The Last French Steps


A new series of writings detailing my last 5 months of exile in France. As many will know I dislike daily diary/journal writing and the mundane nonsense which that usually circles around. I have never offered up that kind of garbage as literature here. This journal will therefore concentrate on very specific areas of my life which I have a passion to write about. The main themes will concern my continued drug addiction; my thoughts on writing and literature and the process around my life as a writer; the city of Lyon and a retrospective telling of my life and years here. As the sub-title suggests the majority of writing will be written during a series of walks around the city. All writing will be written on my smartphone during the actual walks. Walks do not represent days. Sometimes I will make multiple walks in the same day and other walks may be separated by days or a week. The objective is not to capture the last months of my time in France but to capture the city I have passed the last ten years of my life in. Texts obviously written at home I will for the moment refer to as LOT 1003


The Last French Steps - a walking journal of a writer's final days in France. 

Laennec - Montchat

It's quiet here now. There are only the birds left. I can't see them but I hear them all around. Anne has left and this place isn't the same without her. Too quiet. Too lonely. Nothing to get home to but syringes and the computer. Writing away through the night and deleting it because the darkness has gotten into my words. But out here, on these walks, I come down to the level of nature. I am sad with death and sad because I'll be leaving this place in some months and that means leaving a part of myself behind and making the final break from the last lover to have fucked poetry into me and to have left an indelible mark on my existence. 

From a window comes the sound of French evening TV. It always sounds like it's reporting the aftermath of a tsunami. I remember walking around the little village of Belleville-sur-Soane the evening that Indonesia got hammered. News reports flashed windows up blue throughout the evening as local restaurants clattered and rang out with the crickets into the night. The television fades and the birds chirp back in. Floral scents abound. 

Montchat. I used to work around here. It wasn't really working but I got paid at least. I was charged with looking after the cultural centre from 3pm until 10. The only tasks I had were to open and close the building and be on hand inbetween. In the four months I was there my office door was only ever tapped on twice. On both occassions it was the same old lady asking for the key to the library. "It's open," I said. 

"Open? Is it really? Good then." 

Aside from these rare intrusions I passed most my days sat in my office, mostly writing and sometimes reading and very occasionally with my shoes and socks removed, watching a film. Once the Montchat Orchestra had finished their rehearsals and packed up I'd make a tour of the building, lock up, set the alarm, and make the 30 minute walk home through the tawdry summer night. When I arrived home I'd be tired, in a good; in the way where taking the weight of your feet and walking barefoot across cool tiles is an absolute pleasure. There was always heroin in those days and it worked well on my body.

She left because of that. She never said so but in the things she did say, the reasons she gave months later, that's what it came down to. Not the heroin in itself but the consequences of it and that she had used up all her savings to secure a hell that she ended up in alone. My life may have looked like hell to her, or anyone else looking in, but it didn't feel like it to me. 

I felt terribly guilty for what she ended up living. Even now, two years since she dropped bat and left, I get overcome at odd moments thinking of her counting out money from her purse and leaving it on the table. She had saved that money gradually over years, refusing herself treats but for occasionally, enjoying them immensely when she did. And then, all the guilty pleasures she had wanted but never would allow herself, money that could buy them thrice over, was being handed to me and by me to my dealer. The price is heartbreaking when it's not your own money - it's not easier: it's harder. I had promised her success and she believed it, only she soon realised that there could be no success with me using heroin as I was doing. I ended every other night typing pages of the same letter with my face and that didn't produce the kind of poetry you could hang dreams on. If you ask her now, or in some years, how she experienced the writing process, she will tell you it disgusted her. It never disgusted me; I never saw it. For me it was life. The two had to be, and were, one and the same thing. 

