Dark Days (Chapter 2)

I met Summer through Corey, the neighbor that Hyat was getting me heroin from. One night he came over to my apartment and told me a friend of his needed help shooting up. “She’s the plug.” He told me. “She’ll give you some dope if you help her do this shot.” I didn’t need any convincing. We loaded up in my car and drove about two miles away from where I was living and pulled into a little subdivision right next to where Hyat and I would get Chinese takeout sometimes. I couldn’t believe it! All this time I was looking for a steady connection for my dope and it was literally right under my nose the whole time. I was ecstatic. I finally had a way to get out from under Hyat’s thumb, who was increasingly using my addiction as a way to benefit his own addiction to meth. Corey and I pulled up next to a small wooden house with a fenced in back yard. We walked around the side of the house to what looked like a large shed inside the perimeter of the fence and knocked on the door. A tired looking man that looked to be in his 50s opened the door. “You here for Summer?” He grumbled, not at all excited to see us. Corey told him that we were and introduced me to the man whose name was Richard. “She’s in the back.” He told us after the introductions were out of the way and then disappeared into his room. Corey lead me through the front room, which doubled as a living room and kitchen, and we came to a doorway leading out of the kitchen into a small bedroom. Summer was sitting in her bed with two men in the room with her. She smiled at us as we entered the room. “Hey! Can you hit me?” She asked me, getting straight to the point. “Uh, yea. I should be able to.” She reached over to her bedside table and picked up a needle already filled with heroin and extended it out to me. I walked over to the edge of her bed, grabbed the needle, and knelt down beside her. “Where do you want me to hit?” I asked as I started to reach for her arm. She pulled her arm back and shook her head. “All of those veins are gone. “You’re gonna have to hit me in the neck.” I stared back at her wide-eyed. “Shit! Can’t we just try your foot?” I said, “I’ve never hit anybody there before.” Summer laughed and laid on her back with her head hanging over the edge of the bed. “I don’t like hitting in my foot.” She said. “My feet are sensitive. Just be really careful. I’ll hook you up if you can hit me.” The prospect of free dope was enough to give me the courage to at least try so I said “Okay.” Summer put her thumb in her mouth and puffed her cheeks out as she tensed her body and held her breath. Sure enough a fairly thick vein running down the side of her neck popped out so I felt it a couple of times with my finger then stuck the needle in and pulled back on the plunger to make sure I was inside. Blood immediately flooded into the syringe and mixed with the sickly black liquid within so I pushed the plunger and watched the shot disappear into her neck. I pulled the needle out and plugged the microscopic hole with my finger to keep the blood from trickling down her neck. “You good?” I asked her as she slowly sat up and turned around to face me. “Yea, I’m good.” She said quietly as she rubbed her neck, the light already fading from her eyes as the dope worked its magic on her. “What’s your name?” She asked me. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit at the fact that I had just shot heroin in this person’s neck and she didn’t even know my name. I told her my name and she introduced me to the other two people in the room, her cousin Cody and her friend Wade. She gave me some dope and I went ahead and did a shot and hung out with everybody for a bit. Typical dope head conversation. Other times we got high. Dope we had gotten that was “fire.” That sort of thing. Summer was so fucked up she couldn’t hold a conversation for very long because she kept nodding out. One of us would call her name or shake her and she would drift back into consciousness for a bit only to fade away again a minute or so later. I was nodding out a little myself but the shot she did must have been pretty thick because she was really out of it. I managed to get her phone number from her cousin and find her on Facebook and eventually said goodbye to everyone and went back to my place.

