In My Skin (7 page)

Heroin interferes with the chemical transmitters of the brain; it substitutes its own balms for all of these. And when there’s no more heroin in a body, it goes into crisis, bereft. There are no endorphins to kill pain; they’ve all been disabled by the drug. The body feels flayed and raw. Mineral levels of all kinds are unbalanced; the brain works strangely. Deranged thoughts and crazed plans seem reasonable. And, through all this, there’s the icy quiet knowledge that even if your chemistry readjusts, and the body battles through the discomfort, and you give up the one thing that makes life bearable, then there are days and weeks and months and years of
resisting
ahead of you. As you lie there, hardly able to think or breathe for the fatigue, engulfed in the moment, this idea is impossible.

I couldn’t keep it up for longer than a few days, and then I’d seek the solace of the needle. It was more terrifying than anything to actually be trying, with all my will, and not be strong enough.

My parents pressed me to see a psychiatrist. He was a dour man with a waiting room full of lace doilies and modern paintings. We’d sit in his darkened office, which was a little cold, and he’d set his thick face towards me and wait. There wasn’t much I could say. I wanted to find out the mechanisms of my behaviour, and adjust the apparatus. But I had no idea how to go about that. I wanted someone to stop me dead, stop my agile mental justifications; someone to shove me against the wall with a hand to my throat and not let me go until I’d dug out some truth. But this man just kept saying he couldn’t help me until I stopped using. And I couldn’t.

‘I get so depressed and frightened,’ I said. ‘Whenever I try to stop. The detox—trying to kick, sitting around at home all sick—it fucks with my head. Everything seems too big. I think I’ll never ever make it past the fear.’

I left with a prescription for anti-depressants. It was true that they stabilised my mood; but, already numb with the sedative of heroin, I had little mood left.

All the pills did was damp down any feelings I still had. Swaddled, my little heart throbbed more quietly. The legal drugs weren’t strong enough, though, to muffle the terror when it came to spike me.

I had no job now; no references, no confidence. I’d lost my boyfriend, my home in St Kilda. The respect of my family. My friends were busy. It was as if I’d walked into that pale sky—an empty, quiet place.

The love that my family still proffered embarrassed me. I could not tell them how little I felt I deserved it.

I sneaked out of the house and got caught coming back. I filched money. There were days when no one could bear to speak to me.

Night after night I plugged the needle into me. Its cool kiss.

Then my parents said that if I didn’t get clean I couldn’t stay with them. I had to sort myself out; what was wrong with me?

‘I can’t stand to see you killing yourself,’ my dad cried, with a desperation I’d never seen in him. ‘Please, please do something.’

So I rang the rehab James had gone to. It didn’t seem like such a stupid idea now; they might know how to fix me. They said it was a six-day program, but if I wanted, I could apply to stay longer.

‘Stay for the month,’ urged my parents. I was to go in the next week.

‘I’ll just see how I feel.’

One last taste; I mixed it up in my room the morning I was to go in. Liquid ready in the spoon, the needle poised to suck it up; my mother knocked. I jammed my crossed arms over the tray on my lap, to hide the gear. My parents had never actually seen me shoot up. ‘I just want you to know we love you,’ she said.

‘Uh-huh?’ I was trying to smile. I was impatient for the fix.

‘We’ll take you down there when you’re ready,’ my mother said, and left the room.

I pulled my arms away from the spoon. It was empty. I stared. The edge of my borrowed dressing-gown had dipped into the spoon and soaked up all the liquid. I couldn’t stop staring. Sucking at the fabric desperately. Nothing. The shock I felt—my
last taste
, gone— was beyond words.

I told my mother. She started to giggle. ‘It just got sucked up!’ I said, and the stupidity of it hit me. ‘Your bloody terry-towelling!’ I was laughing too. ‘I have to score,’ I told her. ‘Before I go in.’

‘But you’ll be late!’

I looked at her, reason ready and sly on my tongue. ‘I have to. One last taste. To say goodbye. Otherwise I won’t have finished.’

