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Showing posts from August, 2016

Some Days I don't want to get out of Bed

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This is the time of year when depression normal rolls in. Then, I get this face telling me to get up. 

When Your Life Fits in a Plastic Bag

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The streets of San Francisco are particularly ripe right now. It hasn't rained in a month of more. No amount of sporadic power washing can peel away the layers of urine that permeate the air. The trees that line the busy sidewalks have brown gravel covering their roots. Brown from a hurried piss of thousands urban dogs moving quickly as their owners rush from one place to the next. The urban planners never imagined a density of a few hundred dogs per tree and only seven of those per block. The pit bulls and the yap yap dogs share the same space, only connecting through scent.  The same could be true of the downtown area. There is an unmistakable odor, the smell of an unhealthy body known as a city. Everywhere you walk their are bodily fluids to remind you of the person who once was there. There is blood and bandages on the sidewalk. From the home bum who left a pool of blood when he cracked his head on the curb to the junkie that squirted his used rigs on the storefront, DNA evi

From Below the Rock in Rock Bottom

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I made it out though 

Don't Leave People to Die

The title here might seem self- explanatory but I want to give more information.  When I was 20 years old, I was visiting with friends in an apartment in downtown Cincinnati. My homeboy and I had been saving a few precious bags of dope to do when we were alone. Dope wasn't cheap, it wasn't easy to come by, and it was going to be a good night. While the friends went out to the state liquor store to get booze, we thought we would be sneaky and do our issue. The point of doing it then was 1. we didn't want to share 2. fuck you. Just kidding, sort of. Anyway, since we had to share the syringe (with no way of cleaning it), he decided I would go first since I was a lower health risk. I was a few steps away from a virgin and had barely done drugs so my blood was safer. This was how we made decisions since we might have one syringe between four people for months at a time. He had been turning tricks since he was 12?13? and had a long drug history so he was willing to share my bl

A Uneasy Truce With the Past

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I am 46 years old, a fossil by junkie standards. The links I have to the past, they are in my memories. They are in the faces of people I see pass me by. That person *almost* looks like...but I know that person has passed on. In the nearly 30 years since I started dabbling with drugs, I have lost more people that I can remember. An army of dead lovers and friends marching across my dreams.  Maybe I should forget the past, someone told me. Maybe I should only write about positive things, they said. That person died recently under mysterious circumstances. We all know what the social media post means when no one says why you are dead. It isn't a car crash or cancer or an act of God. Those deaths require details. When a user like us dies, we are simply left with questions.  Why did they use again? They were certainly no worse than I was in my day. Why go back to sticking that spike in your vein when you have so much to lose? Why? Because that is what we do when we try to bury the pa

Hitting the Road

I am going to be doing lots of traveling in the next six weeks. Come see me or let's do lunch.  August 20-23 KCMO Sept 10 Michigan Recovery Walk  Sept 12- Seattle Recovery Cafe @7pm Sept 19-20 Washington DC Sept 26-28 New Brunswick NJ

To Hell and Back

To Hell and Back

Cutting off Your Nose

"You are cutting your throat to spite your face," he told me in a muffled voice. We had been sick most of the evening so I wasn't expecting much in terms of conversation. After a long day of shivering and treking around with a snotty nose, there wasn't much to say.  It was creeping up to two am. I knew this because I had seriously considered chugging a bottle of vodka to get the sick off. It was 1:30 before we had made the decision to go in on the smallest piece of dope we could afford without dipping into the money I owed to my regular connection. I had been in a typical junkie paradox. I had money, $497 to be exact, but no access until the morning. He had turned off his phone, god damn him. I assume all my money was paying for him to live a normal life somewhere. The Christmas presents for his kids were paid for with $20 bills covered in the tears and sweat of prostitutes sucking dirty dicks with our condoms just to get well. As a small time dealer, these were my

I need YOUR help

I am going to meeting with policy leaders in Washington DC to talk about the heroin crisis in the US. I would love to get your input on what you feel is going on, what needs to be a priority, and what you feel is working. You can leave comments here or I can give you my email. XOXO Tracey