Digging the Vein

by Tony O'Neill

  She told me about the Musicians’ Assistance Program as I sat pondering my next move. They had formed in the seventies, a group of sober survivors of the L.A. music industry. They started off running a musicians-only AA meeting which proved to be hugely popular, attracting some pretty big players from the jazz era, as well as rock and roll groups and executives from many of the big record labels. After a number of high profile musicians died from fatal overdoses MAP set up a trust, which paid for musicians who couldn’t afford it or didn’t have insurance, to get access to treatment. The only requirement was that you have to have recorded on an album. I suppose it made sense; I thought that Alicia was taking an unusual interest in the bands I had been in, querying me about dates and record labels. And now she had gotten me a break with these MAP people.

  The idea of staying here for thirty more days was terrifying to me. I knew that in this wing we were treated with kid gloves because we were detoxing and fragile, but in the rehab wing things would no doubt be far less relaxed. I knew people who had been to rehab and it always sounded to me like a prison for junkies and only something that someone who had absolutely no choice in the matter would endure. I was due to be discharged the day after tomorrow. I had already planned out who I would call to pick me up, how much money I could borrow off of them, and when I could get my first taste of dope. The thought of not getting high at the end of this weeks detox filled me with an awful sense of disappointment and anxiety.

  I listened to myself think this with a feeling of growing revulsion. I was considering leaving this place to get high. Five days ago I never wanted to shoot up again. I was fully aware that each day was creeping closer towards the only possible conclusion to my reckless drug use. I was desperate for a shot at rehab so I could get my life together. I was suicidal, a prisoner who lived in motels and on peoples floors, someone covered in track marks and dirt that nobody—except the occasional out-of-it junky girls—would consider fucking. Twenty-two years’ old and fucked up, sick, broke and alone. A miserable existence. Now I was clean for the first time in almost two years, and I was already planning my first hit of smack for when I got out. And when something looked like it might come between myself and that hit, I was ready to discard it. Discard 3,500 dollars of other people’s money offered specifically for the purpose of giving me a chance at what I’d wanted, all without my even having to ask. Jesus, I was in trouble. I signed the papers quickly and said thank you to Alicia. She was positively beaming with pride. I knew that this was probably all her doing; Alicia must have had a soft spot for lame animals like myself.

  I went back to my bed. In the next bunk, Todd was lounging around, flicking through a magazine. I told him what had happened and he seemed pleased; I would be graduating to the rehabilitation wing on the same day as he and Billy. He told me that he thought it would be easier to get through the month as a gang. He sounded like he was looking forward to it, almost. In the bed in the far corner, Sal slept in a Valium hush.

  NEAR MISSES (Part Three)

  I had somehow ended up in Beverly Hills with Chris on a harebrained scheme to get high. Chris had a look of quiet desperation about him—he was out of drugs and soon he would be out on the streets. His housemates had finally figured out who had been removing all of the furniture from the place item by item and selling it, and they were trying to evict him. His father had finally realized that his son’s sustained financial crisis was due to a heavy dependence on heroin. The old man was threatening to not only stop loaning Chris money, but also to cut off his allowance completely, demanding that Chris move back in with him and sort his life out. So now we were heading over to the old man’s house -not so Chris could make an attempt to clean up - but so we could rob the place. Chris roped me into this whole scenario with the promise of free drugs; his father was an anesthesiologist and reputedly something of a barbiturate addict himself, and in exchange for driving him out to the house I was promised first pass on any drugs we found.

  His father was in San Francisco on a speaking engagement and as we pulled into the driveway, Chris pointed out his father’s second car, a new-looking, black Mercedes-Benz.

  “Look at that,” he sneered, genuinely aggrieved. “A fucking second Mercedes sitting in the driveway and the old bastard is giving me static over a lousy 900 dollars a month! Makes you fuckin’ sick. Pull in here. Neighbors ‘round here got their noses in each others business, man …”

  We pulled into the covered parking area and walked to the front door. Chris slid his key in the lock, deactivated the alarm and we went in.

  It was a beautiful place. There was an expensive looking grand piano to the left as you walked into the living room, a flat-screen TV and a high end sound system, all giving the place the look of an upper class bachelor pad.

