Hello,

Where was I, ah yes I was sinking into a daily routine of getting as smashed as possible, by 19 I was completely hooked on Heroin. Slowly but surely I lost my values, became more and more willing to lie, cheat and steal just to get my daily £10 fix of Smack. I was running out of veins to use and began to use my feet, neck, chest, legs. I even injected into my penis, that was a mistake it went black and didn't work for 6 weeks. Ouchy.

By this time my mother and I started to drift apart, her take was that amphetamine was a completely different ball game to Heroin. Somehow in her head it was ok to do speed but not ok to do Smack. I came to realise that an addiction is an addiction regardless of the substance/activity. I remember my mum telling me that if I cycled to her house every morning she would give me a large hit of speed to help me avoid doing Heroin. Well do you know what it worked, I didn't use Heroin for nearly a year, however I was completely dependant on speed and special brew. I just traded one addiction for another. I soon needed a little something to take the edge off and told myself "once will be ok, I won't be ill if I just have one bag". Well as all addicts know, once isn't an option, I was soon flat out on the gear again. The lengths I would go to, just to get £10 pounds and then score a bag. Many a time I would walk miles to borrow money and miles to score. How life was different before mobile phones. I used to regularly score from a New Age traveller site, it was a case of walking miles turning up and hoping for the best. It was around this time my best friend died. A mix of strong heroin, Temazepam and ignorance. His girlfriend watched as he convulsed and sweated, dutifully mopping his brow. "He'll be ok by the morning" she told herself. Sadly he was cold and dead by the morning and she woke up next to his corpse. RIP Martin I remember you regularly, although not as often as I once did.

Anyway I think that will do for today.