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WHEN THE WORD HEROIN IS BROUGHT UP WE TEND TO THINK ABOUT UNHEALTHY, LOW-SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, DROP-OUTS ETC, ETC. BUT THINK AGAIN. HEROIN DOESN’T JUDGE. IT’S A KILLER OF ALL WALKS OF LIFE. WHITE COLLAR WORKERS INCLUDED
A meteorologist squeezes clouds into his veins as the evening drops like a curtain over Melbourne. A journalist makes a couple of calls on her way home to line-up a cap for the weekend. An academic takes a break between chapters, while a nurse shoots up in her station wagon before driving home from an early morning shift. And the anesthetist, well the anesthetist does what he does best. Puts himself to sleep. These are the users you don’t hear about. The white collars that so far, have not been defined in tabloids as criminal scum who would sell their own grandmas if they could, or idolised in art-house films as romantic waifs. Yes, most of them admit, they self-medicate. But doesn’t everyone?
SO LET’S START FROM THE BEGINNING... You find a vein, normally in the inside of your elbow, though some seek hidden places like in their feet, penis, or even stretch out their neck for veins in the rear-view mirror, but usually the needle goes into the arm and its contents travels up the vein like a slug from a gun and bang, a metallic taste appears in your mouth. It’s good. Some people will need $50 worth to get high; others will stick $200 up their arms before they even get a buzz. The difference is that “junkies” will do whatever it costs to get that hit, and the others, the white collars, well they don’t like being ripped off. So they walk, because they can. The old cliché “nothing to lose and nothing to hide” is inversed for using professionals – they have everything to lose and lots to hide. Some of the users even blushed when they admitted their habit, despite being surrounded by the obvious trappings of success and acceptance. Letters run after their names, they have about ten different passwords to different accounts and, well, they have a job. But a pinprick a fortnight has the power to change all that.
DEATH COMES KNOCKING
Dean* is a senior lecturer at a top Melbourne university. He has been revived three times. “It feels like hands are trying to pull you out of this really heavy mud.” He was first revived on his parents’ front porch while his mum was inside watching the Australian Open. It was done very quietly with his mate running up ahead to beg the ambulance men to turn off the sirens and lights. One Fitzroy youth worker soon got used to performing CPR on kids who dropped off. “It’s a weird feeling, a couple of pumps to the chest and a few blows on the lip, and they’re up and walking around again. It doesn’t mean much to them,” he recalls.
The last time Dean was revived was 12 months ago. He came around with the help of Narcan to find his lounge room full of ambulance workers and his partner crying on the couch. “I was just going to have a hit before following her up to bed,” he recalls guiltily. “I hadn’t used in months, so I guess I used a bit too much for my tolerance levels.” In a sense, the odd user is more at risk than daily users. They may not have an understanding of what is on the street and how pure (or impure) their gear is.
The image most people get of overdosing is in the cold after-hours down a dark alley, in a stairwell or a KFC toilet cubicle. But many overdoses happen at home. A nurse revived her son three times in his own bedroom. The fourth time she wasn’t home and he died. A parents’ support group out in Greensborough, north-east of Melbourne, is contemplating writing a book of black humour on the antics of their drug-addicted children. One woman recalls meeting her son coming down the driveway pushing the wheelie bin. It wasn’t garbage night and even if it were, he wouldn’t know. She looked inside the wheelie bin and found the TV, video recorder and stereo.
THE SHOCKING SADNESS
But the laughter is sort of manic. The sadness that lies underneath it all is palpable. Colin, a young man living in Footscray, says his mother bursts into tears whenever he comes home on heroin. “She thinks I’m going crazy, because when I get high I sort of twitch, like this,” Colin flicks his head repeatedly in a damaged jerky way. “So now I only use a tiny bit. Just to get a buzz, not the nod.” The nod is the best bit, users say, and the worst bit, bystanders say. “You’re dreaming. You know that feeling of coming in and out of sleep? It’s beautiful,” says Tang, a 24-year-old woman. A mother from the support group says she videotaped her daughter on the nod. She was on the phone to a friend and kept nodding off into her bowl of cereal leaving milk kisses on her cheek. Afterwards her daughter was forced to watch the footage. “She stopped using after that,” said the mother. “It’s funny but sometimes we just can’t see ourselves.”
PROFESSIONAL USERS
Injecting drug users are one of the most stigmatised groups in Western society with many users unwilling to take part in research for fear of their drug use becoming public. This includes the employed, those in positions of social responsibility and others concerned with protecting their public image. Which is why when we hear and read about heroin users, we see the token “junkies” rolled out for another round in front of the media, when an estimated two thirds or more users are elsewhere. These visible users are the homeless, the youth, streetwalkers and those in treatment – people who have nothing to lose being unemployed and/or with a criminal record. Many surveys abide the practice of paying money for research participation, therefore attracting only those who have none to begin with. The usual price is 20 to 50 dollars to complete a government-funded or academic survey for participants. Just enough for a hit, say some.
