text: Note: I wrote this essay for a college course and I'm not the best writer so don't mind my grammar. This is my story of being a heroin addict. I hope that it may help anyone who is struggling with addiction and also to give people an idea of what it's like being a heroin addict. Please give me constructive criticism to help improve my writing abilities. Journal Entry 4/21/11: Throw up before I wake, cloths soaked like a lake. Muscles sore all around, can't get up off the ground. Laying down, tossing and turning, so hot I think I'm burning. Scared about the day ahead, kill me now, I'd rather be dead. I crawl my way out the door, I have a buck, I need some more. I bum, I beg, with tears down my face, lose all pride, become a disgrace. I come up with just enough, now I just got to find some stuff. Searching the streets trying to find the man, waiting... waiting... Finally he pulls up in a white van. I stumble in and make the deal, relieve the pain I don't want to feel. Find a spot on the side of the road, I start to shiver as though I'm cold. Ready to feel high as a kite, I fill it up as dark as night. Stabbing my arm just to find a vein, don't notice anything, no pain. Piercing the skin, still trying to hit, mouth on the tie, I drool and spit. Blood running all the way down my arm, I think it's normal, don't see the harm. I finally pull and it fills with red, I hope this is the one that leaves me dead. I feel the rush then it turns to black, I'm free and I'm never coming back. I rummage through my only possessions, the contents of a black backpack. I can't find a clean rig. I had some earlier today, but now I'll have to use an old one. I find my prized spoon, one side blackened by butane, the other covered in residue. I cup my hand to collect water from the sink, drawing 100cc into the rig. I open a red balloon with my teeth, tearing it like a hyena tears through an animal hide, and I remove the dope wrapped in plastic. Carefully, I open the wrapping and make sure nothing falls. I breathe on the powdered dope to turn it into a moist ball. I put the dope in the spoon, lick the residue off my fingers. A sour bitterness fills my mouth. The taste is horrible. I squirt the water into the spoon. As I cook up the dope, the vinegar-like odor of it melting makes me gag. I try not to make it boil, because I'm afraid some of it will be wasted. When it is completely dissolved, I stir it up with the rig's plunger. I then drop a ball of cotton in the spoon, and fill up the rig. I make sure to suck up every last drop. The rig fills up to 50cc. I pull out my blood-stained tourniquet, and tightly wrap it around my left arm. I clench my fist, waiting for a vein to surface. Nothing. Frustration overwhelms me, tears fall down my face. I start to poke my arm, using the dull rig like a jackhammer to my arm. Blood streams down to my fingertips, sweat down my face. Someone bangs on the bathroom door, yelling "Hurry up!" I don't care. I did not strike oil on the left arm, so I untie the tourniquet, and wrap it around my right. Another ten minutes of searching and I finally hit the spot. The ribbon of blood in the rig brings me a rush. I slowly push the plunger until every last bit is in my arm. I release the tourniquet, take out the rig, and lick the blood off my arm and off the tip of the needle. Suddenly I feel a rush of warmth fill my body. I get the sense of relief as though everything in my life is alright. I slide down the filthy bathroom wall to sit. My sight becomes blurry, and I close my eyes. Nothing matters. Reality slips away. Everything goes black. The life of a heroin junkie is a life that no one deserves to live. It is a miracle that I am alive to write about my experiences. I should be dead. As I read through my old journals, emotions start pouring out as though I'm reliving those horrific episodes. It is as though I am having a recurring nightmare. The heroin problem in America is growing exponentially. Portland, Oregon, being the heroin capital of the west coast, is taking many lives. Every day there are overdoses happening throughout the city. Many of the victims are quickly forgotten. Heroin is like a plague that is growing, and it will continue to grow if actions are not taken to stop this epidemic. This is a day in the life of a junkie. As I open my eyes a bright light illuminates the room. I lie on the top bunk in a room packed with other homeless. The mattress I lie on is covered in sweat. As I peel my back from the plastic mattress, I feel like vomiting. I throw up in my mouth and swallow. All my muscles are sore like I just ran a marathon. I look over to the bottom bunk, to the left of mine, to find my brother still lying in bed. "Travis. Wake up," I say. After a few minutes of calling him, he replies with despair, "I'm so sick." "Me, too. We need to get well," I say. We then both get up. The shelter provides both breakfast and a shower. There’s no time for that. We head out the door. Outside the shelter, the air is cold. I spark up a half-smoked cigarette I found last night. The stale taste and smell of the cig fills my mouth and taints my clothes with the odor of an ashtray. I don't even notice or care. I don't care about anything right now, except for one thing: dope. We walk down the street like a pair of zombies, dragging our bodies in search for brains. We're broke and sick. The anxiety starts to kick in. We become worried about the day ahead. We have to do something. Travis has a cheap cellphone that he may be able to trade to the Hondos. The Hondurans don't have nearly as good of dope as the Mexicans. It is like a comparing a Geo Metro to a Benz. But the Hondos are willing to trade, and we have no other options. We make our way to the nearest payphone. I pull out the fifty cents I saved last night from spanging for a phone call, and dial the number of a Honduran that goes by the name of Juan. His number is engrained in my head, like carvings on a stone tablet. 