traceyh415

"Aren't you done in there?!" He screams from the bedroom. I guess he is lonely. I invited these two over to my place because they agreed to give me a little taste. Now, I am regretting this choice. He is insane and she is annoying. Getting high with a brother and a sister team reaches a new low in my book. I am not sure why it jiggles my moral compass. The family that gets high together... Yeah it has me all fucked up as I ponder my existence while looking for a perfect spot of useable blue. I thought the mother and daughter prostituion team was odd, but I guess it is more common than I thought. The mother swore she never "turned her daughter on" to drugs. Yeah, right. MAYBE . Either way, I found it fairly horrifying to see the 44 year old aging woman with her premature dentures and her abscess scars continuing to work the streets. The woman in black and her daughter were sex workers of opportunity. Dealing, stealing, anything else to make money would come first...

To all my readers- I wish you a SAFE holiday season. I hope you are with people that care for you. If you are alone, remember this pain is temporary. A solution can be a moment away. Love Tracey

I started crying. I can’t go on like this. I thought I was crying but I guess it was a dream. My life is like one endless dream where I no longer feel anything. There was a time when I had dreams. I had aspirations of being a lawyer. I had thought that one day I could see myself achieving things. In the depths of my depression, I had made myself a promise. I had a razor blade in the bathtub as a 12 year old. I had wanted so badly to slit my wrists. Some children seem born happy. This was not the case for me. I was born with a sadness that hung around my head like the fog in my brain. I had wanted to kill myself at 12 years old. I was fat and sad and alone. With no one to talk to, I traced my legs up and down with a razor blade. I promised myself I would never try to kill myself. I was strong. I could find a way to survive my feelings.  Unfortunately, that way seemed to involve heroin. I wish it wasn’t the truth, yet it is, it was for me. Heroin saved my life and took i...

I feel uncomfortable in a church, even if it is in some type of reception area. If there is a GOD, what does he/she/it think about me? I used to pray so hard. I cried as a child when they killed Jesus on those Easter mini-series. Why mommy why? Why did they kill Jesus? I was so confused. I remember when I was 12 years old, a kid died running laps in gym class. I thought God was there for us. So, I tried a little harder. I read the Bible on my own at 14 one summer. That was some super boring stuff. Pages and pages of this person begat that person. I did like the New Testament though. When Jesus turned over the table in the temple, that was some bad ass stuff. I saw Jesus as punk rock. he didn't want material things or to be part of the system. He wanted to change the system. That put me at peace with God. I wasn't sure if God existed, if Jesus was his son, if he was born in a manger. But I knew I was one poor soul living out in the lonely world. I needed to believe in something ...

I was dreaming of home. These rooms have bright lights with no shades and dirty walls. They are perfect for finding a vein, not so good for sleeping. I fell asleep holding my knees. I was rocking back and forth. It soothes me. I don't feel so alone when I hold myself. I came to California alone. I spend most of my time with me, my cooker, and my memories. I was dreaming of home. The cold of winter grazes my cheeks. I am rocking back and forth in my empty apartment. I have the windows open. My heart is going to beat out of my chest. I am grinding my teeth for what seems like weeks. My parents live 45 minutes away but it might as well be at the other side of the world. I am in this room, in this body, in this moment. This might be my last. Sweat starts pouring off of my forehead. I moved out of my parents house when I was three weeks shy of 18 years old. I was still in high school. It was weird to transport myself from my apartment to high school. I thought I was so grown up. M...

"Your hands are cold " she tells me. THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS COLD OUTSIDE. I yell in my mind. I hate dealing with amateur hour. When you are a user of a year or more, you should at LEAST know how to hit yourself. C'mon. This girl is in the same situation that I was. When I started using, I didn't know how to properly use a needle. I was always depending on others to stick me. What is even more troubling is that, you are putting you life in their hands. You are trusting them to make sure enough is not actually TOO much. This person you rely on is both a doctor and a chemist. They have to mix up the precise dosage. Otherwise, they may kill you. I think 22 year old girls all seemed to have learned from older guys with prison tattoos and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He is quick, he can whip the shoelace out of his boot in less than ten seconds. He has a stab wound next to a faded cross on his muscle that is slowly softening and drying up as th...

The cold rain runs down the dirty window. This time of year I think about my youth. It seems like a million years ago, not five. I remember when I was young, I used to draw hearts in the condensation on windows like this.I would imagine my fantasy boyfriend. He would be tall, athletic but like my same kind of music. We would curl up on a day like today and watch the rain from our warm beds. My head would use his muscles for a pillow as he gently played with my hair. My reality is quite different. My prince charming isn't so fucking charming this morning because he is sick. He is laying curled up under the comforter with cigarette burns while I pull on my dirty socks. He is tall, around six feet, and probably weighs 145 pounds. The only scales around here weigh out points and grams. Next to his side of the bed, he has a picture of GG Allin and a plastic figure of THE TICK from the comic books. I can't really use him as a pillow because he is so bony. Some times he rests his he...

