I’m sure everyone has someone who has helped guide them through life, either on purpose or inadvertently, someone whose actions help you realize something about yourself, or the world around you, or just had a big impact on your life and outlook.
I have a friend like that. But she didn’t just open a door for me to show me part of a world that I already thought I knew, she did it twice. And those two worlds are about as far apart as two realms could ever be.
I’ve written about my past drug addiction before, and I’ve also written a novel about addiction. (Very accurate depiction of addiction, if I do say so meself!) My main drugs of choice were alcohol and speed. Many years ago, in the midst of my meth addiction, I ran into an high school friend who was also in the midst of her addiction, only she was a heroin addict.
Most people who get deep into hard drugs have brushes with other drugs that aren’t their drugs of choice. Even though I was a meth addict I still tried just about every street drug out there: I’ve snorted cocaine and smoked crack, I’ve tripped on LSD, and on a couple of rare occasions I smoked heroin. I did all of that before I mainlined heroin. That is, injected it.
When I ran into my high school friend Zoe, (Not her real name,) who I had not seen in a few years, we exchanged phone numbers on the premise of hanging out sometime in the near future. This was years ago before cell phones, texting, and the internet were ubiquitous. (I’ve been clean and sober for nearly 25 years now.) It didn’t take long for her to contact me. She called me up a few days later and said she was going out to San Francisco to visit a friend and did I want to come along? We went in my car, which she drove, because my license was suspended at the time. Before we hit the toll plaza for the bridge she told me her true intentions. “I’ll be honest with you. I’m going out there for a drug deal. If you’re not cool with that I’ll turn around.” I asked her what kind of drugs she was going to buy. She said heroin. I just shrugged and said it was no problem. After all, this event took place within the depths of my speed addiction. If there was one thing I wasn’t going to object to, it was being taken on a drug deal.
The deal took almost no time. The guy came out, handed her the stuff, and we were off. I was totally ticked. Speed deals took forever to complete. If there was one thing speed freaks weren’t good at it was being punctual or expedient. Her deal took less than five minutes. I mean, you would think that speed freaks would be quick with drug deals and heroin addicts would be slow, but it’s the other way around!
She told me she got extra if I wanted to try it. I said sure, why not. We went back to my place and she shot me up. Shortly after she injected me with a beginner’s amount of heroin, my body warmed up, my vision warbled for a moment as if everything was vibrating up and down, and then all at once every single particle of stress, strain, and tension just dropped out of my body, as if it flowed out of my feet all at once.
It was overwhelming. Heroin is definitely a hard drug. I had smoked it before, but that was nothing compared to mainlining it. I felt as if I were floating on a cloud. Even when I started throwing up, which is a perfectly normal reaction for someone doing heroin for the first time, I still felt stupendous. Just lying there in a heroin stupor was virtually heaven.
I know people build up a resistance to heroin the longer they use it, so obviously Zoe wasn’t having quite the same experience. She shot herself up a few more times while I just kept cruising on the one hit. It was just beyond any other drug experience I’ve ever had. But the aftermath was not very pleasant. The next day I felt totally washed out. My body felt completely dry and brittle, and it felt as if a small animal had been burrowing in my brain. Heroin hangovers are no joke, and because of that I vowed never to touch the stuff again, which I never did, even though I still kept using speed and drinking liquor.
I am a recovering drug addict, and the clean and sober community is a big part of my life. Even though I never got addicted to heroin many of my friends struggle with heroin addiction. All of the people I’ve known who’ve died as a direct result of a drug overdoses have all died from heroin overdoses. Drugs are bad, yes, but heroin is the most evil drug out there. Nevertheless I am grateful for the experience because I know what the stuff tastes like. I got a big glimpse into the opiate side of addiction, and I have a better idea of what my junky friends are up against. And I am better person for it.
