Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.

by Christiane F

  The stuff that fell out of my bag was proof positive that I was an addict. It had already become clear to her in the bathroom though. Not only did she find the bloody tissue and blood splatters, but also some soot from the spoon in which I cooked up the dope. She had already read a lot about heroin in the papers, and she'd put two and two together now.

  Denying it was useless, so I gave up trying. Although I'd just given myself a really awesome shot of M-powder, I broke down and cried. I sobbed so hard that I couldn't get out a single word. My mom didn't say anything either. She was shaking. She was totally shocked. She left my room, and I heard her talking with her boyfriend, Klaus. Then she came back. She seemed a little calmer and asked, “Can't anything be done about this? Don't you want to get off that stuff?”

  I said, “Mom, there's nothing I'd rather do. Seriously. You have to believe me. I really want to get away from all this.”

  She said, “Good. Then we'll try it together. I'll take vacation days so that I can be with you the whole time, while you're going through withdrawal. We'll start today, right now.”

  “That's great. But there's this one thing. Without Detlef I can't do it. I need him and he needs me. And anyway, he also wants to get off the stuff. We've talked about it for a while now. We were just waiting for the right time to do it. Together.”

  My mom was completely stunned. “Oh, Detlef? Him too?” she asked, in a weak voice. She'd always liked Detlef and was proud that I'd found such a nice boyfriend. “Of course, Detlef too,” I said. “Do you think that I would've done this all by myself? Detlef never would've let me. But he also won't let me suffer from withdrawal without him either.”

  I suddenly felt much better, almost cheerful. The thought of Detlef and me getting clean together really made me optimistic. After all, we'd been talking about it for a long time. But my mom was completely devastated. Her face turned a pale-green color, and I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. The news about Detlef had given her another shock. She was probably stunned by her own naïveté and gullibility over the last two years as well. And now there were more doubts haunting her. She wanted to know how I came by the money for the heroin. Of course, she immediately thought working the street, prostitution, etcetera.

  I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth. So I lied: “Oh, I'd just asked people for a few marks here and there. And most of the time it worked. Then I also cleaned people's apartments or offices, off and on.”

  My mom didn't pry any further. Once again she seemed very relieved that she got an answer that didn't confirm her worst fears. What she'd already found out on this particular Sunday was enough to totally devastate her. I felt truly sorry for my mom. It made me feel very guilty.

  We drove off immediately to look for Detlef. He wasn't at Zoo Station, and he wasn't at Axel and Bernd's either.

  In the evening, we went to see Detlef's dad. Detlef's parents were also divorced. His dad was a government official. He'd known for a long time what was up with Detlef. My mom criticized him for not telling her about what was going on. That's when he almost broke down and cried. He was incredibly embarrassed about the fact that his son was a drug-addled prostitute. But he was glad that my mom wanted to do something about it. He repeated over and over, “Yes, we've got to do something.”

  Detlef's dad had a whole bunch of sleeping pills and sedatives that he kept in his desk drawer. He gave them all to me because I told him that we didn't have any methadone, and that it would be absolute hell to try and get clean without any chemical assistance.

  On the subway ride back home, I tossed down a whole handful of pills, because I could feel the withdrawal symptoms coming on. And then with all those pills in my system I felt pretty good and slept through the night.

  The next morning, Detlef showed up at our doorstep. His dad had found him right away, and he was already in full withdrawal. I thought that was pretty courageous of him that he hadn't tried to give himself one last fix and arrived in the same state I was in. He must've known that I didn't have any more dope. And he said he wanted to be at the same level as me when we started going clean. He was a genuinely good and considerate guy.

  So Detlef definitely wanted to get off the stuff just as bad as I did. And he was also glad that it was happening this way. Both of us were, like our parents, ignorant of just how stupid it is to have two addicts, who are also friends, trying to quit together. Because at some point one of them will get the other one going again, and they'll work each other up to the next shot. Well, maybe we did have some idea, just from the stories we'd heard. But then again, we were living within our own world of illusions. We always believed that whatever applied to other drug addicts somehow didn't apply to us. And anyway, we couldn't imagine doing anything of importance without the other.

