Add-To-It - Why do you do heroin? asked the man

[cuddlesthefox]

Please feel free to ignore this pretentious piece of crap but swim needs to write this down today. Thanks for letting me DF.

Is it swim or is it something about heroin that conjures up this mystique. An air of beautiful sadness that adds to the whole experience.
Maybe the reality is far removed from anything remotely beautiful... mattresses in corners stained with blood and piss, infections, debt, shattered families, wretched emptiness and death.
But still, amongst all the sordid filth that goes with it there is this beautiful sadness. A perfect portrait for the tragically hip. Skinny, vulnerable, pale, androginous beauty.
Poetry was written for us, songs written about us, life goes on but we have a secret. People pass us in the street but we know how good life can be. It's a if we have the key to heaven but a passion for hell.
Even death becomes somehow romantic on heroin. For, afterall, we will always be forever young.
Maybe this is why swim feels his life resembles a seaside resort in winter. Desolate, sad but oh what magic it has seen.
Swim has kicked, relapsed, reinvented and replaced his addiction so many times he's lost count. Swim has ruined lives and his own, unintentionally but inevitably because of the brown.
But because swim has had it, has experienced that vital first hit, life can never be the same ever.
Swim no longer sees the sordid mess that he's created in his 39 years. Instead he stares at a photograph of a young man of 17. And in his eyes swim can see what might have been.
But would swim have changed one single moment? That first hit, rush, starlight ride into heaven and the trip home on the back of an angel?
Does swim, like Renton in Trainspotting, choose life?
No. It was all worth it.
And that is the scariest thought swim has ever had. No doctor understands it, no psychiatrist can fathom it?
Can you?

Oh yeah, would you like to read my favourite poem too? It seems to tell anyone who cares why they should not worry about me. Not to be sad when the inevitable does happen. Swim was beautiful too, once, he just didn't like shades of grey.

Remember
By Christina Rossetti

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Reputation Comments on this post:

this is beautiful!

[madmatt3d]

I'm suffering from depression and a serious anxiety disorder. I get enough beautiful sadness :P

I made a promise to myself i would never enter the realm of heroin

[Junkhead23]

Originally Posted by madmatt3d

I'm suffering from depression and a serious anxiety disorder. I get enough beautiful sadness :P

I made a promise to myself i would never enter the realm of heroin

SWIM also suffers from anxiety and depression however SWIM entered the realm of heroin

[JohnnyGanja]

That is fucking beautiful.

Know the feeling. SWIM used to call it a "beautiful nightmare". Poems and songs and books were written about us. It was always such a dark and sad time in SWIM's life--being a heroin addict--but like "trainspotting"
there are many moments of dark comedy. Its like we know heroin is ruining our lives and making us and everyone around us sad....but it is so romantic and beautiful. Death is just another door and is just as beautiful as life. Living in heroin addiction is like the living dead; that light in your eyes is gone--you cease to be yourself, you live for one purpose.

William Burroughs was once asked why he did heroin: "to get up in the morning, to tie my shoes, to shave".....for many who get really into it, it becomes a reason to live, a reason to keep going, a reason to smile. Even though we can watch the world around us crumble into ruin, we watch it while smiling and dreaming of heaven in this bitter-sweet dream that is so cold but so warm and wonerful.

People have died right in front of SWIM--last breath through empty eyes and blue skin--too high himself to help them like he should...Does any one here know what its like to watch someones eye's glaze over with death behind the smiling embrace of the drugs effects. SWIM has overdosed multiple times--needing revived more than once and its like falling asleep and never waking up...people force you to wake up with CPR and what not. SO SWIM knows that his friends didn't feel any pain before dying, just that final shot, going to the land of Nod and never waking up again. As tragic and horrible as it sounds, in times of a serious heroin addiction, its still a somewhat romantic and beautiful thing.

Heroin is like a dream...a sick and beautiful and dillusional romantic way of life. SWIM was able to escape that way of life...he has been clean for 4 years and the pain of withdrawal was worth the freedom he got afterwards. SWIM had a pretty bad habit at over a half-gram IV daily. It was getting real nasty their at the end. A "moment of clarity" woke him up and he began the long process of quitting without help from anyone. SWIM was the one everyone said would never get clean and would never want to get clean because of how great his love for the drug life and the addiction oh so romantic and lovely...he read William Burroughs alot and was so into the hardcore scene and himself wrote poems about drugs (especially heroin)--drugs were intertwined into every section of his life--afterall he had actually TRIED to get strung out on smack. SWIM however was the first to get off the shit--strange how things work out...

He will never forget though...He doesn't regret a thing. Maybe some things that he said to his mother but he doesn't regret ever doing heroin that first time (and SWIM remembers that night very well). SWIM likes the person he is today and he wouldn't be that person had he not been through the crooked shit he has been through. So yeah it was worth it. SWIM has a little baby boy and that boy would never have been born had SWIM not got strung out and met friends (now clean) that later introduced him to the woman that would years later give birth to his child. So yeah.....

Reputation Comments on this post:

	great great analogies and a good post overall....so true!
	Excellent post, thanks.