Opening

            I passed the blunt around the circle and held the fiery smoke deep within my lungs as long as I could until it finally escaped, popping into the cold air as I choked and hacked and coughed. It wasn’t the first time I had tried smoking weed but it was the first time I really felt what people tried so thoroughly, yet unrewardingly to explain. The feeling of being high for the first time.         

            You are sitting there, waiting for this awe inspiring moment of revelation when the high sneaks up behind you, careful not to startle you. It creeps up the back of your jeans and navigates through your coat where it begins to massage your shoulders and so you relax and become totally defenseless. The high then suddenly, with insurance of your relaxation, strikes the back of your skull and begins to comfort your brain, your mind.

            I looked across the circle of smokers and could see one of my close friends with a knit cap on. I couldn’t help but smile, thinking of times we had together in elementary school and what not. Noticing every detail of how the hat complimented his hair which complimented his face which complimented his jacket and so on and so forth. A slight chuckle slipped past my teeth.

“Looks like little miss priss over there has finally gotten high.” said some voice amongst the circle. I didn’t care to look, I didn’t care much about anything except for just about everything. I paid attention to it all, feeling as if I had been walking around naked up until this point. How could I have missed such a moon before? How did I never notice the crackled black top cement in the parking lot that was begging to either be fixed or crushed, looking so embarrassed by its own tarnished scalp. I began to feel sympathetic for the black top. So ignored and alone and yet so predominant in everyday life, especially our own and yet we simply walk all over it, laughing at its cracks and imperfections. We literally kicked the cement in the face with each and every step we nonchalantly took, striding to whatever car or place we were headed.

            The blunt had made its rotation within the circle and came back round to me. I decided to take a few more hits, each a deeper inhale. Afterwards I sent the stick of green along its way to please the rest of the crowd and made my way out into a field surrounding the parking lot.

            The ground was crunchy with frost yet not covered with snow. The Earth was so vulnerable at this point. All of its beautiful Summer and Spring life had been killed by Autumn. Left to be tortured by the beginning of Winter and its harsh weather. The delicate snow had not yet arrived to cover all of her impurities and so she lied there, waiting for a salvation. I became unrelentingly jealous of the Earth’s patience and so I began walking back to the car.

            I slowly opened the passenger door to my buddy’s car whom I had been smoking with earlier and sat in the soft, cushioned car seat and waited for everybody else to jump in.

            I was alone in the cold, dark car and my mind began to truly wander for the first time. It felt as if I could almost watch it walk across the dashboard and then jump and swing recklessly from the rear view mirror. It than dove out of the window and was amongst the crowd of red eyed people, dazed with euphoria.

            I began to examine the crowd, full of jocks, preps, bandos, skaters, etc., pretty much every bullshit high school clique you could think of was represented one way or the other. Except here they were all just stoners, looking to get lost for a couple hours and forget whatever hell of a life they had to report to in the morning.

            Jonny jumped in and started the car, but more importantly, started the music. It was as if I had been deaf up until this moment. Cool, calm, and collectively the guitar began to rise and fall, waiting alone for the rest of the band but determined, distinguished, it knew what it was doing. It continued alone for a moment or so until the bass and drums crept in, hitting at the perfect moment. I felt a turning in my stomach trying to get out, trying to explain itself and all I could do was laugh in sheer astonishment. It was as if I thought something so lovely could never have been composed and I felt true inspiration for the first time. I wanted to create, I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to put words to a story that had no words, had no meaning, had no being and yet it felt so important to define.

The Hook

Of course any dope fiend remembers the first time they tried Heroin. For me, it was a little backwards. I tried the hard stuff before ever getting into any pills, which would eventually be my mistake with becoming comfortable around dope. I was 18 and living in Marquette, Michigan. Kind of a bum fucking town in the Upper Peninsula, but it was new for me to be living away from home and it was almost a pleasant place.

