The Photogragh that Exploded.

I admitted myself into a Mexican detox clinic and for eight days I suffered through my withdrawals. After a day of blood tests and urine samples, (Yay! Am not HIV poz! No bugs on this baby! Weak liver, though, Old Doc Benway sez I gotta lay offa the sauce. But, the vices, herr Doktor, the vices!) I was quickly admitted and given a cot in a windowless ward. It was a large foul-smelling room with about fifty cots. Phantoms moaned and shuffled about in hospital pajamas.

In forty-eight hours the backlog of heroin in my body ran out. I took some Nembutal and slept for several hours. When I woke up, my clothes were soaked with sweat. My eyes were watering and hurting. My whole body felt itchy and irritable. I twisted about the bed, arching my back and stretching my arms and legs. I drew up my knees, my hands clasped between my thighs. The pressure of my hand set off the hair triggering orgasm of junk sickness. I got up and changed my underwear.

The pain, the sweats, the paranoid hallucinations. A hefty price I paid. Believe me when I tell you it was a deterrent. Only if you ever had withdrawal symptoms could you fully understand the fear and loathing. Words cannot convey the pain, the searing pain on a cellular level, of withdrawal symptoms. Long nights lying on my cot screaming until my throat was coarse and raspy, and my body tensed as if tied in knots with the flames of devils. My clothes clung to my torso with sweat that soaked the thin mattress through. Horrid demons attack out of shadows from vivid hallucinations.

Real demons.

I have seen the face of pain and suffering, all under the stare of cold dead fish eyes of the night nurse. And nothing compares to a Mexican clinic for sheer poverty and filth. Fifty junk-sick idiots silent in a room with cockroaches and rats climbing over you. No use complaining. There is nothing anybody can do. Nobody can help nobody. Just sit and ride the terror out. I knew at that moment that I'd never travel that line again.

Though, I will never regret my experience with drugs.

I found the vaccine at the end of the junk line. I live in a one-room apartment in Colonia Centro in Tijuana, Mexico. Long been fired from my job. I had not taken a bath in days nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every half hour in the fibrous grey flesh of terminal addiction. I never cleaned the room. Empty ampule boxes and garbage piled to the ceiling. Light and water long turned off for nonpayment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit - and they rarely did since who or what was left to visit - I sat there not caring if he had entered my field of vision - a gray screen always blanker and fainter - and not caring if he walked out of it. If he had died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn't you?

Thirty grains of heroin a day and it still was not enough. And the long waits in front of the farmacia. Delay is a rule in the drug culture. The Man is never on time. This is no accident. There are no accidents in the drug world. The addict is taught again and again exactly what will happen if he does not score for his junk ration. junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.

Junk is a cellular equation that teaches the user facts of general validity. I have learned a great deal from using junk: I have seen life measured out in eyedroppers of morphine solution. I experienced the agonizing deprivation of junk sickness and the pleasure of relief when junk-thirsty cells drank from the needle. I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increase enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.

And that is a life I will never repeat.

It was five in the afternoon when I left the clinic and took a cab to Juarez Ave. I went into a bar and drank four whisky sours and got pretty drunk. I was cured.

As I walked across the porch to my apartment and opened the door, I had the feeling of returning after a long absence. I was coming back to the point in time when I took that first "joy bang" with Gabriel.

After a junk cure is complete, you generally feel fine for a few days. You can drink, you can feel real hunger and pleasure in food, and your sex desire comes back to you. Everything looks different, sharper. Then you hit a sag. It is an effort to get dressed, get out of a taxi, to pick up a fork. You don't want to go anywhere or do anything. You don't even want junk. The junk craving is gone, but there isn't anything else. You have to sit this period out.

Gabriel came around as soon as he heard I was out. Did I want to "pick up"? Just one wouldn't hurt any. He could get a good price on ten or more. I said no. You don't need willpower to say no to junk when you are off. You don't want it.

An interesting experiment, to be sure. But, I will never do that again.