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| Photo by Eric Jelinek. Photo illustration by Paul Melvin. |
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Sitting on a toilet in a hotel with blood streaming down both arms, sweating like a pig, crying and with no veins left to hit, Tim had a moment of truth. He knew he had to stop shooting up heroin.
"At the same time I had to hit, I had to have it in me," Tim Flemming, 28, said.
At the age of 24 was the first time Tim wanted to stop. Tim had been doing "chiva" (a San Francisco nickname for heroin) since he was 17. It wasn't until he was 27 that he could fully come clean.
It was a rush describable only as being like "an angel closing her wings around your entire body and taking off into flight."
It felt "soft and warm," and "anything in my mind was gone. All physical pain and woes [disappeared]."
The angel watched over Tim as he got skinny and turned to stealing. All he could think about was anything to provide the flight away from reality.
At 9 years old, the Eureka native started drinking while living on Indian Island with his mother. By the time Tim was 14, he was into drugs. He moved to Savannah, Ga., to live with his father and attend prep school. A rainbow of barbiturates, LSD, cocaine, PCP and "all the drugs I could ingest" followed him. At 16 he quit school to work and play electric bass.
Moving to San Francisco, Tim got lucky and met some "really nice ladies" who had a place to live and a contagious love for heroin. He moved in and started smoking heroin.
One day he went by his dealer's place in a rush to get to work. He only had $10. You can't get high by smoking $10 worth of heroin. So Tim went for the ultimate rush as he stood against a door frame, put his arm out and the dealer shot heroin into a vein. Tim went down on his knees.
"And I was like, 'Oh my god,'" he said.
Hard-core heroin use in the Eureka area includes about 350 to 500 addicts, estimated Joel McDonough, director and founder of Humboldt Recovery Center (HRC). The numbers are more concentrated in the Old Town area, where there is a younger group of users on the streets. In the Garberville area, there are an estimated 300 to 350 addicts. Humboldt State University has at least 50 reported hard-core users.
These numbers don't include the small-time users, most of whom keep the habit low-profile. Many of these users smoke heroin and are under the impression that heroin isn't very addictive. Such users tend to be in their early 20s.
There are an estimated 810,000 chronic heroin abusers in the United States.
McDonough thinks Humboldt County has about 750 regular users and 750 to 1,000 infrequent users.
"Humboldt County is nothing like it was 10 or 15 years ago," McDonough said. "It was the most easy-going place. Now there is a lot more vicious crime."
The amount of child abuse and neglect, deadly fights, gangs, domestic violence and rapes can be linked to the driving force of drugs.
Working at the center for 21 years, he has seen this "all-night craziness" emerge from a place that used to have only alcohol and marijuana problems.
Most of the heroin is brought in by Mexican nationals and is not of very good quality. It is brown and sticky, unlike the more potent Burmese "China White" heroin that was around before.
Part of the danger of being a junkie is increased with the impure heroin. Dealers add a variety of things ("junk"), including dextrose, talcum powder, cocoa, powdered soap and brown sugar, changing the color from the solid gray form.
Heroin celebrates its 100th birthday this year. It was invented in 1898 by the German chemist Heinrich Dreser for the Bayer Co., 10 years after he developed aspirin. This pain killer didn't remain legal for long, but it has continued killing the pain of living for many people.
Heroin is a child of the opiate morphine, but is separated into two chemical groups. Once in the body, it penetrates the brain more quickly as it converts back into morphine.
In the brain is a complicated network of chemical locks and keys. Heroin is virtually identical to the chemicals enkephalin and endorphin, which regulate pleasure, pain and emotions. By opening these chemical locks and keys, heroin addicts can escape their pain and enter a world of pleasure.
"It brings about a real kind of deep existential angst," McDonough said.
But as heroin tolerance increases and tolerance for pain decreases, all that can be thought about is the next fix and the next rush.
A bad habit can cost as much as $100 to $200 a day. The social status of users have an effect on how much pay for their heroin baggies.
Living in San Francisco, Tim and his friends would steal clothes from the Gap and the Banana Republic and then return them. The money went straight to "feeding the horse." He spent $40 to $80 a day, and the next day would begin another run.
When not hunting for heroin, Tim played bass or sang in several bands, including Change, Child's Eye, Derelict Mary and Food.
At one point, Tim had a job working with his sister as a caterer on the sets of blockbuster films such as "Independence Day." He had more money and heroin than he could handle. Buying up to $700 worth to last him while away from the dealers, he once passed out on the set of "Eye for an Eye" in front of Sally Fields.
One day, Tim left incense and candles burning and burned down his sister's house in Los Angeles. After waking up in the hospital, all he wanted to do was get back to the drugs.