  Chris set to work in the bedroom, looking for cash and jewelry, and I hit the medicine cabinet. I discarded vitamins, heart tablets and hemorrhoid creams. Then I came across some tablets that looked interesting. Fiorinal with Codeine. Checking the packaging, it learned they contained 50mgs of barbiturates and with 30mg of codeine. I emptied whole bottle went into my pocket, and half filled the empty bottle with Tylenol.

  It took me a while to find Chris’s father’s medical bag. When I did I discovered syringes, a blood pressure machine, more tablets, a stethoscope and several ampoules labeled “lidocaine”. Checking the pill bottle I realized I had found something quite extraordinary. The label was yellowing at the edges; quite obviously the bottle had been lurking at the bottom of this medical bag for many years. I could barely believe my eyes when I read the label and discovered I had unearthed some actual, honest-to-god Quaaludes. There were three and a half of them left in there. Chris told me his father was in semi-retirement these days, working as a consultant to one of the big hospitals in West Hollywood. These pills had obviously been hanging around since the late seventies. In Hollywood, the golden era of the Quaalude was a period recollected by drug aficionados with rosy nostalgia. When they became popular as a drug of abuse in the 70s these potent sedatives were suddenly pulled from the market, much to the chagrin of their many devotees. I knew that the right buyer would pay big bucks for what may have been the last genuine Quaaludes in existence. Hoping that they were still potent, I pocketed them.

  Chris reappeared from the bedroom, obviously having found what he was looking for.

  “You found anything? We’d better get the fuck out of here before someone spots the car.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, examining one of the ampoules. “You know anything about lidocaine? It’s an anesthetic, right?”

  “I suppose so. Let’s roll.”

  “Wait, wait … I wanna shoot some of this. I think it’s in the same family as cocaine.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Well, hurry up.” Chris headed to the kitchen to grab some food. “Just give me a yell when you’re through doing that nasty shit.”

  Chris, as heavily strung out on smack as he was, had a curiously puritanical attitude towards injectors. I suppose it made him feel a little better to have someone to look down on.

  I had no idea if lidocaine was really related to cocaine. It was guesswork based upon the similar name, and the fact that dentists used to use cocaine to numb the mouth before dental surgery. I decided to take a chance. I mainlined half an ampoule of the lidocaine and waited. I felt nothing, aside from a mild chemical taste in the back of my throat. I waited for a few moments before injecting the rest and then calling Chris. He wandered out of the kitchen, eating a sandwich.

  “What are you gonna do when your old man finds out?” I inquired, as we pulled out of the driveway.

  “I dunno,” he answered dreamily. “Maybe he won’t notice. He’s loaded, right?”

  As we got back into Hollywood, I started feeling strange: heavy lidded, out of focus. It had to be the lidocaine. Far from being a stimulant, it was making hard for me to keep my eyes focused. Suddenly driving required a Herculean amount of concentration. We stopped at a red light on Franklin, behind
a white SUV.

  I woke up, moments after we shunted into the vehicle in front of us. I had passed out, chin slumping onto my chest, foot slipping off the brake causing the car to lurch forward and rear-end the vehicle in front of us. With Chris screaming at me, I jerked back into life. A fat, white American woman was getting out of the SUV, screaming abuse at me, waddling over to the driver’s window on heavy thighs. She started banging on the glass and screaming about whiplash and insurance. My legs where completely numb and I was laughing, disorientated, as Chris screamed, “You fucking stupid junky bastard!” at me and I passed into blackness once more. Apparently Chris had to get out and scream at the woman to get the fuck away, and we were starting to attract all kinds of unwelcome attention. When she wouldn’t and started threatening to call the cops he aimed a few swift kicks at her ass and had to pull out his knuckleduster before she retreated back into her vehicle. I came around somewhat as Chris started shoving me over into the passenger seat and gunning the engine. I heard him tell me, “You are one stupid cocksucker, man,” as we sped off towards safety.