After I met Summer I really started to go downhill. She always had dope and I was still making pretty decent money with my job despite the fact that my performance at work was starting to decline. When I didn’t have money Summer was usually cool with fronting me until I got paid. She was also giving me free shit whenever she needed somebody to shoot her up and none of her friends could do it. Cody and Wade just smoked their shit. Same with Richard, who it turned out was her dad. Sometimes she would call me at work and beg me to drive over to her place so she could get a shot in her and I would give in and leave my booth. I didn’t have a supervisor at the booth with me or anything so this was usually pretty easy for me to do. I would just walk out of the store and drive to her place. Sometimes I would hang out with her and whoever else was at her house for an hour or so and then go back to work. Sometimes I would just say fuck work altogether. So needless to say I really never had to go without dope. On top of that I was getting meth from Hyat, although nowhere near as much now that I didn’t really need him since I met Summer. I knew he was taking advantage of me for money and the use of my car so I started just driving myself everywhere despite the risk of me getting pulled over with an expired license. I also had a connection for meth, a guy named John, who lived across town. I met him through a girl I trained at work and he was usually good to let me come hang out and smoke with him and buy some tweak here and there. I was also getting coke from a little Mexican cantina I had discovered. You would go in, sit down at the bar, wait a few minutes and a guy would come up and sell you pretty fat little baggies of blow in twenty dollar increments. I would take that home and mix it into speed-balls with my heroin. I was quickly spiraling out of control. I would stay up for days on end getting blasted out of my mind on heroin, coke, meth and Xanax, and when I would finally pass out I would wake up drenched in sweat talking to myself in my sleep. I would also have these moments where when I was falling asleep I would suddenly realize that I couldn’t move and I would lay there in bed freaking out and trying to will myself to move until finally I would bust through the paralysis and sit up gasping for air. It was terrifying. As I said, my work was really starting to suffer as I delved deeper and deeper into my addiction. The meth and coke were making me jittery and paranoid so it got harder and harder for me to deal with the people I was trying to pitch my products to and I was increasingly needing more and more heroin to balance that out, on top of just to keep me from getting dope sick. I was going on my “breaks” to go see Summer more and more frequently, often times not returning to work at all. I still don’t know how I managed to keep my job as long as I did. My boss’s wife was the person I reported to and I know that she would occasionally come by the booths at the different stores and check on us but somehow I never heard from her or my boss about it. Maybe they just didn’t care. I was still managing to pull enough leads to keep them off my back although my numbers were starting to slip a little bit. I was getting high at work which was risky for a number of reasons. With my license suspended there was a good chance I would be searched if I got pulled over and I couldn’t exactly swallow a needle and spoon. Then there was also the danger of me passing out in the bathroom after shooting up which amazingly enough didn’t happen as far as I can remember. I didn’t care though. As has always been the case in my entire lengthy history of addiction getting high was my sole purpose and priority. I didn’t care about the few real friends I had. I didn’t care about my family. I didn’t even care about myself.

One day Summer called me in a panic. An ex-boyfriend of hers was getting out of jail and apparently he had beaten her pretty badly. That was why he was in jail. Now he was getting out and she was terrified he was going to show up at her place looking for her. I told Summer she could come hide out at my apartment for a bit and when she got there we shot some dope and talked for awhile. I asked her what had happened and she had told me that her boyfriend had shot a bunch of meth and went crazy one day and beat her up so badly that she had to go to the hospital While Summer was telling me this her phone rang. It was Richard. Apparently the ex-boyfriend had come by and told Richard to tell Summer that he was really sorry about what had happened and that she didn’t need to worry about him hurting her ever again. He said that jail had given him a lot of time to think and he wasn’t going to bother her anymore and then he left. When Summer hung up the phone and told me everything Richard had just said I asked her, “Well what do you think?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She said. She stayed at my place a little longer but eventually she worked up the courage to go back to her place. I shot up a little more dope and put on a movie then passed out.

The next day I met Stand Up.

What is Magick to me?

“Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”

“Every intentional act is a Magical act.”

“Magick is merely to be and to do.”

~ Aleister Crowley (Magick in Theory and Practice)

I am going to attempt to illustrate what Magick is to me as an admittedly young and somewhat naive student of the occult. What are my credentials? Well, none really worth mentioning. I have been fascinated with the subject of magic, or as Crowley called it, Magick, for a number of years now. I started out as a conspiracy theorist in high school. I just knew that the Freemasons were conspiring for world domination and were behind everything from orchestrating 9/11 to turning the freaking frogs gay. My addiction to methamphetamine and cocaine likely exacerbated these beliefs and it wasn’t until a few years after I failed to graduate high school that I stumbled across Crowley’s writings and read a transcript of the Book of the Law online. As should come to no surprise to anybody who has read it, I didn’t really get it, and I’ll admit that much of it still to this day is mysterious to me. Some of it did make an impression on me though. The idea of personal liberty, that we are all sovereign beings, has always been something that I have believed in very strongly. That’s why I was a conspiracy theorist in the first place. The thought that our leaders are trying to subdue and manipulate us has always, to be quite frank pissed me off, and still does to this very day. Though now I see them less as some cabal of evil insidious men leading us down a dark and meticulously planned satanic path and more as a collection of wealthy elite who at times influence our governments and world events to their own ends. But I digress. Once I discovered Crowley’s writings I was hooked and I slowly started reading more of his works throughout the years and in particular, his works regarding ritual Magick. I would not say that I am anything close to being a skilled magician. I still have much to learn and if I am being honest I am lacking in discipline. Regardless, I think I have a good understanding of just what Magick is. Magick is in everything we do. Every willful act. We engage in ritual work on a daily basis, we just don’t think of it as such. When we brush our teeth and pick out our clothing for the day we are “casting a spell” for how we are perceived by our fellow man. When we pray before we go to bed or before we eat. When we listen to our favorite song to get us pumped for the work day. When we write a love letter in the hope that the object of our affection will share the same feelings for us. When we masturbate. Even when we take a shit. We are magical beings living in a magical universe full of endless possibilities! Most people don’t seem to think of Magick in that way. When they hear the word “magic” they think of a grey haired man with a beard and a staff standing in a glowing circle with swirls of blue energy all around them or an elf shooting fireballs out of the palms of their hands. I think that’s one reason “Magick” has such a stigma around it. People think of it as one thing when it is something else entirely. Magick is much more subtle. Personal. It is a way for us to become intimate with ourselves and explore our own minds. It’s a part of us. It is us. That is why it’s important to be mindful of the things we think and say about ourselves and the people around us because those things, while seemingly harmless, can manifest and become problematic. What kind of spells are you casting in your life? Are you using your power for the benefit of yourself and those around you? Or are you casting spells that bring you and those around you down? What some might call “Black Magick.”

