by Christiane F
I had no idea yet how helpless you are when you've got the itch. Chicken, at any rate, seemed completely impressed by what I said. He didn't even bother replying. Bernd was going on about something or other, but I didn't listen. I told them that if they wouldn't let me try the stuff with them, then they should give me back my share. We went into a doorway and Bernd divided the dope into three equal portions. Now I was really eager to try it. There was no thinking about it, no feelings of guilt. I wanted to just do it, to finally experience a real high again. The needle scared me a little bit though. I told them, “I don't want to shoot up. I'll snort it.” Bernd explained to me how to do it, even though I already knew how from listening to all that talk for so long.
I snorted the powder without hesitation. It tasted sharp and bitter. I had to suppress a quick wave of nausea but ended up spitting out a whole bunch of the stuff anyway. But then the high took over incredibly fast. My arms and legs became insanely heavy but at the same time really light. I was so, so tired, but it felt amazing. All of the aggravation and sadness I'd been wallowing in just fell away, all at once, just disappeared. “Station to Station” didn't bother me at all anymore. I felt great—I felt better than ever before.
That was on April 18, 1976, just a month before my fourteenth birthday. I'll never forget that date.
Chicken and Bernd got into some junkie's car so that they could shoot up. I went ahead to The Sound. It didn't faze me anymore, being alone. It felt good, actually. I felt powerful in a way.
I went over to a bench and sat down. Astrid came over, looked at me, and right away she asked, “Hey, are you on H?” Despite the fact that Astrid was one of my best girlfriends at that time, I went ballistic. “Fuck off,” I screamed at her. “Just go away!” I had no idea why I was flipping out like that.
Chicken and Bernd came in, eventually, both totally high. Chicken was back to normal again—totally cool, calm, and collected. Detlef wasn't in The Sound. I was thirsty and got myself a soda. I drank soda all night. I was really scared of alcohol now.
At around five in the morning, Bernd asked if we wanted to come over to his house and have some tea. So off we went. I happily hooked my arm into Chicken's. The soda was sloshing around in my stomach, and I had to throw up. I puked while walking. It didn't bother me at all though, and the other two didn't seem to notice.
I felt like I was part of an awesome new family. I didn't say much, but I had the feeling that I could talk to both of them about anything. Heroin turned us into real brothers and sisters. We were all equals. I would have revealed my most secret thoughts. After those terrible weeks before this, I felt that I'd never been this happy before.
I slept with Bernd in his bed. He didn't touch me though. After all, we were like brother and sister. Chicken lay down on the floor with his head against an armchair. He stayed in that exact same pose until two in the afternoon. Then he got up because he was starting to get the craving again and had to somehow find a way to get his next fix.
Suddenly I was seized with this insane itch all over my body. I ripped off all my clothes and started scratching myself with a hairbrush. I scratched myself bloody, especially on the calves. But that didn't faze me either. I knew that junkies had a tendency to scratch themselves. At The Sound, I'd always been able to tell who was on heroin by how much they were scratching. Chicken's calves were so scratched up that there was hardly any healthy skin left, and in some spots he'd scratched down to raw flesh. Chicken didn't scratch his legs with a brush though; instead, he used a pocket knife.
Before he left, he said to me, “The dope that you let me have today—I'll replace it and give it back to you tomorrow.” He was already treating me like I'd become a bona fide junkie, as someone who'd need to re-up soon—the next day at the very latest. Somehow I figured out what he was saying in his matter-of-fact way. I acted cool though, and just said, “No problem. No rush. It's okay if I get it back later.”
