Year of The Horse

So here I am, just under 24 hours in. Had my last few crumbs yesterday lunchtime, spent the day pottering about and eventually fell into sleep about midnight. I`ll often watch a film before bed and fall asleep listening to the audio commentary. Last night it was Sam Raimi`s `Spiderman`. I fell asleep about a third of the way through, and awoke with the sound of the DVD title screen echoing through the room. Needless to say, I started the commentary from the point at which I last remembered being awake, and promptly fell asleep again. When I awoke again it was bright outside. Once again the the `Spiderman` title music filled my ears. As is usual when waking under such opiate-deprived circumstances - I felt the sickness hit me instantly.

This is not a good way to start the day under normal circumstances but todays sickness was amplified by the fact that I knew I had to drag myself out of my pit and drive my poorly car over to the dealership for Fiat to diagnose what had been banjaxing up the engine for the past month or two.

The local Fiat dealership is located at a place called Milford Common on the edge of Cannock Chase, next to the entrance to Shugborough hall. Upon arrival memories of a fantastic night come flooding back and I feel better.

2004 was the last year during which I was happy. My ex partner and I were out every weekend that summer and it all began on the Mayday bank holiday at Shugborough. Rennaisance were promoting their first large scale event in years. 15000 peeps at Shugborough. Never seen before, never seen since.

Anyhoo, after we got back from the do, we got the heroin out and started tooting. Hardly a normal move for a bunch of clubbers trying to keep the fire burning. How the hell did that happen ?

About two weeks previously I had been winding my friends up about scoring some heroin. At the end of the day, there was an obscene amount of drugs flowing through my girlfriends house already. Ganj. Coke. Speed. Pills. Especially pills. The staple diet for a true raver. One Friday night we get back from this club and as usual, we "chill" (I hate that word, but how else is one to describe the post club actvities). For years I had been looking for a way to kill the post ectasy comedown and had taken to swallowing inordinate amounts of benzodiazepine tranqullisers. As usual, I took a couple of Clonazepam tablets (K-pins to you Americans) and fell into unconciousness.

I was awoken next evening by my girfriend who was p***ing herself laughing. After enquring as to what was so funny, she proceded to tell me that we all had a bag of heroin waiting for us downstairs, procured by one of my friends who happened to know where to obtain such items.

The four of us set about chasing the gear we had obtained. Unlike my compadres, I had messed about with heroin at school and as such had a prior knowlege of how such substances should be consumed. It did not grab me straight away. Instead I had to wait untill the second time we used (the Rennaisance aftersesh I previously mentioned). On that occasion I took some up to my girlfriends room, took a rather big hit, and the rest is, as thay say, history.

Words cannot describe...

So, that was the first time. Hopefully yesterday will prove to be the last. Two years of addiction may not be alot in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like forever when I think back to when I had a life.

Just starting to feel a bit ropey again. You`ll know what I`m talking about if you have ever dreaded yawning and felt tears stream from your eyes, accompanied by a cold layer of sweat permeating from your back. I hope I`m still writing this tommorow. Things ar going to get alot harder.

They say smell is the most powerful sense for evoking memory. Probably true, I was 11 years old when we had an extension built on our old house, around the same time my next door neighbour decided to kill his wife. Smelling fresh plaster always reminds me of that.

Jack was my first best friend. As a youngster I used to galavant around my back garden. The hedge was in such a state of disrepair that I would wander in and out of next doors otherwise immacualate garden befriending it`s 70 something year old owner, Jack. Jack would sit on his bench smoking roll ups, regalling me with tales of the war and his career buliding airoplanes. Now and again he would take me to the betting shop, his favourite haunt. How else we spent our time is long gone from my memory, save for the fact that we did spend alot of time together.

His wife started to lose it about four years before they died. My mother worked locally as a social worker and came across Doris numerous times in her professional life, spending considerable time visiting her and looking after Jack whenever she was admitted to the local Psychogeriatric unit.

By 1990 Jack had had enough. His vision was failing considerably and it broke his heart to watch his wifes personallity wear away by the strain and destruction of demntia. It was on a Saturday night close to halloween that it happened. It had been as nice an evening a child could have asked for. We were entertaining close friends from Dublin, and after a nice meal I slept as soundly as only a care free child can.

The first sign of trouble occured around 9am the following morning. A community nurse knocked on our door, anxious that she could not arouse Jack of Doris whom she had come around to check on. My mother, brandishing a spare key to the house, accompanied the nurse next door. There she found Doris, dead in her bed, knocked unconcious and smothered. Jack was found hanging in the bathroom.

Although this is a powerful enough memory to have been evoked by a smell it is, save for the smell of my first loves favourite perfume, the only one that I can recall. My memory has been written to music, from my musical origins listening to the first "Thats what I call music" compilations through 14 years of overactive participation in acid house. Its as I sit here listening to a Paul Van Dyk mix from a Love Parade gone by that I feel compelled to revisit some of these memories and more importantly think about where I`m going from here.

Talk about how I`m going to get away from heroin. Talk about the day the music died.