The Big Fix

by Tracey Helton Mitchell

  The writer pleads with me to explain to her what I did to stay clean. I push myself back into my chair. I need to take a moment. When I read these kinds of messages, I try to knock all of the elements of my rational mind down a notch and let my emotions flood in. It would be really easy to provide a long list of clinical advice. First you need to do this, then that, and good luck to you. But that is not what this person is seeking. When people contact me, they want a connection. They saw me on the screen. They feel as if they know me. This person wants to connect with me, the addict. She wants to know what I did to put myself in that place again when I was struggling to keep the needle out of my neck. She doesn’t want some rote catchphrases devised in rehab. She wants me to reflect and respond.

  Her words make my heart ache. I know this pain. While thirty-two days is enough time to physically feel much better, the road to real restoration is a much longer path. When I look at her face in the compressed photo next to her name, I see myself at twenty-seven. She has that overly made-up face, a mask to deflect from her emotions. I remember standing at the mirror putting on eyeliner like it was somehow a ring that would hold back my tears. I caked foundation on my scars, applied lipstick to draw away from my chipped front tooth.

  She sees me as a heroine.

  To a generation of young people struggling with addiction, I am known as the heroine of heroin. The documentary this woman is referring to—Black Tar Heroin—featured me when I was a junkie in my mid-twenties. It was aired on HBO in 1998 and still has a cult following around the world. Articles have been written about me since then extolling the fact that I have done what seemed completely impossible: I have been clean since February 27, 1998. That makes an impression on anyone who knows anything about this drug. When I agreed to do the film, I thought I would soon be dead from an overdose or homicide and that my story would be no more than a cautionary tale that would live on long after I was gone. My story is now one of transformation. I have escaped what has killed so many others.

  This young woman is reaching out to me for answers. I might have a few, but I’m not sure I can fully explain in a few sentences what has taken me so long to learn. I can try. I need to explain that recovery is a long process full of ups and downs. Getting off heroin is just the start. The real work comes after you put down the drugs. Heroin controls every element of your life. Heroin dictates your finances, your sex life, your family relationships, your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual condition.

  I always take a few minutes to collect my thoughts before replying to such a thoughtful message. I reflect on the massive changes in my life since I stopped slowly poisoning myself. Why was I one of the few to get out of that life? Why was it me? What is it about me that made my story so different from that of hundreds of young people I knew who died in addiction? I was what is known as a low-bottom junkie. My using took me into horrors rarely witnessed, and rarely escaped.

  I was using heroin during the era of AIDS. When a friend first pushed a needle into my arm, it was a used one. We would use the same needle—hoping it wouldn’t break off in our arm—until the numbers on the side of the syringe wore off. Needle exchange programs and other services to assist users were nonexistent where I grew up in the Midwest. If you went to the hospital for an overdose or an infection, you could easily be taken to jail. People who had overdosed were dumped on the street, in hallways, or, if they were lucky, outside the hospital. A heroin user was considered to be the lowest of the low in society. We were told AIDS was cosmic retribution for our sins. The world would be a better place if we all just died off.

  Heroin was expensive back then. The first time I tried it, I paid $30 for a bag that I split with another person. The bag started out at one-tenth of a gram. I have little doubt one of my friends dipped into the bag before I did. This was probably for the best. Recently one of our friends had overdosed and had to be revived, so everyone agreed I should only do half of that bag. “You can always do more,” my friends said. “You can never do less.” It was a “stamp” bag from New York City. It was engraved with 666. This should have been an omen. To me, it was a dream come true. After a year of planning it, I was finally going to try heroin.

  I was cautious, afraid to put my life in the hands of another junkie who had agreed to inject me. My friend reminded me that this was something I had wanted to try for a long time. I held my breath, then motioned for my friend who had agreed to inject me to go ahead. It was exciting and terrifying at the same time, but nothing would stop me from experiencing the ultimate high.

  Heroin was not widely available in the U.S. at the time—it took us months to find it. It was clustered mostly in larger cities like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York City, and San Francisco. These cities had what are called open-air drug markets on street corners where heroin could be purchased. New York had storefronts that doubled as drug houses. A person could purchase a pack of gum and a bundle of heroin. My friends and I would travel to large cities to buy it and bring it back. When that ran out, we would go back to our normal routine—school, work, life—occasionally taking pills we stole from our parents. It was tough to have enough access to really get addicted. The first time I experienced any type of withdrawal, no one could tell me what was wrong with me.

  The world in which this young woman lives now is entirely different from the one I left seventeen years ago.

  Now heroin is readily available across most of the U.S. From the cities to the suburbs, heroin has penetrated most communities. If you have the funds, it can even be ordered off “dark market” sites on the Internet and shipped directly to your front door. Mexican cartels have been creating routes straight through the border to towns in the Midwest, where deaths from prescription drugs used to be king. As the government cracks down on legal opiates, users are turning to heroin as a less expensive substitute. This includes places like Cincinnati, near where I grew up. I went there recently for a benefit for their controversial new syringe exchange program. Users there reported to me that the streets are so flooded with heroin, dealers are known to hand out free samples to get new customers. Free samples! I am not sure I would have survived this current era.

