Drugs are for mugs. Or so they say. Usually those people who have never sampled them shout that the loudest and in all honesty they've probably got a point.
Let's get it out in the open, i reckon there are far more of us who have sampled drugs on a recreational basis than we realise. Keeping it locked away as a dirty little secret. I know when i was younger i dabbled in coke, ecstasy, acid, speed, spliff, mushrooms and even ketamine a couple of times (makes me feel wobbly just thinking about it) but never became addicted and was always strong enough to know when to stop and get up for work the next morning and certainly always steered clear of a few old mates who were into smack. Some users aren't quite as lucky.
Their drug dependency becomes all encompassing and a lifestyle of dark, piss stained bedsits, dodgy geezers and ducking and diving just to score a few quid for some gear starts to become the norm. As does watching friends keel over and overdose and even succumbing yourself.
Carl Stanley is one of those people. 99% clean now (come on, none of us are angels are we?) and prepared to share his story. Beware, it's not a Trainspotting style 'Hey Hey We're The Junkies!' type romp.....it's a work in progress that hopefully he'll keep people updated with that is dark, sad, sometimes funny and always gripping.........
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Its safe to say anyone who either likes a spliff now and again or has a nasty rock habit will have a catalog of drug taking, selling, and buying stories that went wrong, we don't go to Tesco's to buy a bag of weed, get a receipt from a nice smiling lady on the till and be safe in the knowledge that no one was used or abused in the making of our shopping, in the name of drug activity we jump through hoops some times in order to partake.
Anyone who visits their local run down council estate to score (unless your living in it) or makes a B-line for the pub toilet for a sniff will always be at risk of everything going tits-up, whether its getting ripped off, getting caught with them and even worse losing the plot or going over, sad to say I have had the experience of both.
So keeping this in mind I have recalled a few low drug moments of my own,
Taking
Whether its some one your with who is doing your head in with incessant talking about pointless crap because they are off their trolley to having a bad turn or reaction to some thing you or some one snorted, smoked or at worst injected to actually being caught in the act, being sprung while trying to sort your self out, taking drugs can be a mission in its self.
Being one of the many idiots to join the idiot club (Heroin addiction) I have my own experiences of drug taking going very wrong.
Going over, overdosing or what ever you call it are literally heart stopping moments, I have overdosed my self and have also had people overdose in my home.
Regarding my self and going over, I came back to my home town after spending 4 months in Borrow in Furness working on the building of a Battle Ship the HMS Bulwark, working for the Ministry of Defence and having to sign the official secrets act as part of your contract making sure no one talks about what they do at work down the pub, I was either withdrawing or high running around this Battle ship getting lost on the different levels on a daily basis.
But I was mostly withdrawing as it was a town I struggled to score in on a daily basis in but I needed the money so toughed it out for 4 months.
Coming back home my tolerance to the Heroin was down, meaning because my habit had decreased I would really feel the effects of a normal hit of gear, and thats exactly what happened.
Basically I met up with a couple of other user mates and scored like normal, but even my mate said "you alright with this, the gear is good and you haven't been using much" but being greedy and a typical junkie wanting to nod out I said its fine and lets get it on.
I hadn't been using needles long so my mate sorted that out and with in seconds I was back on the sofa watching the TV, apparently one of the lads said to my mate "your mate alright" and with that my mate shoved me, I just slumped to one side.
I was dragged to the floor and slapped about ,water thrown on me and stood up and walked, or dragged about the room, my mate sent a lad for an ambulance as we didn't have any credit between us but this lad was called back about 4 times as I would come around with my mate shouting " its alright Steve, Ive got him back" to me going blue again, stopping breathing and nodding out.
Obviously I was out for the count so I have to take my mates account for what happened next, there was a girl at the flat and she started putting her hands down my boxer shorts with my mate totally gone out at what was going on, he said he thought she was kinky like that, she was actually a prostitute and the reason she was trying to pull me off was to try and get blood flowing,..now I still don't know whether it made any fkn difference to my recoverery but I woke up to me lying in my mates arms while this scruffy bird is gripping my nob and wanking me off like my life depended on it, in fact thats why she did it, I was that fkd that I really didn't realize what she was doing but when I saw her hands down there and me in my mates arms I thought I was being taken advantage of,.. to this day when I see my mate (who is still on the gear) he gives me the wanker sign but I found out yrs later reading a magazine article that Janis Joplin, or a friend of hers started blowing this guy off back stage one night because he went over and it was claimed it revived him, who knows, Who cares.