It was disappointment and disillusionment. That's what it was. She'd fantasized about the writing process, had eroticised it in her mind. She imagined being close to the poet, fucking through each great sentence, somehow inducing herself onto every page in every word. I'd allowed her too think such thoughts, had encouraged her. But unlike Anne I knew the process to be deeply private, the writer withdrawn from the interference of his immediate reality. Writers mostly write about what has passed - it's the only way to know what road you're on and how to depict and close it. Writing about the present is perilous and writing about the future fantasy. On the odd occasions when I did write of my life in the present, Anne did not figure in it at all. Until such a time as that chapter of my life with her was a closed one, or sufficient time had passed to conclude something of importance from it, she was obsolete in literary terms. I told her that not being in my texts was a privilege, that my writing is a wordyard of corpses and ghosts and that the time I wrote about her, condemned her to words in my work, it would almost certainly mean she was no longer of any significance in my life. She didn't understand that. She didn't understand that I would never exploit a love so loyal and honest for a few lines of poetry. She always saw it the other way around, like she didn't mean enough to me to be written about. That accounted for the disappointment, not the disgust. The disgust came from the poet sitting there half naked, his penis small and shrivelled, blood down his legs, a syringe hanging from his inner thigh and experiencing god knows what in his state of sedation. I would raise my head and prepare to type again. She would stare at me from over her book, her legs open as she sat on the bed, no underwear, her sex aroused. I'd pretend I hadn't seen. She'd remain like that, sometimes for hours, sometimes nudging me with her foot, before getting into bed and crying. 



Boulevard Mermoz Pinel


Mermoz Pinel and her estatelands are separated from the east side of town by a dual-carriageway with a central divide. The carriageway is not wide but is sufficient to have isolated that section of the city and turned it into a lawless zone. The contrast is evident, even at a walk down the mermoz-side stretch of road, before turning right into one of Lyon's worst ghettoes. Five storey low-rise blocks run along this side of the carriagway, the windows overlooking traffic and a run down supermarket. Directly below these flats is a two meter stretch of mostly dead, yellow grass. A high perimeter railing runs the grass off, prevents it from contaminating the conctete walkway. The dead grass is strewn with rags of fabric, small pieces of broken toys, fallen plastic plant pots, burnt pages from books, pieces of toilet paper, random playing cards, the odd crayon, and thousands of cigarette ends from ashtrays emptied straight out the window. Throughout this debris are sat little mounds of dehydrated dog and cat shit, maybe human too. Big black flies buzz around, the traffic flashes by, life trudges in out the supermarket opposite and Mermoz Pinel rots away in the wastelands of town. 

Turning into the estate brings broken, hole-picked roads, oil spills and dead car batteries discarded alongside the curbing. A car is sat on its rusted metal wheel rims, its windows all out and the seating and interior torn and ripped to shreds. A little kid, no older than 8, is sat at the driver's wheel pretending to drive. Loitering outside the small row of four shops which make up the estate's high street are a small group of shaven headed and criminal looking adults. They stand, blocking the narrow path, forcing people to move around them and following them with their eyes as they do. I walk straight on through the group. When they see I don't care a fuck they give an inch but it's hostile surrender. I turn into the tobacconists. When I leave they've stepped back a foot. I stop and light my little cigar in front of them. They pull up phleghm and spit it out to the side. I leave slowly, back to the Boulevard and off towards home.

As I wait to cross the busy carriageway a Facebook message beeps and vibrates through on my phone. A little circle with Theo's face in it appears on my screen alongside the words 'ça va?' When my dealer messages me asking how it's going, it means come around. I would have usually replied immediately "45mins" and been straight off across town. It wasn't possible today. Before replying I text'd Mary and asked if she could borrow me 30 euros. She said to meet her tomorrow at noon. I asked "not now?"

"I can't," she said. I understood what that meant but that's her private life and not for me to write of here. I agreed to meet her tomorrow and messaged my dealer the word '2omorrow'. 

'That works' he replied. I tramped slowly around my area for an extended period. I went home and an hour later took off again on the same route. At 7pm I cracked and messaged Mary again: "There's no way you could pop out for two minutes to meet me?" 
"Shane, please." 
"OK. Sorry," I replied. 



Croix Paquet - Place Rouville - Hotel de Ville


I visited Mary today. She had agreed to lend me 30 euros for tobacco. I wrote her a cheque for the money and asked her to wait a week before cashing it. She said she didn't want the cheque. I insisted but she refused. She always refuses. Together we sat high up on the Croix Rouse hill, Place Rouville, overlooking the city and thinking. I told her I would be leaving Lyon this summer, returning home to London. We had arrived here together ten years ago. She, didnt reply. Just stared with a momentary sadness out into the distance. We both did. She has a baby daughter now, a month new in the world. Mary's changed. Motherhood has changed her. For the better or worse I'm not sure. Maybe neither. Maybe she's just changed. 

