Disclaimer: This is a post by veritas [mailto:].
A off-white solid chunk of heroin in foil.
Heroin. The name alone invokes fear in the hearts of man. Okay,
maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you’ve gotta admit, this drug sure
has a bad name. 🙂 There is a particular ‘S’ suburb here that’s known
for having dealers of heroin on the streets. I went to check the place
out at the beginning of the week. There are several dodgy looking
people around the main street, and after standing in front of the
central part, I noticed several guys who seem to be a permanent fixture
of the place. One of the guys were obviously nodding out, stumbling
around with a vacant stare and all that. I went up to one of them and
stuck up this conversation:
Me: Hello, are you from around here?
Dealer: Yeah, what’s up?
Me: I hear you can get stuff here.
Dealer: (cautiously) What kind of stuff?
Me: Drugs.
Dealer: What do you want?
Me: What do you have?
Dealer: I only have heroin, you know, smack.
Me: Okay, how much are they?
Dealer: How much do you want?
Me: I only want a small amount.
Dealer: I have A$50 caps.
Me: Sure, I’ll have one of those. I hear there’s a lot of cops around here too, should we go somewhere else?
Dealer: Yeah, you gotta be careful around here, there’s heaps of
cops in this area. I’m scared man, you don’t look like the type that
buys smack.
Me: Well, I’m just experimenting. I’m a student, actually.
Dealer: Okay, walk with me.
(We walk into a shopping center)
(He seems to chew on something for a bit and inconspicuously slips something out of his mouth and hands it to me)
Dealer: Here you go.
(I hand him a A$50 bill)
Dealer: Is this your first time doing smack?
Me: Yeah. I was planning to just snort it.
Dealer: It works better if you smoke it. Just burn it on a foil and smoke it with a straw or something.
Me: Yeah. I know that method too.
Dealer: Okay, take it easy man.
The bag of heroin, look at the detail in the knot. Very nicely wrapped.
After that exchange, I left with a small package wrapped in balloon
that just came out of someone’s mouth. I heard that dealers of heroin
do that here, so that if they’re arrested by the police, they just need
to swallow the balloon packages and they can just throw up or wait for
it to come out on the other end. Thinking about that disturbed me
somewhat, and I proceeded to walk into a restaurant to wash my hands.
Size comparison – pictured with an A$2 coin.
Upon reaching home, I inspected the package I had just got. It’s a
nicely wrapped bag that’s slightly smaller than the diameter of a
pencil. It’s very, very small indeed. The outer layer of the bag is a
balloon that’s been wrapped and knotted very tightly. I couldn’t undo
the knot so I just snipped it off with a pair of scissors. Inside the
bag was a small piece of heroin wrapped in aluminum foil. Professional
gift wrappers would be proud of the finesse going into the packaging of
heroin. 🙂
The heroin is wrapped in a small piece of aluminum foil and put into the balloon.
Anyway, the heroin came in an off-white solid chuck, which was quite
hard to break up. I used a spoon to split it in half and made it into
powder by running the back of the spoon repeatedly over that chunk.
Sources say that the cap contains approximately 50 mg of heroin. I was
surprised at the small amount contained in the cap, until I learnt that
heroin is active at very small amounts. Usually first time users do
about ¼ of the bag if they’re injecting, but since I won’t be using
that method of administration, I decided to insufflate (snort) ½ of the
bag and leave the other ½ for smoking in two days time.
The solid chunk of heroin in the aluminum foil.
The off-white solid piece of heroin next to A$2 coin.
Heroin – Insufflated – 25 mg (approximately)
The line of heroin after I powdered it with a spoon.
10:10 pm
burned a fair bit going up the nose.decided to snort half of that
amount to be safe. yeah its definately burning a fair bit when i
snorted it.
10:13 pm
just tasted the drip. bitter.
10.14 pm
yeah…i feel warm. then again its summer. hahaha 🙂
10:16 pm
shit…that just like snuck up on me. i didn’t even notice it until
now. hehehe yeah, its euphoric 🙂 i’m feeling sedated, very nice. gonna
snort the other half in 3 minutes unless something happens.
10:17 pm
this is going to sound cliche, but it feels good just to sit here.i
even forgot to turn on my fan and summer here is hot.now that i think
about forgetting to turn on the fan, i’m not even bothering to turn it
on. you know wat i mean?