I went back to sleep again, all calm and happy. And then in the evening I went home. There were moments when I thought, Jesus, you're thirteen and you're already using heroin!? That's so fucked up. But that feeling only lasted for a second, and then everything went back to normal. I was feeling way too good to really think critically about things. When you first start out, you don't have to deal with any withdrawal symptoms. And for me, the high seemed to last a week. Everything went without a hitch; everything was wonderful. There were no more arguments at home. I didn't act out at school. I felt relaxed, and I even participated a little bit and got some good grades. Over the next weeks, I even worked my way up from D's to B's in a few subjects. It seemed to me that I was getting along with everybody and coping with everything. I was floating through life. During the week, I went back to the Center House. In the meantime, four other people from our old group had switched over to heroin. I now sat with them. Within just a few weeks, there were more and more junkies at Center House. Gropiusstadt was just like everywhere else, and when heroin arrived, it exploded.
Jürgen Quandt, Managing Pastor of the Center House
For many years, the basement of the Protestant center, aka the Center House, served as the central meeting place for kids and teenagers from Gropiusstadt and the borough of Neukölln. On most nights, we'd get up to five hundred kids at the youth center, but that ended in December 1976, when we had to close it because of the rapid increase in heroin use among teens. The closing was part of an effort to call attention to the catastrophic situation.
What surprised the teachers and staff was how fast the entire hard drug scene sprang up in Gropiusstadt. Up until then—for instance, during the student movement of the 1960s—our main concern was with the use of so-called soft drugs. Within just a few months in 1976, though, almost fifty teens from our area had started using heroin.
Our attempts up until then had focused on raising awareness through conversation and education, about the dangers of drug use. When it came to heroin, though, those old methods seemed dangerously casual: They amounted to surrender. It was almost like we were admitting that we were too weak to win in a fight against this new, powerful drug.
Our work with teens at the Center House forced us to deal with something that the authorities were still refusing to admit at the time: that the drug problem was actually getting worse. The market for these drugs consisted mainly of working-class teens and other young people who were unemployed, unskilled, and not in college. The only thing that we could do, as educators, was to engage in public protests against official ignorance. The closing of the youth center was supposed to bring to light what many people would've rather kept in the dark. Our strategy was at least somewhat successful. Today in West Berlin there's an intense dispute about the drug problem — as it really exists, instead of how we'd like to imagine it.
In Neukölln, they now have a government-financed drug-counseling center, and in Gropiusstadt there's also a new “Clean-Bus,” which is available as a meeting place for at-risk teens. There's also now an expanded availability of therapy and rehab programs. However, the drug problem hasn't gotten any better over the past two years, even though we are now dealing with a new generation of young people. Some of the teens from Gropiusstadt who started using heroin just two years ago have already passed away.
In a high-rise housing development like the housing projects in Gropiusstadt, where approximately 45,000 live, any problem is automatically magnified, just due to the sheer concentration of people in a relatively small area. There's an abundance of the unemployed, of dropouts, of dissatisfaction, and of conflict. Financial hardship, high rents, and a constantly rising cost of living impose a steadily increasing workload and the necessity for both parents to have a job and bring in money. This causes seemingly irresolvable stress: having to come up with more and more energy for the daily grind without reaping the benefits of working harder, such as being happier, more content, and more prosperous. In addition to their parents (or their single parent) having less and less time for them, kids and teens also suff
er from overcrowded classes, a lack of jobs and internships, increasing demands at school and at home, family conflicts, and a lack of recreational opportunities, playgrounds, and open spaces such as parks. Drugs and alcohol have always been a quick, easy way for people to deal with these stresses by numbing the pain.
In view of the challenging living situation of these teens, we shouldn't be surprised at all about their escalating drug use, increasing criminal activity, and growing brutality. Nobody can seriously dispute that a direct connection exists between the increase in drug abuse among working-class teens and the deterioration of their quality of life.
AFTER THAT FIRST SNORT of heroin, I ran into Detlef at The Sound. He got up in my face immediately: “You've done it now, haven't you! You're completely crazy.” He'd already heard about what I'd gotten into from Astrid.
“You started with it, and now you're already a total junkie. But I'm not going to let that happen to me.”