"[Users] begin to cross moral and ethical boundaries they didn't think they would cross," said Mike Goldsby, director of Family Recovery Services at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. "The Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde [description] fits addicts.
"A common theme is depression; life is flat and dull when not using drugs," he said.
Living situations and climate are also factors in drug use.
"The whole Northwest [has a lot of heroin use]; it's rainy and everyone is depressed," Trevor Adkins explained.
At a low in his life, Trevor went straight into shooting heroin mixed with cocaine.
Trevor was 22 and living in Portland, Ore., when his marriage fell apart. His good friend Amy had also just ended a relationship. Together they eased the pain with a needle.
Spending all their available money on drugs meant that it was soon more economical to only use heroin. As a couple, they soon were selling their CDs and whatever they could to get money for heroin.
"It made me rip off a lot of people I respected," said Trevor, now 26. "Luckily, friends knew where I was at and have forgiven me."
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| Photo by Mel Hunt. Photo illustration by Paul Melvin. |
Heroin addiction often monopolizes the time and money of the addicts, leaving them with no way to maintain a home or life outside of the drug. |
Living on the streets of Los Angeles in an area known as the "War Zone," Tim saw people being killed every day. He was hiding out in a motel room with a friend when two men kicked down the door demanding $90 owed to them. They started fighting, and after Tim pinned one guy against the wall, the collectors agreed to negotiate. He had to give them the money or they would kill Tim and his friend. At 4 in the morning, Tim was able to sneak out while the men slept, call his mom for a bus ticket and get back to Eureka.
The scenery changed but the lifestyle didn't.
"Life is totally made up of finding, taking, scoring, feeling [the heroin]," Goldsby explained. "The cycle consumes their existence."
Although heroin kills pain, it has plenty of unpleasant physical side effects, including constipation, nausea and vomiting.
Then there are the abscesses that hard-core users get. When users who are high get the "jitters," they scratch the places along their arm where they shoot up, creating abscesses. After repeatedly shooting into the same spot, a vein may pop and be unattainable for about a year.
"My buddies would get abscesses and then go and get them cut," Trevor said. "It was like a big zit; it was gross."
Despite all the other effects, the biggest danger remains an overdose. The street quality of heroin varies from baggie to baggie and junk is always cut into the "smack." About eight months ago, Trevor's friend Jeremy died of an overdose in Chicago. He did some China White and his system couldn't handle it. Jeremy was 24.
"That really shook me up," Trevor said. "I'm glad I got out."
The Humboldt County Coroner's Office has reported an increase in recent years of drug overdoses in the Eureka area. Although records aren't available for specific drug overdoses, the numbers for such a small area still stand. In 1995, nine deaths from ODs were reported. 1996 saw 11 more. In 1997, there were 21 ODs. At press time, there have been reported 18 ODs in 1998.
Another common threat to users is withdrawal. Trevor said he remembers recovering from his eight months of use at home in Valencia.
"I walked around for weeks in a weird state of mind," he recalled. "I was really sensitive to smell. I could smell every smell in the air and it was making me sick.
"At one point I had no control over my body. My muscles just tightened and my body couldn't function."
Tim echoed the memories of the pain of withdrawal.
"Everything is so sensitive, down to where I could have an orgasm before my erection," he said. "Your whole body aches, your insides ache and you can't eat, you just keep throwing up. You have some insane bowel movements."
The mind of a user trying to quit can be his or her worst enemy.
"Their world gets completely twisted," Goldsby explained. "[Users] call being without heroin 'getting sick' and giving [themselves] heroin is 'getting well.'"
The entire first four days of quitting are hard, but especially the first six to eight hours.
"Your head doesn't just stop. Some call it a committee; I call mine a mob," Tim said. "It's not men in suits; it's motherfuckers trying to kill me."
The low pain tolerance can mean that even your hair hurts.
Users have a hard time sleeping without the usual rush in their system. Tim sometimes wasn't able to sleep for four or five days.
Many addicts get very bad anxiety and panic attacks during withdrawal. The withdrawal scene of the dead baby crawling on the ceiling depicted in the movie "Trainspotting," is an example of the fear.
"The truth is, it does hurt a lot, but it doesn't kill. Alcohol [withdrawal] kills," said McDonough.
Goldsby said he agrees.
"There is very little danger that they will die, but (the anxiety) drives them back to relapse."
Working at Alcohol and Drug Care Services in Eureka, Tony Davis encounters about 10 to 15 heroin users a month.
"They are notorious whiners," Davis said. "They come from all over [to the program] because we come from the same background."
Davis used to "mainline" heroin, slang for shoot intravenously.
"We're pretty hard to BS," he said.
It took Tim a few times before he got into the Crossroads residential program in Eureka, at age 27, to kick the habit.
