Church Group

by Michael Brightside

  * * *

  We sat there for a good hour, the neighbour sitting on the duvet folded into a makeshift cushion on the floor. The four of us took turns to tell stories of nights out as we shared lines. Well three of us shared lines, the neighbour drank beer while he told his own bile flavoured tales of youth fuelled debauchery. I felt more comfortable knowing that although he wasn’t joining us in taking drugs, he had done in the past so couldn’t judge. Like a couple in a close relationship Kyle and I took turns to tell parts of stories of the same nights out, sometimes even with different endings. He seemed to be enjoying himself more and more as the evening went on. I tried to maintain the facade of having a good time; but on the inside I was dissolving.

  “I’ve just got to go outside and get some fresh air,” I said.

  “You can’t go out, you’re too fucked to go out,” Pat replied.

  “I’m getting claustrophobic in this room mate, I’ll go and sit on the stairs outside. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The neighbour looked at me worriedly as I got up and walked away, mouthing, “Literally two minutes.”

  As I made it out onto the stairwell everything began to swirl before my eyes. The stairs in front of me becoming steeper, almost vertical, until I had to reach out and grab the handrail fearing I would fall off the edge. I quickly sat down and watched as what should have been the straight interior walls of the building, joined at right angles, instead turned into a long tunnel, merging and bending in on itself. I wasn’t good. Nausea swept through me like the waves of the sea outside the door, a sickness that rose from the pit of my stomach, sending a signal to the acknowledgement part of my brain to confirm just how fucked I was. And more my vision spun. I rolled down the stairs on my feet as fast as I could, the descent being made harder by the fact that the previously inanimate wooden handrail I was holding flexed and bowed in my hands like a snake. I was on the middle floor now, halfway there. I tackled the next set of stairs the same way, almost like falling whilst using my feet to slow me, before finally reaching the scattering of unopened letters that marked the front door.

  “Are you alright mate?” a voice came from behind me as I staggered on, scaring what life I had left out of me.

  “Y-yeah mate, just going out now, to the outside.” I looked behind me, it was the bloke from upstairs, from next door. He must have come to check on me.

  “Sit down, you look pale. I can’t let you go out. Not yet.”

  I fell back against the wall and slid down it into a heap, lifting my knees up to my chest and nestling my face between them. The neighbour sat down next to me.

  “So what sort of music you into then Lu?” he asked, probably trying to take my mind off what I’d done to myself.

  “Any dance music,” I replied. “1990-93 old skool hardcore really though mate.”

  “That’s a bit dated for you isn’t it? How old were you in 1990?”

  “Er....I would’ve been six in 1990, yeah suppose it is a bit old. I used to be into garage.”

  “I don’t mind a bit of garage, or drum and bass. You into your drum and bass too? I know Kyle is, he’s upstairs trying to persuade Pat to let him play that CD again.”

  “Yeah I’ll listen to drum and bass,” I said. “Just since the first time I heard proper old skool on E it’s kind of stuck with me.”

  “Ah, on ecstasy it’s a different story. Nothing’s as good with pills as old skool, it’s the pianos and the vocals that do it. When I started raving you still had Fantazia and proper Dreamscapes, back in the days when you could take one E for the night.”

  “And all the mad little samples in there mate - He was killed by an overdose,” I said, before realising how inappropriate a sample that actually was.

  A cold draught crept in under the front door, rustling the letters on the carpet before making its way up the stairs. I started sifting through the letters, making piles of ones with the same name on.

  Then I looked straight at him. “I don’t think I can handle this anymore.”

  “You’re alright mate, it’s nice and cool down here. Just try not to think too much, and let your heart slow down a bit.”

  He pulled a box of cigarettes from his pocket and offered me one.

  “Cheers,” I said, as I lit it and blew the first puff of smoke up into the stairwell above us.

  “So how old were you when you first start getting on it?” he asked.

  “When I was sixteen. Three years ago,” I replied. “My mate James had just moved into his own flat and Kyle bought some pills round for us all to try. I think he’d done them before, when he lived in London, but he made out it was his first time so that we all felt on the same level.”

  “Upstairs Kyle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you enjoy the first time?” he asked. “I know a lot of people try to fight it the first time they drop, and end up not feeling a lot.”

  Recalling that first night in my mind filled me with joy, and helped to take my attention from how I felt now.

  “It was the bollocks mate. Haven’t really looked back since; speed, coke, mushrooms. Just none of the heavy stuff,” I said. “What about you? When did you start getting mashed?”

