Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.

by Christiane F

  I was so excited by all this that first thing the next morning, I ran into their office and asked for another therapy session. For that whole first week, I was a 100 percent committed to the program and really bought into the Scientologists' outlook on things. The therapy program ran all day. Conversation, chores, kitchen duties, etcetera. All day, every day, until 10 p.m. It didn't leave you any time to think.

  The only thing that bugged me was the food. I wasn't spoiled or a picky eater—not by any means—but I could hardly swallow the glop they offered up. Plus, I thought that with all the money they were pulling in, they could give us something a lot better. They had almost no other expenses. The sessions were led by former junkies. They were all supposed to have been clean for at least a couple of months, but even these “employees” weren't really paid anything. They were told that it was part of their treatment to lead these sessions, and all they got for compensation was some occasional pocket money. I also didn't like it that the Narc Anon bosses always ate apart from the rest of us. Once, I happened to walk in on them during lunch, and they were feasting on amazing-looking food.

  On Sunday, I finally had some time to just sit and reflect. First I thought about Detlef, which made me pretty sad. Then I took a minute to think long and hard about my options after I was finished with this therapy program. I asked myself if the sessions had actually helped me. I had all these questions but no real answers. I wanted to talk to somebody, but who could I go to? One of the first rules of the house was that making friends was not allowed. And the Narc Anon people immediately slapped you with another session if they heard that you wanted to talk about your problems. I suddenly realized that I'd never really talked to anyone the whole time I'd been at this place.

  Monday morning I walked into the office and let loose. I didn't let anyone interrupt me. I started with the food. Then I said that almost all my underwear had been stolen. You could never get into the laundry room because the girl who had the key kept disappearing—probably to go shoot up herself. Speaking of which, there were a few patients who ran off to score heroin and shoot up and came back whenever they wanted to. I told them that all this stuff threw me off and made me feel defeated. And then there were the chores. I was totally exhausted because I never had enough time to sleep and rest up. I said, “Okay, your sessions are pretty effective—I really like them. But the thing is, they're not solving my actual problems. Because everything is just one big drill. You're just drilling us into submission. But I also need someone whom I can sometimes talk to about my problems. And anyway, I need some time alone, too, every once in a while, where I can just relax and think.”

  They heard me out (smiling the whole time, as always), but they didn't even try to offer a response. When I was finished, they just prescribed an extra all-day session for me. After that, I was completely defeated, totally apathetic. And I thought, Well, maybe they do know what they're doing. When she visited, my mom told me that Social Services was reimbursing her for the cost of the Narc Anon program. So I reasoned that if the government was willing to pay for this, then it must be an okay program.

  There were other people in the house who had it way worse than I did. Gabi, for example. She had a crush on some guy in the building and was desperate to sleep with him. Being the naïve moron that she was, she told the Narc Anon bosses about it right away and was promptly prescribed an extra session. And when she did have sex with the guy, it came out, and the two of them were exposed and ridiculed in front of everybody. Gabi ran out on the program that same night, and we never saw her again. The guy, who apparently had been clean for a few years and who worked there as an assistant, bailed on the operation a little later on. It sounded like he'd reverted back to his old ways.

  The Narc Anon people weren't actually that concerned about the sex—it was really just relationships that they were afraid of. But that guy'd been there for over a year, and how are you supposed to last that long without any friendships?

  During the short amount of free time we had late at night, I hung out with the younger crowd. I was the youngest person in the entire house. But in our little friend group that came together, nobody was seventeen yet. It was around about this time that the first wave of addicts came in who had first starting using when they were literally kids. After one or two years, they'd become just as devastated as I was; the younger you were, the more the poison seemed to affect you. Like me, there was no way they would be accepted by any of the other programs.

  Almost all of these new admissions struggled with the methods here just as badly as I had. When two of us—the younger ones, I mean—were together, the whole session dissolved into chaos. How could you stay serious for long, anyway, when you were supposed to yell at a soccer ball or stare into each other's eyes for hours on end? There wasn't any need to worry about the lie detector anymore because we'd readily admit that the session hadn't done anything for us anyway. I guess that wasn't true because it made us laugh, but that was it. The poor session leaders were totally at a loss when they had to work with us.

