traceyh415

Letter and emails oh my!. I get so many emails, I call the my junkiemail. More surprising, is when I run into people I used drugs with that are still alive and out in San Francisco. First of all, most of them are surprised by my overall health displayed by my chunky figure and smile. I am kind of a grumpy person but I make a daily attempt to smile at homeless people. I say hello to them. I answer their questions when I have a minute. I respond in a kind manner that acknowledges their existence. I see myself in their faces. Surprisingly enough, I remember being out of the streets. The cardboard boxes houses, the coldness of the sidewalk stay with me. I remember being so afraid of sleeping outside. Many nights I would take speed or sit up staring at the streetlights. People leaving their jobs or the bar or their apartments would stroll pass me ignoring my very presence. Looking at me mean that in some way your soul needed to ponder the fact that people like me existed in your world. I ...

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown. – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot I love heroin. For the average person, these three words are shocking, grotesque even. “How can you love the worse drug ever” and “It’s such a horrible, horrible drug. Didn’t you listen to your parents/society/church/politicians/DARE? It WILL kill you!” Heroin is a bitch, no doubt about that. She can make the most pious, virtuous person pawn their family heirlooms for a fix. She can make the strong, fall. She can make even the most disciplined, controlled person keep coming back over and over and over. She can corrode the soul . She can fuck up your sense of right and wrong. What is up is now down, and what is down is now up. Heroin is terrible, ruthless, heartless , but that makes me love her even more. She soothes my troubled spirit and my overactive mind. Forget tai chi and yoga, onc...

This is the time of year when the days are shorter and my bank is much smaller trying to keep up with a dizzying array of social activities focused around my my need to reign in my food addiction. The holiday season casts a dark cloud over the heads of people like me. I am always in a a state of moderate depression but as I forced indoors by the rain and the cold, I am given more hours to contemplate my complete inadequacy as a decorator, baker, and selector of gifts. Both of parents are dead. I think this may have something to do with the feeling as if the holidays are not particularly significant. My mother was always the person who believed in decorative sweaters, earrings, cards, and obligations. If my father ever picked out a gift, I am not aware of it. I know his name was added to many cards. He would get me flowers for valentine's day- an extension of holiday disappointment that reminds people that they have no one worth buying last minute candy or flowers from lest be t...

i sat at the bus stop and smoked my third cigarette while checking my phone. my man had said it would be forty minutes fifty minutes ago. i had been sitting there for half an hour. buses had come and gone, people dressed in their work clothes had gotten on those buses and cast confused looks at me when i remained seated. there was only one bus that stopped here, why on earth wasn't he getting on? i fought the nausea rising up from my guts, the cramping in my sides caused me to wince, i checked my phone again while i lit my fourth cigarette, wondering what other people did on their days off.  i couldn't cop at my apartment. i was lucky enough some friends had a spare room they let me move into. they didn't want drug dealers going into their apartment, and i suppose i couldn't argue, i was a guest after all. my plans to move back home to be with my girlfriend fell through when she broke up with me. she no longer returned my calls. she told me i was a sociopath, in...

I feel very proud that as an unknown author, I could get over 100,000 page views in less than nine months. Thank you for reading my blog. I really do appreciate my readers. Love Tracey

" I think I am going to be get clean..." The words tapered off into the air. The hotel room is full of the medicated smell of burnt chore boy and butane. My lips are slightly numb. I took a hit of crack. I hate this shit. I don't know why i have to sell heroin so he can fuck off our little bit of extra money on crack. The room is a mess. Full of wrappers from candy, clothes on the bed, syringes, and cookers on the floor. I am trying to shake off a nod. It took me so long to get the money to pay for this room for another night, I am too tired to enjoy it. He sits on the edge of the bed. He is starting to pick at his hands. His tweak is tearing up the beds of his fingernails with small tweezers from a swiss army knife. "Really. I'm so tired of this shit Spanky. I really want to try to get clean." It feels so nice to have my pants off and lay down on the bed. I have to count the money again. I need $12 for my dose in the morning. I already missed one day. If ...

Drinking coffee until I nearly have an anxiety attack seems to be my only chemical fun anymore. My world seems to be full of the overlapping realities that are polar opposites of each other. I have this great life that creates an outward picture of happiness. I have a great job. I have a family. I have two cats and a dog. I drive a mini van and live in the semi outskirts of a large city. Yet, all the outside trappings of success do not explain all the crazy things that go on inside my head.  My closet is sort of a metaphor for my mind. It is organized from the outside but once you get in there, it is a whirlwind of things that don't go together. There are boxes of syringes from all my harm reduction projects. Work clothes on hangers, some in piles. There are old things that no longer fit on me or in my life. There are things I swore I would grow into but I just can't make those things work as part of my daily life. I have dresses I say i will take out on a special occasion b...

