(Inspired by the website http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/heroin.html
and the TV show Intervention on A&E.)
Chandra got into the new car that had just been bought
for her by her kind and loving grandparents and drove out onto the highway. She
had more than 100 kilometres to cover before nightfall. But she knew that if
she didn’t do this trip today, her physical symptoms would just get worse. They
were already almost unbearable—chronic restlessness, muscle and bone pain,
insomnia, diarrhoea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps and involuntary
kicking movements. It was a wonder she could drive at all.
Many times, her mother and elder sister would nag her,
telling her that if she did not stop shooting H (heroin), she would soon die. The
thing is, it was her drug of choice. No one, certainly not her family, was
going to tell her what she should or should not do. All she wanted from her
loved ones was some loving support, but all she was getting was this constant
lecturing, nagging, arguing and fighting. It wasn’t her fault she found it
difficult, if not impossible, to kick the heroin habit. She told herself and
anyone else who would listen that she really did want to quit, but there was
never any evidence of this, just her inevitable daily downward spiral that she
seemed unwilling or unable to stop. If only the constant pain in her life would
go away. Getting high seemed to be the only time she was happy enough to deal
with her daily life.
To support this very expensive habit, she had to get money,
and lots of it, every single day. A modest estimate of her daily need for the
drug was about $500, but her family was neither willing nor able to fork over that
kind of money. She had to find a way to make that kind of money herself in
order to pay her dealer for just a few grams of heroin. After pondering her
problem, she decided she would start doing “private dances” for various male
customers for money, either at their home if possible, or at her home. The main
problem was that she had a friend and her sister as roommates, and whenever she
brought men to the house, it was obvious to them that she was doing more than
just “dancing” for them in the privacy of her bedroom; it was prostitution to
get money for drugs. Right after her male customer had paid for her services
and left the house, she would leave immediately to go to her drug dealer. This
trip had to be done several times a week because her heroin supply would not
last her more than a day or two at most.
As if
prostitution was not enough for her, Chandra also stole money, jewellery and
credit cards from her family members in order to get money for drugs. These
thefts were never reported to the police only because they tended to involve
family members. To be sure, she was on a slippery slope. Still, she was happy
and content just to shoot up daily. Her deteriorating health did not concern
her in the least. She looked like hell, but didn’t appear to care. Her face was
red, blotchy and full of acne; she habitually picked at her face. Her family
was increasingly worried about her and horrified by her appearance. A couple of
her family members had, in the meantime, done some research on the long-term
effects of heroin use on the human body and found out some very sobering facts
about the extremely high risks to her health, which were significant in any
drug user. They now knew that she ran a real risk of dying from any number of
causes.
To her family and friends, she appeared to be in terrible
shape and getting worse daily. But she didn’t seem to care about herself or
notice that she didn’t look good. Only the drugs were important—how to get more
when she needed them. The potentially deadly effects of heroin were practically
nonexistent to her.
Her mother, who had also been a drug addict at one time,
tried to talk some sense into Chandra one day. But it was to no avail. Chandra
was not the least bit interested in what anyone thought of her neglected looks,
promiscuous behaviour, constant drug use or thefts of money and property;
nothing was important to her except getting high. When she was high, all she
wanted to do was vegetate and nothing else. Everyone who lived with her had to
do all the daily housework and yard work. She would not do any of it. No one
even dared talk to her, especially in an argumentative or confrontational way. She
could “snap” at a moment’s notice and lose her temper very quickly, so no one
wanted to start a battle by saying the wrong thing to her at the wrong time. Needless
to say, it was trying for everyone who was a family member, whether they lived
with her or not. She had lost every friend she’d ever had who did not do drugs;
the only friends she wanted to hang out with now were people who wanted to get
high.
