Heroin Addiction

Whether or not people actually use drugs, they are fascinated by them. They are fascinated by what drugs and alcohol can make people do and to what lengths people will go to in order to get the substance they abuse. This is especially true of Heroin. Heroin has been around for a very long time and most people have heard tales or read articles (not very pleasant ones) about someone who has used heroin. Those who do have actual heroin addiction stories try to get the message out so others don’t fall into the trap, and urge them to seek treatment if they did.

Some people just enjoy getting off on other people’s misery. It’s a proven fact. It could be that they have wanted to try heroin and want to read stories of people who actually have or it could be that they just have some sort of fascination with it. Regardless of the reason, heroin addiction stories are always widely read. Maybe it makes people feel superior to know that their lives are so much better. They should not feel so freakin’ secure because a heroin addiction can happen to anyone.

Heroin and other opium related drugs don’t know prejudice or bias. It can hit low income, middle income and even higher income people. Male, female, old, young, black, white, heroin can strike anyone at any time. Heroine doesn’t care who you are as long as you keep using. Heroin addiction stories often end in tragedy. Maybe that’s why people like reading them so much; like a book, they remain enthralled with the story line to find out how it ends. Well, it always ends badly in one way or another unless the addicts go to treatment and recover from their addictions, which is often a story of its own. Even those who get out alive and off of heroin have usually paid a steep price for using. The stories are really tragedies, not unlike novels, which people read to either entertain or educate themselves.

With heroin making a strong comeback, unfortunately the articles and tales are not going to dwindle down. There are people who used heroin in the 70’s who still haven’t told their story. Now some of their children have stories of their own. Heroin addiction stories all have lessons for those who would hear them. These are people who have been to hell and back and want to spare other people the misery.

People read heroin addiction stories for many reasons but as long as they learn something from them, they should go on reading them.

As I watched the other girls in the tank that evening, I noticed the scared young girl who had come in a couple of hours earlier.  She reminded me of another young girl just a few years earlier who had sat in jail cell much like this one…me.  Back then I was in for shoplifting.  Not having a dime to my name or any family to speak of, I was desperate and hungry.  I was also caught.  Not even 21, I was arrested for the first time in my life.

A woman befriended me in the tank that evening after I was arrested.  I was surprised when she told me she was 30, she looked older, as if time had stamped her with every one of life’s trials and tribulations.  She wasn’t going to be in long.  She had been booked at the same time as me and already had someone coming to bail her out.  How?  I wondered.  As if reading my mind, she told me she was a prostitute.

“How can you do that?” I asked her.  “Easy” she replied.  I have a little help from a good friend.  She told me about using heroin and that it helped her get through the ticking of the clock as she did what she had to do.  Besides, she liked sex and that helped a lot.  “So do I” I told her, but I couldn’t do that.
“Not even for about six hundred bucks profit per day?” she asked.

As my eyes grew wide she explained that she spent a lot on heroin but it helped her to always be ready for when a client was ready to go.  I mumbled something about wishing I had the nerve.  Right then they called her name.  She was being released.  As she walked away, she turned and asked me if I was serious.  “Hell, yeah!” I said.  I was desperate.

About an hour later my name was called.  I was being released!  Surprised, I walked out and saw the woman I had just been talking to an hour earlier.  She had bailed me out.

She took me to her hotel room and gave me some heroin. By dawn the next morning, I had done my first trick.  Before long I was so hooked on heroin I would take a trick at any price just to get the money together, spending it as fast as I made it just to get that feeling that heroin gave me.  Eventually, I felt nothing except during the most high of highs and here I was, in the tank, this time with what would be my second prostitution charge.  I found out heroin starts with a p…for prostitution.

I looked at the young girl.  She was terrified.  I could tell she had never been in jail before.  She jumped nervously as I walked over and sat beside her.  I calmed her down with a smile and we got to talking.  Just as Linda had done back then, I was giving this young girl my story.  She asked how I could sell myself.  As I started to tell her it was easy because of the heroin, I hesitated.  She didn’t deserve to be led down that path.  She was in for writing a couple of bad checks.  “I don’t remember how I got started” I lied.  “I just know I need to get clean.”

I talked to her till they called her name.  She was being released..  Hopefully she was walking out of there with just a little life lesson learned.  As for me, I couldn’t wait to get out, either.  I was itching for a fix and knew exactly where to find the perfect john to get me one.