He feels an almost imperceptible pin-prick against the first layer of skin under his boxers in the muscled groove that points to his groin. It is nowhere near the jarring sensation of a piercing needle – which Eric Allgood has also experienced several times. His permanently intense face focuses on where the needle is going. He clenches his slightly crooked teeth together and then relaxes. The soft poke of the needle disappears from his mind as he draws blood back into the chamber and then plunges the end all the way down.

A warming sensation surges up his torso from his crotch where the heroin entered. It flows straight to the back of his neck and then quickly spreads to the rest of his body. His mind enters a comfortable euphoria, similar to the experience of going under on the surgeon’s table, and afterwards, nothing else matters. It can easily be described as floating on a large cloud or swimming in Jell-O, but swimming would imply much more effort than this sensation would require.

After he leaves a downtown pay toilet where he usually shoots up, he is floating free in his mind. He cannot feel the cold San Francisco air rolling down Union Square’s streets against his dark, baggy shorts and heavy jacket. He doesn’t mind the thousands of footsteps that tread past him in deafening indifference. He is released.

“Some people do art, some people do music. I’m into those things, too, but this is more instant,” says Allgood, a 30-year-old bar mopper at Aunt Charlie’s.

Allgood has been using heroin on and off for ten years and has tried to quit just about ten times. Sometimes it has been by choice, other times it’s by force such as when he has been thrown in jail. His situation has changed several times over the years from home resident to traveler to resident of the streets of San Francisco, but heroin has always been a part of that situation.

“H” AND THE SUBURBAN KID

San Francisco is a city of heroin. According to a report by the National Institute of Drug Abuse in May of 2004, San Francisco was one of only two cities where reports of heroin use were higher than that of cocaine use.

Nick Smith, a 26-year-old musician, got hooked on heroin in San Francisco partly because of the “chic-ness” of it all. It was scary to him at one time but he had been messing around with downers (hydro codeine, morphine, percocet, valium, oxycontin) already when he came across heroin.

“I was hooked on pills for a year or so before I even saw a needle,” reflects Smith, now clean for about a year. “Surprisingly pills can be just as expensive as dope, and they don’t pack the same punch. By the time I used heroin I was already hooked on opiates. All it took was a friend showing me how to do it and where to get it.”

Smith describes many of the same sensations that others do when on heroin – the warmth, the euphoria, the tuning out of everything external – but his favorite part was “nodding off”. Nodding off is the term used to describe the almost unconscious sensation that follows the rush of injection. “Nodding off is like being awake and sleeping at the same time,” says Smith. “I used to light cigarettes and nod off and wake up to my bed sheets smoldering. I loved nodding off. It was like a perfect nothingness.”

But while he experiences this perfect nothingness, the rest of the world continues and a lot of junkies are inevitably forced to face that. For Smith, a suburban kid from the Pacific Northwest, situations brought him to a point where he had no other choice than to quit using heroin.

“I had no money, no one else to steal from,” he says. “I had no hustle, no street smarts. I was forced to quit. And I was tired too. If I had the money, I wouldn’t have quit, and I’m pretty sure I’d be dead by now.”

As his resources run out, it becomes evident to him that he must get away from everything to actually quit the drug. He decides to move back up to Oregon, where his parents live, to divorce himself from city life and quit cold-turkey. There he has the protection of a warm house and a family support system to help him get through it more easily. Cold-turkey means dropping the drug and going through all the withdrawal symptoms until they’re over.

For the first three days of quitting, Smith experiences the most intense sickness imaginable. His muscles are tense even as he lies on his couch, his body feels contorted, and he cries to get through the pain. He smokes as much pot as he can and that helps very little.

“It is kind of like being possessed,” he says.

The three days pass and it’s still not over for Smith. Insomnia kicks in and an intense depression sets into his mind. The lack of sleep causes his mind to speed over everything in his life and he continues to cry for himself. But after about two weeks, sleep returns – a full eight-hour period and he begins to feel healthier. When it happens a second night in a row, he knows he is almost home free.

“H” AND THE CITY

Getting tired of it seems to be a routine occurrence among users. After a while, the trouble that comes along with heroin, such as withdrawal symptoms, outweigh the sublime high.

Eric S. (who does not want his last name published) is a man of intelligence and speaks with authority whenever he says anything, giving off an alternating adorable/fierce vibe in his mannerisms. When he talks the conversation can quickly move to politics, no matter what the original topic. His wife, Lydia, complements him perfectly.

