From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 17) P Is For Paranoia Date: 1996/09/26 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 17) P IS FOR PARANOIA Starting in 1988 and continuing more or less right up to a few years ago, I began a time period of "controlled usage." After six years of complete abstinence, and after moving out of New York for good, I guess I thought the time and distance since the bad old days offered some protection from being completely strung out. Of course I was also determined to prove to myself that I had really gained control over my desire for opiates. Anyone could argue this forever, but in a sense I did. This next adventure is a snapshot of one of my "decisions" dope it up again. Well, after the big scare I had in flying to New York to cop in adventure number 16, after a few months I decided to do it again a little differently. I met this woman named Janice where I live who used to be a dope fiend in New Jersey. She had been living here for a couple of years. She was a complete addict. Taking a 100 mgs. of methadone a day, she still found room for heroin and cocaine whenever she could get her hands on some. I told her of my plans to go to New York and cop and offered to take her with me. She said had great connections in New York, and was sure she could cop easily. So me, my girlfriend Paula, Janice and another friend named Peter rented a car and proceeded to drive to New York City. Eighteen hours later we arrived in Greenwich Village. With the exception of my girlfriend who was just along for the ride, the rest of us were craving the shit in a big way. After parking the car, Janice made some phone calls. As luck would have it, we were invited up to a pretty classy apartment in the West Village. We were introduced to a girl named Andy and her boyfriend named Chuck. While they may have been living in a nice pad, these were two totally down and out dope fiends. Andy was wired for sound on coke and heroin, and Chuck was totally fucked up. That little voice inside my head told me this was going to be very interesting. After exchanging the usual hello's I gave Andy some money and told her what I wanted. She was back in about 1/2 hour with about 20 bags of dope and 10 bags of coke. Party time. It wasn't long before we were all fucked up. After nodding out all afternoon, the question of where to stay came up. Andy said we could crash there, as long as we kept her high. Since money was not a problem, we decided to do this. This was a mistake. As the early evening turned into night, and we continued to shoot up, and buy more and more drugs, we noticed that Andy's apartment was like a shooting gallery for every assorted low life her and her boyfriend knew. About 11 PM this guy comes in, and sits down and pours out some cocaine that he wants to shoot. Me and my friends are pretty much nodded out, but we can't help notice how paranoid this fucker is. And sure enough, in a few minutes he has his shot ready and instead of injecting it in the usual way, he asks Andy to help him out. Andy takes the needle and helps him get a hit in the vein in his neck! Jeez. I've done this myself years ago, but seeing it again made all of us kind of sick. After he gets his hit, he goes into total paranoid mode. I guess he was using a lot of coke, cause all he does for the next half hour is to keep creeping up to the door and looking through the peep hole. We're all watching him and getting pretty paranoid ourselves. My friend Pete asks him to sit down, but it's not doing any good. Pete is convinced the police are outside the apartment door. When he's not actually looking out the apartment door he's running over to the window to look down onto the street! Pete forcibly tries to get him to sit down, but it does not last long. There is no stopping this dude. He's off and running to the races. Throughout the night other weirdo's come and go. Finally about 1 P.M. we are out of cocaine and we ask Andy if she can get more. She makes a call and says that someone will be over with 1/4 ounce. Are we interested in buying it? You bet we are. Well about a half hour later this guy and his girlfriend come in a sit down in front of us. His girlfriend ends up in a bedroom with Andy and the guy, who's name I don't recall sits down and offers us a taste of the coke he brought with him. The coke is good and we're all flying quite high by now. Then he pulls out the 1/4 ounce and says $400. At this time my friend Pete whispers into my ear, "don't do business with this guy, I think he's a cop!" "A cop," I say to myself. It don't make sense. Do cops try to sell you drugs and then bust you for making a buy? I couldn't remember if that was legal or not, but I wasn't taking any chances. We decided not to buy any coke. And mind you we are already sitting with over 20 bags of dope in our pocket. With the news that he may be a cop, and with all the coke we've done it