It was one day during her usual activity of doing “private
dances” for her male customers that she met a guy named Les who wanted to hang
out with her. He told her he loved her and would do anything for her. He knew
all about her heroin addiction, but that didn’t appear to bother him. Les
seemed like a nice enough guy, but Chandra’s sister thought Chandra was just
using him—to get more money for drugs and for sex. He would mention, in passing,
that he didn’t necessarily like her “entertaining” her gentleman friends
privately in her bedroom, but he couldn’t stop it from happening any more than
anyone else could. She just tried harder to keep him in the dark about how
frequently and when she did it because a fight between Chandra and Les might
have meant that Les would get pissed off enough to leave her, and she did not
want that to happen. He was her “sugar daddy” for the moment—someone who was
willing to help her get the drugs she needed so it wouldn’t be necessary for
these other guys to come over.
Eventually, though, Les became curious and jealous enough to
see what she was actually doing with her gentleman clients in her bedroom. He discreetly
and quietly knocked on her door. Then he tried the door knob to see if it was
locked; it was. So he started pounding forcefully on the door, shouting for her
to open it. She refused; she did not want Les to see her having sex with a
strange man. The harder he pounded on the door, the more reluctant she was to
open it. Only after a few minutes, when they were supposedly finished, did she
open the door fully dressed and slip by Les. She had her coat on and headed
straight toward the front door of the house. He followed her, demanding to know
where she was going.
Chandra screamed at him, “As if you cared! I am merely trying to get what I need to get through
life because my life sucks! Do you hear me? It sucks! If you knew what I’d been through as a very young girl with
my stepfather, you would know that I was sexually molested by him on a regular
basis when he was still around here and nobody would do anything to stop it! It
went on for almost five years—from the time I was 10 until I was 14. The damage
he did was permanent. He took gross advantage of me, sexually, and because of
that, I will never be whole and healthy again! So get out of my way, Les; I need to get to my dealer today or I will
be extremely sick tomorrow without my drugs, and you do not want to be around
me then!”
By this time Chandra was hysterical, her voice rapidly rising
in octaves, and Les thought he’d better go along with her in the car, just to
make sure she would be able to get to her drug dealer in one piece.
The next day, after her customary hit of H, intravenously
injected of course, Chandra said she felt this incredible surge of euphoria
(the “rush”) along with a dry mouth, warmly flushed skin, heavy-feeling arms
and legs that now made her feel lethargic all over and a clouded mind.
Following that initial euphoria, she’d go “on the nod,” an alternately wakeful
and drowsy state. When describing the sensations she felt while high, she would
say she was in la-la land; she didn’t care about anything or anybody. The
people who lived with her and often saw her in this state would comment that
they could not communicate with her about anything important at all. There was
absolutely no point in trying to carry on a conversation with a zombie. The
only thing that really mattered was getting more heroin, as much and as often
as she needed it.
Her health was
failing. She ran an extremely high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, as well as
heart, kidney, liver and lung diseases of various kinds. An accidental overdose
could easily kill her. Intellectually, she knew all of these things, but the
power of the drug to control her behaviour and attitude made her apathetic.
These negative side effects did not concern her in the least. Eventually, her
mother and third husband and her sister had to prevail upon an interventionist
who could help them all come to terms with the fact that Chandra was “flushing
her life down the toilet” by using heroin daily.
This
interventionist, named Candy, a former drug addict herself, knew firsthand what
the effects of daily heroin use were. She had the ability to steer Chandra onto
a path that would lead her back to health and happiness. But it would also take
a great effort by Chandra herself and a solemn promise by each of her family
members not to enable her drug habit any longer. They would not be doing her
any favours if they truly wanted her to survive and live a good life.
As it turned
out, the intervention, a necessary step in the right direction for Chandra,
turned out to be a great thing for her. Les, who had been more interested in
her when she was drug-addicted, dropped out of the picture much to the relief
of her family. Chandra was sent to a drug rehabilitation centre called “New
Horizons” in Arizona
At the end of
her rehab session, she was welcomed back into the family with love having learned
to rejoice daily in a life finally free from drugs.
copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
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