  Heroin has moved from the shadows into the living room. Somehow it has managed to become a more social experience. I hear about groups of high school students who started out stealing their parents’ pills and end up railing lines of heroin together on the weekends during marathon Xbox sessions. When I started using heroin as a recreational user I was repeatedly told within social circles and by mere acquaintances that I was a “loser” and “ruining my life.” Friends of mine were scolded by their friends for even associating with me. By the time I stopped using, many of these same people were asking me to get heroin for them. Heroin in social groups takes off like deadly dominoes, knocking people off one by one, until someone breaks the cycle. Users compare the process to making vampires: You hate the person who started you on the path, yet you find yourself creating new victims. That way you will not be so alone.

  Heroin is now cheap, a ridiculous idea when I think of my twenty-two-year-old memories. With a few minor exceptions, heroin is cheaper in many places than a mixed drink at a bar or a pack of cigarettes. No more scrimping and saving and planning are necessary. A person can make a split-second decision to use that may change the course of his or her life. The woman who wrote me that message lives in a world where heroin is an option, not an exclusion. It isn’t a struggle to get an affordable experience, one that has the potential for dire, unexpected consequences.

  Heroin is also now extremely potent. In my using days, the heroin I was getting was tested at 20 to 38 percent pure. When street heroin would reach higher levels of purity, there were clusters of overdose deaths that followed. One nice lady in the cell next to me when I was in jail in 1996 had a brother who had died of an overdose, and she got a special overnight pass to attend his funeral. A few days later, the inmates received word she had also overdosed and died. A family was destroye
d, taken by heroin in just a few days. Her son would no longer have a mother. But that was “heroin-lite” compared to what is now available to the young woman who wrote to me. Some samples recently tested on the East Coast are up to 70 percent pure.

  I also did not have to worry about deadly additives like fentanyl back when I was using. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, looks like heroin but is much more potent. Clusters of users have been killed by the dozens across the U.S. when they unwittingly get a batch laced with this substance. There are so many risks, yet there are new users sampling heroin on a daily basis, trying to escape depression and anxiety, or just to get a taste of the euphoria that only this drug can deliver.

  It takes a lot of courage to reach out to a stranger. As I think about what to say to this woman, I wonder what I could possibly say that might make a difference. I want to honor her confession. I have moved through the same dark tunnel out to the other side. To an observer, my life might seem removed from that place. It can now be quite ordinary. I have loads of laundry that need to be folded. I need to take the dog to get her shots. We just got another parking ticket for not moving the minivan on street-sweeping day. I have a pile of work on my desk. My to-do list is constantly overflowing, like my toilet when my child stuffed it with a bunch of wet wipes.

  What did I do to get my life back? I cannot sum it up in 140 characters on Twitter. I can’t explain my process in just a few words. For people trying to hold on for their lives, the entirety of my story provides some answers. There is no quick fix when your drug of choice is heroin. I have searched for them. I would read elongated war stories about addiction. I would be curled up in a ball while I nibbled on a pint of ice cream. When I read these stories, I was still deep in the beating heart of drug addiction. I had the blood on my arms to prove it. As if by magic, the writer would get clean in the last chapter: “And now I have a fabulous life.” The End. Or maybe the person died. Fuck. This wasn’t helping me. It was the literary equivalent of a long sex session where your partner finishes, rolls over, and falls asleep. I lay there wanting more. I craved more. I needed more. I was looking for something I never really found. So I decided to create it.

  I type out a couple sentences.

  “Thanks so much for contacting me. Congrats on getting clean!” I stop. It feels as if the weight of the world is on my shoulders. Until the day I hit rehab, I never knew anyone who had gotten off drugs. I knew people who had died. Then there were some who went to prison. There were some who just disappeared one day. Clean was a rumor. Clean was a fairy tale. Clean was an island in the never-ending stream of depression and self-hatred. How could I get to that place? I wondered. Clean was so elusive, I was afraid to go there. It was impossible. They had to drag me into recovery in handcuffs. I was not sure I could ever change. That last time, I was willing to give it my best effort. Because I knew if I failed, the end result would be death.

  This woman says she’s thirty-two days off heroin. I admire her determination. Any day without a needle in your neck is a good day.

  “The road in recovery is an uphill struggle, but well worth the energy,” I tell her. “I am finally in a place in my life where I am willing to accept my imperfections. I don’t need anyone or anything to fix me. I am okay in my own skin. It may take time to get there. Don’t give up. You may not be able to replicate my process. Find what works for you.”

  I make a difference when I am willing to share my story. I know this to be true.

  I turn my attention back to my work for the day. My kids smile at me from my screen saver. Sixteen years ago I was dying on the streets of San Francisco. Now, I am the treasurer of the PTA. I take a breath to let it soak in. I take a moment to remember I am loved. Back to my keyboard.