That shut him up. He wasn't feeling well enough to put up a fight anyway. He didn't have withdrawal symptoms yet because he wasn't yet physically dependent, but he was clearly craving a fix. After some initial stumbling, he finally made his intentions known: He didn't have any cash, but he wanted to find some way to buy a little dope.
I said, “Well, there you go.” And then I suggested that we both go panhandling. He agreed, although he must have known how it would turn out. In twenty minutes, I made about twenty marks. Detlef earned much less. But overall, it did the trick and was enough for both of us (because back then, a very small dose still got us plenty high). We didn't even discuss whether or not I would get some of it. That was just a given. Later that night, Detlef shot up and I snorted. My resolution to avoid heroin for a month was already shot to hell.
So, suddenly, Detlef and I were back together again, and it was as if we'd never been apart. Neither of us talked about the time when we treated each other like strangers. It just felt right. Things were as good as they'd been when we shared that Sunday dinner together at my place.
Overall, I think I was pretty happy about how everything had turned out. I reasoned that if I hadn't done heroin, then I never would've gotten back together with Detlef. I deluded myself into believing that I would be able to keep on being just a weekend user. Everyone who gets into heroin thinks that way, even though hardly anyone actually manages it. On top of that, I believed I could save Detlef from becoming a junkie. Those were the lies I told myself at the time.
Deep down, I probably knew that I was deceiving myself, even at the very beginning. When someone tried to talk to me about H, I'd freak out. I'd scream at them and tell them to fuck off. I treated people who wanted to talk about it the exact same way I'd treated Astrid when she first confronted me. And I started to hate all the other girls who were my age and looked like they were on a similar path. I could easily pick them out in the subway and at the club, all the little posers with their clumsy attempts at heroin-chic style—twelve- and thirteen-year-old runaways, usually. Even though I was generally very easygoing, seeing those girls really made me aggressive. “That one will definitely wind up on a street corner, begging for a hit,” I'd say to myself. I absolutely hated them. It didn't occur to me at the time that the person I actually hated was myself.
After a few weekends of snorting heroin, I did in fact take a short break. I felt pretty good, and so I decided that it hadn't had any real effect on me. Physically I didn't feel worse. But the old attitudes were all coming back. I didn't care about anything, and I started fighting with my mom again. That was shortly before spring break, in 1976.
The first Saturday of spring break I went to The Sound and sat down on a bench near the stairs. I didn't really know what my agenda was at the time—or if I had an agenda at all. Two girls came down the stairs—they were about twelve years old, but they had on makeup and bras and were all decked out like they were sixteen. (Incidentally, I also told people who didn't know me already that I was sixteen, and I used makeup to try and support that lie.) I instantly disliked these two girls, but at the same time, they were compelling. I didn't let them out of my sight.
I could tell by the way they moved through The Sound that they were looking to make some connections. They wanted in. There was probably nothing they wanted more than to fall in with the hard-core druggies—with the heroin users. It seemed like they already knew Richie, the cook from The Sound's cafeteria. He was in his late thirties, the only real adult working at The Sound, and he got along well with all the kids. He acted as a kind of father figure for a lot of runaway girls. So those two girls kept up a steady stream of chatter with Richie at the bar. They must have noticed that I was watching them because they kept looking over at me—probably because I was their age. One of them eventually came over. Her face was as innocent as an angel's. She said her name was Babsi and asked if I could give her any LSD.
I said, “Come on, give me a break. What would you want with acid?” I enjoyed this sense of superiority. I felt like I was miles above her and years ahead. She should have known that you couldn't just hit someone up for acid—especially if that person was already on to the next big thing: heroin. She apparently thought I was cool, though, just like I used to think all those other guys were cool, a few months ago, just because they'd tried a bunch of drugs that I hadn't. She said she wanted to buy me a drink and would come right back.
After Babsi walked off, the other one came over. Her name was Stella. She asked what Babsi had wanted. I told her.