gets real easy to get even more paranoid ourselves. My friend Pete asks this dude what type of work he does, and he says he's a chiropractor! You can take it from me, this guy did not look like a chiropractor. In fact he looked like a fucking undercover cop. And he's pressuring us to buy his shit. He's bitching that he came over here because Andy told him we wanted to do business. And where was his girlfriend all this time? In the other bedroom now for over an hour with Andy. What were they doing in there? Shooting drugs? Fucking? Nah... Me and Pete became convinced then and later that she was recording every word we said with a receiver that the "chiropractor" had on his person!!! How do we get out of there? Are we going to get busted? We definitely had the cocaine paranoid delusions going. Finally about 4 A.M. the chiropractor/drug dealer/cop and his girlfriend leave. They are really pissed that we did not buy anything. But we are convinced that the "bust" is going to go down any minute now. I'm convinced that Andy is working with this undercover cop to "work off" a previous bust that she'd already been through. Somehow, we calm ourselves down until dawn, convinced that the minute we hit the street we're going to get pinched. At about 6 A.M. I decide to hide the dope and coke we have in the apartment and make a trial run down to the car. I'm waiting to get nabbed. Nothing happens. Convinced that we can make it out of there alive, I go back upstairs and grab everyone else and the dope and leave in a hurry. Once inside the car, the cocaine paranoia takes over again. "We are going to get pinched." It's just a matter of time. We're going to be followed and busted real soon. I'm too nervous to drive, so Janice is elected to take the wheel. This does no good and we are all scared shitless. I keep shouting at Janice to take it slow. And of course it seems like Janice is driving like a real shit head. What if "they" are following us? What if they bugged the car? I know, they're waiting for us to cross the bridge into New Jersey, so they can get us on interstate transportation of narcotics. Makes perfect coke induced paranoid sense to me, right? Convinced we are going to get popped once we get over the G.W. bridge, we decide to head up to my mothers house first. I know she's working and won't be home. I reason that if we can make it up there, we can take the time to hide the "stash" we are carrying. Arriving at my mothers, we pile out of the car and go inside, while I get a screw driver and some other tools. I'm going to hide the shit out of this stuff. After stashing the goods, we get back in the car and head for the bridge. Crossing over the bridge with our hearts in our mouths, we make it onto the New Jersey turnpike without incident. This brings a little relief, but the ride ain't over yet. Janice is driving and she's got her sleeves rolled up, exposing a lot of track marks. Plus she keeps speeding. Finally I loose it. I scream at her, "Janice you fucking idiot. We are on the New Jersey turnpike. The cops here are hip to people crossing this bridge into New York to buy drugs. You're going to get us pulled over and busted etc." After pulling the car over, me and Janice get into a real pissing contest. There we are, somewhere on the New Jersey turnpike, standing outside our car and screaming at the top of our lungs about dope! Pete and Paula break up the fight and things calm down again, a bit. But we are all fucking paranoid as hell. The paranoia is self perpetuating. It won't, or the coke won't let us calm down. This goes on for the next 8 hours, when exhausted we stop at a hotel to rest for the night. Carefully undoing the drugs from their hiding place, we take a room to "rest." Sure, we are. All we do half the night is shoot up more dope and coke. Just what we need. When morning comes and it's time to leave, my girlfriend accidentally slams the door on the fingers of my friend Pete. I scope the move and said, "Pete, damn you know you're not supposed to put your fingers near the door man." Wrong move. Pete completely looses it and again we have another screaming match on our hands. With threats of violence etc., again I'm convinced we are never going to get home without going to jail first. After this incident ends we agree to drive on home. Within an hour or two of getting home, the paranoia hits once again. Again we all convince ourselves that the police in New York have "called ahead" and that as soon as we get home, the big bust is going to happen. The paranoia will not let up. Even after getting everyone home, my and my girlfriend are still looking out our window to see if there are any suspicious cars out front. It's only when all the coke is gone and worn off that the paranoia finally lets up. And it's only then that we can see that we "invented" the whole fucking thing. Heroin. Cocaine. Just some really harmless little drugs eh? Copyright 1996 Gizmo