  At the end of the day, there was just one thing we talked about now: H. I started making plans to leave.

  After two weeks at Narc Anon, I'd figured out an escape plan, and it worked: Two boys and I disguised ourselves as the “great housecleaning platoon.” With a garbage can, a mop, and a bucket, we got through all the doors. The three of us were blissfully happy. We almost peed our pants in our giddy anticipation of shooting up. At the subway station we went our separate ways. I was headed to Zoo Station, to see Detlef.

  Detlef wasn't there but Stella was. She almost fainted when she saw me. She said that nobody had seen Detlef lately, and I was afraid that he'd landed in jail. Stella said that Zoo Station was in a real depression, so we went to the boulevard at Kurfürstenstrasse instead. Things were dead there, too. We made our way from the subway stop at Kurfürstenstrasse up to Lützow Place before someone finally pulled over beside us. We recognized the car and the guy inside it. He'd followed us before—and one time he even stuck around when we went to a public bathroom to shoot up. We always thought he was an undercover cop, but apparently he was just a customer who had a thing for young heroin junkies.

  He only wanted me, but Stella came along for the ride.

  I said, “Thirty-five for a blow job—and I won't do anything more than that.”

  He said, “I'll give you a hundred marks.”

  I was blown away. That was totally unprecedented. Even the customers in the biggest, brightest Mercedes had a fit over a mere five marks. And this guy, in a dinged-up rusty old VW, was volunteering to give me a hundred. After a minute, he said that he was an officer in the Federal Intelligence Service—so in other words, he was probably full of shit. But these kinds of cocky, conman types were also some of my best clients back at Zoo Station because they liked to puff themselves up by throwing money around. He really did give me a hundred marks though.

  Right away Stella found us some dope, and the first thing we did was give ourselves a shot, right there in the car. We drove over to the Pension Ameise, a small hotel. Stella waited in the hallway outside. I took my time with this guy because I was super high from my first fix in two weeks, but also because he had paid a pretty decent amount. I was so doped up that I didn't want to get up off the narrow cot in that grubby hotel room.

  I talked with the guy for a little bit afterward. He was a funny kind of show-off. At the end, he said that he had half a gram of heroin, and that he would give it to us if we would come back to the Kurfürstenstrasse in three hours. And then, after that, I managed to squeeze even more out of him—another thirty marks. I said we needed the money to get some good food for a change. I told him that I had never been fooled by his VW. I knew it was a cover-up, and that he was rich since he was working in intelligence. So he couldn't very well say no then. He had to hand over the cash.

  Stella and I went back to Zoo Station because I was still hoping I'd be able to find Detlef. Suddenly this small, shaggy, spotted dog
ran over and jumped up on me. I must have reminded the dog of someone. I thought the dog was unbelievably cute. It looked like a sled dog that had shrunk a few sizes in the wash. A couple seconds later, this ratty, disheveled old guy came after the dog and actually asked me if I wanted to buy it. I did. He wanted seventy marks, but I talked him down to forty. I was high—both on dope and due to the fact that I finally had a dog again. Stella thought I should call it Lady Jane. I decided to go with Janie.

  We ate pork chops with vegetables and potatoes at a restaurant in the Kurfürstenstrasse, and Janie got the leftovers. The intelligence officer really did come by, right on time, and he gave me a real half of a gram. I couldn't believe it. This half-gram was worth a hundred marks.

  Stella and I then went and paid one last visit to Zoo Station in the hopes of finding Detlef. We ran into Babsi instead, and I was so, so happy to see her because despite all of our fights, I liked her a lot—even better than Stella. The three of us went into the station café and sat down. Babsi looked terrible. Her legs were like matchsticks, and her chest had completely flattened out. She said she weighed sixty-six pounds. Only her face was as beautiful as always.