10:20 pm
very noticable effects already, but i’m going to snort the other half anyway.
10:20 pm
okay, maybe that was a bad idea coz i’m still peaking right now…but whats done is done.
10:23 pm
yeah its very noticable now. i feel like the world is muffled…everything seems so far away.
10:27 pm
very prone to zoning out. just sat there looking at my hand and that just feels nice.
10:32 pm
everything feels so surreal. so surreal.
10:34 pm
i get that numb feeling. my face is numb and so are my fingers. everything has a slow quality to it. slow. tingly.
10:40 pm
its very different to a stimulant high. i’m just feeling so safe and
contented, its a cliche but its true. it feels the way it does when
you’re young and you’ve just woke up from a good night’s sleep and the
warm sun is shining in and today’s a holiday and you don’t have to do
anything, you just lay in bed and read and its comfortable. that made
me smile. 🙂
10:44 pm
this just feels so good. it’s not like other drugs, its not the
ecstatic happiness of MDMA (feels like you’re about to go on a really
good vacation you’re really looking forward to), it’s not like
stimulants where you go “fuck i can take on the world!!!”, this is like
a comfortable, very comfortable feeling that you lose as soon as you go
into puberty. its an innocent sort of comfortable where the best thing
is that you’re feeling comfortable and safe and warm in your house. and
that’s all that matters, nothing can hurt you. its the feeling of
picnics and reading books and eating cheese cake and nice weather and
mom taking care of you when you’re sick and i’ve got it! its the
feeling of being a kid, where there are no real problems, only little
ones, and you don’t need to do anything, you just hang around and feel
comfortable and they’re parents there to take care of you. damn, thats
what it feels like. return to childhood.
its the feeling of waking up on a saturday morning to the smell of
french toast and you just lie around in bed waiting for your mom to
call you down to eat breakfast and you’ve had a great nites sleep and
the only thing you want to do is read a good book, a safe book where
there are no great problems and everything turns out to be okay in the
end. jesus, you just don’t get this feeling anymore after you grow up.
no wonder people get addicted to this shit. it’s really comfortable.
10:56 pm
my lips feel numb and my tongue feels swollen and it’s a little hard to
breath but it’s all good. damn, it’s all good. this is not the Oh my
fucking god, this is great when you take stimulants but the yeah…this
is real good of downers.
11:05 pm
feeling drowsy now.my eyelids keep going to half mast. heh.
11:12 pm
ugh…nausea. gonna lie down and read a book until i sleep. bye.
Afterthoughts: There was no withdrawals or crash to speak of,
but I did have this godawful nausea, dizziness and major stomach
churning at the end. It didn’t make me itch though. It felt very nice
and comfortable, but it’s not something I would do often. I’ve probably
said this before, I prefer hallucinogens and stimulants. It was a very
nice experience though. The feeling heroin gives is hard to describe,
but the best adjective would be comfortable. Very, very comfortable.
Heroin – Smoked “Chasing the Dragon” – 25 mg (approximately)
Paraphernalia – a hollow tube from a Bic pen, aluminum foil with powdered heroin, lighter.
9:02 pm
that warm feeling pretty much came instantenously 🙂 when i burned the
stuff, it smoked a whole lot and i couldn’t get everything thru the
tube (wat a waste) so i started to breath with my nose as well and held
the smoke in for about 2 minutes. i felt The Blanket right about then.
🙂 i did get a whole lotta foil smoke though. interestingly, the heroin
turned into a liquid when flame was applied under the foil and started
to turn into a mini liquid river which ran down the line of the foil.
part of it turned into a black gunk and part of it turned into a
yellowish stain after all of it has been burnt. yeah i feel numb now. 🙂
9:12 pm
yeah the feeling is the same as insufflating, but i think i got higher
when i snorted it though. perhaps i didn’t get all the smoke when it
started to smoke violently. it does feel nice, but not as intense as
insufflating.
9:21 pm
ah, i’m feeling it now. comformtable. 🙂 made me smile again. heh. what
a late rally, i thought it’s supposed to be near instantanous for
smoking.
9:37 pm
had fun zoning out. don’t feel like staring at the screen though, gonna lie down and read a book. 🙂
9:44 pm
i just had this bright idea to mix a couple of shots of my cannabis
infused grain alcohol into a beer and take a valium. i am aware of the
potential risks but this is such a small amount it doesn’t matter
anyway. cheers! 🙂
10:00 pm
mmm…i’m feeling very chill now. 🙂 yeah this is good. in fact i can’t be bothered writig, i’m gonna watch a movie.
