Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.

by Christiane F

  I cried so hard that I could barely breathe.

  Christiane's Mom

  After that fiasco at Narc Anon, I didn't think it was a very good idea for my ex-husband to take Christiane in and help “bring her to her senses,” as he put it. Aside from the fact that he couldn't supervise her around the clock, thinking about Christiane in the care of her dad caused me emotional indigestion. Mainly because of the memories of my relationship with him, but also because her sister had just moved back in with me as a result of his over-bearing tactics.

  But I didn't know what else to do and hoped that maybe he'd succeed where I had failed. But I also don't want to exclude the possibility that I was eager to find any reason—however implausible—that would give me a break from Christiane and her issues. Since her first withdrawal, I'd been swinging back and forth between hope and despair. When I asked her dad to intervene, I was physically and emotionally drained; I was at the end of my rope.

  Just three weeks after her first withdrawal (which Christiane bravely endured, along with Detlef, back at my place), the police called me at work and informed me that they'd picked up Christiane at Zoo Station. I was asked to come and get her.

  That first relapse hit me like a ton of bricks. I sat at my desk, shaking. Every two minutes I glanced at the clock to see if it was 4 p.m. yet. I didn't dare leave before the end of the workday. I didn't want to entrust my family's pain and trouble to anyone else. My boss's two daughters would have basically condemned me. I suddenly gained some understanding of what Detlef's dad had tried to express. You really are very ashamed, especially at first.

  Christiane's eyes were almost swollen shut when I got to the police station. That's how hard she must have cried. The police officer showed me the fresh needle track on her arm and told me she had been arrested at Zoo Station in an “unambiguous position.”

  At first I couldn't imagine what “unambiguous position” meant, but maybe I really didn't want to know anyway. Christiane was intensely unhappy about her relapse. I helped her withdraw again. Without Detlef. She stayed at home and seemed determined to make it work. I got up my courage and let her school advisor know about what was going on. He was shocked, but he thanked me for my openness. He wasn't used to that from other parents. He suspected that there were more heroin addicts at the school, and he would've liked to help Christiane. The only problem was that he didn't know how.

  It was always the same. It didn't matter who I talked to— either people were as helpless as I was, or they had already completely given up on people like Christiane. I saw this same thing over and over again.

  Slowly I began to realize how easily teenagers came into contact with heroin. The dealers were already waiting for them on their way to school. I couldn't believe my ears when Christiane was once approached by one of these guys, in my presence, while we were out shopping. She told me how she knew these people: That guy deals with this guy; and this guy sells that; and that one over there does this or that.

  It all seemed so crazy. What's going on here, anyway? What kind of a place to live is this? I wanted to transfer Christiane to a different school, so that she could at least avoid that particular route to school and its inherent dangers.

  It was right before spring break, so right before I wanted her to start at the new school. I hoped that this was a way I could pull her out of the environment she was used to and away from the dangers at the subway stations. Of course, that was a naïve idea and my plan didn't even come to fruition anyway. The principal of the other school told us right off the bat that they didn't like to take students from a comprehensive school like Christiane's. And Christiane's grades were far too poor for him to make an exception. Out of curiosity, he asked why Christiane wanted to switch schools. When Christiane said that there was no sense of community or camaraderie there, the principal smirked. “Camaraderie? Of course there's no camaraderie at a school like yours.” He said that since the students were always being shuffled and resorted in their classes, there was just no chance for any kind of community spirit to develop.

  I don't know who was more disappointed, Christiane or I. She just said, “This is so pointless. Rehab is the only thing that can help me.” But how would I ever get her a spot in a rehab program? I called each and every regional office and state office, every department, every authority. The best thing they could come up with were the drug-counseling centers. And the drug-counseling centers insisted that Christiane approach them voluntarily. As much as they all fought with each other and berated the other centers for their methods, they all agreed on that one point: Voluntary participation was the only way to start. Otherwise, a recovery would be impossible.

  When I begged Christiane to go to a counseling center, she became obstinate and combative: “What good would that do?” she said. “And anyway, they don't have any openings for me. No way I'm going to hang around their place for weeks on end, doing absolutely nothing.”

  What was I supposed to do? If I'd dragged her against her will, I would've been betraying their primary requirement. That being said, today I can at least understand their position. At the time, Christiane probably wasn't emotionally mature enough to undergo a serious therapy program. On the other hand, it still seems wrong to deny assistance to addicts who are still so young. We should do whatever we can to help them.

  Later, at the various points when Christiane felt run-down, depressed, and helpless—when she felt so bad that she would have happily checked herself into a strict rehab program, it was always the same: There were no spots open, and she'd have to spend six to eight weeks on a waiting list. It left me speechless. The only thing I could respond with was, “What if she's dead by then?”

  “Well, in the meantime, she should come to us for some advisory interviews, so that we can figure out if she's serious about quitting.” Looking back, I have a hard time finding fault with the drug counselors. With the few spots that they had available for addicts in rehab programs, they invariably had to make some tough choices.