  REHABILITATION

  I spent two more days convalescing in the detox ward. During the final twenty-four hours my medication was reduced to zero. My short-term memory was shot to hell. A year and four months of constant, heavy heroin and cocaine use had played havoc with my brain. I could not hold onto people’s names. I forgot what day it was. Drifting off to sleep when I could, I dreamed of the chaos of my room in The Mark Twain, Genesis naked bathed in lamplight, tarot cards spread out in a semi-circle in front of her, feeding a syringe loaded with crystal meth into the tiny vein on the sole of her foot: “gotta feed it long and slow, otherwise vein pops like a balloon…” My own needle, penetrating gray skin without any sensation … blood blossoms in the light brown solution; I feed the shit in smooth and steady. Suddenly I’d jerk awake, gasping for air, my sheets soaked through with sweat… momentarily expecting the rush to take me in its chemical grasp before I remembered were I was with the sudden taste of disappointment. Shivering and wet, guts churning ominously, I closed my eyes and would try to recapture the feeling.

  The morning I moved over to the rehab wing - the staff called it “population” - I made myself take a shower, cursing the way the water burned my skin. Every inch of my body felt oversensitive. Any temperature that varied from room temperature was unbearable. The air either scorched or froze me. The feel of my T-shirt fabric against my flesh was profoundly unpleasant. I was in a near-constant state of anxiety. Even when there was nothing specific to worry about, a nagging sense of impending doom remained. I had frequent and persistent thoughts of suicide. My mind would always seem to return to the practicalities of self-murder: which method would be least painful? Would my parents be able to have my corpse brought back to England? Could it go wrong, leaving me paralyzed, and brain damaged? My state of mind was such that when I considered the possibility of a failed suicide attempt paralyzing me from the neck down, the most horrible part of the whole scenario was the fact I’d be unable to use a syringe.

  I packed up my clothes and my books. Alicia brought me over to the main wing. The reception area was huge, with an enormous aquarium filled with tropical fish as its centerpiece. If it wasn’t for the jailhouse tattoos and missing teeth of the woman behind the front desk, it may as well have been the entrance to a luxury office block.

  “Fuck me,” I said, disorientated by the sudden bustle and noise of the place following my week of monastic self-contemplation in the hospital wing.

  “Cool, huh?” Alicia pointed at the giant tank behind the desk. “That one over there is a cowfish. I call her Exene, like you know, like from X? You can take a look later, we gotta give you the once over first…”

  I was followed her to a small office, containing little more than a table and a plastic chair. Along the way a tall, scrawny black guy wearing a hoop earring and eye shadow fell into step with us. Alicia introduced him as D’Antwoin.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he lisped. “Now you pop that bag on the table, hun…”

  He had a voice that made Michael Jackson sound like Barry White. I thought for a moment he was putting me on. Surely no one could sound this queeny without being ironic? But no, as he and Alicia gossiped idly while pawing through my meager possessions, I realized that this was his actual voice.

  “Gurrl… you ain’t ever gonna guess what Miss Frankie says to me last night. She says I shouldn’t be fraternizing with that new boy. You know the one! That sweet li’l surfer boy with the blonde hair. Fraternizing? Moi? I think Frankie boy be feelin’ jay, cuz blondie be tossing some looks my way, you dig?”

  “He was tossing looks your way?” Alicia laughed as she put one of my books aside. “That boy’s straight, D'Antwoin and you know it.”

  “Get her!” D’Antwoin nudged me as if expecting that I was about to join in with their queeny banter. “I think she got designs on my surfer boy too!”

  I grunted in response. D’Antwoin raised both palms in mock outrage. “My oh my…” he said, “She’s a grumpy one, Miss Alicia!”

  “She ain’t had an hours sleep since they stopped giving me Valium,” I growled. “So her tolerance for bullshit is a little lower than usual. Can we speed this shit up a bit, princess?”

  D’Antwoin made a disapproving noise as he went back to work. Eventually two paperback books and a wife-beater were confiscated. I was given a receipt for both items. The undershirt was out, they explained, because there were a lot of gang-bangers in treatment. People had been beaten or stabbed for having the wrong tattoo, so now everyone had to wear T-shirt sleeves or longer. The books were out because newcomers were forbidden to have any reading materials that were not “recovery orientated.” They took my dog-eared copy of Burroughs’s Junky and a non-fiction book about an Ebola outbreak. As I re-packed my bag Alicia said, “I’d better leave you boys alone.” As soon as I was alone with D’Antwoin I realized it was cavity search time.