  Over the course of the morning, we were able to keep our heads above water with the pills from Detlef's dad. We could still talk to each other. We painted a fantastically upbeat picture of our future after we'd gotten clean, and we promised each other to stay tough and brave through the next few days. Despite the pain that we were starting to feel, we were still pretty happy.

  In the afternoon though, we were in the thick of it. We kept popping those pills and chasing them down with wine—lots of wine. But it didn't help. I lost control of my legs. There was this huge pressure on the back of my knees. I lay down flat on the floor and stretched out my legs, trying to alternately tense and relax the leg muscles. But they were beyond my control at that point. I pressed the legs against the dresser, and that's where they stayed. I couldn't move them after that. I was rolling around on the floor, but my feet somehow stayed glued to the dresser.

  I was soaked through and through with an icy cold sweat. I was freezing and shaking, and the cold sweat ran down my face into my eyes. I reeked. I thought, This is that nasty, evil poison that's coming out of your body.

  It seemed to me like I was going through my very own exorcism.

  Detlef was even worse off than me. He was almost going berserk. He was shivering with cold, but then he suddenly took off his sweater. He sat down on my chair by the window. His legs were in constant motion. They were running while he was sitting. His pencil-thin legs twitched like they were possessed, up and down, up and down. And he kept wiping the sweat from his face, his whole body shaking terribly. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill shivering anymore. Again and again, he doubled over and screamed. It was stomach cramps.

  Detlef smelled even worse than me. That whole tiny room was full of our stink. I thought about what I'd heard, that friendships between heroin addicts always fall apart after a successful withdrawal. I also thought that even now I still loved Detlef— even though he smelled absolutely horrible.

  Detlef got up, somehow made it over to the mirror in my room, and said, “I can't take it anymore. I can't do it. I just can't do it.” I couldn't answer. I didn't have enough strength to bolster him up or give him courage. I tried not to think those thoughts. Instead, I tried to focus on a stupid story, frantically turning the pages of a newspaper over and over again and tearing it apart in the process.

  My mouth and my throat were totally dry. But in a weird way, my mouth was also full of saliva. I couldn't swallow and started to cough. The harder I tried to swallow it, the more violently I coughed. I got a coughing fit that just wouldn't stop. Then I started throwing up. I threw up all over my rug. It all came out as white foam. I thought, Just like my dog used to do after she ate some grass. The coughing and the puking went on and on and wouldn't stop.

  My mom was in the living room through most of this. When she came into our room, she was completely helpless. She kept running to the shopping center to get something for us, but we couldn't swallow anything anyway. At around this time though, she brought me some cough drops, and these did actually help a little bit. The coughing stopped. My mom cleaned up the vomit. She was so sweet. And I couldn't even say thank you.

  At some point, and I don't know when, the pills and the wine started to
work. I'd swallowed five Valium and two quaaludes, and on top of that downed almost a whole bottle of wine. Any normal person would have slept for a few days after that. My body, however, was so thoroughly poisoned that it hardly reacted. But at least I was able to calm down enough so that I could lie down on my bed. We'd set up a cot, too, for Detlef, and he lay down on that. We didn't touch. We were each way too preoccupied with what was going on with ourselves. I drifted off into a kind of waking sleep. I slept but at the same time was aware that I slept, and was also fully aware of my pain. I dreamt and thought things over. It was all muddled together. I thought that everyone, especially my mom, could see right through me. That everyone could read my horrible, evil thoughts. That everyone had to see what a revolting piece of shit I really was. I hated my body. I would've been glad if it had simply died on me right then.

  At night I took a few more pills. Again, any normal person would have probably been dead at that point, but I just fell asleep for a couple of hours. I woke up after a dream about my life as a dog. I'd always been treated kindly by people before, but now I was being thrown into a kennel to be tortured to death.

