This is a great article on heroin, history and Melbourne.
Posts Tagged ‘heroin’
Chris Middendorp on Melbourne and Heroin
June 22nd, 2009Howard to withhold welfare from drug offenders
November 18th, 2007John Howard has announced he is going to quarantine welfare payments for people convicted of drug offenses. The most interesting part of the announcement was:
“It’s not right that people should have control of taxpayer money when they have been convicted of such offences,” he said. “This will mean that they will not be able to spend the money on those sorts of drugs, or indeed, for that matter, on alcohol and tobacco.”
Oh? I didn’t realize alcohol and tobacco were illegal drugs and a drug conviction somehow made purchasing them a crime – even if it’s ‘welfare’ dollars they are bought with. This is particularly awful with regard to heroin addicts – a lot of whom use tobacco to help them self-medicate in combination with Bup or Methadone. Another example of why zero tolerance is such a joke – the players have zero idea of the impact of their actions and their motivations are purely political.
Pig City Rollers
October 27th, 2004Cannot recommend highly enough this book. It’s called Pig City and is authored by Andrew Stafford. It details the rock music history of Brisbane from the early 1970s to the present day. It is set in the context of Joh and the Nationals, police corruption and violence, the birth of 4ZZZ, the heroin epidemic, punk and onwards. If you are from Brisbane or if you have an interest in music history then I highly recommend it.
P.S. Now I am going off to see if I can replace my Saint’s vinyl. Oh and my precious Go-Between’s albums – stolen from Burchett St all those years ago. It’s time.
Falling in and out of bars
June 23rd, 2003Just spent an hour on the phone with my friend J’s mum. J’s in prison currently. Armed Robbery in which she managed to stab someone. She’s a heroin addict. She got sentenced – three years. Which is monumentally nice of the judge. The actual maximum sentence for the charge is 20 years. But the judge obviously saw something redeemable in her. Three years with 12 months non-parole. Very, very, very lucky. So she’s potentially out on parole in December.
I wrote her a letter. A fairly angry and bitter letter. She never wrote back to me. But from speaking to her mother I gathered she didn’t know what to say to me. Which is fair enough. I don’t know that anything she could say would make me feel better about what has happened. Her mum said she’d remind her to write to me. But we’ll see I guess.
I defended her to so many people over the years and defended the fact she was my friend because – well because she was my friend. A lot of people adopted the ‘once a junkie, always a junkie’ mentality. I guess I had hopes that she’d be alright. But it was not to be. Apparently she is doing well. Studying in prison. Staying out of trouble. In counselling and rehabilitation. Clean. Don’t know what to think about that. Want her to be okay but don’t trust myself to care again and get hurt yet again.
The whole thing has left me feeling a little lost again. Divergent paths I guess. Wondering what would have been. Got to build that fucking bridge and get the fuck over it and leave hindsight alone.
Another Friday Five
June 14th, 20031. What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to do, but never have?
Well there a hell of a lot of people I’d like to do but never have … but please excuse the crass digression 
Hmmm. I don’t think there’s one thing I can narrow it down to. Certainly nothing that makes me say ‘Gee I’d love to have done that’. I have a list of things I want to do though – a visit to Cuba or Ireland (or preferably both … *grin*), seeing some friends I miss, visiting the wineries at Mudgee, building a proper big library for my books, writing a novel, being a father, learn to dance (I have discovered you can’t marry into a big Spanish/South American family and then not know how to dance *sigh), take up home brewing again – I’ll stop because the list could go on a while.
2. When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest?
Actually I belong to that rather unfortunate group of men who look at someone and go ‘Some thing is different about her/him’ and then four hours later realise the person has cut ten inches off their hair or changed hair colour. Though to my credit, after having dated a woman who has not seen her natural hair colour in ten years, I am excellent at recognising new shades and what they are. The number of women who go ‘What? How did you know’ when you say you like their new ‘Black Cherry’ dye job… Serious feminine kudos.
As for being honest after I do notice – sometimes. A lot of that sort of assessment is very subjective. I am happy for someone if they are happy with how they are. It’s not my place to critique someone’s choice of hair or clothes any more than it is my place to critique their lifestyle choices or choice of partner. Given my taste in hair and clothes it’s probably safer too.
And giving compliments – I am good at compliments and I like giving them. So it’s easy for me to be nice.
3. Have you ever found out something about a friend and then wished you hadn’t? What happened?
I found out an old friend was a heroin addict and wished I hadn’t. We remained friends for several years afterwards and I tried to help her through rehab and support her in any way I would. Recently, however, she committed a serious and violent crime in order to feed her habit and I decided I couldn’t maintain the friendship anymore. She needed to find her own way and solve her own problems on her own terms – whatever may result.
4. If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why?
The real world is where I’d prefer to be – no point escaping to somewhere else if you won’t face the issues and challenges in the real world. Though it would be cool to have a lightsaber.
5. What’s one talent/skill you don’t have but always wanted?
Languages. I can learn them but they are hard to hang onto. I would love to be one of those people with an easy gift for languages. It’d be great to speak Vietnamese, Spanish, German, Japanese … hell I’d even like to read/write in Latin.
Tired
February 9th, 2003Been a long weekend. Started with some drinks and then dinner on Friday night at a friend’s place – we cooked prawn jambalaya and added some cheese naan from the wonderful Faheems – the finest Indian/Pakistani food in Sydney. I am a fan of the jambalaya part but not the prawn part – I usually make a vegetarian version. Not a seafood person really. Happy to cook it but never liked the taste. So I ate the meal minus the prawns and we consumed some nice wine. We were all zonked from a bloody long working weeks and after the yawning started we all bailed off home.