So my mother drove me to Jake’s, and waited outside while I had my taste in the living room there. I got back in the car.

‘Ready?’

I was full of heroin and relief. ‘Ready.’

It was an old church building, with the day-treatment out the front, a yard behind, and at the back the residential building, sealed from the outside world. The centre was a holistic healing centre: they offered massages, acupuncture, reiki. The front rooms smelt of perfumed oils. The back building smelt of household cleaner and detox sweat.

In the lounge of the residence there were a dozen people making sandwiches at a large table and sitting around on old couches. The person admitting me, a brisk middle-aged man, took me up to my room. Three beds.

There was no chocolate, sugar or coffee allowed. The diet was a healthy, detoxifying one. We would be in bed every night at ten.

He was kind, evidently accustomed to the blank look I had on my face. He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine here, Katie.’

I went downstairs and outside to have a cigarette under the green plastic portico. There were mud-splashed plastic chairs in a circle around an old fruit-juice can used for an ashtray. Some people came out and sat with me and lit up smokes.

‘I’m Danny,’ said a round-faced, dazed-looking young man. He spoke slowly, and tugged at his long jumper. ‘Everyone knows me here. I’m always here, aren’t I?’ he asked another man.

‘You’re like the house mascot,’ the man said. He had a rough, lined face and a beanie on his head. ‘You’re our fucking totem.’

I sat and smoked. People smiled at me, and asked my name. ‘You been using long?’ one asked.

‘Nearly two years,’ I said, and found myself almost proud. ‘About a hundred bucks a day.’

‘Right,’ he said. The feeling was almost of school camp, except that here faces were pale with sweat, or rugged with life’s experience. Jeans were ripped, jumpers were saggy. There were some young women, timid or loud; a couple of clean-cut young guys, a couple of Asian faces, a lot of men. I gathered almost everyone was here because of heroin.

The afternoon went on, and already I felt comfortable. I knew enough of the scene, and Jake’s assorted associates, to know how to mix with this company. Jail terms, comparing of scars; a blokey humour. ‘You’re a bit nice for this kind of thing, aren’t you?’ someone said.

‘Not too nice.’

‘Hah!’ He grinned and offered me a cigarette. ‘Me neither.’

I heard that people would arrange drops of chocolate bars over the fence. Forget drugs; heroin users are addicted to chocolate. We dreamed aloud of ice-cream and cake.

There was a good feeling there. The staff had shifts, but after only a few days there were familiar faces. Three times a day we were called, one at a time, for our meds, and some traditional Chinese medicine as well if we wanted; black and bitter mouthfuls of liquid, to soothe the nerves or help the detoxification process. I took everything they offered. The little pink Doloxene pills familiar from the country detox with James helped too; I managed to sleep every night. Others didn’t; there was one young man, Andy, who said he hadn’t slept for fourteen nights. He was pale and aggrieved. ‘Every time I do manage to nod off during the day they fucking wake me up!’

‘It’s all about getting a routine,’ the staff said. ‘Regular meals, regular sleep times. You’ve all been all over the place, you have to get some order back.’ Andy scowled.

The days were tightly scheduled. Breakfast, then a swim at the public baths down the road. At first I just paddled around one end of the pool, shy in my bathers and weak in the muscles. Then I tried some laps. It was humiliating. In the next lane the local patrons ploughed up and down—young women and Russian grandmothers slogged, never pausing in their slow heaves towards each end. Our gaggle of young people flopped arms towards the rim of the pool, out of breath. It was so obvious what we were.

‘It’s a terrible thing, that heroin,’ said an old man to me. He was white-haired and one-legged. ‘Lost it in the war,’ he said. ‘You young folks. You’re all getting better now, aren’t you?’ He smiled at me.

‘We are,’ I said. ‘We are.’