I stayed with Mary and child for nigh on an hour. It's the longest I've been in anyone's company for over 5 months. We found a bar and each took a fruit juice with ice. Mary paid. As we sat out in the sun I asked her if she ever thought about heroin. She said no with such an honesty that it shocked me. "Never?" I asked, surprised, adding: "For me, on days like this, I am seduced by memories of walking up the Saxe Gambetta in the afternoon sun on our way to see Mamms... His dog scampering along and looking back with its tongue out as it slid in those boardings of the squat."

Mary looked at me and seemed to change her mind. Now she said she did have memories. She told me not of summer but of winter. The days we'd wait for hours in the wet, deserted square with our noses dripping and feet turned to ice. 

"But they're sick memories," I said. "They were days we were half ill."

Whether or not she really remembers such days, outside of being asked about them, I doubt. I think her initial response was the truth. Its insightful nevertheless. It would take a huge tragedy in her life now to have her return to the needle. Her track marks are all healed. Her depression is gone. She quit her medication and stopped smoking when she found out she was pregnant. The only trace remaining of her heroin history is me, and soon I will be gone as well.

Alone, on my way back down the hill, I took some photos. I never take photos. I've learnt I should. Not of myself. Of the world and the places I've trodden and the places which have trodden on me. I never did of London and it haunted me, that gradual loss of true memory of my roots when I needed them the most. I will capture Lyon. In my literary memory and in photograph. It will be the Lyon of a Londonian, not the Lyon of the Lyonnaise. From my eyes their city may not even be recognisable to them. If I capture anywhere near the truth of my life here it most certainly will not be. 

I was honest to my word and made sure to buy tobacco with the money Mary gave me. I purposely kept that 30 euros in my left pocket so as it wouldn't get muddled up with the 48 euros 78 centimes in my right. That 48 euros was my very last drippings of physical cash. It was for my dealer, for one last gram of heroin to be used up slowly over three days. As I waited for him at the foot of the hill at Place Terreux I bought 3 pouches of rolling tobacco, 2 packets of cigarette papers, 4 small cigarillos and a one euro Numéro Fetiche scratch card. 

"A vous aussi," I said, collecting my purchases and leaving. I'm sure it'll be a good day for the entire fucking town.

Outside I stared blankly at my losing scratch card. I never expected to win anyway and by the time I had bought it I had already lost. It was a strategic no hope gamble. Hope is a disappointing emotion. I ripped the losing game into quarters and popped it in a trash can. Barely had I done so when a car beeped and slowed and stopped down along the road. I ran to catch up and got in the passenger side, pulling the door closed towards me as it drove off. 

I have no cash at all. My dealer dropped me off a mile from home in that state. I am overdrawn all my limit and more so will be living the next two weeks on cheques. For each cheque I cash I will incur a ridiculous charge. My major concern will be tobacco. I've enough for ten days. You cannot buy tobacco with cheques in France, and so once I'm all smoked out I will need to find someone scrupulous enough to want to make a twenty euro profit on a cheque for cash. We will see. For now I have heroin. It will be the last for the month. My fingers will get a well-deserved rest from typing. 



Avenue Rockefeller


Oh God, spring is here in the sullied air and France prejoices to the distant haze of her Rimbaud summer and I'm four days clean and feel so unhappy and vile. To all old lovers, and Lovers of Tragedy, I saw it this morning on white muslin cloth billowing gently from some early window. I was stopped in my tracks. Olfactory memories. Fresh linen pegged on the line in the damp back yard, me lost entangled within it, brief glimpses of the spinning, wonderous blue sky.

When I look up buildings begin to topple. 

"Mum, why is the house falling down?" 

"I don't know," she would say. I would look up again, and sure enough, the house was falling down. And not just ours, all tall buildings everywhere. It was no illusion. The eyes can only see what they see. No more and certainly no less. 

I looked ahead down the length of the Avenue Rockefeller, through the bright clarity of the morning. In the far distance a ghostly shimmering, the last of the cold morning air meeting the heat and laying like mist along the horizon. Sunlight glinted off the traffic far and way up ahead. I had to return home. My head was full of words, terrible words, and that can become a curse. My phone was low on battery charge too and I didn't want to fall into the fury of those words and be foiled by technology. Lost words like that will never return and its better to have never thought of them at all. 

By the time I had gotten home and my phone had charged, the day had changed. Rain clouds had come over the afternoon and a wind rattled my door. I drank my methadone and went to sleep. 