Lydia S. is a small, pretty woman with an impeccable sense of style ranging from punk rock girl-cuteness, to a chic-downtown thrift store look. Her sassy demeanor and penchant for inserting a quick, sharp word gives the impression of someone who’s survived the streets and a tougher lifestyle. But her sense of style throws people off.

She has never looked as if she might be homeless, destitute, or strung-out.

Eric and Lydia walk down 16th Street near Mission Street together under the hot morning sun, much hotter here than other parts of the city. They are looking to score heroin and know exactly where to go, what alleys to walk down, and who to speak to. Lydia tunes in the Latino boys on bicycles who casually call out, “one and one’ers” (meaning one bag of heroin and one bag of coke – generally mixed together before injected) as they ride past the smartly dressed couple. After seeing who they need to see, they pick up their supply, go back to their home, and satiate their cravings.

This is their life for this part of their heroin career. But among the usual cast of characters and fiends down on 16th and Mission are the old-timer junkies, 50 or 60 years old, with green sacks of skin and a lifeless appearance.

“That’s the last thing I want to do,” thinks Eric as he looks into glassy eyes and sees the depressing scene of spending every day hustling $20 a day for bad dope.

It is rough getting up every morning and figuring out where they are going to score next, dealing with how they are going to get that money, and seeing their possible future in every grim face of the elderly junkies on the street.
Eric and Lydia S. used heroin for about 10 years, but now in their late-20s decided it just became too much. They chose to go on methadone to get off of heroin, and they have been off heroin for three years now.

“It’s all about a matter of survival,” says Eric S.

It is difficult to survive independently and worry about withdrawal symptoms. Both are glad that methadone allowed them to get away from “the lifestyle” while trying to get by in the city. Lydia cautions though that everyday on methadone is “pure torture.”

Methadone is a synthetic opiate that feeds the body the opiates needed to stave off withdrawal symptoms without giving the user much of a high, allowing a junky to be weaned off of opiates. It blocks the effects of heroin for about 24 hours and has a proven success record if the user doses properly, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s report on heroin. It’s also a long and tiring process to use methadone to quit heroin.

“You are actually supposed to be on methadone for twice as long as you’ve used [heroin]” says Lydia. For her that would be 20 years on methadone, making it 30 years she would be dependent on opiates, although she plans to speed up the process herself.

THE VEINS OF POP CULTURE

Heroin presents a dichotomous face in popular culture and consciousness. It is probably the most stigmatized substance in America and is referred to in dramatic and morbid terms from every side of the debate. Consider the gateway drug: marijuana; once you try marijuana; its straight on to heroin, or so they say.

On the other hand, it seems as if trying heroin is the last stronghold of taboo behavior and crossing that line places you in a class of countercultural genius and despair. William S. Burroughs reportedly wrote all of Naked Lunch on heroin and swore by the drug as a muse for years. Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in the Chelsea Hotel while quarrelling about using it and then died of an overdose months later. Jim Carroll and Elliott Smith are two contemporary poets/musicians whom have struggled with heroin during their young lives.

And pop culture gives us a slew of media examples for the average person to find information about heroin. Danny Boyle’s film Trainspotting gives a visual and verbal lexicon of heroin terms, uses, and practices, as does Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. Whether those are accurate portrayals or how factual they are is up for debate.

“THIS IS ERIC’S TRIP”

Allgood gets up at 6 a.m. just to make it to the Tom Waddell Health Center, where he is waiting to be admitted into a residential rehab somewhere to try to kick the habit with an indoor support system. The program would last for three weeks. Allgood thinks of the woman he loves, who has a home, and wishes he could support her. He arrives at 7 a.m. and it is still not his turn to get in, so it will be another day of scrounging up the money for not only his fix but food as well, which is still a necessity even if you are on junk.

Allgood is tired. He wants to get off the “H.” He still uses and he lives on the street without the comfort of a home to try to quit cold-turkey and hasn’t the resources yet to obtain methadone. He sits almost every day along a busy downtown street, flying a sign reading “Broke and Hungry” without much enthusiasm. He is tired of being judged by everyone that walks by with some suspicion about where their money might be going - and some of the time they are right.

He wants to move on in his life, but he also knows the taste of euphoria and has been “chasing the dragon” for a long time. It’s partially a wonderful chase. “Honestly, I’m never going to stop using heroin,” says Allgood. “For me to say I’m going to quit forever would be a farce. This is not a small drug. This is hardcore.”