  “The same sort of age as you then. I’m thirty now though, haven’t taken anything for nearly ten years. Started off smoking weed, then a bit of amphetamines here and there, like you say it all seems normal after that. It’s only really heroin and crack that I’ve avoided.”

  He had the same view on it all as I did. Heroin and crack were just the wrong side of that imaginary line I’d drawn in my head too.

  “Do you think I’ll ever stop?” I asked.

  He turned to face me as if to tell me some secret he’d never told anyone before, and stared into my eyes. His were horizon wide.

  “It depends if you want to stop,” he said. “Do you want to?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s just these feelings I’ve been getting, it’s like every now and then during the week I get a little tingle in my spine or my jaw tightens up for no reason. Like the drugs aren’t quite out of my system. This is on like a Thursday or something, when I’ve had loads of time to recover.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem Lu, the chemicals still being in your brain,” he said. “I think it’s what they’re doing to your brain when you take them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The feeling you get when you’re on the drugs, it’s from all the chemicals being changed, which changes the way your brain works. That’s why you get confident when you’re buzzing or paranoid when you start coming down.”

  “Right.”

  He went on, “I don’t think the levels of the chemicals in your brain are going back to normal when you stop taking the drugs.” The passion in his words became intense. It was as though a million points he wanted to make rushed through his head and he’d just realised he knew how to say them. “Every time you get on it, your brain is staying changed, just a little bit,” he said. “But then you do it again the following weekend and it stays changed a little more.”

  “So you’re saying if I carry on like this I’m going to end up walking around feeling like I’m buzzing all the time?”

  He looked straight ahead, pulling another cigarette from the pack. I politely accepted one.

  “I think that’s what’s happening Lu, I think it happens to everyone on drugs. Eventually they stop being the person they were before and start being, well, the drug. It changes you, the chemical makeup in your brain, and one day it will change you for good. Each time you do it you get a little bit closer to that point, and reality gets that little bit further away.”

  It suddenly made sense to me. I could tell an alcoholic just by looking at them, or a heroin addict. Why was this any different? We were doing enough of it to mess us up, and none of us ever thought it was safe; I guess we just didn’t see clubbing drugs as being, like, proper drugs. Drugs that you gave up for any other reason than being bored of t
hem. I’d naively thought I could carry on like this forever if I wanted; but here I was being chewed up and spat out, just another worn-out cog in this machine that I adored.

  “I’m going to have to stop,” I said.

  “When I stopped, I knew I had to fucking stop. I’d have fallen apart if I hadn’t.” I couldn’t remember hearing him swear before. I think he saved it for occasions like this.

  I gave him an emphatic glance. “I suppose we can’t until we realise we have to.”

  “Pretty much hit the nail on the head,” he replied. “You can’t deal with a problem if you don’t know there is a problem. Anyway, how you feeling now? You alright to come back upstairs?”

  I had a look around me. I knew myself well enough to know I was still tightly clenched in the drug’s grip. I had somewhat levelled off though, so followed the nameless stranger upstairs.

  Kyle and Pat were also deep in conversation in the flat, but both looked relieved when I walked in.

  “You alright now Lu?” Kyle asked.

  “Yeah fine mate, just needed some fresh air. The buzz got a bit heavy for a bit.”

  “Safe bruv. Yeah probably a bit warm up here, I bet you need a drink. You got any more beers Pat?”

  Pat brought me out a cold one from the fridge. Kyle was right, it was a lot hotter up here than on the bottom floor in the stairwell.

  “Just got to pop to the loo,” I said.

  I looked at my reflection in the mirror. I was ghostly white, most of the colour still not having returned to my face. I at least felt better though.

  I walked back in to find them doing lines again.

  “You having one of these Lu?” Pat asked me.

  “You don’t have to if you’re not ready mate, I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” the neighbour said.

  “Lu’s alright aren’t you?” Kyle said.

  Fuck it. I was feeling alright now; I’d probably just messed myself up earlier by doing it too quickly. I knelt down and snorted my line, and it took about two seconds to realise it was probably the worst decision I’d ever made.

  Every feeling that had caused me to have to run away before came back; the head rush, the spinning nausea, but even worse.

  “I’ve-I’ve-got to go,” I managed to utter as I made my way to the door.

  “You can’t go anywhere now Lu, stay here for a bit and chill out,” Kyle tried to calm me down, but his words, though I understood individually what they meant, didn’t seem to form a coherent sentence.

  I looked back at him and the whole room looked like it was coated in ice, or maybe glass. A thick, almost clear layer that seemed to sit on everything, like the world had been lacquered.