That’s really all I have to say on this subject for now. I am striving to be more disciplined in my day to day rituals and activities. I still have a long way to go but I am growing as a person and student. Hopefully I will continue to do so, and you as well. Much love, everybody!

Dark Days (Chapter 1)

(This is going to be a multipart story that I am going to tell over the course of several entries. I hope you enjoy!)

The last few years of my life have been a major roller coaster ride for me. As of right now I’m something close to 10 months clean from heroin, crack, and meth. I’m living in a nice halfway house in Austin and I am somewhat gainfully employed as a dishwasher at a local Japanese restaurant. I am on suboxone as a maintenance drug and if you have a problem with that you can go fuck yourself. The last fifteen years or so have been a living HELL and I have finally found some semblance of peace through suboxone. Is it a crutch? Absolutely! One that I need. If my leg was broken I would need a crutch. Right now, it’s my mind that needs help. The idea is that one day I will feel I’ve reached a point where I don’t need the subs but I’m not quite there yet. As it stands this is the longest I’ve been clean off the hard stuff in my entire life. So if you have a problem with maintenance drugs just keep it to yourself. I have no interests in hearing your high and mighty rant about how you white knuckle your way through every situation in life. *slow clap* Good for you. So brave. Much wow.

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, the last few years. Well…shits been pretty crazy, fam. How bad did I get? I was starting to shoot dope into my neck and dick because I couldn’t find veins anywhere else. I guess that’s pretty bad. I was thinking the other day, I’ve been a junkie a lot longer than many junkies even live. So my body has taken a lot punishment and the fact that I’m still living seems to defy all science and logical thinking. As I illustrated above, most of my veins are gone. It’s so bad that doctors now look in my legs and feet for places to take blood or put an IV and many of THOSE veins are gone as well. On top of that I have Hepatitis C. But still, I’m alive. Although I have been an addict for many years the last few have been especially bad. Just a couple of years ago I was living in Oklahoma and experiencing the lowest point in my life I had ever seen. My Nana had just passed away and while I had already relapsed prior to her rapid decline in health her death really sent me in a tailspin. I have never dealt with emotionally traumatic events well and death is certainly something that really affects me. I was close to my Nana. Incredibly close. So losing her seemed like as good a reason as any to kick my addiction into high gear and I most certainly did so. At the time I had a pretty decent low level sales job. I was working for a home remodeling company and my job was to get leads for the real salesmen to go out and try to close. So basically my job was just to set appointments and get potential customers’ information and pass that on up the chain, but I loved it. It was the first job I’d ever had in my life that I thoroughly enjoyed doing and didn’t hate waking up in the morning to go do. For awhile my life was pretty sweet. I finally got away from my family and was living on my own. I had a nice little studio apartment that I rented from a Vietnamese man and for awhile I even got to work with my best friend who got me the job in the first place. A big jovial man named Jimmy. I loved working with him. He got me the job after only knowing me briefly and showed me the do’s and dont’s of the business. Me and the rest of our team would load up in his old car and drive all over Oklahoma knocking on doors and doing our spiels and sometimes we would get doors slammed in our faces or cussed out but I loved it. I felt free! Eventually Jimmy left the company due to some creative differences with our bosses but I stayed on and we remained friends either way so it was all good. I still missed working with him though and to be honest, when he left part of the magick of the job left with him. Still I enjoyed what I was doing and was eventually able to buy a car with some help from my father. I worked my way up into getting a nice cushy position working the front door in a major retail warehouse. That gig was sweet! I hung out in the store all day, took breaks when I wanted to, and even trained other people to do what I was doing. As long as I kept bringing in the leads my bosses didn’t care how I worked. Now up to this point I was smoking a lot of weed but I had managed to stay away from the heroin for awhile. I was smoking a little crack now and then but that was more of a weekend thing. So far I was managing to keep from making a habit out of the that but still, it was present in my life. But things were going good for me. I was on my own, I was self sufficient, I was content.