  “Okay, young sir…” he said, producing a small torch. “Go ahead an’ drop those drawers and spread those cheeks for me.”

  “They say this is the secret to a happy life…” I grumbled, pulling down my pants.

  “What’s that, hun?”

  “Turning your passion into a career.”

  D’Antwoin laughed at that. I bent over and held the cheeks apart while he shone his little torch up my ass.

  “OK, it looks all good up there.”

  “Good to know.”

  I straightened up and pulled up my pants.

  “I’ve just been in the detox wing for the past week. What the fuck you think I’m gonna have on me?”

  “You’d be surprised, man, you’d be surprised,” he grinned. “Or maybe not. You a junky. You know what sneaky-ass motherfuckas we can be, right?”

  D’Antwoin smiled, revealing a row of glistening gold teeth. It was eight in the morning when he led me up to my room. I’d vaguely hoped that I would be rooming with Billy and Todd. At least I knew that they weren’t complete psychopaths. I was disappointed when we arrived. Two strange-looking men straightened up like they where in military school as we walked in, and then slumped over again upon seeing it was only D’Antwoin and myself.

  “Hi, boys,” he sang. “We got a new kid here. Y’all be nice to him, hear?”

  My new roommates were Michael and Simon, two men who brought the whole ‘odd couple’ cliché to ludicrous new heights. Michael was in his late twenties, an overeager and over-friendly guy who looked like he’d be more at home in some stuck-up country club than a drug rehab. He wore a polo shirt and shorts, with a pair of Oakley sunglasses propped casually on his head. He called me “buddy” and shook my hand with a strong grip. I winced when I noticed that his left leg was in encased in a painful-looking metal contraption, with long steel pins that bored deep into the discolored flesh of his calf.

  Simon looked to be in his 60’s, with sunken cheeks and thinning, sandy hair. He talked in a nasal whine, and his false teeth whis
tled as he spoke. His face was webbed with ruptured blood vessels and his eyes had the ferocious sheen of a man who had seen the insides of mental wards and police cells. I immediately liked him a little more than the other guy.

  D’Antwoin excused himself, telling us to get ready for our morning meeting. As soon as he was out of the room Michael sneered, “Jesus, did that lousy faggot do your strip search?” I glanced at Simon, wondering how he’d take the ‘faggot’ comment, but he just raised an eyebrow and said, “Oh honey, why don’t you get your self-hating ass out of the closet already...”

  Over the next few days I got Michael’s story, bit by bit. It turned out that he had been a successful broker until he had lost it to crack. I suppose it started off like a typical story: high pay, high-pressure job, engaged to his high school sweetheart. He used a bit of blow after work with the guys, mostly to fuel their drinking sessions. Michael really liked coke though and he found it helped him work better. It made him more confident and aggressive and in his line of work that was a bonus. He got into the routine of having a couple of bumps before taking important meetings. After a few years of increasing use coke became more and more central to his existence. He became gripped by terror at the very notion of having to face the day without the security a couple of grams tucked away in his wallet. Now he had to snort more and more each day and his nose was getting fucked up. He’d wake up with red smeared on his pillow from the nosebleeds he’d get at night. Sometimes he’d sneeze and this awful, fleshy crimson gunk would come out, making him feel sick and nauseous.

  He had started fucking his dealer’s girlfriend on the side, and she was the one who introduced him to freebasing. His fiancée was getting suspicious by now, and started snooping through the credit card bills. When she found evidence of a hush-hush abortion – he’d knocked up the dealer’s girlfriend that summer - the whole house of cards came tumbling down. She left, and it was only a matter of weeks before his erratic behavior that he was called into head office and given an ultimatum – get it together, or look for a new job. Determined to turn his life around, Michael quit coke and started attending Cocaine Anonymous meetings. Things were great for the best part of a year. Then Michael heard his ex-fiancée was getting married to a guy they’d both gone to school with. He started using again and simply stopped turning up to work. The way he told the story, from that day on Michael stayed in his apartment, sucking on the pipe and indulging in paranoiac fantasies, in which the DEA were camped outside of his apartment, or were his ex-fiancée was laughing about Michael’s coke-fuelled impotence with her new husband. He got arrested the first time for trying to force his way into their apartment with a golf club. The second and third bust followed in quick succession.