Albert Thomas - Monplaisir


It's the first day since seeing Theo that I feel well. I've not written much either but for a few emails and some scraps. The heroin was strong. I had argued with Theo the time before last I had seen him. I had left without buying anything which shocked him and I hadn't phoned for a week. It was him who finally messaged me. He gives nothing away for nothing and his stubbornness (unlike mine) only extends to him losing money. When he is losing money he can be capable of the kindest behaviour imaginable. I know this, but even I have to remind myself at times that he doesn't care a damn. The quality of the stuff he sold me was nothing more than good ol' bait. You could be sure if I had made the call he had baited for the next batch would have been half the strength, rotting sardine left for me to make it on. And yet, for all my years of knowledge, I would have still made that call, hoping for some honesty somewhere in this fucking racket of death. I would still like to make that call now. I cannot. I've no cash not even credit. I can be extremely stubborn and exercise amazing self-control and willpower when I'm potless. You should see me in them fine moments. 

It drizzles. The sky. It's been a dull misty day, like sea spray. The road Albert Thomas runs on pretty much the same for miles. It's one of those roads you hate to tramp as you can always see how little you have gotten on and how far left ahead. I turn off at Monplaisir and cross the square. My bank is on the corner. I eye it suspiciously remembering so many soul-shrinking moments where the cash machine refused me cash; walking off red in the face, my heart beating and my eyes intent on the ground in hope of a miracle to blow on by in the form of a wallet full of notes. It happened once. 190 Euros. I condemned the find to history in style, withdrawing the notes and tossing the black leather wallet back over my shoulder into the air. The thing caught the wind and flew, the poor fellas ID and bank cards spinning free and blowing away behind me. People were looking at me strangely but I was already on my phone, asking my man if he was at home and holding, my pace quickening and heading towards the metro. 

Touches like that are rare. And usually, when they do occur, it is when you least need them. I recall some years ago, in London, having done all my wages and having to stick to methadone for the last ten days of the month. Every evening I took these 6hr long walks around my area, my eyes peeled on the ground. I surmised that doing that for ten days I would at some point stumble upon a ten pound note. I walked for ten evenings, for 60 hours, and didn't find a penny. On the morning my wage finally went into my bank I crossed the road and entered the newsagents. With two thousand pounds fresh in my account I looked down and there staring up at me from the floor was a neatly folded twenty pound note. I picked it up between two crossed fingers, put it in my pocket, smiled and carried on with life. 

The drizzle is now proper rain. It feels like there is a storm coming in. I cannot see the distance. Cars flash by and sound like sheeting being whipped and blown by heavy winds. I lower my head and with a shopping bag of cheap tinned food I make the walk back home.


It's 9pm and the evening is in. There are some fantastic dark streets just over the way. It's like being in a tiny country village. Silhouettes of large trees and conifers rise in the front gardens. The place smells of pine. I can hear my own heels clicking and I walk in a way so as to accentuate that. I walk these dark streets until gone 11pm and then head home. I am restless. I don't want to sit and write. I enjoy writing as I walk, as I take in life. I think of heading back out again but don't. I take a selection of authors I enjoy in order to look at sentence structure. I want to see how often other writers employ introductory clauses to open their sentences. I don't like such sentences but they are often unavoidable. I've tried writing without them but it leads to very choppy paragraphs, like sliced ham. I end up masturbating but not over sentence structure. 


#LOT 1003


I take long walks. I constantly tidy the apartment. I run on the spot for 20 minutes at a time. I write and swallow my methadone. I reply to emails. I watch pornography of women urinating. I cook pasta and butter and add pepper and sliced cherry tomatoes. I smoke. I hand wash my clothes and hang them around the apartment. The apartment looks like a campsite. I pretend I'm a sniper holed up in an outhouse. I cannot sleep without heroin. I am constantly wanting to do stuff, to a level where it is irritating. I never get the urge to want to hit the sack and relax back to a film. I put on films but it's out of habit. 10 minutes in and I'm deliberating over what writing file to open, what book to read and take stylistic notes from. I pull up the shutter of the back window and stare out at the Silver Birch tree in the moonlight. It is what Tristram Spencer the hero of my novel Waiting for John does while waiting to have his skull bashed in. All my secrets are being revealed. 