10:06 pm
don’t mean to sound retarded, but this feels really good actually.
What the foil looks like after smoking – yellow stain where it evaporated from a liquid and a black stain to the side.
Afterthoughts: Heroin is rather overrated in my opinion. It
certainly feels nice, but it’s not the best drug in the world, not by a
long shot. The media makes it seem like such a hardcore drug that you
can’t help but feel let down by the experience. It is however a very
illegal drug due to the problems surrounding its use and the potential
for addiction. Perhaps I just don’t have the type of personality that
appreciates heroin’s effects. I still prefer hallucinogens and
stimulants. 🙂 It is a very nice feeling though, just not something
I’ll do very often. Interestingly, I got higher when I insufflated than
when I smoked heroin.
Caution:
Heroin is very illegal in most (all?) countries.
Heroin is physically and psychologically addictive.
While it may not be the demon drug the media and government makes it
out to be, it is easy to get into trouble in a very short time if you
do it often. Be careful and respect heroin.
Been reading your shit for a few years now man, and I have always enjoyed your writing. Particularly regarding drugs and alcohol.
SH: Thanks mate! Appreciate you dropping by to comment. I love writing about drugs and alcohol too, but that’s a chapter of my life I’m about to close now. 🙂
If writing of that sort comes up again, it’ll be in castitas.com 😉
I definitely hear you, man. I am in the same boat, honestly. I had a full year sober before I got back on opiates. They can be quite damaging when abused, but unfortunately they just feel so damn good! Luckily I haven’t gotten back into heroin in the year and a half since I started using again, but I’m trying to kick a very small buprenorphine habit at the moment. I got enough to basically last me into March, so it’s a tough decision haha. Withdrawing sucks because it diverts my concentration away from school. Anyway, good luck with everything!
SH: Yeah, that’s the best and worst thing about it – opiates just feels so good, it’s like everything is alright in this fucked up world.
I quit meth using heroin (frying pan – fire) but managed to stop using opiates in rehab too.
Damn those were trying times – searching for any opiate possible – after my first arrest, nearly got caught again coz a doc prescribed me MSIR (Morphine Sulphate Instant Release) tabs and I went to the only private hospital that has it – which unfortunately has my name on the blacklist. They called the doctor who claimed she was pursuaded into scripting me that, I heard the conversation, saw security and made a quick exit. 😉
Withdrawals from opiates is pure hell.
Thanks mate, I’m clean now.
I prefer methadone to bupe but the latter seem to be less addictive for me (personal preferance).
Good luck mate, hope everything goes well for you.
I managed to quit after rehab, it’s worth a try buddy. Cheers! 🙂
Hi!
I know it’s a bit late, but in which city in Malaysia where you in this story?
It didn’t happen in Malaysia.
This happened in Melbourne, I was living on-campus in Clayton and took a train to Springvale (better to be on public transport when purchasing is my motto – don’t want to get pulled over in your OWN car with something you don’t want to be on you).
I was keeping up with your posts up until about 2004. After that I was off on my own narcotic pilgrimage. I’ve started reading back through your work since then catching up with the present. I’m happy to see that you made it through and continue on surviving. You have my fully-informed sympathies.
Thanks mate!
I eventually got on a really bad methamphetamine habit – was injecting a lot, got renal failure, went to ICU, nearly died several times, and then got on opiates.
If you ask me now how I quit meth I really have no idea how I did it coz I was doing some horrible stuff while on it/to get it. I got on opiates, methadone, oxycodone (OxyContin) then heroin again (life repeats itself) and never really quit.
I got on the government Suboxone program (8 mg buprenorphine with 2 mg naloxone daily for RM 38, RM 40 after GST).
Hey! First off I just want to say that was 500mg. Not 50. Basically you bought half a gram.
Second off that looked like GOOD dope. ust be careful man I am on methadone from addiction. Not a nice feeling. I guess I “appreciate it” too much lol.
Interesting! I’ve always thought it was 50 mg.