I was with a good friend of mine, Jim, smoking weed, when he dropped the bomb on me...
"Would you ever try something like heroin?" he slid into the conversation between hits. Too stoned to focus on really what the question asked, I replied, "I'd pretty much try anything once." And that was it, the decision had been made. It was to happen the next day. I don't think Jim had any kind of malicious intentions, such as  getting me hooked. Rather, I can relate now to the loneliness of being an addict in a small town and how finding a running partner may have felt like a good idea at the time.
That night, I thought little about the unconscious hell I had just condemned myself to and passed out, still stoned from smoking weed earlier that day. The following afternoon Jim and I met up on our usual routine. I swiftly presented the 20 dollars he had mentioned the day before. In return, he handed me a neatly folded lottery ticket that resembled a tiny envelope. As I carefully unfolded the pack I found a light brown powder that could have been blown away if the wind picked up. It wasn't until later into my addiction that I realized Jim had charged me double the normal rate of the pack, plus diced out half the goods for himself. But I was interested, naive, and could give two shits after what I was about to experience.
Jim drove us down a few back roads and through some dense woods until we finally arrived at the black cliffs overhanging Lake Superior. It was early November, that time of the year when your body is adjusting from the light chills of late Fall to the blanketing cold of Winter.
I watched intently as Jim poured his pack into a half bent spoon filled with residue from prior usage and pulled water from his Kroger bottle into his rig. He then mixed the water with the dope in the spoon and cooked it for a short time until just before it began to boil. The brown substance left in the spoon gave off a distinct scent that at first may have seemed somewhat repulsive but eventually any junkie comes to love. That smell alone will take the sniffle out of the nose and the water out of the eye of any dope sick junkie. By then Jim had already thrown the cotton into the mix and withdrew the dope into his syringe. I had already fallen in love with the process before the blood shot backwards into the syringe and he pushed the plunger down, sending God coursing into his veins. We both sat in silence, myself in awe, literally with my jaw hanging down until we locked eye contact five seconds later as he said the word, "Now." His head fell back against the car seat with his eyes closed, bathing in the glow of being shown the light.
"What did you say now for?" I asked, afraid to throw off the groove he was clearly displaying.
"That's how long it took to hit me and feel it." he replied.
"Feel what?" I couldn't help but ask.
"The greatest feeling you'll ever know for the rest of your life."
Excited by watching this whole process but too scared to shoot my first time, I poured my pack out onto a small car manual that was held in the glove compartment, stuck a rolled up dollar bill in my nostril, and snorted the dope as if it would expire if I didn't hurry. There was a stinging in my nose and throat and I began coughing. I kept plugging my clean nostril and sucking in what was left in my other nostril, the bitter taste and actions causing my eyes to water. Within five minutes it felt as if somebody had lit a fire in my stomach. Not a burning house fire, but a warm, cozy fire, like the ones my family use to light in the fireplace on Christmas eve. I felt at ease and calmed, perfectly relaxed in every way. I closed my eyes as I let the high take over my body and subconsciously, my mind.
I felt content to just sit in the car but Jim was hurried to get out before his initial rush faltered back to the regular high I was experiencing. We stripped down naked and ran to the edge of the cliffs. Jim looked back at me with his crooked smile, "Don't worry, you won't feel a thing," and before I could protest we both launched ourselves off the charcoal cliffs and into the ice bath of Lake Superior. Known for how cold the water is in the summer, the winter water stabbed every part of my body like dull knives. I was expecting a piercing chill and found it tamed instead. The heroin had combatted the majority of the shock I experienced and left the dive into ice bath manageable. As I resurfaced, I felt my entire body go short of breath, panicking for air. I quickly dealt my body a few deep breaths and it began to settle down so I could enjoy the experience. I looked over as Jim was calmly doing the backstroke and spitting water into the air, mimicking something you'd see in a movie. It wasn't long before the cold began to set into my bones and I began to paddle back to a discrete inlet where the shore was.
As I stood out of the water, the fire in my gut was doused. The combination of the cold air, swimming, and most of all the dope overtook my stomach. I began puking uncontrollably, giving that scene from "The Excorcist" a run for its money. As I regained control of my stomach, Jim was just exiting the water as if it were a heated pool in the middle of summer.
We conversed as we made our way back up to the top of the cliffs. Jim and I hurried back to the same place we had just jumped from earlier. We sat along the edge with our feet dangling over, our naked bodies unnoticed by the cold.
"I could get use to this." I laughed as water dripped off my nose and sprayed out of my mouth.
"It can be beautiful." Jim said with a somber tone, "but it can be a living hell too."
I sat in silence, watching the orange hues of the setting sun contradict against the dark blues of the waves of the lake, thinking.
"Kind of like Lake Superior." I nodded towards the water.
"Kind of." Jim smiled.
Looking back on the situation, it was an innocent, but beautiful experience. Most junkie's first times are in the back of a car or some basement with the lights off. For me it took a different route. I immediately associated heroin with this idea of being completely content and peaceful with the world, something I had always longed for. It finally silenced all the storms I had inside of me and finally allowed me to just see what is, and not what isn't.
Luckily, I left Marquette shortly after that and didn't use again for another six months. The last six months of normalcy I've known for what feels like ages.