I've also had to deal with some one going over in my flat a few years after this, I was in the same position, still a junkie and still in the same neighborhood .
One day I was just popping out my grubby little flat leaving a couple at my flat while I nipped out to see a man about a dog when this lad I know turns up asking me to score some crack for him, this lad wasn't a junkie but a drinker and enjoyed a rock now and again so would come to mine for me to sort it for him, I told my mate who was flat sitting to look after this lad while I was out and when I get back I would get this guy, called Dave, some crack.
Well getting back to my flat coming through the door I was just in time to see this typically selfish junkie bastard cooking up some gear and telling Dave to get his sleeve rolled up. He had talked Dave into spending his money on Heroin because he wanted a taste him self,..."What the fk do you think your doing, he don't use pins dick head, He'll go over"
This fell on deaf ears as this guy who I left to look after Dave slapped his arm scouting for a vein to use, I walked in the kitchen, where shooting and smoking took place and saw the needle in his arm with, lets call him Mr Selfish, pushing the crap we call Heroin into his thick and healthy arms, with no track marks and a healthy glow to Dave's skin it instantly indicated he was not even a recreational user and his arm was virgin territory to dirty junkies injecting his veins with shit, the signs did not look good.
Dave feels the hit, moves to the living room and I tell Mr Selfish to watch him, so I'm having a piss and trying to get my head together after watching some thing very wrong when I hear the shriek of the girl who was with MR selfish so I run to my living room to see Dave flat out on the floor with Mr Selfish stood over him like the useless twat that he was, I go into "Oh Shit mode" and put Dave into the recovery position which is on his side and making his breathing easy, while slapping and again throwing water over him with mad dashes to the kitchen to fill the cups with water.
I shout at Mr Selfish to go and ring a ambulance and he duely excepts and flys out my front door, so I'm thinking "the medics on the way, keep him breathing" but about 30 seconds later the girl who was still there said " he will do what he did last time when this happened" ...what the fk are you talking about , I ask her..." last time we were some where and some one went over he did a runner, he hasn't gone to ring anyone, hes fkd off".
This is getting better...., I'm shouting and slapping Dave while telling her to "go to the phone, you ring em" so like Mr Selfish she is out the door, but this time I know I'm going have to do this so I shout for my up stairs neighborer and he is down stairs real quick with a phone, he told me later he was listening to it all and was to scared to come down, poor bastard.
Pleased to say I saw Dave months later and he told me the medics said he owed me one, though it could of been all so different.
Buying
Touch wood I have never been caught with drugs by the Police, and these days I'm not likely to but I have ridden my luck in the past.
I have been bumped off with the odd bag of shit gear, bash...but it was the purchase of a nine bar of fine Moroccan solid that got me and some of my mates right in the shit, though again it could of been worse.
I went to Magaluf at 17 on the promise of a job painting villas and some where cheap to stay, I was on the dole and scrounged the air fare from my Dad (he bought me a 1 way ticket) but with 5 of us altogether out there, and 1 of the lads more or less a local due to growing up there for a bit and having family there I assumed it would be easy street.
After 2 weeks painting villas hung-over the novelty wore off, this led to the suggestion from my mate who knew the island and some of the people to buy a "nine-bar of Moroccan" make loads of deals out of it and punt it to the holiday makers busting for a smoke, we really should of kept painting them villas while throwing up hung over because it was still a better option compared to the mess we made.
on the 5th night of going out, splitting up and getting rid of our really small, piss take £10 deals of resin we got collared by two plain clothes police, they made it quite clear they were happy with them selves gripping us, we were took behind the night club where we were hanging out side of and in that 10 meter walk God knows how but I managed to get my hands in my pockets and discard the 5-6 deals in my pocket (Id sold the rest).
So I was alright but one of my mates copped it when one officer found a couple of deals in his pocket, straight away this lad tried to eat the evidence and got a slap and cuffed to a lamppost for his efforts, and while we were being turned over so was our apartment in which they pulled to bits and found another of the lads stash ( we did say "don't keep ya shit in the flat") it was a couple of ounce and they found more deals cut up, but he payed the price along with the other lad who tried eating his draw.
They were summand to the local bobby station to find out what their fate would be,....when they got back they looked glum and said they tried to play it stupid when asked "where you score, who" they said "some guy in a night club" in which they were told they would either go back to the night club with 2 undercover bobbies that night to point these men out, or they would take the charge and not see their passports again, what an option, well that night they went to the night club and pretended to spot the phantom dope dealer, obviously they wen'rt going to finger anyone but they needed to play for time.