Thanks for that. Yeah, I know, I myself got on methadone and OxyContin and various Rx pills and eventually on heroin again (just coz it was cheaper). You commented in 2012, that was the year I got on Suboxone (government program, but paid in full by the user – RM 40 – around USD 10 per day).
did you ever try injecting it? thanks for writing this. lol. (bit weird to say thanks, i know but i guess it’s better to read about than actually experience?)
Yeah, I did.
I injected a lot of weird things, including sibutramine after I ran out of methamphetamine. I suspect that was what caused my renal failure. Opiates…it has a role in surgery etc but not for messed up people with problems, it can have a high addiction liability.
I just wanted to say it was interesting reading this. I’m assuming I’m a bit older than you by a few things you wrote though I may be wrong. Also, I live in the US.
I enjoy your unique style of writing.
I shot heroin (dope) every day for a few months short of 10 years. Most of those days I also shot coke or cooked it up to smoke as well but dope was always my main.
The first time I shot dope was the night of my 18th birthday and the last time was a few months before my 28th birthday.
The first few years were pure bliss, then the hell slowly started kicking in and the last seven or so years I was desperately trying to get off of it but couldn’t stop though there was still some enjoyment in it mixed in with living on the streets (especially in the winter) in abandoned buildings, under bridges, in jails and at shelters and eating at soup kitchens; Still some enjoyment despite robbing places and people for money daily as well as just about every scam for money you can imagine. It had turned into a full-time job with a lousy benefit package.
I’ve done just about every drug out there starting with weed and alcohol at 11 years old but dope was my favorite by far. I lived and bought dope mostly in NYC and Philadelphia which, according to the DEA, has the purest and cheapest heroin in the US.
I lived mostly in Philly during the time and the area I lived in you could buy dope or literally any drug you wanted on just about every street for 30- 40 blocks in any direction. It’s actually easier than buying beer. Philadelphia, PA has the biggest open-air drug market in the states.
If I told you the amount of dope I shot every day no one would believe it to be humanly possible so I won’t bother. Let’s just say when I kicked, and I have many times over that 10 year period, there are no words to describe the extreme physical pain but also the psychological pain. In those jails they don’t give you anything for the pain or symptoms at all.
Heroin can be a beautiful drug but people must realize if they’re going to do it, do it a few times a year. You’ll enjoy it and won’t go through the nightmare of addiction.
I also want to point out that some of the worst aspects of drugs in general in the US come from the government having unconstitutionally made them illegal. They made alcohol ( a liquid drug) illegal for ten years in the US but at least did it legally through an amendment to our Constitution that was later ratified. They did not do this with other drugs so all the drugs laws here shouldn’t even hold up in a court of law but they do. By the US (and probably other countries) making drugs illegal, they have made a problem that was small and not getting worse in the mid-20th century, into a massive problem that has turned non-violent people into criminals that cannot get a job. They have caged people for decades for possessing drugs or making a mutual deal between two consenting adults which should have been none of the government’s business. They have created dangerous gangs that make money from selling these drugs just as the Mafia came to power in the US during alcohol prohibition. They have created propaganda to scare people. Since drugs are now sold on the street, the user doesn’t know what he’s getting. The price for drugs is artificially high because of these laws so people commit crimes to get money for them. US police which used to be peace officers now refer to themselves as drug warriors. That is their main goal everywhere in the US and they will make up lies to stop you just to search you for drugs. Our federal government gives local and state police large grants and rewards for capturing drugs. Police can and do legally take money from people, 10,s sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars from people that have committed no crime and it happens many time a day. It’s called civil asset forfeiture and it is very real. They have perverted the justice system so much that the money becomes guilty instead of the person. Around 90% of US paper money has traces of drugs on it that a dog can detect. What they do is get a drug dog to give the “nod” that they smelled drugs on the money and that’s that. The police legally take the money without even having to charge its owner with a crime.
I am sober now of all drugs besides nicotine (I love to vape lol) for 12 years but I see the sickness that the so-called war on drugs has brought to the US and it makes me angrier than anything else in this world. I have seen the police in the US go from being regular deputized citizens to paramilitary troops because of the war on drugs and the kind of people that they hire as police are not the same as they were 40 years ago. That’s why America is the world’s prison nation.
Yes, I’ve been sober for many years and I’ve seen just about everything you can imagine but this “War on Drugs” is killing the US from the inside. It’s time to decriminalize all drugs and just like with alcohol, if someone commits a crime while they’re on it, they will be punished.
Thanks for your article and thanks for letting me rant – T