  Chapter 2

  LET’S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY: LIFE BEFORE RECOVERY

  To understand what an uphill struggle it was for me to get to this place, you must first understand the road to my well-documented bottom. My first exposure to recreational drugs and alcohol came when I was growing up in the ’70s. I had certainly been with teenagers smoking pot well out of view from their parents. I had heard all about Quaaludes, reds, blues, and other types of pills mentioned on the television shows of the day. But, as a nerdy teen, I spent most of my time focusing on my studies. I had taken a full load of Advanced Placement classes and was able to test out of nearly a full year of college coursework when I entered my freshman year. I barely dated until I reached my senior year of high school and didn’t lose my virginity until almost my eighteenth birthday, with a boy I loved. My parents had no need to worry about me because on the surface I seemed to be the perfect child. I had smoked pot here and there. I had drunk a few beers. But I never drank alcohol for the taste. I only liked the effect. That should have been a clue that I should quit before I really got started.

  I remember flipping through a magazine that talked about a drug called cocaine and how it was not addictive. A few years later, news reports told us crack was an “epidemic” sweeping the country. Still, during the Reagan era my parents must have felt that their three kids were well insulated from anything beyond a little excessive drinking or occasional use of “reefer,” as my dad called it. We were only told to study hard and “just say no.” To my parents, there was certainly little indication of what would become the beginning of my downward spiral.

  When I moved out of my parents’ home, it was as if a switch had been flipped. It was as if there had been a party going on my whole life, but I had never been invited until I got out on my own. I was always somewhere on a Friday or Saturday with a drink in my hand. Then there were little pick-me-ups to help the party last all night. When everyone was going to bed, I felt like I was just getting started. But I slowly dissolved into the woman who is always in the bathroom crying and angry at the world, eyeliner running down her face. The booze brought out the darker side of my personality.

  Addiction slowly crept up on me, as it frequently does. It lied to me. It told me everything was okay. I can quit whenever I want. See? the inner addict told me. You can go a few weeks or months without a drink. You have a job. You go to school. You can’t possibly have a problem. It wasn’t hard to convince myself that everything I was doing was part of the college experience. Maybe that was true. Initially, drugs and alcohol were part of a social connection. As time went on, though, I found myself less and less interested in hanging out with friends and more and more interested in getting fucked up as my only goal. By the time I reached the age when I could legally go to bars, I was slowly becoming a shell of the person I was when I had left home a few years before.

  By the time I turned twenty years old, my life had become a complicated mess where my moods were dictated by the presence or absence of substances. The struggle to maintain my fragile grip on sanity began the second I opened my eyes. Every day when I would wake up, my thoughts were always the same.

  At least this time when I wake up it is morning. The last time I laid my head down, I believe it was in the afternoon. My internal clock is thrown off by the chemicals that pump through my veins.

  “I hate my life,” I mutter, as my eyes attempt to focus.

  I say these words out loud frequently, with varying intensity depending on the mess I got myself into the night before. Today there is no one around to listen. But I don’t need an audience or a witness to know my life is fucked. I am feeling grateful this morning that I didn’t wake up half naked with some random person from the bar. I say “person” because my misery can be equal opportunity. I seem to drag people—both male and female—from all walks of life into my fuck-ups. The worst part for me is when I realize that some of these people have developed feelings for me. I don’t want to lead them on. I bat my blue eyes, flip my hair, and whisper things they really want to hear. I should really find a way to take more psychology classes, study it full time. I suck people in with my ability to listen. In my black suede skirt and my ripped fishnet pantyhose, I may not be the prettiest woman in the bar, but I am the
one who makes people want to sit with her and spill their deepest secrets. I am quite charming when I need something.

  When I leave a bar, I begin an adventure in intoxicated navigation. My partner for the evening will often have to help me avoid running into yet another parking meter. I enjoy going over to other apartments, other places. There is generally a lack of food in my house. There is also a lack of companionship. I hate being alone, but I also hate being with someone. I am never satisfied. I always assume each of my companions is as drunk or high as I am, until one morning one of them is upset that I do not remember his name. Waking up alone in my own bed, today, is a relief. I hate that series of embarrassing questions when I wake up next to someone I don’t really remember from the previous night. Where am I? Who are you? Where are my clothes? Trying to find my skirt and my shoes without waking them up has become my new survival skill. If they do wake up, they might want to cuddle. I am not into it. Definitely not the way I feel right now.

  I cannot remember the last time I had sex with someone when I wasn’t under the influence of something. Yet drugs have taken away my sex drive, my period, and most of my appetite. I guess I should be happy—no pesky pregnancy to worry about, I tell myself, although I am sure this is a lie. I remember those health classes where all the girls giggled in hushed tones. It wasn’t that long ago that I was swishing around the hallway of my high school in my black watch plaid uniform skirt. Why am I so smart yet make such dumb choices? I ask myself. Am I going to end up pregnant? It could still happen. But since I have very little interest in anything beyond opiates and booze, I am not horny; I don’t paw at my conquests to take me back to their place. Most of the time I cling to these unfortunate souls for survival. I am using them for drinks, or drugs, or a place close by to sleep. I am using them to help me navigate so I can make it home in one piece. Women get raped in these campus towns. I don’t want that to happen to me. Sometimes, when they want to hold me, I wish I was capable of just loving them back. I wish I could be a person who succumbs to feelings. I can’t do it.