  Detlef was flinging his arms around and hitting me. The light was on. Next to my bed was a large bowl of water and a wash-cloth. My mom had put it there. I washed the sweat off my face.

  Detlef's whole body was in motion, even though he seemed to be out cold. His body was bucking up and down, his legs were kicking, and sometimes his arms would shoot out, too.

  I seemed to be a little better off than he was. I could at least manage to wipe Detlef's forehead down with the washcloth. He didn't feel a thing though. I still loved him like crazy. Later, after I'd dozed off again, I was half aware of Detlef reaching out to me and stroking my hair.

  The next morning, we both felt better though. Apparently, the old rule about the second day of withdrawal being the worst didn't hold true for us. But of course, this was our first time going cold turkey for any extended period of time, and your first time was supposed to be much less difficult—by half, even—than all the later attempts. Around noon, we even started talking again. First about trivial stuff, but then, later on, about our future as well. Our plans lost their domestic theme from earlier. Now we swore to never, ever do heroin again—no LSD and no pills either. We wanted to live a peaceful life with peaceful people. We agreed that pot was okay, just like during that time when everything seemed so wonderful. We also wanted our friends to be from pot-smoking circles, as those kinds of people were mostly very laid-back. We thought that we'd avoid the drinkers, though, because we didn't want anything to do with those aggressive boneheads. So our overall plan was to get out of the H scene and dive back in among the potheads.

  Detlef wanted to look for work again, too. He said, “I'll just go back to my old boss and say that I kind of fucked up, but that now I've got my head screwed on the right way again. He's always been really understanding. I'll start my apprenticeship as a pipe fitter all over again.”

  I said that I wanted to totally focus on school again and maybe even finish high school and, after that, go for the college entrance exams.

  Then my mom came back in with a surprise for us. She'd been to her doctor, and he'd prescribed a bottle of methadone for her to take home. Detlef and I took twenty drops each, just as the doctor had instructed. We didn't take any more because we knew it had to last all week. With methadone in our system, we felt even better. The withdrawal symptoms were much less intense now. My mom kept feeding us a steady supply of pudding, ice cream, and anything else we needed or had a craving for. She brought us piles of stuff to read, too. Tons of comics. I used to think that comics were boring. Now I read them together with Detlef. We didn't just skim over them like we used to. We read every panel carefully and only stopped when something really got to us and made us laugh hysterically.

  We were still improving on the third day, too. That being said, we were also always on something. Methadone, Valium, and a lot of wine, too. We felt pretty good, even though our poisoned bodies sometimes still revolted against their lack of heroin.

  On the night of the third day, after what had been a long time, we slept together again. When you're on heroin, your sex drive really takes a hit. It was the first time—since the first time— that Detlef and I had slept together without any heroin. It was unbelievable. We realized that we hadn't experienced anything like that in a long, long time. We lay in bed together for hours, sweating still, but happy just to be able to touch each other. We probably could have made it out of bed on the fourth day, but we didn't bother trying. We stayed in bed an extra three days, sleeping together, drinking wine, taking Valium when we needed to, and leaving all the other details to my mom. Going through withdrawal wasn't that bad, we thought. We were happy to have finally made it to the other side.

  On the seventh day, we got up again. My mom was so, so happy that we'd recovered and that it was all over. She kissed us both.

  My feelings about my mom had started to change over the course of the previous week. I felt something like genuine friendship and gratitude toward her. And of course I was also very happy about having Detlef back in my life. I thought that he was just about the best boyfriend ever. I mean, I loved the way he decided to join up with me in getting clean. He didn't even think twice about it. And the fact that all the stress and pain of withdrawal didn't break us up—as happened with most other couples—was also unbelievably cool. In fact, if anything, our connection was even deeper now.

  We told my mom that we wanted to get some fresh air. She agreed that it would be a good idea since at that point Detlef and I had spent an entire week holed up in a tiny room.