7eme arrondissement - Rue Jaboulay 


Rue Jaboulay looks the same as ever. In whatever my head remembers the past I find it difficult to relate logically to time. There seems some magic loophole we must be able to exploit. I cannot comprehend how things are the same but life has moved on. I could turn into no. 47 now, climb the three flights of stairs and be mystified that my key doesn't work and my life isn't here anymore. I lived here for the first four years of my exile in Lyon. It was the apartment Mary and I took while we were in London. She travelled back and found it and laid a deposit down in preparation for our move. I remember the photos being emailed through to me as I was injecting in my leg in my office. An apartment in a foreign city I was now paying monthly rent on. It seemed absurd. How the hell would I ever really get there? It was the dream. Not my dream but hers. I went along with it because she was my dream. I'd later set fire to that apartment. Nothing too serious but a lot of smoke. I pass by here occasionally but more often than not I avoid it. It's an emotional place. A crossroads of life and lovers or happiness and heartbreak. A lot went on in this street. A lot of fucked up heroin activity too. I don't turn in and climb the stairs, of course not. I know I no longer live here, that my life is somewhere else. But I am dangerously on the threshold of insanity when I revisit old places. I guess that is why the past and time has so much to do with my literature. Memories are so sharp and feelings so fresh that its hard to comprehend that today isn't yesterday and just where exactly time goes...

"Exskews me mate 'av you got thuh time?" he would ask. 

"Five forty five." 

"What year is it?" 
"2001." 
"What happens to time? Where does time go? It must go somewhere. Everything goes somewhere?" 

I look at Chris the retard, 50 plus then, same bulgy eyes, one lazing off into a world that only he inhabits. He stands there staring at me, waiting for an answer, his back slightly hunched, his arms low slung and his fists clenched like a baby. He wears a baggy, dirty white T-shirt, trousers pulled up to his tits and beetle crusher shoes that look like he's been wandering the streets kicking along walls. For some reason he makes me terribly sad and in the same time he is a weird connection to a time which no longer exists.

He'd been on the scene all our young lives, 30 and playing with the neighbourhood kids... Riding bikes and making wild excited noises. I would blow into his large moon face and asked if it hurt. He would start crying and saying it hurt. I'd blow again, a blow that wouldn't hurt a flower. He'd toss his bike away and lumber up the road bawling his eyes out and yelping in pain. A little later he'd come skulking back, his head low and his lazy eye looking sadly at me. I'd blow his face again and ask: "Does that hurt?" 

"Yes," he'd say collecting his bike and slowly peddling away for the evening. When he was far enough+h up the road he'd turn and pull a big ugly face at me, blow an horrendous wet noise from his mouth and then peddle for his life. I could have caught him on foot. His bike was childsized and he was a lumbering overweight adult whose burden flattened the tyres. Even at his fastest peddle he got nowhere. I always let him go. 

How he recognised me after all those years is a mystery. I had changed so much that I could walk up and down my old street and not one of the neighbours knew who I was. 

"I don't know where time goes," I tell Chris, after a moment . 

"Muss go sumwhere," he says, "evrything goes sumwhere."
- - - -
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19 comments :

Anonymous said...

Very lovely, evocative writing. It all carries the sentiment of "goodbye" just so. Re Lot 1003, what is the interest in watching women urinating? My husband always asks that I please close the door. Though to the other extreme I've dealt with men who just love it, including the infamous golden shower. I'm not revolted. I Just wonder what the draw of watching someone pee is. Thanks,
E.

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hey Esme... I think they'll be a great series of posts. They're nice to write and refreshing in that I can really let myself go at describing landscapes and skies and times of day and light... All things I love writing about (the beauty that often surrounds ugly lives and tragic events). That duality has always fascinated me. I remember reading eyewitness reports of Hiroshima and the people describing how beautiful the blast was or the red glow that lit the city up.

Peeing. It's the great sexual fetish of my life, but is not so easy to explain. For me, but in rare instances, it must be taken out the bathroom. Half the excitement is having someone do that in a place we've been trained all our lives we shouldn't do it. In the bathroom it is really just going to the toilet and there's something about the toilet itself which isn't erotic to me. So first the two are separate. It's the same as if my lover wakes in the morning needing the bathroom... That's not erotic either (unless it's been planned). When it becomes sexual and erotic is when it's about someone losing control... Being so desperate that just the sensation of relief is sexual and that final act of surrender and freedom. When that is played with and forced as part of bondage and roleplay it becomes an extremely erotic and exciting act. And when it is forced it's not really urine. There's many ways the fantasy can be played out and in many situations. The act is extremely intimate... So intimate that it's sexual just on that level. I think also, for maybe someone open to it but who does not necessarily find it a sexual nor erotic idea for themselves, that can soon change when its happening during a state of high sexual arousal. So imagine being bound and forced to drink to the point of being desperate to pee, but as you're bound you've also been stimulated and aroused to the point of near orgasm. That sensation of being desperate to pee is then mixed up with that orgasmic state and becomes a part of it. That act of finally losing control and letting yourself go... Of having no choice but to do so, becomes highly erotic in itself and just the taboo of what you have done is exciting. I think as well, something that excites your partner so much usually excites you also... Even if not for the same reasons. It's my partner peeing, not the other way around, which excites me.
Often we don't know where our sexual tendencies come from or why they excite us so much. We have no choice over them. But in this case I do know where it is derived from. I won't explain here as I've written enough but will leave a further comment in a little while. X