Addiction is a terrible disease. I went from being a top student with a goody-two-shoes reputation to a junkie eye soar living out of her car, scrounging up change to buy food a few times a week. Some how I never made it more than a day without H. Food, doctors visits, dentist appointments, hair cuts, and all hygiene went out the window. I left to college and immediately dropped out because my addiction to smoking Percocet was controlling my life. I would be so sick the few days that I made it back to college that I couldn't even get up to go to class. I dropped out, moved in with my boyfriend, but with in a few months we had blown through the thousands of dollars. When pills got to expensive and became scarce we moved to heroin. We were forced to live in my car barely getting by. In all actuality, I wasn't forced to do anything. I had a loving caring family and many great friends. I had tons of people around me who would have helped if I had asked. I was always the good girl ...

Some days I hold back things in my writing because I am concerned about the impact my words could have on my family members. Today is not that day. Growing up with an alcoholic parent has clouded my idea of a healthy relationship. There is a general sense of dissatisfaction in my personality. There is a general sense of uneasiness of not feeling comfortable when things are going well. I am fully prepared to deal with chaos at any given moment. In fact, I have the tendency to lean in and create my own drama. I gained this from having my life on edge from the time of my earliest memories until I left my parent's house. I remember sitting on the stairs with my brother in my foot pajamas. I must have been around three at the time and my brother was around eight. We were sitting on the top of the stairs listening to my parents argue in not so hushed tones. I was clutching a stuffed animal. We would get out of our beds and sit there some times. My parents were completely oblivious to...

I stick needles in my body. I manipulate myself so I feel okay inside. I watch you spin outside my fishbowl. There are stones on my chest when I breathe in. You want me to stop this thing that makes me feel complete. You provide no guarantee happiness remains beyond my dreams. Tears of withdrawal from the drugs as they leave my essence Afraid to touch my skin as I made you crawl. I wear these masks. I wear my masks to keep me safe. I wear these masks to keep me free. I wear these masks to keep you love No one hates me more than me. No one loves drugs more than me.

Some of you are aware, I run an underground syringe and naloxone distribution project. If you want to donate or buy my book, my email is traceyh415@gmail.com

I am fat and out of breath jogging for the train. It is cold outside. I am scanning the concrete looking for ground scores as I head to the station. One day I found two shiny quarters. Another day I found a hair tie. I am living in the present as my backpack slings back and forth in my haste. I am intrinsically tied to the past. I eat like I am still in jail. Done in three minutes. I shower like I am on the tiers- leave the door open so I can see who is coming. I cover my eyes with a sweatshirt sleeve like I have for the past twenty years. I sleep so lightly, wondering  who is sneaking up on me.  I am fat and out of breath- running for my life. Addiction is always one step behind me. I got a Benadryl hangover that feels like I have not rested since the day you tied my arm off. I cannot relax. I cannot waiver. I am a lonely hungry animal surviving on scraps of what others consider affection. My affliction- the ever present desire to destroy ever thing I touch and call it normal...

I had a dream during nap time. I was at my parents house in West Chester. I was going through the closet in the living room. All the jackets were there from fall and winter seasons that were long past. My plaid jacket was there from the third grade, the one with the hood I bled all over during a tornado drill. Got a nose bleed as I sometimes did spending winters in the house with the heaters blazing all day. Sometimes we would light the fireplace and make s'mores. I went farther into the closet. The blue jacket was there. It smelled like my father's cigarettes and old spice. All the shoe boxes were there from boots I had long grown out of and left behind. There was always the comfort in my addiction of some day being able to return to the only real home I had ever known. When I came home in 1990, my parents let me move back in after a failed relationship that accelerated my addiction. In 1993, my mom let me come home to dry out. She drove me to get my AIDS test. After b...

I look down at my hands. I see them starting to age. Time is getting away from me. I see the skin crinkling and wrinkling with the passing days. The veins have slowly reemerged as I put a few days between me and the last time that I used drugs. The lines on my face show a life lived in the open. I show myself to you. I attempt to keep nothing hidden from view. When I stopped using drugs, nothing was promised to me. No one told me that I would be anything but free of my chemical chains. To the uninitiated, using drugs is a series of highs but the lows are lower than anything I that I have ever seen. Imagine you wake up one day. Your life has been completely rearranged by a substance. You are put into a state of suspended animation. My family was no longer a priority. My health was no longer an issue. Using spit and dirty water in a fit of weakness become part of the spiral of unknown depth and location. When will the the madness stop? Could I have ever imagined that I would suck an ...

You want me to bring it? Come over to the dark side. Chills are running down my spine. Bells are a ringing. The first year that I shot drugs, I was always dependent on someone else to inject me. This meant I was also forced to share with another person each and every time. Despite claims to the contrary, I believe there is a certain level of planning involved in getting a naive young creature like my former self strung out. I worked or had money from family. I would borrow from Peter to pay Paul in my utter devotion of Junkie Jesus. I was out by Aquatic Park with friends from Ohio. They had gotten lost in the junkie shuffle. People would migrate to the area in search of a chemical vacation and never make it back to the part from whence they came without a parental or criminal justice intervention. My friends had set up a scam that would eventually cost the City and County of San Francisco hundreds of thousands of dollars. They has figured out a way to dismantle parking meters and r...