"I am not really sure what to say to you when you wake up crying like that " I tell him. What am I supposed to do? Let him sleep? Wake him up? Dope is supposed to be this cure all pain killer but what happens when the pain is so deep nothing will make it go away, not even your dreams. He rolls back over away from me. "Crying" he tells me "I was fucking crying" I can see him wipe his face. His brown hair hits the pillow in a way that I can his eyes slowly close. I know he isn't sleeping. He is not escaping whatever penetrated him when he had no defenses. This moment would almost seem normal if it did not involve us. Two young people in bed, the light streaming in through the window hitting the bare skin on his shoulder. I am in his boxer shorts and t-shirt snug under his comforter. There is food from last night at the edge of the bed from snacks we devoured. Our clothes are strewn about the floor. As soon as we hit the door at 2:30 am we ripped ...

Click here for an article I wrote about how the movie "Black Tar Heroin" impacted my life

Turn the lights on! As I ignite the lighter my obsessions manifested, floating in a transcendental eventide, like silhouettes, they wandered alone to a tangle of shadows in the sunrise. Embraced by the humid walls of this grayish city, the essence that filled the gaps of the improvised alleys in a pile of homes was vanished from my body which, with shades of melancholy, blurred the street from the opaque grey of the wet stones until the last wood hue of that last shack, where you still could see the pale yellow of light in the last lighted lamp post. Maybe by far, only for a few moments, I could get myself clear again, under that fascinating brightness that slipped to the cold wind, like a fluttering orange dress, glowing at night. My desires quickly melted as words that broke down in an imperative mood stripping the brightness of my being to the abyssal sight of the dark. The streets were silent just like hostages of the morbid landscape of São Paulo suburbia. It was all so quiet that...

"Why are you fucking crying?"  I can't stand when he yells at me, especially not an inch away from my face. I am sitting on the ground with my arms crossed. I am not sure what I am going to do. I know I am not going to get up from this spot.  Have you ever just had ENOUGH. Not enough in lower case letters. You can ignore that enough. That enough comes the first time you fuck someone over for a bag of dope. That enough comes when you miss a family gathering because you are too much of a fuck up to make it. That enough is when you promise yourself you aren't going to use today, yet by nightfall you are leaning to the side. That is lower case enough.  I mean ENOUGH! Like- fuck this shit enough. Like break all your gear enough. Like I need to go to the emergency room for this abscess enough. Like I am over drafted and have no hustle enough. Like my girl left me, the one who promised she understood me enough. Like I hate myself enough. I had ENOUGH.  I was crying in a pub...

I wanted to let you know readers- I am officially publishing a book from Seal Press. This book will be more focused on how I have stayed clean all these years. I will not be abandoning you readers. This blog is our thing. It helps me as much as it helps you. Love Tracey. 

The room is completely dark with the exception of the red ember illuminating a sweaty face. I don't have my glasses on so it is impossible to see much farther than my nose. I had gone to "sleep" a few hours or a few days ago. It is hard to tell. Have you every had that feeling when you wake up and you are not sure exactly where you are or what the fuck happened? Yeah that was me. Wait a minute. I have something in my mouth. What the fucking fuck. I fell asleep eating something- something sweet. I continue chewing this paste in my mouth. I feel the sugary paste on the corners of my mouth I must have been drooling as well.  I try to lean up when I notice my arm has gone completely numb. I must have "slept" on it the wrong way. There is no light in here. Someone has covered the only window with cardboard. The room smells like sulfur, butane, and the faint smell of ass. That old fart smell. I know There is a light around here somewhere if I could only wake my arm ...

The fog has slowly rolled in over the city. I can hear the sounds of the garbage trucks getting started on their route. I can hear the chimes of the recycled bottles getting places gingerly in shopping carts as the all night recyclers attempt to beat the clock. In a few moments, their free money will be sailing off to the city dump. There is a method to their madness. Sorting through their smelly routes of dumpsters and cans they can get up to $50 for three to four hours of intense scrounging.  I feel slightly guilty when I see the older Asian ladies searching. I have put everything from piss to bloody hits I have missed to uncapped syringes in those bottles. I hate to think of myself as catalyst of a new disease. I knew a mother that died that way. She got the Hep C after being stuck by one of her son's needles. He swore he was clean. As she made his bed, she felt the truth sticking her deep into her finger. I wondered what he thought as he stood there at her bedside thirty year...

