American Quiz

Saturday, 30 December 2006
American Quizzzzzzz!!zzzzzz!Mood: quizzicalNow Playing: Who Wants to be a Millionaire...!Topic: miscellaneous
SOME PRETTY TRIVIAL QUESTIONS ON AMERICANA-DRUGANA
We see so much of the USA in films, exported TV-shows, etc. But what’s the real America like? I haven’t a clue. And, wondering how a junky's life compares, I found myself posing the following questions:—
1 — Is the j-word mostly spelt “junky”?
(Told you this was trivial, didn’t I?)
We tend to spell it “junkie”, that’s all.
2. What is American heroin like?
I’ve heard of this “tar” (Mexican black tar H—?). Is that literally black?
What colour is it cooked up?
Is China white easy to get hold of?
(Our gear is nearly always brown (that’s why our dealers call it “B”,) Even when it comes as grey lumps like catlitter it still cooks up brown.) You don’t ever get “tar” over here & China/Thai white is rare as hens’ teeth.
3. Are fresh works (needles-syringes) easy to get hold of?
4. Is it true if you OD yourself the hospital/911 emergency are likely to call police on you?
(That wouldn’t happen here unless you were under-age, or some equally dodgy factor was involved.)
5. Is that crystal methamphetamine really as widespread as the media would have us believe? Our speed over here has always been amphetamine sulphate — it’s weaker; must be easier to make or something. We are apparently starting to see crystal meth… but I’ve never come across it… but then again I don’t do speed…
I’ve seen cleaned-up addicts filmed in rehab and even one month clean they looked terrible. A month off heroin & crack and most people look so okay you wouldn’t guess they were a recovering crackhead junkie…
6. How popular is ecstasy? I’d estimate that out of my generation (I’m 34—gaah!!) about one person in three has done it. They used to say a million (or was it 2 million) people in the UK took it every weekend. I used to love it at a club or party when you’d get someone dead straight in real life getting down & funky on the E-E—E-E/E/E•E\E-E\E-E/E•E-E•E%!¡!¿?!!! vibe. Yeah, man. It was like living a really happy dream and sharing it with my friends. (“We are E-E-E-E!”) (The only problem was certain distraught comedowns. Like someone had grabbed my dream, shook out all the pixie-dust, given it a good kicking and used it as a toilet-cum-ashtray, then slammed all this rubbish back in my head and made me suffer the ashtray of doom brains all week long.) Tuesday Blues, they call it… Blues? What an understatement.
… Then Friday night comes and whee-heeE-E-E-E! Back up there!
7. What’s the consensus on George W Bush? There isn’t a consensus? Okay, what do you personally think?
Okay, that’s enough questions for now.
Anyone who knows the answers and can be bothered, please post ’em in a comment.
Ta!
Posted by gledwood at 4:44 PM GMT
Updated: Saturday, 30 December 2006 4:47 PM GMT
Post Comment View Comments (2) Permalink
.page_link { text-align: center; margin-left: 100px; margin-right: 100px;}
.prev_link { float: left; position: relative; }
.next_link { float: right; position: relative; }
.date { margin-top: 0; }
Comments Page 1 of 1
Monday, 1 January 2007 - 4:13 AM GMT
Name: "Laurie" Home Page: http://www.laurieishii.comE-Mail: laurieishii@yahoo.com
Happy New Year!

Hi Gledwood! I’ve been so busy these last couple of weeks – I’ve been trying my best to get caught up on e-mails I’ve gotten and haven’t a chance to answer yet. My hubby has been sick since before Christmas – we both have HepC (unfortunately we are both very symptomatic) and we are pretty sure that his liver is having a hard time digesting or processing certain types of food…like red meat for example. The last two times Daryl ate meat he broke out in hives all over his body. It’s been crazy.

Anyway, being that I’m from America and also was a junkie – I can answer a few of your questions…okay, granted the fact that I haven’t done dope for almost six years now (March 9, 2007 will be six years - oh wow, what a miracle that is!) I don’t think the junkie world has changed all that much in the last six years.

To answer your first question – I have never spelled junkie (in the way you are using the word) any other way but JUNKIE – honestly, I myself have never seen anyone I know spell that word junky…except maybe if they were talking about a junky car or something…?

Second question – the heroin here, at least in Southern California – is yes, Mexican black tar. It isn’t really quite black – but more of a very dark brown. But the texture is definitely ‘tar like’ – sometimes even quite gooey. It comes in small ‘balloons’ (like the type you would make water balloons out of…do you guys even have water balloons where you’re at?) anyway, the H is wrapped up in plastic – like the kind of plastic you’d get from a plastic grocery bag. Then it’s put in the little balloon, so in case the cops happen to come around, if you’re fast enough you can pop the balloon in your mouth and if need be – you can swallow it. Later on, if you’re real desperate, you can poop later and look for it in your poop. (This is really gross, but one time when I was in jail I was soooo dope sick, laying on the cement floor, and an old black woman called “Mama” told me that she’d been arrested the night before and swallowed 14 bags – if she went to the toilet, she’d let me know. Well, lo and behold, she did! She pointed at the toilet and I dove right in. I was supposed to see the judge soon and I was too sick to even stand up. I found a little green balloon in her poop and washed it off and snorted it. I was well within seconds – but I think I smelled crap for about a week. Whether it was in my head or what I’ll never know. Disgusting, huh? But I didn’t even think twice about it back then.)