  “So, where to?” Detlef asked. I looked at him, clueless. I really didn't have any idea. It just now occurred to us that we didn't have anywhere to go anymore. All of our friends were heroin junkies. And all the places we knew, where we somehow felt at home, were part of the heroin scene. We didn't even know where the potheads hung out anymore.

  After Detlef asked where we should go, I suddenly didn't feel so good anymore. We were out of methadone. That must have been the reason why we'd gotten so restless and wanted to go outside. Not having a destination in mind, however, made things even worse. I suddenly felt really drained, really empty. We might have gotten off H, but now we didn't know what to do next.

  We walked to the subway without talking about a destination. It was like we were on automatic pilot. There was an invisible thread pulling us along, without us being aware of it. And then we were standing at Zoo Station. Detlef finally said something: “We really should say hi to Axel and Bernd. Otherwise they'll think we're dead or in jail or something.”

  “Of course!” I said—full of relief. “We have to at least tell them what it's like to go absolutely cold turkey. And maybe we could talk them into getting clean, too.” It only took a second to find Axel and Bernd. They had a lot of dope, after a good day with customers. Detlef told them about what we'd been through, and both of them said how awesome it was that we'd actually done it. After that, though, Axel and Bernd said that they were going back to their apartment to shoot up.

  Detlef looked at me, and I looked back at him. We caught each other's eyes and started grinning. Looking back I remember thinking, Already—on the first day! That's crazy! But Detlef said, “We can still shoot up every now and then, you know. Heroin's still a great time, in moderation. We just have to be careful. We have to watch it, so we don't get hooked again. Because I'm not about to do a total withdrawal all over again.”

  “Sure, a shot every once in a while. I'm cool with that. We just can't let ourselves get hooked again.”

  We had absolutely no ability to take stock of what we were actually getting into. It was like the reasoning parts of our brains had been shut down. The only thing I could think about was that next shot of heroin.

  Detlef said to Axel, “Can you spot us some? You'll get it back soon, no problem.” Axel and Bernd told us we should really think about it first. Then they
said that they'd get clean next week, too, just like we did. They just had to get some methadone lined up first. They thought it'd be cool to be able to go to work again and just shoot up every once in a while.

  Two hours after we'd left my mom's apartment, Detlef and I were using again—and totally doped up. Arm in arm we strolled down the Kurfürstendamm. It was such a good feeling, to be high and not have to worry about getting anywhere. Instead, we could just walk around. We didn't even have to worry about getting a supply for the next morning. “Well,” Detlef said to me, with a smile on his face, “tomorrow morning we'll wake up, do a few stretches, and start our day off right: without any H.”

  We actually seriously believed we had recovered. Our first mistake was in thinking that over the course of the past week at my mom's, all that pain and puking had been proof of a real, complete withdrawal. And sure, the poison had left our bodies— the heroin at least. But we'd been busy replacing one drug with another. With lots of others, in fact: with methadone, Valium, and whatever else was on hand. And we hadn't wasted a single thought on what we would do afterward. My mom was similarly naïve. She felt optimistic that we'd gotten over it once and for all. And how could she have known any better?

  Actually, we should've known better because we'd already heard stories from a lot of other people about the process of withdrawal. But we weren't that interested in what was really going on with us. We were still incredibly naïve. We didn't care what other people had been through, or what other people thought they'd learned. We knew best.

  For the next month or so, it looked like we were actually pulling it off. Neither one of us had to do any hustling. We only shot up when someone treated us or when we had some extra cash. At the same time, we were getting more and more impatient every day about finding someone who'd treat us to a shot or who had a few extra dollars to loan us. We were anxious for our taste—but not ready to admit it.

  It was a good time for us. I didn't have to go back to school yet, because my mom wanted me to be happy and relaxed during my first few weeks off heroin. She even let Detlef stay over with us. I got to know a totally new side of Detlef and fell deeper and deeper in love with him—if that was even possible. He was carefree and happy and full of ideas. It seemed like we were always having fun. And if we weren't, at least we pretended.