503-***-****.. That number will never be forgotten. "Hallo? Who's dis?" I hear Juan's familiar Honduran accent. "Hey. This is Caleb." "Chino? Whatchu need?" "Dos negro." "You got the money?" "Yes," I lie. He won't come meet us unless he thinks we have money. "Okay. Come ah to like ah 12th and brouhnsaeed," he says with his broken accent. "Wait... Where? 12th and Johnson?" I ask. "No, Chino. 12th and Brouhnsaeed!" "Oh, Burnside!" "How long?" "Ten minutes." I hang up the phone. We quickly walk towards the meeting spot. As we pace towards Juan, the withdrawal starts to kick in harder. My eyes water, and I sneeze and shiver. My body is malfunctioning. I feel like a fish without water, flopping helplessly on the ground. I vomit as I walk. Travis starts sneezing heavily as though he is allergic to the world. When we finally reach the crossroads, Travis digs through his bag to find the old cheap cellphone. We wait...every second feels like a minute and every minute feels like an hour. Looking in every direction, Juan is nowhere to be seen. 10 minutes pass. Still no sign of juan. An eternity passes. Finally Juan appears from around the corner. It feels like Jesus's second coming.Juan walks up wearing the Nike's we traded him the other day. "What's up Chinos? whatchu need?" Juan says. "two blacks" I say. "wheres the money?" Juan says. Travis pulls out the cell phone. "AHHH NOOO Chino!" juan says with dismay. He then starts to walk off. Travis and I begin to follow him. "Juan please! this cell phone works and it has a sim chip" Travis says. "NO." Juan says with finality. We continue to follow him. Within I'm filled with the fear of not being able to cop. Afraid of being sick. Hopefully if we follow him long enough, Juan will finally give in. "Go away Chino!" Juan says frustrated. We begin to beg as though we are begging for food. "Juan, we are so sick. We need something" I say. Juan stops. "Okay I give you one" he says. He spits out in his hand one bag wrapped in a black black plastic and hands it over to me. I put it in my mouth and we head out. Travis and I head to the nearest public bathroom and both walk in. He gets the works ready. I open the black bag to find a small, sticky smear that smelled like perfume. Travis and I look at each other in disappointment. "What the fuck is this?" Travis says. "This shit must have been cut with something I don't even want to know about." I reply. We both were so sick we still decided to do it. As Travis cooked it, the strong odor filled the bathroom. This dope was dirtier than a whores vagina. When we did the dope, we felt nothing. No pleasure, no warmth, just a feeling of normalcy. We were well. Growing up, my brother and I Travis were like two peas in a pod. We did everything together, good and bad. No matter what situation we got into, we always had each others back. By far this addiction brought us down like no other.Everyday was a constant struggle to survive on the streets. Living homeless is a struggle in itself, but to also have a drug addiction made the experience hell. This drug addiction made us do things that we would never do sober. Travis and I came up with many scams to make money quickly. We took and resold recycled cellphones. We got beanies from homeless shelters and sold them on the street. We pawned everything we owned. Travis sold his prized possession "Reneysha", a 2002 BMW 525, sterling gray with a sports package, equipped with projector headlights, for half the value. We stole and spanged (asked for spare change). We dealed dope. We scammed people for "bus fare." Ad infinitum. It got to the point where we could no longer live this lifestyle. We lost connections with our friends, our family, saw people we cared about die from overdoses, we ourself overdosed on several occasions, this merry-go-round we were on was no longer fun and something must change. I remember one day Travis said to me, “one of us is going to die if we keep on living this lifestyle and it’s gonna take that death to be enough to make the other stop.”We needed to stop. After years of being strung out, 6 times of detox and rehab, my brother and I were finally able to get off the junk. Things we’re starting to look forward. We no longer needed a substance to feel alright. We felt like normal people. It was not an easy journey getting clean, the higher you get, the harder you fall. It was a cloudy christmas eve night in downtown Portland. The homeless youth shelter was packed and I would die if I slept outside. I needed to find shelter. As I walk down Burnside to the Portland rescue mission, I begin to reminisce on the good days. The days before I did drugs. I thought about all times we had Christmas with the whole family and sat in front of the fireplace. I can feel the warmth from the fire heating up my body from my head to my toes. The smell of fresh roasted coffee brewing in the kitchen while mom is cooking up Christmas breakfast. There was just a feeling of peace and serenity. There was