Saturday was spent doing house stuff – a lot of gardening, house cleanup stuff. Then a whole heap of cooking for Saturday night. We meandered off down to a park in Lane Cove and had a night picnic. A few glasses of wine, some food – which I must say – since I cooked most of it – was great.
Today we went down to Cabramatta and had a nice long Vietnamese lunch and then wandered through the shops in Sydney’s Little Vietnam. Was good. Even saw a drug deal that showed me Cabramatta is still worthy of being called Sydney’s heroin heartland. So now absolutely buggered. Going to vege out and watch some TV and then crash out. Adios all
Wild Swan
December 3rd, 2002A friend of mine, J, tried to kill herself last week. I just spoke to her and found out about it. I was starting to panic because I had not been able to get hold of her for several weeks and usually when she doesn’t answer the phone it means things are bad. She’s in a different city so it’s often hard to track her down. When I called today I was about on the last ditch effort – after that I was going to call her mum – usually the only time I have to resort to that is when something disastrous happens. She’s a recovering heroin addict and life hasn’t been easy the last few years. She’s been in and out of rehab, in and out of trouble and spent the last few years scaring the shit out of me. This time it got bad. She had what can only be describe as a psychotic episode and tried to kill herself with an overdose. Thankfully it didn’t succeed.
I just listened today as she talked and I couldn’t dare speak other than to acknowledge I was still there. I felt like yelling down the phone ‘we all love you how can you do this to us and yourself … you are a smart, funny, precious, beautiful, caring woman. Give yourself a chance. Please don’t do this to yourself. Don’t leave us.’ When I got off the phone I was shaking – god help me but I have spent the last couple of years wondering if the phone was going to ring and it’d be her mum telling me she’d OD’ed and was dead – it’s hard to take, hard to deal with, hard to keep coming back. But I can’t not. I can’t leave her to fight this on her own. She’s my friend and a long time ago she was my lover too. She wasn’t always the best friend and certainly our relationship was a disaster but I always knew she cared. I will always remember the dark patches when I was in trouble and then we’d speak and there’d be a little bit of light in that darkness because of her. I will always want to able to return that favour.
I think this has triggered something too – I think she’s finally trying to get the help she really needs – which is to address the underlying problems as to why she is a junkie. She keeps going to these rehab things which are preventative without really addressing the root issues that are causing her addictive behaviour – whatever they happen to be. So she has gone to see a shrink and is going to try some medication to help her with some things. I can only hope it helps. I get so scared for her and I care about her so much that it makes me want to cry when she hurts herself. She means a lot to me and I think the only people I care about more than her are Lucinda and my family. I live in hope that she always remembers how much she is loved and how many people care about her when things get bad.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
- Wild Swans at Coole by William Butler Yeats
And what are we to do with you…
August 24th, 2002Spoke to my friend J last night she is back from her trip to Darwin. She had to come back early when one of the girls she was close to in rehab OD’d. When she told me my heart leapt into my mouth. I was scared to ask her if she was using again – I was scared that the experience might have pushed her into a depression and from there into using again. But she seems have dealt with it all in a pretty healthy way. God knows I hope she has.
I really want her to live and be happy. Hurts to think about anything happening to her. But I feel so bloody helpless in face of it. This massive addiction. I’ve read and learnt so much more about it. It’s changed the way I think about myself and my feelings about addiction. I know there isn’t any easy or ready cure. A heroin addict is just like an alcoholic. It’s something you live with for life. NA are just like AA and believe you’re either a junkie or a recovering junkie for the rest of your life. I think sometimes that is a bad way of looking at things but I suppose for some people the constant reinforcement, the fear and the shame keep you from resuming your addiction.
I think you should use every help you can get to keep Mr Jones – as I call my personal alcohol demon and a lot of junkies call their need – off your back every day – day after day. At least with my addiction it only fucks up parts of my life when I let it get away from me. J’s could and probably will get her killed if she continues to stick that stuff into her body. I don’t want to think about that – it would leave a big hole in my life to lose her.
Also note I’ve started using initials to protect the innocent … and the guilty … for those people who probably would prefer not to be named.
Reading: Just finished Dan Simmon’s Hardcase.
Listening to: Sita
Last train out of Melbourne’s almost gone
July 2nd, 2002I had dinner with an old friend whilst I was down here – a friend who broke my heart years ago and kept me scared and frightened for her as she went through a nasty heroin addiction and the problems problems with that. A friend who thankfully is now in a program and trying to stay clean and sober. So much so that I drank tonic water whilst I was at dinner so she’d feel more comfortable. She’s also someone I have been in love with for a lot of years. When I see her I used to feel desire in addition to love. When I saw her on this trip I didn’t feel that desire anymore – just the love and affection I think I’ll always feel for her.
When I thought about it I realised that it is because I don’t want anyone else other than Lu. That I want to spend the rest of my life with her and that I want to make a commitment to her. So I asked Lu to marry me. Which is a bit weird to write as I think it’s still sinking in. I am missing her a great deal and I know that’s probably not the best time to make those sort of calls but I had a long chat with my friend Marcus a couple of days ago on the topic and decided it was what I wanted to do. I was going to wait until I got home but I got a little excited to the idea and just called Lu up. We were talking normally and then I just asked “I was wondering if when I got back you’d like to get married…” and stopped. I think she was a little surprised. We’ve talked about it before but I’ve never got to the point of proposing before so this is the big moment. But she said yes which has made me a happy man. So we’re going make some plans when I get back and work out the details. Weird – still hasn’t sunk in yet. Very weird.
Reading: A Dark Imbalance by Sean Williams & Shane Dix.
Listening to: Moby – 18