  I told them about Narc Anon and how cool it had been over there. Stella didn't want to hear anything about it. She said she was born to be a junkie and that's the way it was always going to be. Babsi, however, was totally into the idea of the two of us going to Narc Anon together and quitting H for good. Her parents and grandma had also unsuccessfully tried to find a place in a rehab program for her. Babsi was couch surfing again, but she really wanted to quit. She was in a horrible state.

  Once we'd all caught up, I took Janie into Metro, an expensive but still pretty underwhelming store in the station that stayed open at night for a while. I bought two bags of dog food and a whole bunch of instant pudding for myself. Then I called Narc Anon to ask if I could come back. They said yes. I said that I'd be bringing along a girlfriend but didn't let on that the friend was Janie.

  Although I'd never actually spent time thinking about it, I'd basically always known that I'd be heading back to Narc Anon. Where else could I have gone? My mom would have freaked out if I showed up on her doorstep. Also, my sister had moved out of my dad's place and was now living at my mom's, taking up my old room and my bed. Couch surfing wasn't for me. And the last thing I wanted to do was be completely dependent on a john who took me in for the night. I'd never stayed overnight with a customer because that automatically meant we'd have to have sex. But most importantly, I still wanted to get clean for good. And I still believed that I could do it at Narc Anon because for me there were no other choices left.

  In the house—we always called it just “the house”—they were cold, but they didn't say anything. Not about my escape, and not about Janie. There were already about twenty cats in the house, so how much of a difference would a dog make?

  I brought some old blankets down from the attic and made up a dog bed for Janie, right next to me. The next morning, the dog had covered the entire room in shit and piss. Janie had never been house-trained. She was a total nutcase. But then again, so was I. I loved Janie, so I didn't mind having to clean up after her again and again.

  I was immediately given an extra session. It didn't bother me. I just went through the motions automatically. The only thing that got on my nerves was the fact that, so long as I was in here, I couldn't be with my dog. Other people were taking care of her while I was in sessions, and that made me sick. She was my dog. Everyone played with her, and she played with everyone; she was kind of a slut like that. Everybody fed her, and she just got fatter and fatter. But I only talked to her when we were alone. It was nice to have someone I could talk to.

  I ran away two more times. The last time I was gone for four days. That was my first experience with couch surfing. I could stay with Stella because at that time her mom was in a psychiatric clinic with the DTs.35 All the old shit started up again. Customers, shooting up, customers, shooting up.

  Then I found out that Detlef had gone to Paris with Bernd, and I had a fit.

  The idea that Detlef, who was basically like my husband, would just up and leave Berlin without even letting me know—that was the last straw. We'd always dreamed about going to Paris together. We were going to rent a small room in Montmartre or some neighborhood like that and go cold turkey together because neither of us had ever heard of there being a heroin scene in Paris. We believed that there were no drugs in Paris, only a lot of cool artists who drank a lot of coffee and maybe sometimes had some wine.

  So now Detlef was in Paris with Bernd. I'd lost my boyfriend. I was all alone. All the old fights and irritations had risen up again with Babsi and Stella. The only one I had left was Janie.

  I called in to Narc Anon at one point while I was away, and they told me that my mom had already picked up my stuff. So my mom had given up on me, too. Somehow that made me furious. Now I wanted to show them all. I wanted to show them that I could do it all on my own.

  I went to Narc Anon and they took me in again. I participated in their therapies like I was possessed. I did everything I was told to do. I became a real model student and was allowed to use the lie-detector apparatus, and its pendulum never moved when I said that a session had been good for me. I thought, Now you'll make it. I didn't call my mom because, what did she care? She'd already checked me out. I just borrowed the stuff I needed, like boys' underpants. I didn't care one bit. I just didn't want to ask my mom to bring back my stuff.

  One day my dad called: “Hi, Christiane,” he said. “So tell me, where the hell's this place you're living now? I just happened to find out about it.”

