text: Through my own heroin use personal experiences I always believed in the duck test that is a form of deductive reasoning. This is its usual expression: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject's habitual characteristics. In the case of Lolita heroin use the look fit to a tee. The swimming part fit and she most times flew high like a duck going south for any winter season. Yet in reality she was just your garden variety garden snake. Basically she was a no good for nothing heroin junkie. For those of you who may not be aware heroin is an opiate drug derived from the poppy plant, is a stimulant that produces euphoria. Though it has some medical applications, recreational use is illegal in the United States. Smack. Dope. Mud. Horse. Skag. Junk. Black tar. Heroin comes with many street names. Nevertheless, heroin abuse is a common problem. Drug addiction has caused Lolita Greenhowe to be accused about doing things she thought were impossible. When heroin, also known as the dragon, enters the brain, it activates receptors that will then release the chemical dopamine. This is where the feelings of euphoria and pleasure come from. The rush sends numbness through the body as it flows through the blood. The central nervous system is depressed so someone on heroin won’t feel pain. The heart is depressed and breathing is shallow. All of this results in a sedated appearance that is hard to ignore. Lolita’s constant use of many times stepped on heroin is one reason she couldn’t be a mom to her two children, who are being raised by their grandparents. I met Lolita during my 5 th or 6 th stunt at a rehab facility in New York City. She was ordered by some tea toting Judge to join our outpatient classes after being released from jail for drug trafficking and after violating the terms of her probation. Heroin has been Lolita’s primary drug of choice since she began using at age 17. All of us female heroin addicts who were forced or court ordered to sit around the girl scout rehabilitation campfire telling true or make believe stories from the crypt sitting in a circle. Lolita was now 55 looking like a young 85 year old sea and weather beaten junkie hag. When it was her turn to share the first story she allocated with us 11 other heroin addicts, was the time she got accused of killing a trick (A man that pays prostitutes for sex or a man that pays women to hang around him), named Balderdash. Even Rosie woke up from a nod to asked her how did that john (A man that pays prostitutes for sex or a man that pays women to hang around him), come up with a nick name such as that old lady rhyme who shot up so much heroin up her right scarred up arm that she didn’t know what to dos. Before Lolita could respond Rosie Perez returned to the land of nod. Lolita said for the record he got that name because he was one who acted senseless and stupid and used exaggerated talk after spiking up. This heroin junkie who called herself Peaches, yelled for Lolita to get on with her lying sordid story if you please! One thing about a heroin junkie is when they get interrupted is the fact that they have to collect their thoughts when intentionally interrupted. Where was I Lolita asked herself? Cookie Love shouted the trick the trick! You see Balderdash cashed in what was left of his 401K. He had accumulated over $62,000 at the junkie age of 50. Rumor had it that he was some kind of broker. Everyone in the group started laughing even Rosie laughed as slobber dribbled out of the side of her big painted green lips. She looked more like the Joker than the real Joker. As all of you hookers well know, what really happens when you have excess to a lot of dough. Rhonda croaked. Yeah them trickin days is over. Anyways me and dashed shacked up and an abandon building for a little over a week. All we did was shoot up constantly. Whenever he called the dope suppliers they came as fast as FedEx. When he died of an overdose. Everyone blamed me for his death. I even got charged with conspiracy to commit murder. If it wasn’t for me being held in a mental institution when they discovered his decomposed body those charges may have stuck. After I got released from that god awful place I was ostracized on the streets. No one believed me when I tried to explain to them that I asked him to take a day off. You see in truth when Balderdash found out that he was dying from aids there was no stopping him. Besides, he only had about 8 grand left in which the police found in my purse. One thing about heroin junkies they have a short memory especially after I started spending the money I acquired to watch someone who insisted on killing themselves. The sad part about my life is that in a few months later I was accused of murder again. This time it I was with my pimp Macaroni. Sure he treated me and all his streetwalkers like dogs and sometimes beat us with a clothes hanger, but that didn’t mean I was the one who killed him, even if the thought of killing him crossed my confused mind a million times. Someone shot him up with enough anti-freeze that the police thought his body would never overheat or thaw. Whoever did that to him left the syringe in my purse when they found me all beat up and half dead. If it wasn’t for the 8 ball (An 8-ball is one eight of an ounce of heroin, approximately 3.5 grams, enough to OD on) I shot up that day I probably wouldn’t be sitting around you sorry junkies trying to prove my innocence. The room wet silent for a few minutes and all that could be heard was the snores coming from Rosie. I swear on a bag of bad dope that I didn’t have nothin to do with his timely demise from this world but no one ever believed me, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The doctor who saved my life testified to the grand jury that I was just a victim of circumstances. Whatever that meant. It taint easy trying to convince heroin junkies that you didn’t kill no one. Lolita completed the 30 day treatment and I don’t know if I should share what eventually happened to her. Anyway through the street grapevine it was rumored that since she was accuse of killing two people. She decided to kill herself. I can’t say that I believe she was all that innocent of killing those two losers because she didn’t even leave no suicide note or nothing.