The scariest night of my life

A normal day in 2017

Consisted of me still awake when the sun came up, contemplating what time I should sleep to get enough rest for work. I was a server at buffalo wild wings. Shaking from lack of sleep, food, and water. I would usually end up going to sleep around noon, waking up at 2 or 3pm, showering and heading to work to clock in by 4.

I was shooting meth at this point, not daily but a few times a week. I would go on a bender for a few days then chill out and recover.

Work was a disaster.

The beginning of each shift was a hot mess. I was delirious, half asleep, and feeling like I got hit by a train. Around this time is when I would internally tell myself I would not get too high after work, sleep early, and recover from the bender. As you can guess that did not end up happening. What ended up happening was the first night of a week long bender, the first night of hell week.

I was at the POS ringing in an order when my co-worker approached me. She was frantic, anxiety was bellowing out of her like a freight train.

“Can I stay at your place tonight?! I just got kicked out of my house and I have nowhere to go”

she asked.

“Wait what?”

was my response. She repeated herself, but I knew what she said. I needed a few extra seconds to detect what was going on with her. Something was off. Then I understood. She wasn’t frantic and anxious, she was high as a kite. 

“Yes of course you can, my mom leaves for work around 10pm. Once we’re off we can hit the bar then go to my house.”

I completely forgot about the commitment to myself to stay sober and go to bed early so I could catch up on sleep. My mind was now on getting high. As we were getting closer to being cut, I asked her if she knew anyone that could get dope.

That I wanted to buy some for us for the night. Of course she did, and once we were off we headed straight there. After we picked up the dope she went to get her belongings from where she was getting kicked out of.

“Oh shit, I forgot about that”

I said as she put the car seat in the back. She had a kid, she had a baby no more than 2 years old.

The night progressed and we talked and smoked the bubble, tweaking out and talking about work. I loaded my rig and shot up halfway through the night. Time flew and it was 7am before I knew it, and my mom was coming home. I didn’t think any of this through before, I was so laser focused on getting dope I completely missed the reality that I agreed to let this woman move into my moms apartment with her 2 year old child without even asking my mom.

“Steven we cannot have her stay here, she has to leave”

my mom said to me as we stood by the garage smoking a cigarette.

“She has 10 minutes to leave or I'm calling the police”

she firmly stated. Well, the gig was up. I walked back inside the apartment and let her know she had to leave. She was furious, having brought all of her belongings to my home just 8 hours before. She called another friend of hers and an hour later was carrying all her things out with the baby. We never spoke again, though she did make an appearance a few nights later. Don’t worry, we haven’t gotten anywhere near the worst part yet.

My mom was so mad at me she demanded I leave the house immediately and was threatening to call the police on me. Looking back, it was obvious that I was tweaked out of my mind. I left and got a hotel room a few blocks away. I had enough dope to last a few days and a fresh pack of needles from the Walgreens across the street.

I was good to go as far as I was concerned.

I figured I’d go to the hotel for a night then come back and my mom would be relaxed. 

In the meth underworld, most people are homeless dope fiends with no money to fund their addiction.

You become popular very quickly if you still have a job.

A steady stream of income means dealers can depend on you to pick up when they get more product. You become even more popular when you have a place to stay. In my case, I had both. Dealers would often come to my moms apartment at night and set up shop. They didn’t need to pay for a hotel room so I would get high for free all night and they would run in and out selling dope in my parking lot. Sometimes they would leave and go drive to customers and return several hours later. Either way, I got high for free and minded my own business. 

This particular day when I got the hotel room, I spent my day fixing random stuff while ignoring my phone that was blowing up with text messages from the girl who I just kicked out of my moms apartment. She was furious, sending me all sorts of negativity. No threats, but telling me I was a piece of shit. I needed someone to boost my ego, so I let a few tweakers know I had a spot if they needed somewhere to go. Of course, when you tell homeless drug addicts you have a place to go your room will fill up pretty quickly.

All was well for the next 48 hours,

we were talking about the previous night's mishap while smoking meth. Typical tweaker shit. Then it all broke loose. One of the people in the room went into the bathroom and shrieked.