dan said...

I've said it b4 but I just can't understand how no1 has paid you for your writing??? Each time you post it reminds me again of how
great your words are & I'm not the only 1. Don't you know any1 who would pay you for your writing here? I would if I could.

JoeM said...

Writing away through the night and deleting it because the darkness has gotten into my words

Wonderfully elegiac all this.

Funny how descriptions of a place one is leaving is so tellingly different from a place that is just being passed through etc.

That Montchat job is my ideal!

Almost worth moving to France for.

Not.

So when did you decide to leave France?

I'm presuming the legal stuff is sorted now regarding returning to London.

Will you be staying with your mother in London?

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hey Joe...
Excuse me for no reply to your last comment. I've been working from my phone and it's not easy leaving comments on blogger with it. But I will reply, of course.
Oh, I think this walking diary will produce some really nice stuff. It also allows me to appreciate and remember the city in the proper way as my feelings for some years now have been quite bitter towards it. Now I can see the end there's a certain relief its given me.
I made the decision to leave in February??? Around then. I've been so unhappy here that it's pointless to stay. If I'm going to be unhappy because of circumstance I'd rather be unhappy in my own country where I've much more control over my own situation. I think I also need to be home now for my writing. I need to write about my town of birth from a real perspective and not through nostalgia. The writing I've done around nostalgia and feeling of exile will always be worthy and of importance but i think there is a great work and great writing to come where I am actually experiencing my city and country. Since starting to write seriously I've not written a word about home from home. I need that now. It may seem strange that my writing has an effect on my real life decisions but I guess that goes to show how important it has become to me.
Problems I'll have to sort out once I'm back. France is like a prison anyway, so to leave, even imagining the very worst scenario, would still be better. X

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hey Dan... I could get it published no problem... Lots of people who'd even stand the cost, but that doesn't help me. My words get more exposure here. I only wish someone would offer me something as I'm in dire straits here just now with my home internet cut and have been given 10 days to pay electricity or it'll be cut... And as for my rent! .It wasn't even heroin which led to it but some percentage cut in my money which I still don't understand. No doubt, like in the post, when I no longer desperately need it, it'll arrive! X

Speedy said...

Very melancholic read but I like it. Can't wait to see what stories living back in your home country will bring forth.

Claudia said...

Great idea for a series of posts, Shane. It's a fantastic blend of romanticising the past and also portraying it in all its filthy beauty. I look forward to reading more!

Anonymous said...

shane, is it okay with you if i comment on each individual story in the series. beautiful lines abound. when commenting i like to quote the lines that really struck me. i have a very stupid question for you. in one of the first three pieces you say that you are four days clean. okay, prepare for stupid. do you not get junk sick? or, the 4 days in which you hadn't used, did you just not go into detail about that? i take legally prescribed opiates and i get sick going without for one day. i will be back. x

Shane Levene said...

Of course you can comment on each individual post in the series.. I prefer that.

I don't get dope sick as I am on methadone which prevents that. So I was four days clean of heroin and back to using just methadone - which can take up to a week to feel normal again. So I wasnt physically ill just didn't feel too good within myself. X

Anonymous said...

shane, thank-you for responding to the dumbo question. okay, when w/o heroin, you take methadone. i have another dumbo question. here, if you're on the methadone program, you're on the program and there's no going off of it to use anything. i have a friend who was on the program and i didn't know, at the time, but he was coming to me for pharms to help with pain that the methadone didn't cover. i actually helped him fuck him, piss dirty, and lose his carries. out with another friend this week, who was a heroin addict and went on methadone and then weaned himself off methadone, he told me, if i had anyone ask for my pharms that is on the methadone program, not to give them to them. i understand that now, but didn't when it happened. so, it's suggesting to me that you're not on a methadone program, or things are very different in france, and you may be buying on the street even methadone. pardon the stupid questions. they're separate from what you write. i'm trying to understand and the only reference point i really have is my dead husband and how life was for him (and the kids and i when we lived with him, or i guess even when we didn't). he developed a heroin habit while in jail once, maybe about 3 months in, and i detoxed him at home.

