“What’s it like when you’re on heroin?”

We were sitting on the grass in the middle of some scene work for “Balm in Gilead”, the play our 47 students are putting together at the end of the week. It’s a huge ensemble piece and we’ve divided the class up into two separate casts so everyone gets a chance to perform and work.

The world of the play is filled with homelessness, addiction, prostitution, and sickness. Pretty much Tuesday for me.

But for some of these kids, students who’ve lived a life that’s just beginning, it’s a hard road for them and an almost impossible task. How do you explain to a 22 year old college student what it’s like to be hooked on heroin? Exactly how far should I go? How much history is too much history? And quite frankly, I’ve been sober now for almost 15 years; did I actually remember what it felt like?

“Well…” I said gathering my strength a bit, “…it’s really a whole process. I used to cook mine in a long bong-like apparatus. I’d buy the stuff on the street, in Cabrini Green, which at the time was known as the projects in Chicago. Now I think it’s a summer retreat. But I remember the first time I actually saw heroin and knew I wasn’t in the middle of a movie. I was homeless and had nowhere to go. To sleep. I was tired of going from shelter to shelter and I remember it was starting to get cold outside. I ran into a guy who offered me his closet. There was an old mattress in this tiny, little walk-in closet of his in a filthy apartment that, at the time, seemed like a suite at The Playboy Mansion. I was so tired, and so hungry and half crazed it could have been the inside of a microwave and I would have been eternally grateful.

I remember laying my head down and then hearing noise coming from the kitchen. I popped up, opened the door and there, around a dark table were 3 or 4 guys lighting something on fire that resembled a Bunsen burner from my old science classes in High School. I crept by the door and stared fro a minute. Then, one of them took a needle from the center of the table, stuck in into the top of the small dish that was teetering precariously, and then plunged it gleefully into the middle of his arm.

It was pitch dark outside. I remember glancing out the window and thinking to myself that someone must have erased the sky. Not a star, not a moon, nothing. It was completely empty. Like staring at the bottom of a well.

Then, he sat back in his chair, and closed his eyes. And for about 10 minutes he ranted on and on about God, the sea, and some woman named Francis. It was incoherent babble, but I could tell, in his own head, he was making perfect sense. And as quickly as the high surged through him, it subsided and he went into a kind of half vegetative state.

The needle was shared by everyone at the table except my host, who was watching me out of the corner of his eye since my arrival.

‘Here.’ He said to me flatly.

He handed me the needle and I notice his arm was almost black. Like the sky outside the small, cracked kitchen window, there was nothing but big, black spots on the inside of his right arm. As if some small animal had walked up and down his forearm with paint on it’s feet.

I have no idea why, and to this day I can’t think of a logical reason, but I took it and jabbed it into my arm.

It was incredibly painful. I was furious. It didn’t look for one second like the others had gone through this pain, and I was ready to tear him limb from limb. And then, as quickly as my anger rose, my heart began to soar. I was happy. Then my happiness turned to elation. Things were fuzzier, less confusing, more joyful. I was almost overcome by the feeling that I was utterly invincible. I could do anything. I could take anything on. Nothing was that bad all of a sudden. So I didn’t have a home, so what? So I had no idea where my parents were, so what? Nothing really mattered, and even if it did, it was solvable.

As long as I had this.

I don’t remember much after that.

I woke up in a small pool of vomit in my closet on my mattress with a naked man sleeping next to me. I had no idea what had happened, or what day it was. And that was just the beginning.

From then on, it happened weekly, every other day, and sometimes hourly. Having the high wear off, coming down was unforgettable. It was like sitting naked with my mouth open in a bucket of live cockroaches. Biting, itching, crawling, my nerves jumping out of my own skin and every inch of me too alive and too awake. And it didn’t stop until the needle was in my arm.

It was almost 4 years later that I was able to put that thing away. Then I switched to cocaine, which I assumed was a less lethal drug.”

My student’s mouth hung open. We sat, in the middle of the day staring at each other. The sky was opening up and the sun was pouring down on us. Clouds, shades of blue and streams of light through the trees on campus as we sat cross legged face to face in the shade. Her beautiful 22 year old face shining at me and her blue eyes filling with tears and her breath a little short. She was scribbling furiously.

She then looked me straight in the eye and asked:

“Do you miss it?”

I looked right back at her and almost to myself and to God I said:

“Almost every single day of my life.”

And then I looked up and said a very, very quiet “Thank You.”