It would be another six years after that experience before I would wise up and get my act together. After weaning myself off of the “hard stuff” I realized I needed to stop drinking alcohol in addition to laying off of meth and other drugs. In June of 1995 I walked into my first ever Narcotics Anonymous meeting and I haven’t gone back to using since.
My clean and sober journey didn’t just begin with the quitting of drugs and alcohol. I went back to school, I got a job at UC Berkeley, and I worked for a degree in Computer Science. I started writing books and I also started working out. I got a gym membership and started running on a regular basis. Eventually I ran my first ever marathon, the San Francisco Marathon in July of 2009. In the next ten years after that first marathon I ran thirty seven more marathons. I became a running maniac!
Enter Facebook: I found more than a few old friends on thee Facebook, including my drug buddy Zoe. Zoe didn’t post as much as some Facebookers, but eventually she got around to spamming her new business.
Zoe had also gotten clean, and she had also started working out, though in a different way than myself. Not only had she been going to the gym, she became a physical fitness trainer. She had opened her own place and was offering fitness boot camps: One hour of interval exercises for people who wanted to get into shape, exercises that are meant to target your whole body. She mentioned her bootcamp on Facebook because she was looking for new recruits.
I decided to have a go at it. After all, I had a gym membership and I ran marathons. I worked out at least five times a week. I figured a fitness bootcamp would be a piece of cake.
My first ever boot camp was a bit awkward. I had never been trained by a certified trainer before. My lunges were awkward and my weight training was a little off, apparently. Zoe corrected me and demonstrated the movements, and put all of us through a pretty good workout.
Despite my bravado at believing a bootcamp would be a piece of cake for a gym rat and a runner such as myself, it took me about five minutes to sit up the next morning. My arms were sore and stiff and my gut ached from all of the core exercises she had us do. It was quite a wake up call. I was in good shape at the time, but I was not in nearly as good a shape as I thought. I started attending her bootcamps on a regular basis, at least once a week for my cross training.
My bootcamp training, along with my running and gym membership, got me into even better shape. I started losing more weight, getting more toned, and getting stronger.
Zoe was an excellent trainer. She knew when to push people and when to scale back. Sometimes when I picked up a weight for an interval, she would take the weight out of my hand and give me a heavier weight to use. I also remember her sidelining someone, making him sit off to the side because he had become physically overwhelmed. He wanted to keep working out, but she told him “No. You’re done for the evening.”
I worked out there at least once a week for around a year. But eventually things caught up with Zoe and her business. Maintaining her workout space became too much and her business folded. No more Zoe bootcamps.
I didn’t sit on my hands though. I sought out a new place, a place I had noticed nearby where I had seen people working out in front of a storefront, doing burpees, flipping over truck tires and swinging kettlebells. I went to Game Changer Fitness and started attending bootcamps run by Jennifer Lynch, also an excellent trainer. I have been going there at least once a week for cross training for years now, ever since Zoe’s place closed down. Since I’ve been going there I’ve gotten in the best shape of my life. Even at my age, I can do things with my body that I’ve never been able to do before. I am stronger than even my younger self.
I am a man of the world. I’ve written novels, I’ve hung out with biker gangs, I ran one marathon a month for twelve straight months, I’ve hung out with big time drug dealers, and I put myself through four years of college to acquire a degree in computer science. I’ve done more than a few things that other people only wonder about, dream about, or say they’re going to do but never get around to chasing. I didn’t just dream about doing things, I’ve gone out and done them.
Zoe is rather aloof, and not much for sentimentality or receiving compliments or praise. She can be a sullen and complex person, for reasons I don’t fully understand. I suspect she feels bad about taking me on that heroin adventure many years ago, and she is reluctant to connect these days.
Nevertheless, Zoe was a big part of both of my worlds: my bacchanalian party past, and my Phoenix-like resurgence after leaving my broken self behind. If I can’t relate that to her through all of her roadblocks, I can at least tell everyone else what she meant to me, and what she stills means to me now.