Dr James Rowe, from the Centre for Applied Social Research of RMIT University, recently completed a survey to get an idea of how many functional users are out there. At a discreet needle exchange in Melbourne (being one of several health services under the one roof so people could walk in off the street for any number of reasons) he conducted 150 interviews with a sample of long-term clients. Rowe discovered that nearly a third owned a home or lived in private rental properties. The same number was also in paid employment, with one public servant earning $80,000 p.a. More than a quarter of participants had gone on to further education beyond secondary school and five had postgraduate qualifications.
“This means zero-tolerance policies will only serve to criminalise and marginalise visible drug users, while allowing those who do not fit this category – academics, police officers, journalists, public servants, students, chefs – to continue using drugs within the confines of their own homes free from fear of prosecution,” he says. And in a sense, “why not?” Rowe continues, after all the latter are, for all intents and purposes, model citizens of our mainstream society. Policies have certainly changed in the past decade – police are no longer required at the scene of an overdose to arrest the dead user as soon as they come to. “This means people are actually sticking around and calling the ambulance when a friend ODs, instead of running off,” says Chris Morley, a youth worker.
Sofia’s* instincts and good judgment are very important to her. She is a nurse in a busy public hospital and has been for ten years. But every few weeks or so, she goes to St Kilda and scores. She admits there was a time when she “overdid” it. “But that was ages ago and I was young and lost sight of a few things.” Nowadays she enjoys the odd high with her boyfriend in their city apartment. “We stay in and watch television,” Sofia laughs at the “boringness” of the event. In a sense, the many users of heroin are exactly that. Invisible and very domesticated. They use in the comfort of their own home, one user saying he often takes the opportunity to clean his fish tank when he’s high. “It’s such a chore when you’re straight,” he says with a laugh.
And while people call heroin the classic capitalism – you don’t consume it, it consumes you – ultimately heroin is a minimalist’s drug. It doesn’t seem to need accessories, aside from a syringe, spoon, bottle of water and a cigarette filter (used between the spoon and syringe to draw out any impurities). In terms of merchandising – there’s not much else required, unlike party drugs where furry coats with multiple pockets that Velcro off to reveal Lycra dance-all-night outfits are a must – plus exuberantly priced tickets to shed parties that look like mega-aerobics classes. But with junk, you just assume your position on the couch. Hell, you assume your position wherever you can get it. One addict pronounces to be so proficient he can score, use, and throw the fit away all in one city block and ten strides.
ICE FUELLED SORCERY
Before and during the course of the recent 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, city needle exchange decreased dramatically. Foot patrollers who hand out clean syringes on the streets reported a 77 per cent drop in needle needs. So where did it all go? Did the police just do a damn good job of cleaning up the city, or is an exhalation of ice shifting its way like a glacier down the back alleys? Crystal methamphetamine or “ice” as it’s known, is described by its users as “the cream off the top of a speed bake”. The user switch from sedate heroin to adrenaline-fuelled ice in the past few years is a circumstantial one. Many street users don’t necessarily base their drug
of choice on the aesthetic of a substance – rather it can come down to budget. Ice is cheaper, purer and lasts longer.
Health workers and emergency wards are lamenting ice’s newfound popularity. “I never thought I’d say it – but bring back the good old days of heroin,” says one worker sadly. “Kids on ice don’t sleep for days on end and when they come down, they get seriously paranoid and violent. A lot more suicides happen on ice too.” One ice user, Yvonne, says you feel “singed” after a week of ice. “You can’t sleep and your head just won’t shut up. Not even heroin can get it over with. I’ve only smoked ice four times and I got a cyst in my lungs from it,” Yvonne says. “It was no big deal though,” she adds in regards to the cyst, “You just swallow lots of
salt water.”
THE GLOBAL MARKET
From dealers to users to health workers, everyone’s got a theory about the world’s heroin market and what’s happened to it. America often has a cameo role in these theories. Some say that in the ‘70s the US had the opportunity to give money to Burmese freedom fighters but instead poured millions into the Burmese Government, which in turn went to the drug trade and helped strengthen the Golden Triangle. A place where donkeys travel rocky conical trails up mountains, with leaky saddlebags full of sap. Farmers lead the animals to dens that unfold into laboratories. These farmers, and a thousand others, spend the season slitting gashes into the bulbs of poppies smearing the thick sticky black sap into plastic bags. Then later, perhaps in a shipment of tinned water chestnuts heading for Australia, a tomb of heroin lies in the centre of a container. This will hit the streets in a thousand different combinations.
Others say that now America has shifted its focus from the War on Drugs to the War on Terror, the Taliban’s efforts to wipe out all opium crops has since been overthrown and Afghanistan is back in the game. When the Taliban was in power, word in the media was there was a heroin drought. Today, Burma is in an actual drought. And yes, Australia’s street markets have definitely gotten quieter, but workers just say it has “finally gotten back to normal”.
