Day 26/8 - "Dr. Jeykell and his friend (Part 2)"

Tuesday, 19 December 2006 - Day 26/8 - "Dr. Jeykell and his friend (Part 2)"

Continues from Part 1

I lost my love. The love that came so close to me through the lies and pretenses I couldn’t see. Pushing me away from my family, my friends – until only one remained. My best friend – GM.

I never took heroin if GM wasn’t with me. We were like the three musketeers: GM, Heroin and Me. We would meet in the mornings before work and took our first hit. Some lunches if the cravings were too bad or the withdrawal setting in, we would sneak away for a hit. And in the evenings after work we would meet up again and take once more. Our lives became pretty predicable, taking drugs and passing the time in between.

Both of us tried to stop many times. We had to do it without medicine or doctors since we couldn’t afford either one. Even if we had money, it would all be spend on drugs before you could say ‘Pharmacy’. So, we had to withdraw cold-turkey (without any medicine), which is not only dangerous but painful as hell. Every cell in my body was screaming at me – looking for heroin. I couldn’t withdraw at my parent’s house because they would surely notice something so I used to stay over at his place.

Every time we tried it, it started the same. We would take one last time the night before and in a few hours the withdrawal would start to set in. We were hurting badly but still confident that this would be the time we beat it. It only took a few hours for the room to get dead quiet. Nobody said a word but your thoughts were ear-splittingly loud calling for heroin. Sometimes it took only minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes we even made it to a day – but sooner or later one of us caved. We’d sit in a circle anxiously calling the dealer, trying to score again.

After my parents found out about my addiction we weren’t allowed to spend that much time together. And as the survival instincts of the addict kicked in I started buying on my own, taking on my own and withdrawing on my own. We were both serious to get and stay clean but neither of us wanted to end the friendship.

It has been a month since I’ve seen or spoken to GM. I wonder if he thinks I abandoned him when he needed me most or does he think I deserted him like the rest? It hurts for things to be like this but I hope he understands. I may not always have realized it but I was fracturing our friendship with my shifting personality and drug craving. I was turning into Dr. Jeykell and taking my friend down with me.

In a perfect world he is fighting this same battle and making as good progress as I am. In a perfect world we can meet up someday and look back at these events as a distant learning experience. But that day is not now – and now the best way we can help each other is time apart!