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hey ya Cindy...

You don't have to stick to the writing... it'd get pretty boring if we only discussed that. I am on a methadone script, but things are very different here. Basically, in the UK and USA addicts are punished once they enter a substitution program. They are constantly threatened with being thrown out of treatment, are constantly reprimanded and have their dosage cut down as a consequence, they are belittled in every way and treated like a complete fuck-upa nd failure if they use even once in a year. It is a system designed to fail and can only possibly fail. We are at constant loggerheads with the staff and the relationship is based on us learning what they want to hear and then giving them those lies so as our lives are easier. They say tht the staff must never form personal relationships with the addicts, but it gets pretty personal when you give a dirty urine test and they start telling you that you have personally disappointed them and completely undone their trust in you. Here in France there is none of that and there is a different class of addict due to it. We are tested here, but it is for statistical purposes only. You are not berated and punished for a dirty urine and neither are you patted on the back for a clean urine. The methadone maitnenance here is purely to keep the addict well, allow him/her to work, and prevent the desperation crimes which are rampant in other countries and which are committed through the desperation of the addict to avoid illness. Here in france we have a great relationship with the staff. There is no judgement and no punishment for telling the truth. And so we tell the truth about our usage and the frequency. Here, even if for some reason you finished your weeks worth of methadone a day early you can turn up at the centre and they'll give you an extra bottle to tide you over. It's a whole new and better philosophy. Sure, the statistics for addicts getting totally clean are no better (but that isn't one of the aims), but the statistics for lowering petty crime and having stable addicts who work are absolutely fantastic. Because of the social security system here addicts have to work. Street addicts don't, of course, but the majority of addicts are not on the street but with families or their own apartment. These addicts in the UK and US would all have been incapable of holding down a job in the UK and US and would all be funding their habits through illegal income. So often the system is doing more damage than good and yet because it's often free (in the uk anyhow) that means we have to somehow be grateful for it regardless. If there is gonna be real help it must be unconditional Any help with a million impossible conditions attached is no help at all - just a government con to make it look like they are doing something. X

eyelick said...

Time with junkies stands still. The years pass by and everything changes but you.

Tatiana said...

My Beautiful Love,

I can't tell you how many times I've read this text. Just read it all the way through again while sitting in my car, in the rain. Every time I read it, the experience is so overpowering that it washes over me like a piece of music, and i feel it sounding away inside of me. So many lines that make time stand still. Like all great literature it has that feel of something both complete unique and hauntingly familiar.


Everything I love about You and your words is contained in this text. And the magic never ceases.

Your forever loving Tatiana Xxxxxxx

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

My Darling Girl... You may be a little bit biased! I hope you are. I wouldn't want you so desperately if you thought it was just an average piece of shit! But greater words will come... words just for you... borne in our most private and intimate moments... words that will be written in memory an remain eternal and young. Words of when I'm inside you and want to be closer still.

I'll stop My Love before I get too pornographic... All My Wild Love Returned... eternal... XxXxX

labellavita1985 said...

Shane,

I've been following your blog on and off for several years now, though I've never left a comment. I just wanted to say that I think you're an incredibly talented writer. I literally spend hours on your blog reading; there are entries I've read so many times I feel like I could memorize them.

I've been in recovery now for 20 months, and am coming to realize that I will never love anything or anyone as much as I love heroin. I don't know what to make of this, really. I don't know if using will ever be an option again for me, not that it ever was an OPTION, because when I use, I become completely consumed by addiction, which I'm sure you can identify with. But, it makes me sad to think about the rest of my life without the one thing that truly makes me happy. Not "happy" in the traditional sense, because, without doubt, active addiction involves MUCH suffering, degradation, loss of self, loss of humanity, etc. But, you know those moments right before using? That sense of NOTHING else mattering, the feeling of being so completely consumed by something, by your addiction, that it's almost liberating? Like, this is what I am, and I don't have to be anything else right now. Not happy, but content, in the most primal, fundamental way.