Anyway, when the H is cooked up, depending on where you got the dope from, the color is anywhere from light almost clear brown to dark, dark brown. But that is misleading! Because I have done both – I once thought that how strong it was depended on how dark it was, but I had been using the $7.00 bag from downtown and went over to my friend’s place in Hollywood and I thought he was being stingy – he only broke off a small little piece for me to do and it was almost clear when I did it. I shot up in my thumb, it hit my head and my knees gave way and I overdosed. The stuff you get from the delivery guys (they deliver to your front door) is much better, but not all that much more expensive.

Then there’s the powder (that’s not quite powdery) stuff that sounds similar to the way the stuff you talked about looks like, only light brown and not quite as consistent as cat litter. That’s sometimes from downtown LA. The tar is usually from across and down the street from Mac Arthur Park. (A known to be bad area where a lot of crack heads hung out before.)

I have never done China White – I wanted to but never came across it. Friends I knew who were from the back east or New York have easier access to it.

Question three – yes, free works are VERY easy to get here because of the governments concern of the spread of AIDS. So we have what’s called the “Needle Exchange” where you can get free syringes, saline water, rubber ties, cookers and tiny cotton balls. You can get a bag of thirty each time you visit, and the Exchange was only open once a week. You can even receive a card which you can show a cop if you get pulled over and they find syringes on you that says you got your needles at the Exchange – just so long as they’re not opened and have something in them. (It never worked for me)

Fourth question – YES! Not all the time, but MANY times. Once I had an allergic reaction from breaking crack down with a bad lemon and my throat began to close up and I couldn’t breathe. The cops came along with the ambulance cause my boyfriend told the 911 operator that I was a heroin addict. I kept telling the EMT’s not to give me ‘narcan’ because I had done cocaine – but they didn’t listen to me. They gave me narcan which caused me to kick and flip out because of the over stimulation and the cops waited for about two hours to question me but finally ended up leaving. But another time I was just kicking and went to the hospital to get some clonadine (and hopefully some phenergan just to get a little high) and the cops came and they called in to see if I had any warrants because if they did they were going to take me straight to jail.

Question five – I’ve never much cared for speed – but it is VERY widespread here in America. It is so easy to cook, there are labs all over the place, mostly quiet deserts n’ stuff. Daryl (my hubby) was a speed dealer as well as a user back in his day. He did 3 years prison time for sales. I only used speed when nothing else was around, or once I tried to kick heroin by just doing speed instead. Does NOT work. Shot a 16th in hours with my ex, and that 16th was supposed to last for at least 3 days. Yeah right!!!

Question six – Ecstasy for me about ten years ago was very popular…but then again I lived with an X dealer, so I did it every day, for weeks. But the bad thing was that we had to double the dosage if you did it simultaneously day one day after another. So first day you took one, second day you took two, third day you took four, and so on. I was so stupid – I don’t even know if that was really true or not, I just did it. I don’t think it was true cause I’d take a day or two off and then go back to a couple at once…the most I ever took at once was fourteen. I used to LOVE X, but then I heard about it affecting your spinal fluid, and I knew one girl that supposedly got a ‘tick’ in her neck from doing so much of it. So I stopped.

Question seven – I’m not even going there! I’d be here forever.

I’m pooped! God bless you Gledwood!

Love,
Laurie
Reply to this Comment
Saturday, 6 January 2007 - 5:42 PM GMT
Name: "Gledwood" Home Page: http://gledwood.tripod.com/blog
The American police sound so different from our ones here. Not so much a difference in attitude (though I sense maybe there is and has been for quite some time more of a laissez-faire attitude to heroin here than in the US. Not that it's not a hard drug... I put it down to opium coming in from the empire... it's been a part of our culture since Victorian times at least.)
Though what I'm trying to say is over here if police find needles on you (they have on me loads of times) they just want to stay away from them. You need no special licence/excuse/explanation/card in order to carry them. Obviously carrying works may give police reason to suspect you're carrying drugs, fair enough. To be honest when they've stopped me they've always been more scared of getting spiked accidentally! Usually they've been pretty reasonable with me (almost as if there's a hidden camera filming for a police PR video). They have tried to wind me up (once). I've never been treated really badly. But then again I have the self-control not to answer back...
As for your hospital story... wow. How on earth can they give you narcan when you tell 'em expressly not to? And as I said, police wouldn't come to an OD unless 1. the person's underage; 2. loads of ODs have happened at that address in a short period of time ;3. children are in the house and childcare "issues" have in some way come to the fore... The only case I know of police waiting in the ward was a shoplifting friend got caught, pretended to be slowly going unconscious on some unnamed drugs, acted the part well enough to get ambulanced into hospital (though they (nurses or police) did all they could to make her cry out in pain when she was "unconscious" (they're not stupid, but they can't jeopardize their jobs either... just in case!...) She managed to avoid the naloxone/narcan yet affect to stay unconscious long enough for the cops to just leave... Here if you get caught shoplifting you do not automatically go to jail. You may spend up to a weekend in a police cell, if you're known. You only end up in jail if you've been in before, skipped bail/that kind of thing. For a first offence shoplifting, if the goods are worth (I think the amount now comes to £180... it's quite a lot) you're more than likely to get off with a caution. As I say, being carted off to jail is the result of outstanding warrants & that kind of thing. America has such a different (and harsher) attitude to their criminals than here! (I think here, though we despise the crime, we're aware and more forgiving in the sense that "it's somebody's son/brother/father/I might do the same in a similar situation"... I dunno. Does this ring true? Anyone?