“When the fuck did you start shooting and why are there needles everywhere?!”

Some addicts refuse to shoot, and frown upon it. They are looking out for the rest of us when they warn about the path shooting leads to. Naturally, I would only admit to shooting if whomever was asking also shot dope. This time there was no hiding it. 

When there's drama and meth involved, everyone typically leaves very quickly.

Within a few minutes everyone had left the room.

“Do not ever speak to us again until you get help, you’re fucking killing yourself”

was the last thing I heard before the door shut. I was sitting there contemplating what to do, not thinking about sleep or getting help as my friend had suggested. I didn’t think about the fact that I had been up for 3 days at this point, nor did I care. I called down to the lobby and extended the room 2 more nights, and called my dealer.

He was almost 60, had gone to prison 4 times, and sold thousands of dollars worth of dope a week. He was always respectful and so grateful to have a place to stay, not to mention would let me smoke as much as I wanted. I invited him over, and he set up shop per usual. Another 24 hours passed where I was yet again playing victim to what happened the night before. Then he left to go make some runs far up north.

I was on my last night in the hotel, running out of dope and extremely paranoid.

We were now approaching 120 hours no sleep, with the last time I slept being only 2 hours. The shadow people were in full effect, and I was convinced that with all the traffic in the past few days this hotel caught on and was working with the police who were going to bust in any second. I was alone, scared, and loaded my rig one more time.

I put at least a half gram in the syringe, without cleaning it, and started the process to find a vein. At that point it was difficult, my veins were so tiny with so many bruises everywhere it often took well over an hour to find a spot to hit. I finally did, but this time was different. I finished pushing the plunger in and took the needle out, and it started immediately. The rush was intense, the cough was forceful, and then my vision started to blur. It was hard to see and I could see my heart beat like a jack rabbit out of my chest.

I got so dizzy I couldn’t get up.

I started to sweat profusely, dripping all over the floor. It was getting increasingly difficult to breathe, as if I were breathing through a tiny straw. I was moving slower than a turtle, moving centimeters at a time towards the counter. My mind was racing. It was the one and only time in my life that I thought

I, Steven Hendrickson, might die.

I inched my way closer to the counter where a bottle of vodka was sitting. I knew something was wrong, very wrong, and the liquor would slow my heart rate. I grabbed my phone and texted

“I love you”

on my mom, not knowing how this would end. It took 45 minutes to move 10 feet to the counter, but I finally made it. I grabbed the bottle and took a few very large gulps before dropping to the ground and laying there for a very long time. It must have been hours, and I started to cry.

“I can’t do this. I can’t keep doing this. What the fuck am I doing”

I cried to myself.

Addiction is a powerful son of a bitch,

I was crying this out loud while cleaning up the room. I threw the used needles away, and made sure to put all the clean ones back in the bottom of the empty iPhone case I jimmy-rigged to hold my dope and rigs. I put each and every clean needle back in that iPhone case, and made sure every crystal was accounted for. 

I walked out of the hotel room like a scene from a movie. 144 hours awake, arms bruised red, eyes wide open, scurrying through the hotel like a rat in the sewers. Anyone that saw me on the way down was 100% certain what I was up to. I left through the back door so I didn’t have to go past the lobby. I made it back to my moms apartment, and was so scared I went inside, sat on my bed, and prayed it would all end. I looked around my room and froze. Almost everything was gone. My TV, some clothes, all my shoes, it was all gone.

“That bitch!”

I yelled out loud. I knew who it was. This was revenge for promising her a place to live only to kick her out 16 hours later with her baby in her arms. This was well deserved. Yet, I was still furious. Now I was strung out, paranoid, scared of almost dying a few hours before, and my shit was missing. I had no intention of getting it back either, I had no intention of caring.

Addiction is a powerful son of a bitch because even in that moment of despair, intense fear, and the thought of overdosing in that hotel room, I still made sure my dope kit was secured. Because I, Steven Hendrickson, was not done yet.

I needed to relax, so naturally, I dropped a few crystals in my bowl and sparked the lighter.