There are many types of users. There are "chippers". These are the junkie unicorns of users. These are people who can use occasionally. To me, any day was an occasion. How someone can take an Oxy or shoot some dope here and there is beyond my comprehension. Yet i hear that people do it. Personally, my drug of choice was more.  There are pain patients.  After having three surgeries, I have a soft spot in my heart for them. I needed that pain medicine- needed it. I would be lying if I said it didn't feel good in the process. It would have been so easy to take that extra pill. And pain profoundly impacts your life. It is hard to participate in the world when you have trouble sitting in the chair. Pain patients- I salute you. You are like the food addict. You need something to live that may be killing you at the same time.  There are the new users. They provide middlemen, older junkies, and dealers a constant stream of income. All that over charging and overdosing. It is almo...

When I was a teenager, I remember sitting on the sofa starting blankly at the TV while my mother vaguely attempted to educate me on the ways of the world. She would have her heating pad on her back after a hard day at work. She carried most of the parenting burden as my father was either traveling for work or drunk or both. I would to lose myself in Star Trek the Next Generation, imagine myself being magically transported past the boundaries of West Chester Ohio. I had very few friends and an emotional unstable boyfriend, a perfect storm of self pity  I could not wait for the weekend so I could get out of the house.  Around 7:30, my vegetative meditation would be broken by the sound of a car in the driveway. I could feel a chill go up my spine. I held my breath with anxious anticipation as my father turned the door knob. I never needed to look up from the tv but I could tell within three steps if he was drunk. In fact, I already knew he had been drinking today. I saw him at ...

"Hey Tracey I have 90 days clean " he says.  I see the glow has returned in his eyes. He has that look, that swagger. That pep in his step like fuck yeah my dick works AND I can take a shit every fucking day. Feel me?  I haven't seen him in awhile. I assumed he was in jail. When people come around after rehab, they have this bloated look on their face. Like a fucking chipmunk storing up for a relapse. Their food reserves hang off their cheeks.  The first week after getting off dope is spent masterbating, showering, and marveling that a needle is no longer hanging out of your arm. The first month is depression alternating with boredom. Suddenly you are sober to realize OH GOD I FUCKED UP MY LIFE. There are parents to deal with, bills to pay. If you duck off to treatment, these will be waiting for you when you come home. It is amazing how fast collection agents get your new addy. By the second month, the connection is no longer on speed dial. Fuck, they may start calling yo...

I took some time off work this week to finish my book proposal. There was a time when getting a book published was my only dream. I remember bringing a sample of my work to the English Department of the University I was attending when I first started using drugs. The professor was nice enough to humor me by reading it but I could tell he was put off by the content. He referred me to another colleague and I never pursued it.  I had more important things to do. My work at the time was filled with near pornographic material on my love for opiates. I loved the burn of the needle, I dreamed about when heroin and I would be together again. Drugs were my sex, my romance, my joy in one place. I never had to look beyond the plastic bag or bottles of pills. As I licked the blood of my hands, it was as if I was embracing life when that needle came out of my skin. My foreplay consisted of two hours of waiting for a dealer. I was in that phase when heroin WAS love and we were happy.  And t...

http://ruthjacobs.co.uk/2014/09/29/tracey-helton-writer-interview/

CHAPTER: "Push Down and Turn" "Life..its not meant to be easy and sometimes you may feel liked you are locked in the same everyday routine that never ends. There comes a time where you will have to "push" yourself a little harder, Take the things you normally do, with a firm grasp, grab ahold of your emotions and "twist" them in the opposite direction... and you will be surprised on how some doors open to reveal the "fix" you have been needing all along. 2:37 AM   As I sit here getting high I stare at the top of the pill bottle. The white cap with the blue letters marked "PUSH DOWN AND TURN" stare back at me. I think back to the hundreds, if not thousands of pill bottles that have crossed my path. From the great ones like the original OC80's, the roxi's, the xanax bars....down to the norcos, the vicodins, somas,percocets,flexeril....then the tylenol 3 and 4's, neurontin, marinol....the list goes on. Then there are the p...

I did not wake up one morning and have one year, two years, five years, a decade, or sixteen years clean. When I read literature, personal stories, and academic articles so much is left out of any description of the process of recovery. It is as if nothing after the first year exists. It is assumed if you can make it through the initial year, you are magically released of addictive thinking. This is simply not true. Sometimes, whether you have four days or four years clean, you are going to feel like absolute shit. Addiction is like an abusive relationship. Despite the fact that you are clear this is no good for you, you still romanticize the memory of your time together. "Remember when me and you were cool, drugs? We could hang out all day and never get tired of each other? We did big things together ". But then those drugs beat your ass over and over and over. You FINALLY left but you can't forget them.  When you get into recovery, everyone thinks you should be ...