  I just said, “It's great that sometimes you remember that you actually have a daughter. Awesome job, Dad.”

  He: “So, do you really want to stay at that place, with all those wackos?”

  Me: “Definitely, for sure.”

  I could hear my dad taking a long, deep breath before he asked if I would like to come out to eat with him and a friend. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. I can do that.”

  Half an hour later, I had to go down to the office to meet him. There he was, my dad, live and in the flesh. He came up to see my room, where I was housed with four other patients. “Look at this friggin' mess,” he mumbled. After all, he'd been a neat freak all his life. And it really did look like a bomb had gone off in there. Every room was like that, a total mess, with clothes everywhere.

  Because we were heading outside, one of the bosses said to my dad, “You're required to sign a statement that you'll be bringing Christiane back.”

  My dad went ballistic. He shouted that he was my father, and that he alone could determine where his daughter was allowed to go, and when. He was going to take me with him, and they wouldn't need to wait up.

  I started moving backward, toward the therapy room, and said, “I want to stay. I don't want to die, Daddy. Please let me stay.”

  The Narc Anon people, who'd been attracted by the yelling, all came running and backed me up. My dad ran outside and shouted, “I'm coming back with the police!”

  I knew that he wasn't bluffing. I ran up to the attic and climbed onto the roof. There was a kind of platform for the chimney sweep. I crouched down on that and shivered with cold.

  Then two patrol cars arrived. The cops searched the house with my dad from top to bottom. Meanwhile, the Narc Anon bosses started getting scared and also started calling for me. But nobody found me on the roof. Eventually the cops drove off, and my dad left with them.

  The next morning I called my mom at work. I started crying right away. “What's going on?” I asked her. “What's happening?”

  My mom responded with a voice that was as cold as ice: “I couldn't care less about what happens to you.”

  I said, “I don't want Dad to take me away from here. You are the custodial parent. You can't just give up on me and leave me to fend for myself. I'm staying here and I'll never leave again, I swear. Please, do something so that Dad can't just take me o
ut of here. I really truly need to stay here. Otherwise I'll die, Mom. Seriously, you have to believe me!”

  When she spoke she sounded impatient: “No. I can't. I won't.” Then she hung up.

  At first I felt like I was now a completely lost cause. But then my rage returned. They can all kiss my ass, I thought. Your whole life they didn't care one iota about what was happening to you. And now they feel like they can do whatever they want with you, when they've never done anything right. Those assholes totally let you get sucked down the drain. Kessi's mom made sure that Kessi didn't end up totally fucked up. And now that you're really struggling, they're trying to tell you what to do? They're fucking crazy.

  I asked for an extra session and totally immersed myself in it. I wanted to stay at Narcotics Abusers Anonymous and maybe even become a member of the Church of Scientology. In any case, I wouldn't let anyone take me away from here. I didn't want my parents to damage me any further. That's what I was thinking to myself while my anger burned itself out anyway.

  Three days later my dad came back, and I was forced to come down to the office. He was really calm. He said that I had to go with him to the Social Services Department since they were reimbursing my mom for her payments to Narc Anon.

  I said, “No, I'm not coming along. I know you, Dad. If I come with you, I'll never see this house again. And I don't want to die.”

  My dad showed an authorization document to the Narc Anon managers, that stated that he was permitted to take me out of here. My mom had given him the authority. The head of Narc Anon said that there was nothing he could do, and that I had to go with my dad. They couldn't keep me here against his will.

  When we said good-bye, the head of Narc Anon said that I shouldn't forget to do my exercises. “Always confront!”

  Confronting was one of their magic words. We were supposed to confront everything. What a bunch of idiots, I thought. There's nothing for me to confront. I'll have to die. I just can't take it anymore. After two weeks I'll get doped up again. I can't do it. I'll never make it on my own. This was one of the rare moments when I saw my situation as clear as day. In my despair I really believed that Narcotics Abusers Anonymous was my only lifeline. I was sobbing with rage and despair, on and on and on; it seemed I would never stop.