day 3

so this is day 3 of my subutex. suprisingly, i dont feel too bad at all. last night was pretty awful though, dizzy spells that led to fainting a couple of times, vomitting. but there is nothing i can do; subutex blocks the effects of heroin, so i might aswell set fire to my money than stick it in my vein. cant do that anyway; my arms and legs are in such a mess…. bruises everywhere, torn veins where i have missed my hits (with crack in them too, which in my experience, always leads to an abcess). my last ever hit i had on wednesday (you have to stop using for 24 hours before you take subutex) and i didn’t even get it… i couldn’t find a vein so blood that seeped in just clogged up my hit. squirted it out, recooked it in the spoon to get rid of the clots, put it back in a syringe, tried again. couldn’t get it. in the end, i just injected in my foot, but missed half of it so now im walking around like a cripple. nobody seems to realise how much damage injecting does, you loose your veins; most old-timers i know (old-timers being in their 20s, 30s) have to go in their necks or like me, their groins. and when they go…. so have one of your legs and you have to go back to smoking it. i don’t miss the hours it took me to find a vein.
i am finding it hard to fathom how for the past years i have nonstop used heroin and crack, injecting it into my body on a daily basis. completely not caring about the consequences. the first thing i did when i exited hospital after my overdoses was, yes you guessed it, go and scored again. i didn’t care. i’m dreading to think what i have done to my body. scary. scary because heroin is the ultimate painkiller, now i dont have that, and my body is starting to ache. big time.
im going to go to the chemist and pick up my two 8mg subbies, highest dose, which you let dissolve under your tongue. i am so glad i didn’t go on methadone but as i said in my last post, i only chose methadone so i could STILL use. like, its my birthday on October 1st and before i got my subbies, sitting in the doctors waiting room i was like “but what if you want to use on special occassions, like your birthday, you can’t. go on methadone, but just use every few months, naomi” then i realised what lies i was telling myself, what i had been telling myself for years. i cannot touch heroin. at all. i can’t control myself when i use it so i am going to have to accept that if i want to have any form of decent life i have to cut it out forever. which i will find hard, as i sit here romanticising the ‘good times’
but then i think, what good times? it was only good for the first couple. everything beyond that was just to stay well and heed off withdrawing. i am wincing at the money i have spent. in excess of £120+ a day at my worse. what i could of done with that. oh well, this must of happened for a reason, right?

make or break

I guess you can pretty much say this is 'make or break time' now. I do believe for certain things and certain people, change can happen at any point. I have this gut feeling though, that if I do not turn things around now, I never will. I have already lost 8 years to drugs and I can easily see myself losing the other X amount, also. And if I carry on, nothing will be carved in stone except for the fact those X amount of years probably will not go into double figures. So, on the 25th September at 2pm I have an appointment with the doctor to be put on Subutex. I did not want to go on methadone- to me, it really was no better than heroin apart from the fact it was

1. free; so it kept me away from the constant need to find money any way and any how and
2. needed to be taken just once orally; no injecting needed
3. safe; no worries about purity, that it might be poison, etc. etc. 100% clean from a reliable source.

Though, obviously, as most of you will know, methadone has its downsides. People are heavily divided about it- both opiate addicts and their families, health professionals etc. When I was on my methadone maintanence programmes I discovered a lot of negative points and I really did not see myself progress in any which way or form. Like many others, I continued to use heroin and just used methadone as a safety net- it was there for when I couldn't get any heroin, so I didn't have to endure the dreadful ordeal that is cold turkey. These downsides consisted of

1. Drowsiness; I still carried on dozing off. Even when I lowered my dose from 60ml to 50ml.
2. Collecting; I had to pick up my methadone 7 days a week from Boots at the Grafton Center, along with god knows how many other junkies which meant we were all passing each other, just like we used to, but instead of going to our illegal dealer, we were going to the state supported one. We just tempted one another, and it was all to easy to approach somebody else picking up their script and ask if they wanted to go halfs on a bag. We couldn't leave the 'scene' behind.
3. Isolation; Once I no longer had to score heroin (which is, as we know, a full-time business) I got in with old friends and began to spend less and less time in the scene. But you had to go everyday to pick up your script, and drink it infront of the pharmacist, and your friends if you hadn't given them a good enough excuse for why they should wait outside. You couldn't with the money you saved from not having to buy heroin, go away for a weekend to say, Brighton. You needed to be in Cambridge to pick up your script.
4. Addictiveness; Methadone is a lot stronger than heroin and takes, obviously, a lot longer to come off.
5. Sugar; It took me ages to get sugar-free methadone, and this was only after complaining and comparing my teeth to everyone elses, or rather, the gaps where everyone elses used to be. My friend Becky is 32, her top teeth are rotted beyond repair.

I will have to go to the pharmacy everyday for my Subutex but the difference is, Subutex blocks the effects of heroin. There isn't much of a point in me taking it, not like with methadone. My sleeping patterns have dramatically changed; I get up at about 6am every morning now so my plan is to go to the chemist as early as possible to avoid everyone else (lets face it- if I'm not sleeping now I'm on heroin, what chance do I have when I stop it!?!). I will have to rattle for over 24 hours before I go to my appointment and collect my prescription for one Subutex. This is because, the first time you take it, if you have heroin or methadone in your system you go into an instant, violent withdrawal. No thank you. I can't cope with a normal withdrawal, so I'd had to experience that. Urgh.

I am really looking forward to this. May seem strange to say that, looking forward to feeling so damn ill when you know you could just spend £10 and rid yourself of that unbearable pain. But thats just it... you rid yourself of the physical pain for a couple of hours then you need to go and get more money to stop it starting again. And you do so much bad shit, you degrade yourself, abuse yourself, sell your dignity... all for something that doesn't even last longer than a few hours. Something that has helped destroy your life beyond repair. See what I mean about the make or break.... either I do it this time, or I just resign myself to the fact I don't want to change, and I will carry on my life of utter misery, disgusting behaviour and lawlessness. I just hope and pray I do it this time. This time... everything is resting on it.