There were tensions, but mostly the atmosphere was cheery. People seemed to like me. I was happy to talk to everyone. I made jokes with the men and chatted with the girls. I made friends with my room-mate, a sallow, gentle girl who wore a silver bell around her neck. My old friends wrote me encouraging letters which I received with surprise and gratitude. Cheered once I got over the first week of withdrawal, I was jaunty in the mornings, surprised at my energy, and starting to discover a zeal for improving myself. The group therapy classes were almost like university tutorials; it seemed that there was a science to the understanding of addiction. And each acupuncture session, each massage, seemed like a limbering of something I’d allowed to stiffen in myself.

Being treated embarrassed me. A guided meditation class had me in tears, trying to visualise the correct shade of magenta spiralling through my body. Reiki made me giggle in the awed hush of the room. But I persisted, and I found that just taking it, taking the kindness, wasn’t as dangerous as I’d thought. I let my limbs loosen and my body be gentled. I felt better every day.

Still the thought of heroin hummed in the background. I was in a strange mood; removed from the life I’d known, safe in this small, enclosed world; but surrounded by the issues of drugs, by those who understood what it was like. We’d wake some days to find one of our number missing. ‘Jumped the fence,’ we’d say, although whoever it was had simply asked to leave, and gone. It was as easy as that. I could feel the pull of healthiness, of hope, but also the tug of heroin and its promise. Recovery, as we were told every day, was hard work. Long work. It took years. The prospect of such struggle was so exhausting that it sometimes seemed as if it would be simpler just to use.

One night this all got too much. Dazed in bed, desperate to sleep in a prickle of thoughts and dread, I got up and went to Becky, a plump, motherly staff member on night duty. She was watching television in the lounge. The room was cast in blue and black.

‘I’m afraid,’ I said tiredly. ‘I’m so afraid I can’t do this.’

She smiled at me. ‘But the thing is, just because you’re afraid doesn’t actually mean there’s anything to be afraid of. Perhaps you can do it, even if you’re afraid. Have you thought of that?’

I hadn’t. Maybe I could puncture the bubble of panic, maybe I could just try it anyway. What was the worst that could happen? I thought,
I can always use when I get out, if I still want to
. And so I stayed.

Tim, a handsome, lithe boy with dreadlocks and tattoos, didn’t. He walked right past a staff member with a bar of chocolate in his hand. He had to leave. ‘He’ll go out and use,’ we protested.

‘But he’s broken the rules that keep you safe,’ the worker said. ‘It was his decision.’

A few days later there was a whistle from behind the tall wooden fence that separated us from the outside world. Tim’s head appeared. A few of us stood and chatted to him. But his face was pale, and his speech and eyes slow with drugs. It was horrifying, and we understood how different we felt inside here.

In my diary I wrote,
I can do without heroin for now. I feel good like
this. But I shan’t say ‘never again’. Not just yet. It’s out there. I can wait. But
when I leave…
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in recovery, or see the need for it. But there was a hushed voice in me that said what I wanted, I would get. And while I was happy now, I couldn’t shut that voice up. The drug had its own psyche, embedded in mine.

We all had private counselling sessions. Mine was with Cassie. It seemed hard to believe she had ever been a user; she was so groomed, so calm. She sat there, facing me, and said, ‘You’re always smiling, Kate. Are you happy all the time?’

‘I guess not,’ I said. ‘I can’t be that happy if I’m using, can I?’

‘No, I don’t think you can be happy all the time. What do you feel when you’re not happy? When you’re sad, or angry? Where do you feel it?’

I touched my belly, my throat.

‘And what do you do with that?’ She was looking at me serenely.

‘I just try to deal with it. I try to keep going. You know?’

‘You’re smiling. Can you stop smiling a moment? Just—stop smiling.’

There was silence. She watched me. I blinked at the ground.

I thought of how much pain I’d been through, and how stupid it was always to be smiling when my throat was aching with misery, and I sat there, and I couldn’t get the absurd little curve off my lips. This woman could see right through my bravado; she knew I was a faker. She knew I wasn’t all right, and I knew that, but I’d done so many stupid things, and I was trying to be brave, and all I could do was hold on. She was beautiful and composed. I was sitting there, having fucked it all up.

‘You’re still smiling,’ she said. I couldn’t stop. I had a stupid grin on my face and my eyes were full of tears.