From: (Durtro) Subject: North Wales Pennsylvania OD-1980 Date: 1997/07/03 Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard 20 years old, wanted to die. nothing new for me, old hat in those days. glad i am over that. don't know how i did it, maybe time. maybe lots of acid, maybe finding my true love. needles were scarce there in 1980. i was living in a shitbox apartment with a thousand flies, and several roommates. was heavy into crystal meth. someone was stupid enough to leave an eight ball at my place. at last. the ticket. an eight ball would bounce me out of the flesh, i was certain. but i needed works, tools, a rig, a kit, whatever. there was a very crusty old veterinary syringe in the drawer in the kitchen. glass works, nothing finer, and the barrel was big enough to do the job, i thought. crouched down in room full of flies with heavy glass tools and eightball. dumped eight ball into coffee cup.. no heat. the needle looked big enough to suck up gravel. sucked the milky white into the syringe. it was loaded. now for a hit. not hard to do, i have bigass veins..used to hit 'em in the back of a moving chevy van in the dark. thought i would go for the foot, though. but they were too rolly and the needle was dull as dishwater. went to the forearm, register, bam. i don't remember much after that. ears ringing, rush of a lifetime, or a deathtime. the week went by very fast. i remember talking to dead relatives, aliens, people that didn't exist. they told me many things, all forgotten. at the end of the week i was skinny, didn't eat at all that week. i was still alive but i didn't even know that. someone wanted to look at my arm. black lines running up my arm to the pit. i hadn't noticed. my ears were still ringing, it had been five days. good non-needle friend takes me to the ER at North Penn Hospital. Dr. Goldtooth, i called him. he was Hawaiian and all of his teeth were rimmed in gold, looking like a suited up version of the devil, little grapefruit headed mofo, all brown and bald with these gold teeth. "we're going to teach you a lesson", he said. no anaesthesia. 1/8" long incision at injection site. squeezing out the stapholococcus. me, screaming, psychotic, bucking on the table doing my best Linda Blair. felt like it took a lifetime, those minutes. Dr. Goldteeth suggests my friend take psychotic me to to Norristown State Mental Hospital, Building 13. my lucky number. my friend talks me out of it, says i don't need that. best friend's mom takes me in. i slept for three days, didn't even get up to urinate. she checked my breathing. during those 72 hours i dreamed the events of the next four years. honest. and little blips of the time left that i have to live. honest. staph infection returned, another doctor said that the incision was not the work of a surgeon. Keflex. one week. swore i would never shoot up again, but i did. it took four years, but after snorting meth again for four years i discovered H. another story, for another time. you wanted OD stories, well, there's one. love and avoid needles if you can there are better highs, other highs. no sharps since '84 and glad, mostly.