nothing to fear. I had a sense of security. As I walk up to the rescue mission, I see a sign on the front door that says ‘shelter full’. I knock on the door. No one answers. I knock again. Nothing. Out of desperation I begin knocking on the door as though I was being chased by zombies and I needed to get inside to shelter. Finally the door opens and a man comes to the door. “Sorry there is no more space, we are completely full”. The man says. “Sir is there anyway you could fit one more person? The youth shelter is closed and I have nowhere to sleep.” I say shivering “I’m sorry there isn’t any room. The capacity of the shelter is 95 and we are pushing it we have 120 people crammed in here.” says the man. “It’s okay, thank you anyways.” I begin walking off. I don’t know where I’m walking to. I feel like a child lost in the supermarket looking for their parents. Or like Bob dylan says, ‘Like a rolling stone’. As I’m walking away from the shelter, I hear a man calling me. “Hey kid! come here!” says the man from the shelter. I walk back towards the man. “Yeah?” “It’s Christmas eve, we can fit you in here” says the man “Yeah?! awesome thank you so much” This was the greatest Christmas gift one can ask for. As I walk into the shelter, I smell an old familiar odor. The odor like the burnside bathroom. I look around this cram packed room to see a room full of homeless people laying on the ground. The man leads me to my mat. As we are walking towards my mat, I look at all the other homeless. I see men with expressions on their face like they are living through misery. I see helpless faces all around. We finally arrive at my king size temper pedic mattress, a 1” thick and 2’ wide blue mattress. “Here’s your spot, wake up is at 6:30. There is coffee in the morning” says the man “Thank you so much sir” I walk towards my mat. As I crawl my way in, the man on the left of me is coughing as though he just smoked a pack of old stale cigarettes. His strong odor of urine fills my nostrils to where I had to hold my breath. The man on the right of me reeks of cigarrette smoke and shit. As I lie down, each one of my shoulders touches the shoulders of the other men. As I look up to the ceiling I think to myself, “What am I doing here?” “Life was so good, and now it comes to this?” “God, if your out there, I need your help.” I fall asleep. The next morning I grab a cup of coffee and make a decision that will change my life for the better forever. My brother and I check ourselves into rehab. With the help of Ouside In, my brother and I both get ourselves into a rehab. Because we are siblings we were not able to go into the same rehab. This was going to be hard because we were always together, we became dependent on each other. There were no other options. We checked in that same day. After weeks of cold turkey withdrawel, I finally started to feel good again. This rehab was the best thing I ever did in my life. I would talk on the phone with travis once a week to see how he was doing. He was moving along pretty quickly in the program. I could hear the difference in his voice. He sounded happy for once. 3 and a half months pass. I’ve come a long way. I have my own studio apartment, I’m working and I’m no longer strung out. I feel as though I can do anything I put my mind into. Life is going good for a change. I inpatiently wait tell my brother gets out. we are both ready to start a new life clean and sober. One of his goals was to go to UTI and automotive school. He wanted to be a mechanic for bmw. My main goal was to go back to college and get an education majoring in Business. our goals were now once possible, we can now make something out of ourselves. When we were on the streets, this was not an option. It’s 5:30 in the morning and I hear a banging on my door. I get up to see who it is. As I open the door, two of my counselors from Outside In are standing at the doorway. The expressions on their face was not a good. They look like they have just seen a ghost. “What’s going on?” I say tiredly “Something happened.” they say quietly. As though they were about to say some bad news. “Is it Travis?” I say knowing that something awful has happened. I had a strange vibe knowing something bad has happened with Travis. “Yes...he passed away last night.” Right when they said this I was in shock and disbelief. This can’t be happening, I must be dreaming. “I’m so sorry” “What happened?” “He relapsed and overdosed. He died in the Joyce hotel” she said. It finally sank in and tears begin to roll down my face. It felt like the whole world was coming to an end and everything around me was going to collapse. I felt like a huge chunk of my soul had been torn off. I was left with this emptiness inside that nothing could ever replace. How could this happen? Everything was going so good. I call my family to tell them the news. Traviss’ death was the last straw for heroin. I will never touch that shit again. All the pain and suffering this drug has put myself and family through. This was no longer an option. There are no happy endings to a heroin junkie. The only thing you can get from it is experience. This experience has made me a stronger person. It made me more grateful for the things I now have in life. Today I’m grateful for the littlest things in life. I’m grateful to once again have my family and friends, I’m grateful to have hot water to take a shower, I’m grateful to be able to eat and not be hungry. I’m grateful to be alive.