After 2 nights of this ordeal they were getting visions of "Midnight Express", I was down the road drinking in a bar thinking what my options were when my 2 friends turned up and said "were off", so we fled to Palma City for two 1 day passports for these 2 newly formed on the run petty drug dealers from the British Consulate. With those two now sorted for departure it was the airport next, and I would like to finish on some thing like we got a flight and made an easy get away, but we actually got on a flight that late that we only found out which UK airport we were actually landing at while flying, while in the air we had a game of guess the airport with the lad who booked it while we sorted out the luggage, he couldn't quite remember which airport it was we were landing so I went through all these airports with my mate saying "nope, not that one" to every airport I suggested until he said "I think it starts with an E", basically he didn't give a shit because he had just dashed a Spanish drug charge and would of taken a flight to Guantanamo Bay just to see the back of Magaluf.
The letter E has been quite influential in the past and the basis of many great nights but this time it represented the only airport I knew which started with an E, Exeter, considering we had about £1:50 between us and a few Spanish coins we were stranded in Exeter needing to be in Humberside, and to cap it off when we landed the customs chap pulled me and had me for a random drug search, by the way I was looking I don't think it was that random, they rubbed a tissue in my pockets to see if I had carried anything, the tissue would turn blue if I had been carrying anything with the chemical they use on the tissue reacting to the smallest of traces, I was very nicely told by one customs chap that "if it turns blue Mr Stanley it means you have been carrying drugs, there fore you will be arrested".
We all stood there watching this piece of tissue with baited breath, or rather mine was,.I was shitting my self while receiving evil looks from the German Alsatian sniffer dog, the color stayed white and I was waved on and as I walked off I had 1 thought only, I had made sure I placed enough smooth Spanish draw in my mouth for a post flight spliff, which set me up for the 2 days travelling and thumbing it home as 1 by 1 people made there own way home.
Taking the piss
I have to include this, and I hope a Yorkshire bobby never reads this, in fact any bobby.
I was once in the back of a car in Sheffield taking night club supplements and all of a sudden the little metro I'm in is surrounded by police, we all panic and start putting stuff away, necking and crushing things.
To my luck I was stuck in the back and in the middle, there were 5 in the car and all of em could be got at easy as they were next to windows but I had that little window of time to slip things into my mouth, a wrap of this and 2 of them wrapped up, so i was already feeling quite cocky before I even got out the car while the other lads were having things being found on them, I could hear shouts coming from the drug squad officer saying "watch him in the back, watch his arms" I was gripped, yet again by the plod.
But again the patron saint of lucky bastards was looking down on me and all my little treats were tucked away in places where they wouldn't go, if it came on top I would should swallow the shit down. So it was off to the police station and again theres a seating situation because there is not enough room for everyone to sit down in the police van for the trip to the plod-shop so I was given the floor and was tucked away in the corner, the only one who could see me was a mate who glanced at me like he was fkd, and he knew it, so you can imagine he was well pissed off with me when I thought I would have a little laugh by moving the little wrap of pills with my tongue to show my mate while he was hand cuffed to a bobby, if looks could kill and I was already thinking what I was doing as soon as I was out of the grip of the plod.
The one thing I did have and didn't want in my mouth was a lump of resin, it wasn't even that big but by now I was buzzing of all this shit melting in my mouth so I think fk it and as we are led into the station I drop the small piece of resin on the floor out side the doors, actually thinking " I'll be back for that", and back for it I did.
When I came out I was proper flying and really feeling like no one could fk with me, not even in a police station, I'm also very nice and polite when I'm off my head so the bobbies thought I was an alright lad who liked a chat, about anything.
I got outside the station and its dark, instead of walking on I start looking at the floor for this piece of dope, I know I shouldn't and didn't particularly want it but I knew it was on the floor and I knew I would like a spliff before bouncing into the club so I keep looking more intensively until two police officers walk past and inquire " you alright lad, you lost some thing", as I said, I was really pushing it so I say "yeah, I cant find my house key, I'm sure I dropped it here" one of the officers takes out his tourch and shines it about, next I have the other bobby looking as well, asking "are you sure it was here" when I glance and see this little piece of dope and realize I am taking the piss having Starskey and Hutch stake out the front doors to the station to find this 2 joint nugget, I swoop for the draw and in one full move pull a key out my pocket and say" what an idiot, it was here all the time, but thanks lads for your help, you've been great"
TO BE CONTINUED..........
© Carl Stanley - Feb 2011
