From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: HEROIN - THE PROGRESSION (3rd Version with an update for The Millenium) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 07:57:13 GMT HEROIN, THE PROGRESSION, (3nd Revised Version) Updated (perhaps) for the New Millenium At first you are just curious, so you agree to give ole H a try and you love it. Cause if you don't love it, the rest is meaningless. It's easy to miss the "you gotta love it part," cause lots of folks say, "oh man, I was hooked for a while and I kicked that shit...and it was no big deal." If you love it, it's gonna get you and it's gonna be a bitch to kick, but on to the stages. STAGE 1 You've heard about how addicting it can be, but hell, your different, so you figure it can't happen to you. At this point you're singing hymn number 1, that goes something like this. "Oh how cool I am, Oh how in control I be, I can take it or leave it, just you wait and see, Gee this stuff is so cool, especially when I get it for free!" You feel powerful as you casually use the drug. After all this is H. The BIG H. SMACK, JUNK, SHIT, DOPE, NARCOTICS, HEROIN. WOW! At first it's just so cool. Kinda makes the whole world seem just right. Yummmm. Now of course today we have Sublimaze and Oxycontin, Morphinecontin and all those other super continuous release designer opiates for your sampling pleasure. Now sure it might make you a little sick. You might even have to throw up the first dozen or so times. You may even swear that you'll never do it again. You'll say things like, "yeah it's good but no high is worth getting so sick over it." Famous words! Maybe George Washington said them once. Wanna take a guess at how many junkies have said the same words? Roughly every one that ever got sick and went back for a second try. Perhaps that should tell us something? Hah! You go on like this for a bit, controlling your use, only using on Saturday nite, or maybe only twice a month or so, etc. Cause after all. This is the big H. This is the one drug that has a terrible stigma attached to it. It's roundly condemned by almost everyone. Even the drug taking/get high community often draw the line at H. And shooting it? Triply so. But that's part of the attraction, ain't it? "Hey Julio, what's up man? Wanna get high tonight? Meet me down by de schoolyard." STAGE 2 Then one day, you think what the hell, why wait till Saturday. I can do it Friday as well. No problemo baby. Then you notice that if you did some on Wednesday it would really shorten the long wait until the weekend. How nice. And holy shit after a few months of this surprise!!! You don't have to flip your guts out anymore. Wow what a bonus, what a treat. Plus I can now do a whole bag at once. Oh boy. Wow I'm really making progress ain't I? Then you notice that it's a rainy day. Why not get high? Oh, then you notice that's it a sunny day. Hey, why not get high? Then you notice it's a nice night for an evening. Gee I know, I'll get high. Nothing like orginal thinking. Oh, then you notice that you have a bit of a headache one day, Hey why not get high? Oh, then your father dies. What to do? Yup, time to get high. Don't want to have to go to something as depressing as a funeral straight. Or you're just bored one day, Hey let's party. Or it's Christmas. Wow man, did Santa bring the heroin? Nothing can change an emotional state like a shot of smackamora. Then a very subtle thing happens. It's so subtle nobody sees it usually until years have passed. And it's this: You notice that your normal straight feel good level starts to go down each week. Little by little. So slowly you can't notice it. But it's there. You get colder and harder inside. You get tired real easy. You notice that you start looking forward for more dope about two days after the last shot wears off. Also you have to pay attention to the behavior of those folks who you may be doing this with. This is really interesting. Well interesting if you're on the outside looking in and you have no personal involvement with anyone doing it. You start to notice that everyone gets attitudes. And argumentative. They get bitchy, mean at times, hostile, manipulative etc. They'll take advantage of you if it suits their purpose. You'll see a lot of lying, taping of bags, outright beats, and as Madison Avenue is so fond of saying in their ad compaigns....."and much much more! So much more." STAGE 3 You finally decide that even if you use the stuff for a few days in a row, your really not feeling any different. So, this proves that your in control. THE PERSONAL PROOF. This may be the first stage of long term addiction. At about this time, if it didn't happen already, you finally decide to try skin popping, chasing, or mainlining. Hey why not, it's cheaper. You only need 1/3 as much to get high. Good move, right? "Jeez, it's just economics, and I'm a financially oriented guy or gal, right?" Then one day, after doing this for a few days straight, you run out of stuff. You wonder if the chill in your bones or your runny eyes could be....??? Nahhhh. Can't be. Wanna bet? In fact even if those first signs of withdrawal are not happening to you just look around. Look around to anyone you may be doing this with. Take notice. Watch their behavior when the dope runs out. You gotta look carefully or you could miss it. Cause after all it's not going to look like the kind of pain and agony you've seen on TV or in the movies. But it's there. Just a physical law. Can't be helped really. It's your body in what it perceives as being very logical wanting