In the mid ‘90s there was a boom of users,
a great big mushroom cloud of heroin exploded over Australia. But by the end of the decade things turned sour with the sellers becoming anonymous and younger kids mugged for their drugs. Dealers started cutting their gear down till some people were buying only eight per cent purity – if that at all and not the scrapings of an aspirin. Today, caps have leapt from a street value of $25 to $100. “The worst bit is waking up hanging,” says one addict. Taxi drivers veer across the city with addicts in the back seat fidgeting, bickering and praying for the morning traffic to part like the Red Sea. Most say they don’t know themselves when they’re hanging out for a hit.
“I don’t inject,” says one user in Atherton Gardens of Fitzroy’s commission flats. “I do snow cones,” she says self-importantly. Snow cones are just a sprinkling of heroin on top of a tightly packed cone of marijuana. “Only junkies inject,” she says. The tops of the commission flats are hidden in the fog of a cold Melbourne morning. I ask her about the dealers up there in the buildings, as high as twenty floors, and if it’s true they keep pit bulls in the small flats for protection. “Yep – big ugly dogs in there, they can scare the shit out of you,” she affirms.
REHABILITATION HITS AND MISSES
Programs for young addicts are more like maintenance projects. “We aim to keep them alive,” says Chris Morley. “You learn to celebrate the small victories. Like making them smile. With half a dozen suicides in eight months and overdoses on top of that, you begin to understand that some will die.” Morley used to visit one addict who couldn’t leave his bed. “He had bottles of his own urine next to the mattress.” Another addict disappeared and was found dead in the tip. She had been murdered working in St Kilda’s red-light district. She was 17. While another overdosed when Morley was taking a well-deserved holiday. “I felt shit about that for a long time. If I had been there maybe he wouldn’t have died.
“A lot of workers burn out in the system and the kids have to keep retelling their stories to new health workers,” Morley says. And for some addicts, that means reliving the same traumas they are trying to hide under a blanket of heroin over and over again.
Without a real understanding of drug users in society, the reasons that lead the visible minority into kamikaze drug use will never be dealt with, according to Dr James Rowe. “Functioning drug users show us that drug dependence is often a consequence of lifestyles defined by disadvantage and abuse... and stereotypes about who uses drugs allows policy makers to avoid addressing the causes of drug addiction such as lack of housing, education and employment opportunities.” In the substance abuse health industry, most workers’ say decriminalise heroin. Get rid of the black market. In Denmark, where heroin is legal, there is a notable decrease in users coming up through the ranks. “Heroin addicts don’t become this mysterious absence in society. They stay alive and most of them look pretty shit in their 50s going into the local chemist for their hit. That puts kids off,” says Morley.
Going cold turkey (called that because during withdrawal, blood is pumped to the internal organs leaving the skin white and covered in goose bumps) is – although excruciating – not the hardest part. The hardest part, say addicts, is staying off it. “It’s like trying to wean yourself off your greatest love,” says Sarah, a 26-year-old addict, who waits in the methadone queue at a Brunswick chemist. “The world is flat without it.”
It is lonely too. “No one sends you flowers in detox,” says another health worker. “Kids are often hassled to get jobs as soon as they come off heroin, and too often, because of their skill levels or criminal record, they find themselves working in factories alongside people who read the Herald Sun, hate junkies and are racist. They’re doing all the right things, superficially that is, and they feel lonelier than ever before.”
Up north, some people disappear offshore on prawn trawlers to have a break from heroin,
but in the cities it’s difficult to get away. Taking methadone or naltrexone
(a drug which blocks the effects of heroin sometimes resulting in a headache after hitting up) is the most common way addicts abstain from using heroin, while some also attend Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings. At NA, addicts are encouraged to do “90 meetings in 90 days” in the first few months of getting clean.
In a church that NA rents out from the God’s Squad (Christian Motorcycle Club), the facilitator for the evening, Robert, hangs up the 12 steps on banners on either side of the church’s white cross. “We go wherever the rent’s cheap, churches, tennis court houses, scout halls,” he says. NA is a younger crowd than Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). “The quicker the high the faster they fall. Plus, with AA, people take longer to realise they’ve got a problem. They think drinking is a lot more wholesome.” Slowly the church fills up, some people taking a seat in the middle of the pews, most staying at the edges of the room. “I was an addict for over 15 years – sorry, using for 15 years and I am an addict. But I’m drug-free today. Have been drug-free for 18 months now,” one man starts the session.
There’s a saying that heroin addicts are the only people that can look down on you from the gutter. Some parents respond by saying they hope their children are still looking down on them from the heavens. In the western districts hospital three Buddhist monks enter wearing orange saris. They are here to turn off a boy’s life support with the family. His veins coagulated shooting up sleeping gels – a chemist-bought alternative to heroin – and his brain haemorrhaged. One addict I spoke to described being on heroin as “probably the feeling Buddhist monks get after 20 years of meditation”. I wonder if these monks agree.
*Names have been changed
Words by Anna Krien
