Tunnel Vision

I remember I would be with some of my comrades getting high and they would pass the bag around and I knew what they were doing.  By the time it got to me there wasn't too much left, but I would't say anything because the more they had the less I had.  All I needed was a two and two and I was set.  Back in the seventies and eighties the dope was brown and it had me throwing up.  That was the only thing about heroin I didn't like.  I wouldn't do it three days in a row it would give me a chip pee.  The majority of them got strung out on the drug.  See, that drug let me sleep and be with myself.  Basically I like the high to have sex, not make love.  There is a difference.  See, some of my get-high partners started shooting heroin.  That was not part of my program even though I like trying things.  Some  girls I knew would say, "Redd I wish I had your veins."  Shooting heroin I didn't try, because I was into my skin and wasn't putting any marks on me.  I just wanted to test drugs to see if I was the kind of person, not to let anything get the best of me of me.  Oh yes, I smoked cigarettes from the age of sixteen until I was about forty years of age.  I would drink water or take a shower. Water, kills the nicotine urge.  After the third day it was downhill.  Yes, I had an attitude and was very irritable, but I got past it because my mind was made up.  It wasn't about "I only smoked two cigarettes today."  I just quit.  When I'm ready to do something either I do it or I don't.  I have been like that all my life.  And I don't care what people think.  You put your mind to do something and you can do it.  You know when you are tired of doing something because you get tired of just being tired.  I smoked marijuana too, but I didn't like that high, it made me laugh all the time and I wasn't in control,  I would laugh, and when I thought about it, it wasn't all that funny. I could be down the block, and to get to the other end would look two blocks long.  So I left that drug alone.  Everything just looked so far away.  

I remember one time one of my girlfriends went to get me some heroin from the spot, and that time I said to myself, while she was away, that she doesn't really care for me.  If she did she would show me tough love.  See, I was a little sick from not having the drug.  But I still felt she should have showed me tough love.  When she returned I looked at myself in the mirror and said, "Look at you.  Look at the way you look... Don't do anymore drugs."  And I didn't.  So I was sick for about three days.  The fourth day I felt a little better.  I flushed the bag of dope in the toilet bowl.  It wasn't just about her not caring for me.  She knew I was sick from not having the drugs.  I guess she thought by buying the dope for me she was helping me, but the question is what did I feel about me?  And the answer was I love me.  I used to take cocaine.  I didn't like it too much because it make me move around too fast and it cost too much money and the high didn't last too long.  See, one bag of heroin would last me two days. I indulged in crack cocaine for a minute.  That cost a lot of money too, but I dealt with it as long as I had some heroin, because that would bring me down. 

One day my partner and I were walking up the stairs to to my apartment the elevator was broken.  I was talking to him and said, "Look.  I don't even have any money left.  I just got paid and don't have any money."  I would go to the bank for a withdrawal.  And I said.".  "I can't even put any pictures on my wall.  It's got to come to an end."  And that's when I stopped dipping and dabbing in drugs.  I mean we used to get high at my house while