Trevor said he is more scared of heroin now than ever before.
"One friend pulled some out (in Valencia) and I got really irate," he said. "There are only three ways out: jail, stop or die."
In Eureka, there are several programs to help drug addicts. The waiting lists greatly surpass the number of beds and spaces.
The law enforcement officials that McDonough has spoken with agree that "the War on Drugs was lost long ago," and most of them favor treatment.
Heroin users can be any age. Smoking or mixing it with crack sometimes begins as early as 12 or 13. One man in Ukiah is alleged to have been using since he was 11 and still "skin-pops" (subcutaneously pinching the loose skin and injecting into the fat) at the age of 91. The majority of users mainline heroin and most aren't as careful about the quality of their smack or how clean the needles are.
Many tend to come from strict and frequently conservative families with rigid morals, McDonough said. When clean, they return to being highly moral people.
"Addicts ask for 'kick-kits' (from the St. Joseph emergency room)," Goldsby said. "There is no such thing."
There are kits that contain opiate-type drugs such as codeine that help users deal with the pain and symptoms (bowel problems) associated with quitting.
"We will not just detox a person; they have to follow up with a program," Goldsby said.
Davis agreed, saying his program uses a social-model detoxification program as well. Some programs elsewhere use methadone to wean users. Methadone is a synthetic heroin substitute. There are about 115,000 users nationwide receiving methadone .
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, White House national drug policy director, supports subscribing methadone to heroin users.
"Methadone is the only cheap, effective tool," McCaffrey said in a Sept. 29 Associated Press article.
On the other hand, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently announced a plan to get patients at city-run hospitals off methadone. New York City has about 32,000 addicts on methadone.
Humboldt drug programs also believe that methadone is not the answer.
"All you are doing is prolonging [the addiction]," Davis stated in reference to the methadone treatment.
Goldsby agreed: "People have to feel the heat before they see the light."
HRC and Crossroads are similar long-term residential treatment programs. Most of the users come in voluntarily or under a court order. They enter into a residential program that includes people with a variety of drug problems.
These people become their support group for the next six months or over a year, depending on the program and resident. A person isn't clean until a year after graduation, two years total.
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| Photo by Eric Jelinek. Photo illustration by Paul Melvin. |
Intravenous heroin use is the choice for users who want to get high quicker and for less money. |
"It was scary [entering Crossroads]," Tim said. "You're about to give your freedom up for a year. You are moving into a house with 20 other people, all fucked up.
"It turned out to be one of the best things I've done."
A large part of treatment is group counseling. Several hours a day are spent going over life stories. Personal counseling isn't allotted as much time because many addicts have become skilled at manipulating individual situations.
The counseling requires a lot of blunt truth, patience and love, McDonough said.
HRC and Crossroads have a therapeutic community model.
"They have to regrow on every level [including] psychological and spiritual," Crossroads Director Steve Volow said. "People don't know how to make friends (or do) basic stuff like reading and writing."
There is also nutritional counseling about amino acids and lots of herbal teas are used. Eating meat and drinking milk helps many addicts sleep.
Both facilities are partially state-funded, but have only 25 or fewer beds. HRC charges $750 a month with everything included, and the Crossroads average is $500. Both make special allowances for those on welfare and operate on a sliding scale (based on ability to pay). Residents are encouraged to get a job or attend school as soon as they are ready. The waiting lists are very long, but the centers allow some addicts to come in for day treatment.
Tim had to wait 10 months to get into Crossroads, while on probation. He has been there for seven months and wants to work and go back to school in the future. He is considering a working on a business degree.
Tim's advice is "don't do it." There is no feeling like heroin, which is the worst thing about it. It is what makes coming clean so hard.
Trevor considers himself lucky. His addiction only lasted eight months, until he was 22. He went home and told his parents he was recovering from the flu. Withdrawal and the flu have similar symptoms.
"I don't know how I got off it so easily; I think I just got fed up with the scene and ran from it," Trevor said. "I still drink too much. That seems to be a little more socially acceptable.
"It's a very wise decision to not even go that route [of using heroin], to not even try it. It's very destructive -- it's the worst."
He now works at a restaurant in Arcata and is also thinking about going to college.
"We live in a heavily drugged society," McDonough explained, adding that the United States accounts for 4 percent of the world population but uses 85 percent of the drugs. "People feel better loaded than sober."
The Alcohol and Drug Care Services detoxification program's phone number is 445-DTOX. St. Joseph's program can be reached at 445-9251 or (800) 334-4774. For residential care, contact Crossroads at 445-0869 or Humboldt Recovery Center at 443-3100. For more information on services, call Humboldt County Alcohol and Other Drug Programs at 445-6250.
