag and doled it out nice and small, and after one morning hit on the snow white powder I could resist right up until bedtime, and I just relaxed and snoozed in a cucoon of total warmth and bliss, and my old man was none the wiser. First night after travelling for twelve hours I was at the hotel, had my second hit in the bathroom while I showered, and a bong. Hotels are great for this because they all have powerful fans in the ceiling that drags out all the smoke, and my father was happily watching Mr. Bean or something. By now we were already at the border in a small country tourist town.

Anyway, I took a hit for the next morning, again limiting myself to make it last, and we got to our destination deep into Queensland and this situation continued happily and uneventfully for another few days, the little motel was like a small beachside cluster of strange little circular wooden huts but had all the normal facilities of a hotel. I loved the high bunk bed which allowed me to shoot up quietly while my father watched a bit of tv and even chat to me while he was in the same room!

But it could not continue. The gram ran out, and I was so used to taking two fifty dollar ballons at once while on the streets of Sydney I just could not relinquish the habit. I was great gear though, but I was taking so much it only lasted another couple of days and then it all ran out. The final chapter of feeling good approached, and that was washing out all my specially preserved junkie spoons (they are strangely shaped little plastic wells distributed for the purpose of drug injecting) that I had saved up for weeks in a little ziplock baggie, they had had nothing but sterile water and heroin before, and now only dried heroin residue was left, caked on the plastic and little filters. I had about fifty of them! It was a delicate operation, swirling it all up to dissolve it, then withdrawing and moving it onto the next spoon, and repeating, while being careful not to lose a drop, and occasionally adding a drop more saline water as it moved along, I also rinsed a couple of caked up baggies and the gram bag. The final result was clean, but bigger than like, and I had barely enough room to draw before plunging, but what a fucking rescue! It was so good, more than I had hoped for, it felt like a $100+ hit, and I was fine for the final night.

Anyway, I had my one and only 'Trainspotting' type experience, made all the worse because I was stranded and couldn't tell my father (or bring myself to tell) the full story. It really doesn't bear reciting, but you can guess at three days that felt like an eternity, vomiting, sweats, too tired to do anything, to agonised to sleep, cramps, shaking, waking in fright to sudden seizures. I had to pull out of family visits which was a real shame and told my father it was just a really bad flu/stomach bug/whatever... So this bizarre little yurtlike hut became my solitary abode for the final hellish portion of my 'holiday'. What can I say, I knew it was coming and did not plan properly, was not honest to people, there was a lesson in karma.

Anyway, in parallels to 'Trainspotting' my father had his own socially acceptable addiction courtesy of his local GP -benzodiazepines, namely clonazepam or Rivotril as it is known here. Anyway he forgot to bring his 'dope' and on the first night while I was cruising he sadly suffered a major late night panic attack, and I felt really sorry for him and was hinting in a roundabout way that maybe some of my pot might help. He was having none of that so he set off for a chemist, then a local hospital and explained the problem. As I said it is a really weird state and so at the chemist made him give his address[!] for restavit non prescription sleep stuff (which is nothing more than glorified flu medicine!) and I took that as the norm for this place. But then he goes as a stranger to an interstate hospital at midnight with no proof and they give him ten valiums to take back!!! Go figure.

So at the time I had no interest because I was all set, but flash forwards two and a half days and I'm thanking god that here I am stranded and fucking strung out and here I've got some antihistamines, diazepam (much better than Dad's real meds actually because its got more muscle relaxing effects and the dosage is better) and pot. I decided to talk Dad around to my way instead of just swiping them, I only took one val at night and two restavits over the day, he wasn't keen but accepted my request. The pot helped with the nausea and dysphoria. Finally it's time to go home via my sister's place, who lives up there and is very anti drug and suspicious of me in that area. I decide to buckle down and just sink into a deep rut, feeling sick and tired and not having the energy or confidence to chase up a score or among strange places and people even though I had the money.

But this cough had been coming on with my withdrawals and so amazingly, like manna from heaven this chemist pops up on the highway and I get the idea to make dad stop so I can get some syrup. What a world- syrup. In the past I'd got methadone, normethadone [whatever that is it worked], pure codeine linctus, ethylmorphine and codeine together, and the trusted, Rickodeine (dihydrocodeine tartrate). I go in with a good story (dry, raspy, unproductive ticklish cough with no other symptoms, always works) and see the Rickodeine bottle staring me in the face, like a gift from a sympathetic nonexistent God, begging me to buy it. But I'll be damned if the woman doesn't steer me to the shit put out by her own pharmacy, she doesn't suspect me but is very insistent. It's pholcodine or some crap, totally inactive. But I get my opening, the Rickodeine was cheaper, and I had the perfect excuse, she couldn't argue with that, I said I needed to save my dough (a bit of a laugh when I still had three crisp green hundreds in my pocket!) and she relented. So then the final step is I have to sign the book [I don't get these people] and just as I do in walks my father...'Signing the book, eh? Sounds like strong stuff -I hope you're going to swig the whole bottle to get high are ya, heh, heh?' And I'm thinking, please, no this can't be happening, please keep quiet just this once. I nervously laugh it off and the woman doesn't twig. I'm outta there before it gets any more fucked up and we're driving again.

Because the subject came up, I go easy on the dosage, and don't exceed the max number of daily doses for another two days. I make it past my sister's harangue, and we're on the road. One last night at a hotel, dad successfully discouraged me from buying some spirits to top off the soothing warmth of the syrup, then off through freezing windy highlands in mid winter. I feel I'm on the home stretch, and just follow the label for my syrup dosing, and keep strictly parsimonious. Although covered entirely in jackets and blankets, my fingers and toes succumb to the cold of the car and I lose all feeling in my extremities, but by the end of the night I'm back in my nice warm bed at my father's and the final night was a breeze. Dad thought it odd that I could be so keen to catch the train home since I had apparently been so ill, but one more day after arriving I set off for my home in the city.

The 200ml bottle had held up for me admirably, and I had nearly a third of a bottle left. I just couldn't help myself. Down the hatch it went, and for two hours on the train I actually felt great! Can you believe that, a junkie hanging out to score but cough syrup, as homer said, innocent, children's cough syrup had me buzzing and dozing like a first timer!!! Nevertheless, as soon as I got back to my apartment I was off to the mailroom, straight into my letterbox for the replacement bankcard from my wallet losing incident. It was a sunday, see, so I really needed my card [thank god I ordered it a week ago!] and like a bullet I was off to my dealer and everything was back to normal again...aaaahhhhh. Sweeeet junk. My flatmate wasn't too happy with me, but I felt great. But the moral is, dihydrocodeine saved me. Never forget it [I won't] when in need.

Bill Burroughs said 'Trust the nazis to make invent something twice as strong as codeine, almost as good as heroin and with a wired coke like edge to boot.' I think he was right. Hooray for dihydrocodeine, I couldn't have done it without you!

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 64731
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 30, 2010	Views: 36,385
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Heroin (27), Pharms - Dihydrocodeine (392) : Not Applicable (38), Multi-Day Experience (13), Families (41), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11)