  So I never managed to get her a place in a rehab program. But when Christiane returned from spring vacation, I had the impression that she didn't need one anymore. She looked really refreshed and healthy. I thought that she had finally quit for good.

  She also made a lot of disparaging remarks about her friend Babsi. She said that Babsi was selling herself to old men for heroin. Christiane insisted that she would never be able to do something like that. She talked a lot about how glad she was to be away from all that crap. She seemed dedicated to staying sober. I could've sworn that she really meant it.

  However, after just a few days she slid right back into the same old behavior. I could tell by her tiny pupils. I didn't want to hear her lame excuses anymore. When I confronted her, she would say things like, “What? I just smoked a little weed, that's all. Relax!” This was the start of a very bad time. She told me bald-faced lies and stuck with them even when I knew she was lying and told her so. I grounded her, but she didn't care; she left the house anyway. I considered locking her up inside, but then she would've jumped out of the window. We were in a second-floor apartment, and I didn't want to risk her injuring herself.

  I was at the end of my rope; my nerves were completely frayed. I couldn't stand looking into her distant eyes anymore. Three months had gone by since I'd caught her in the bathroom. Every couple of days the newspapers reported on yet another heroin-related death. Most of the time they only dedicated a couple of lines to each incident. They reported on heroin overdoses as routinely and dispassionately as they covered traffic accidents.

  I was a wreck—just so insanely worried all the time. Especially now that Christiane had stopped opening up. She wouldn't admit to anything, and the constant lies and deception were really unnerving to me. When she felt like I'd figured her out or if I caught her in a lie, she'd become obscene and aggressive. Slowly but surely, her personality began to change.

  I worried about her survival. I stopped automatically providing her with her allowance of
twenty marks. There was this constant fear living inside me: If I give her an allowance, then she'll buy herself a shot, and that could be the one that kills her. I could almost live with the fact that she was addicted. But it was the fear that the next shot could be her last that destroyed me. I was at least a little reassured by the fact that she was at home now; otherwise I'd be like Babsi's mom, who had to call me all the time, in tears, asking if I knew where her daughter was.

  I was constantly on edge. When the phone rang, I feared that it was the police or the morgue or some other horrible place. To this day, I still sit bolt upright in bed when the phone rings at night.

  There was absolutely no reasoning with Christiane anymore. When I'd address her addiction, she would just scream, “Leave me alone!” I got the impression that Christiane had given up on herself.

  Even though she kept insisting that she was only doing pot now, and not heroin, I was able to see through those kinds of lines. I'd stopped deceiving myself.

  I searched her room regularly and would often come across her drug paraphernalia. Two or three times I even found a syringe. I'd throw them at her feet, which only made her yell at me, totally offended. She said they were Detlef's, and that she'd taken them away from him.

  One day when I came home from work, they were both sitting on her bed and had just heated up a spoon. I was dumb-founded by their audacity. All I could do was scream at them. “Get out!” I yelled. “Just leave! Now!”

  After they'd left I broke down and cried. I felt an incredible rage toward the police and toward the government. I felt completely abandoned. One of the Berlin papers reported another death from heroin overdose. There had already been more than thirty victims in that year alone. And it was only May. I couldn't grasp any of it. You could see on TV what huge sums the government was spending on the fight against terrorism. But in Berlin the dealers were running around unencumbered, selling heroin like ice cream cones openly in the streets.

  I was really getting myself worked up. Who knows what else was running through my mind at that moment? I sat there in my living room, looking at my furniture, piece by piece. I think I was in the right frame of mind to smash it all to bits. This furniture was all I had. This was the reward for all my hard work. I started to cry again.

  That night, when Christiane returned, I had decided to give her some measure of real punishment. While I was waiting for her to come home, sitting alone on my bed, my thoughts ran wild with a mixture of fear, guilt, and regret. I felt like I'd failed, not only because my marriage had broken down, and because I had so little time to for my kids, but also because I'd been too ashamed—too cowardly—to face up to the reality of Christiane's situation.

  That evening I lost my last illusion.

  Christiane didn't come home until after midnight. From my window I could see her get out of a Mercedes. She was dropped off right at the front door. My God, I thought, that's it. That's the end. She's given up all self-respect. The catastrophe was complete. I was shattered. I grabbed her and spanked her so hard and long that my hands hurt. In the end, we both sat on the carpet and cried. Christiane was in pieces. I looked her dead in the eyes and told her that I knew she was prostituting herself. She shook her head and sobbed: “But not in the way you think, Mom.”

  I didn't want to hear about the details. I sent her off to take a bath and then get in bed. Nobody can imagine how I felt. The thought of her selling her body was killing me. It was even worse than the news about her heroin addiction.

  I didn't get any sleep that night. What other options did we have? What could we still do? In my desperate state of mind, I even thought of putting her in an institution, but that would've only made things worse. Initially, they would've placed Christiane in the central home on Ollenhauer Street. And I'd already heard some negative things about that place. Apparently the girls there have a tendency to recruit each other into prostitution.