Then I met Hyat.

Hyat was a Pakistani man that was renting a small corner of the kitchen in the nail salon where my apartment was located. He literally lived in a small nook that the landlord had set up for him by putting a bed in the corner of the community kitchen me and the other residents shared and sliding two bookshelves together to give him some privacy. So whenever I went to cook something to eat he was just there. It was kind of unsettling to be perfectly honest. Still, me and him became buddies. See I bought the car from my landlord, a cute little red Toyota, and he knew my license was suspended so part of his stipulations for me getting the car was I had to share the insurance with Hyat, who could legally drive, and let him drive me everywhere like some kind of fucked up limo service. That went okay for awhile but then I picked up on the fact that Hyat was using meth. He would drive me to work in the mornings and at one point he offered to smoke some with me. At first I turned it down but after a couple of times I gave in. Maybe it was the fact that I was working a lot of hours and felt like I needed some extra motivation in the mornings pr maybe I was just bored with life. I don’t know. Regardless of my reasons I eventually gave in and smoked some with him. This started happening more and more and for awhile it did what I intended it to do and gave me more zip in my work day. Eventually I started to stay up all night smoking it and that began making me tweak out. My work would suffer because I was jittery all day and I started looking for other things to take the edge off. Namely, xanax and other benzos. It didn’t take long for that to stop working the way I wanted it to so I started asking Hyat if he could get me heroin. It took him a few weeks of asking around but one day while I was at work training somebody he called me and told me he had gotten me some. I was ecstatic. At that point it had felt like forever since I had gotten a taste of my most favorite of all the drugs. I finished out my work day and had Hyat come pick me up. He showed me what he had got me and we went straight to my room where I had kept needles waiting for this most glorious of occasions. I went through the all familiar ritual, tied off my arm, and fired it up. It was every bit as warm and loving of an embrace as I could possibly feel. I knew I had to find more as soon as possible so I asked Hyat to continue finding heroin for me since he wouldn’t give me his dealer’s info. I would soon come to realize, all too late, that this along with many other little “quirks” in his behavior was a way to control me. At the moment, however, I was happy to just to feel the familiar warmth that only heroin can give flowing through my veins.

Me spun off my face on meth and heroin.

It didn’t take long for me to start spiraling WAY out of control. As I continued the ups and downs of a combination meth and heroin addiction, my performance at work began to suffer. I was simply too strung-out to function effectively at my job. My relationship with Hyat was also becoming strained. He was using his dope connections as a way to keep me under his thumb. If I didn’t do something that made him happy, like let him use my car at all hours of the night to go do fuck knows what, he would keep me in line by not helping me get heroin. To add insult to injury he would make it sound like he was just being a good friend and trying to keep me from going too far with the smack. Yet he was feeding me amphetamines left and right. We were arguing more and more and just as my frustration was beginning to reach its peak I managed to bump into the people he was getting the heroin from one night. Turns out they lived right next door to us the whole time! I struck up a friendship with them and eventually met THEIR connection, a dealer who lived right up the road from my apartment. A tiny little blonde girl named Summer. Once I met Summer all bets were off. By now my grandma was starting to get really sick and I was going to see her, along with the rest of my family, at the nursing home her and my grandfather were living. She was at this point bed bound and in a medically induced coma courtesy of the hospice folks. Seeing her like that was devastating. She could barely move and was no longer speaking. She would just moan every now and then. Other than that she was just gone. I really regret spending so much time chasing dope at that time in my life because maybe I would have had more time to say goodbye to her. Maybe I would have seen her before she was in such a state that she barely knew I was in the room with her.

A couple of weeks later she was gone. I took it really hard. I was coming to the house my grandparents still owned but no longer lived in and spending time with my mom and my younger brother Connor who was in town for my Nana’s funeral. One night in a stupor I decided to shoot up in front of my brother. The next morning we got into a fight and I don’t even remember what it was about. I’m sure it had something to do with my behavior the night before though. At any rate he kicked my ass all through the house. I got drunk on some vodka I had brought with me then drove home sobbing where I shot up more heroin and passed out in my room. After that, things really took a turn for the worst.