Stella asked me, “Did she give you any money? I can't find five marks. I bet that bitch stole it from me.” That was already classic Stella—the exact same person I'd get to know and come to expect in the days that lay ahead. Babsi and Stella were going to become my best friends—that is, up to the point when Babsi made headlines for becoming Berlin's youngest heroin fatality.
Babsi came back with my soda. I hated her, obviously, but at the same time I also found something appealing about her baby-faced naïveté and her straightforward manner. We started talking. Babsi and Stella'd been kicked out of school because they apparently skipped more classes than they attended. They'd started skipping school because they fell in with a group of regular potheads. So now they'd left home and become runaways; they wanted to experience more than what their little pot-smoking group could offer them. Babsi was twelve. Stella was thirteen.
I invited Babsi over to my house the next morning. Since she didn't have much of anything, I gave her two of my old T-shirts and a pair of underpants. After a minute she fell asleep in my bed, and I cooked something to eat. I'd gotten to really like her. The next day, I became friends with Stella, too. The two of them reminded me of the person I'd been just a short while ago. I felt much more comfortable in their company than with those totally wrecked junkies. They smoked pot and dropped acid, but with them I also managed to gain some distance from the more hard-core drugs and all the junkies. I only had my little snort at the club on Saturdays. The others from my clique made fun of me because I spent so much time with these two teenyboppers. But I didn't care.
The three of us had a lot to talk about. We all had pretty similar home lives. Babsi's dad committed suicide when she was still a child. She said that her mom used to be a dancer in East Berlin and then a model in the West. Her stepfather was supposed to be some kind of pianist. A world-famous artist, she said. She was really proud of her stepfather—especially when, one day, we went into a record store and found a ton of his records. This pianist didn't seem to care very much about his stepdaughter though. As a result, Babsi lived with her grandparents, who'd adopted her. She lived there like a princess. I visited her house later on. She had an awesome room with amazing furniture and a top-of-the-line stereo system, with tons of records. And more clothes than she knew what to do with. But she didn't get along very well with her grandmother, who had a bad temper and a very short fuse. What Babsi really wanted was to live with her mom again. When all the clothes and furniture didn't make up for the way her grandma treated h
er, she decided to run away.
Like Babsi, Stella had a mom who also happened to be beautiful. Stella loved her, too—but her dad had died in an apartment fire when Stella was only ten. And since then, her mom had had to make do on her own. She didn't have much time for Stella, and she'd started drinking heavily. In those days, Stella was totally obsessed with Muhammad Ali. She was always bragging about how strong he was. In a way, he seemed to replace both her dad and all of her potential boyfriends.
The three of us all came from more or less the same place and were headed in the same direction. Right from the very beginning, I'd known that they wouldn't stop pushing the envelope until they wound up as real, full-blown junkies. But when Stella actually asked me for some H, I was honestly shocked. I couldn't help myself and just started ripping into her: “Stay away from that shit!” I yelled. “Nobody would give you any, anyway. I'm gonna stop using soon, too. It's bad news, trust me.”
So I didn't give Stella anything, and I told the others not to give her any either—not under any circumstances. A few days later, she still found a way, via Ralph, one of the guys from The Sound, whom she'd just made friends with. And Babsi got in on the act, too, of course.
But for a while after that, they were pretty limited in terms of what they could do. They were picked up during a drug bust and escorted back home. I didn't see them again for a few weeks.
In the meantime, spring had arrived, and it was getting warmer every day. The first sunny days of the year always carried happy memories along with them. Even when I was a kid, I was immediately reminded of running around barefoot, stripping down to my underwear, splashing around in the water, and watching the flowers open up in the garden. Every new spring, I experienced that same rush of joyful memories. But in the spring of 1976, I waited in vain for that feeling of contentment. I thought it was impossible for life to keep dragging along once the sun came out. But even after the spring came I was still lugging all my old problems around with me. I wasn't even sure what I was worried about, or what was bothering me, or what my problems were. I snorted H, and the problems were gone. But the high didn't last anywhere near as long as it used to.