  There was only one thing to do: I had to send Christiane away from Berlin immediately. Forever. Whether she wanted to go or not. She had to get away from this place, from this morass that sucked her down over and over again. She needed to go someplace far away from all this heroin.

  My own mother, who lived in the state of Hessia, was willing to take Christiane in, as was my sister-in-law in Schleswig-Holstein. But when I told Christiane about my decision, she was dejected, almost distraught. Still, I'd already begun making plans and preparations, and I would have followed through with them, but eventually Christiane came to me, meek and full of regret, and declared she was ready to begin with a rehab program. She'd already found a place that had an opening. A place called Narcotics Abusers Anonymous.

  That was a weight off my shoulders. I wasn't sure if she could make it without any professional assistance, and I was also afraid that she might run away from my relatives.

  I didn't know much about this Narcotics Abusers Anonymous program, but I had heard that it involved a substantial fee for services rendered. So two days before Christiane's fifteenth birthday, I called for a taxi and went with her to Narc Anon. A young man did the intake interview with us. He congratulated us on our decision and reassured me that from now on I didn't have to worry anymore. He said that the therapy at Narc Anon was usually successful. He seemed really confident, and, to be honest, I couldn't remember the last time I felt so relieved.

  Then he put the contract in front of me and went over all the details of the program, including my own financial responsibility. It cost fifty-two marks a day, and the payment had to be made four weeks in advance. That was more than I made at work in that same amount of time. But what did that matter when you considered what was at stake? Besides, the representative indicated that I could probably get the costs for the program reimbursed by Social Services.

  The next day I scraped together five hundred marks and brought them to the Narc Anon offices. Then I took out a loan for a thousand marks and made the payment at the next parents' evening. A group of reformed addicts ran these evenings. You couldn't tell that the one I saw used to be a junkie—at least I couldn't. He looked pretty normal. That was thanks to Narc Anon, he said. After getting clean, he'd become a new person. That certainly impressed all the parents. And he assured me, in particular, that Christiane was making good progress.

  It turned out that they were just putting on an act. Like everyone else, they just wanted our money. Later I found out, in a newspaper article, that Narc Anon belonged to a dubious American religious organization, and that it was profiting from parents' fears about their children.

  But as usual, I didn't realize what was going on before much too late. Initially, I thought that Christiane was in the best of hands. I wanted to leave her there for as long as possible. But in order to do that, I needed money.

  I ran from one government office to the next, from one department to the next. But nobody wanted to take any responsibility for Christiane. And at the same time, nobody told me what was really going on at Narc Anon. I felt discouraged. I felt conned. Everyone acted like I was just wasting their time. Then finally, somebody told me that I first needed to get a statement from a government-approved doctor certifying that Christiane was indeed a drug addict before I could even begin to apply for reimbursement of her therapy fees. I thought that was a joke. Anyone who knew even a little bit about this topic could plainly recognize the misery in Christiane's face. But those were the rules. The thing was, when I finally managed to get an appointment with the officially approved doctor (an appointment that took two weeks for me to get), Christiane had run away from Narc Anon again. It was already the third time.

  I broke down and cried. I thought, Now it'll start all over again. We're back at square one. Every time that she returned, I was convinced that this was the time that she would finally make it, and every time, I was disappointed. My boyfriend and I went out to look for her. In the afternoons we'd check out the park that young people often hung out at called Hasenheide36; at night we'd go downtown and to the clubs, and in between we'd go
scouring the subway stations. We went wherever the drugs were. With each new day, we'd renew the hunt. We even checked the public bathrooms all over the city, just in case. We'd reported her as missing, but they only said that they'd add Christiane to their missing-persons list. She'd show up again, they said.

  All I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and disappear. I was consumed by fear. Fear of that phone call: Your daughter is dead. I was just a bundle of nerves. I wasn't interested in anything anymore, and I didn't want to do anything, I had to force myself to go to work. I started getting heart palpitations, and I could hardly move my left arm. At night it would tingle and go numb. My stomach was constantly upset. My kidneys hurt and my head felt like it was going to explode. I was physically and mentally spent.

  I went to my doctor, who told me it was all nerves and prescribed me some Valium. When I told him why I was such a mess, he said that a couple of days ago another such young girl had come to him, confessed her drug addiction, and asked him for advice on what she should do. “And what did you tell her?” I asked.

  “I told her to go and hang herself.” That was his answer. Just like that. It was hopeless.

  When Christiane showed up again at Narc Anon a week later, I couldn't even bring myself to feel relief. It was like a part of me had died. I was of the opinion that I had done everything humanly possible, but nothing had helped. Whatever I did, things always got worse.

  It was like a snowball tumbling downhill. Narc Anon had done more harm than good. Christiane had changed during her time there. She made a bad impression now—she was vulgar, almost to the point of repulsiveness—and had lost whatever girlish innocence she still had left.