When I was in rehab, the group therapy facilitator used to talk about how addiction changes our brain and, in time, the body thinks it needs the DOC to survive, which explains why we do anything and everything to get what we need. So this satisfaction we addicts get from using is quite literally the same satisfaction a starving person would get if they were able to eat, perhaps after months of starvation. When I think of it this way, I realize that NOTHING is ever going to give me that feeling, of relief, of liberation, because, nothing really can, unless something is threatening my survival and the threat is then removed.

I realize I'm probably just thinking out loud now so I'll stop. I just wanted to ask you what you think of the prescription heroin program in England. Is that something you might consider looking into?

Btw, this is so random, I know.

Anonymous said...

Shane,
Bloody hell. I understand the French system that I think you explained to me once though I didn't understand! It makes much more sense than the British system...much much more. The fact that they will give you another bottle is fantastic in itself. One time, I dropped a weekends worth on the floor of the chemist's doorway. 3 days in 3 45mg bottles. I had an appointment with the clinic that day so wrongly assumed that I would get help...since by this point in my methadone prog I seriously hadn't used and had given consecutive clean piss tests, been put on twice a week pick up within a few months etc...but no. I was told that I would have to 'get by'. This time I managed to buy a 100ml bottle off a friend but the help given by the meth clinic was shocking. I was told in different words to go and score. Even though I bought someone else's meth...I enabled them into scoring.
Since then, from another mistake, I have been taken off my luxury of picking up once a week to daily and supervised. I cant even take them home and get a day ahead so my mornings ain't so bloody horrible. I was used to taking my script while half awake, going back to sleep and waking up for a bloody strong coffee feeling human.
Speaking of piss...sorry, a comment from Esme got me thinking about piss! Without any morning methadone I can't stop pissing. With it, on weekends as the chemist is shut, like before when I picked up weekly...I don't have to go as much. I've forgotten which is normal. Has methadone fucked up my bladder? Does methadone take away the feeling of urgency to wee? I don't know, though such thoughts are floating around my head....oh, its August Bank Holiday! Another day of luxury.
Back to the French system.. Is it collected from the Clinic? Cos the place which prescribes my methadone then sends the script to local chemists....with exception to their hopeless cases who have to consume daily infront of a nurse and stay there for half an hour incase they go over.....cos obviously they could always go and have a dig two mins after that half hour and go over then anyway, though then they aren't anyone's problem. Strange that bit. I've been confused by the method of daily consumption for ages. They supervise so you take it. Won't give it if you're obviously inebriated. Though daily consumers are on fail for a reason....because they use on top or you can't be trusted to take it and not sell it. I use cos I feel like crap and scoring is quicker than walking to the chemist... I don't score on weekends. As I've had my meth. I know people are all different and I may not be the norm. If I could have my script back as it was, I wouldn't be using. I had a fuck up which is being made worse by my script change. It's just shit.
Ahhhhh. So, at least France is good at something.!!
How much does each prescription cost? Is there always a fee? Like the unemployed or homeless etc? Luckily, living in Wales ALL scripts are free. I don't know what the situation is in England if you're not on S.S.Benefits and on a Methadone/Subutex prog. ... I'm not sure if people have to pay. Would be bloody expensive if you did. So, I doubt it. Hmm. I might have to find out. Project for the day.
Right, I'm talking rubbish now.
Take care (I'm patiently waiting for new writing...re reading stuff I've read and re read each time I check)
Kate from Sunny Swansea

JFB 4-8-15-16-23-42 said...

Man I love this piece, so many times I've recalled places that I associte scoring with past decadence...
Beautiful I'm glad I'm able to read your work!

eyelick said...

Oh, man! Relationships & drugs - never been addicted while my partner was not. Did have it the other way around for a while, but was still a poly-drug partier. Luckily, sex still happened during that. But yes, even without imagining oneself immortalized in poetry, there are many disappointments. Opposite drugs, well at least there's a level of understanding, but it's intertwined with misunderstanding, and a lack of sympathy for the other's periods of suffering & various differences. Same addiction - you go through these periods of almost completely sexless intimacy. But it's ok. It's very imaginable, that particular scenario with her nudging you & you're telling her, "In a moment, love, let me just finish this up..." It has to be frustrating on her end, and when you come out of it, quite guilt-inducing in yours. However, you avoiding dating drug addicts is probably a very smart choice, there are so many complications avoided, as well as some pretty desperate poverty to skimpy living and rare treats, during these periods that when you look at your combined income - you see that you really "shouldn't" be living in these conditions & places that you do!