more of what made it feel good. Plus it starts to actually need it to function. So on you go. Using when you want, or so you would think. Shooting it straight. Oh, and I forgot to mention, by this time, you usually can't wait until your "friend," gets it for you, so you go down to wherever, and meet the connections yourself. Nice bunch of folks, eh? At least here in the USA, you are about to meet some rather interesting folks. I'm being generous. You're about to meet every type of street urchin, skell, n'er do well, lowlife, etc. The scum of the earth. Ooops, that's me too. Shit I forgot that one. But that's okay too, because after your first encounter with these folks, you can always comfort yourself, that you'll never be like that. Unless of course you are already like that before you started using. Which does happen, of course. Stage 4 Your doing it every day and you do notice now, that when you don't have any you feel like shit. Maybe the shitty feeling is genuine withdrawal, maybe it's just your body just normally having a bad wake up, a bad feeling day. BUT NO MATTER. Hell, who gives a shit or has time to analyze which physical sensations are which. Bottom line is, if you don't feel good, it's time for a neat nifty shot of heroin. Yippee i o Kiyea! You may even quit a few times just to show yourself who's boss. And you succeed. See, I told you, you are still in control. Wow. This is one of the final proofs of being addicted. The ability to kick and then start again. It really makes you convinced that you're still in control. In some circles it's called DE NILE. But then one day finally, you get really sick. I mean god awful sick. And you can't wait. You can't wait for the illness to pass. You have to have a shot. And you get it. AND MAN, THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A SHOT OF DOPE WHEN YOUR REALLY GOING THROUGH WITHDRAWAL. IT'S EVEN BETTER THEN THE FIRST TIME IN A WAY. Okay let's sing it all together now. Hymn number 24, page one. All together now. And a one, and a two and a three, and a four. That's a DMA7 chord on the intro. Satch. Let's have it in five part harmony like "In Sync or Boys to Men" SING HERE..... ARE WE HOOKED YET? Hey watch it now. Don't go flat on that baritone. Stage 5 Guess what, it gets worse from here. Sooner or later, you get tired of trying to quit. So you're in all the way now. And here is where your job, your girlfriend or boyfriend, if they're not doing it with you, goes. Here is where your family disowns you. Here is where you may end up in a police station being treated like some lowlife scumbag criminal, the joint, a program, on methadone, in the street, broke, sick and pathetic. What a deal? "But what happened? I had so much control in the beginning?" Plus I really knew it all. You betcha. Nobody could tell me a fuckin thing. Cause I knew that all this shit was never going to happen to me. Now you don't just use a little bit to shorten the long wait till the weekend. Noooo. Now you use it anytime you can get your hands on it. You would sharpen a football pin to get a hit, if you couldn't find a real spike. You'll shoot the veins in your forehead after you've collapsed all the ones in your arms, legs and neck. Gee thank god I was so damn smart and right. "Thank god. Cause none of this shit could ever happen to me." And that's how it goes, for almost everyone. Unless you're living in certain other locales on this fine planent where you can get it under prescription. In these cases your addiction will have some rather different characteristics. Afterall, a large part of the junky hell in the USA is due to the criminality associated with it. That's sad, to be sure. But you can kind of see how it got that way. Maybe if dopers were really cool and private with their dope throughout the last 80 years the "establishment" would not have made so much hoopla about it. But there's just something in lots of folks that does not warm up to the idea of stoned out, zombied looking people nodding out on the streets of our fair cities. USA. Love it or don't. NEW MILLENIUM STUFF: Today the pharmaceautical companies are pushing drugs on everyone worse than Pablo Escobar ever did. And we've entered a new era where lots of people have no convinced themselves that what they have is a "medical condition." I'm talking about anxiety disorder, panic syndrom, depression etc. Now it's not that these things are not real. Fuck they are. It's just that after treating a condition like Anxiety Disorder with Zanax for a year or so, you get to a point where you can't tell if what you're experiencing is the Anxiety Disorder or the Zanax Addiction. What a connundrum. Besides nobody likes pain, be it emotional or physical or both. But does this sound anything like something I mentioned in STAGE 4? You decide. Epilogue But I'll still put in my standard disclaimer. Of course there are exceptions to all the above. But they are very very very rare. So if you're banking on being the exception, you might want to give it some thought. You got a better chance of being the exception in hitting the lottery, to thinking you're going to be that one exception. Gizmo P.S. Oh yea, I forgot to mention. At any time as far back as stage 1 you could end up dead or in jail. Junk...Don't you just love it? P.P.S. Sorry if all this sounds gloomy and/or preachy. It ain't really. We all either love or have loved heroin or we would not do have done it al all. It's one of the neatest highs you can do. But it has a hefty price tag. So remember newcomers. Watch your pro's and con's.