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Sonya and Eric: Hunts Point, Bronx. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Sonya’s going to court today to see her husband, Eric. This is his first felony. “My husband cannot have money in his pocket and not get drugs,” Sonya said, shaking her head forcefully. “It’s not possible.” Eric was caught buying/selling/using. A blur of charges stacked, misdemeanor to felony level.

She hopes the Bronx criminal court offers her husband, a heroin addict, a residential substance abuse treatment program in exchange for sentence time. Everyone knows that you can’t have too long a drug record to get a treatment offer, but he’s pretty new in the NY state system. Still, it’s a gamble and depends on the judge. Sonya’s nervous and asks for prayers.

At the beginning of his stay in late March, Rikers Island jail gave Eric methadone, but soon after, the jail stopped providing, and he went off cold turkey.

Eric and Sonya have been heroin addicts for years, a substance they’ve chased around the US — New Orleans, Rhode Island, Hunts Point.

Substance Use and Mental Health Disorders
Substance use disorders among inmates are at epidemic proportions. Almost two-thirds (64.5 percent) of the inmate population in the U.S. (1.5 million) meet medical criteria for an alcohol or other drug use disorder. Prison and jail inmates are seven times likelier than are individuals in the general population to have a substance use disorder. One-third (32.9 percent) of the 2.3 million prison and jail inmates has a diagnosis of a mental illness. A quarter (24.4 percent) of prison and jail inmates has both a substance use disorder and a co-occurring mental health problem.*

Sonya anticipates how bad it will be when Eric’s released: the bundle (10 bags) of dope he’ll find himself drawn to, despite being clean from use. She remembers back in New Orleans where she spent 34 days in jail, a span that hardly counted. Despite the brevity, she doesn’t remember much until her first bag of dope a few hours later. She managed to get the drug on credit from a dealer, shooting it fast right there, who cared who was looking. She was home, home to the feeling.

The Treatment Gap
Of the 1.5 million prison and jail inmates who met clinical diagnostic criteria for a substance use disorder in 2006, only 11.2 percent had received any type of professional treatment since admission. Only 16.6 percent of facilities offer treatment in specialized settings which can produce better outcomes for offenders as measured by drug use and arrests post-release. Few inmates actually receive evidence-based services, including access to pharmacological
treatments, and the availability of highly trained staff is limited. Simply offering treatment, even in specialized settings, does not mean that the treatment is available to all who need it or of adequate quality.

In terms of adjunct services, 22.7 percent of inmates with substance use disorders participated in mutual support/peer counseling and 14.2 percent received drug education; however, such services alone are unlikely to create lasting behavioral changes among those in need of addiction treatment.

Charlie, a long-time cocaine and heroin user, is at the start of a multi-year stint in upstate NY prison. She’s been in before.

The other times, though, one of her girls had snuck her drugs, ferrying opiates sewed into packages of clothes. A privilege of being a pimp, perhaps. This prison is further away from her usual city lockup, in Westchester County, about an hour drive from the city, and her girls don’t have cars. And so, she’s detoxing without medication, laying in bed day in and out, sleeping little out of discomfort, unable to concentrate on much more than not getting sick. The first time in 25 years.

Her thoughts apart from pain focus on her now-young adult brother who she raised after her parents died when she was a young teen. She worries what he’ll fall into while she’s away, what lifestyle habits he’ll collect back in South Bronx. He calls running the streets cool, ignores Charlie’s protests otherwise.

Children of Inmates
In 2006, American prisons and jails held an estimated 1.0 million substance-involved parents with more than 2.2 million minor children; 73.7 percent (1.7 million) of these children are 12 year of age or younger. The minor children of
inmates are at a much higher risk of juvenile delinquency, adult criminality and substance misuse than are minor children of parents who have not been incarcerated.

Beauty: Hunts Point, Bronx. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Beauty was born in Oklahoma prison, her mom a crack addict who spent most of Beauty’s childhood behind bars. Beauty herself spent the better part of this fall and winter in jail, and, after, has continued to sink deeper into her K2 (synthetic marijuana) dependency.

Similarly, Roland grew up in a Brooklyn children’s group home, after his mom died of a heroin overdose. He’s now in jail now, for drug possession misdemeanors, where he misses his toddler son.

Roland: Hunts Point, Bronx. Photo from August 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Both Beauty and Roland live homeless in Hunts Point. Both are 22 years old and have been locked up for the first time and for multiple times after in the span of the last year.

Reentry of Substance-Involved Inmates
Substance-involved offenders are likelier to recidivate than those who are not substance involved. Over half (52.2 percent) of substance involved inmates have one or more previous incarcerations compared with 31.2 percent of inmates who are not substance involved.

High rates of recidivism translate into burdensome incarceration costs for society, averaging $25,144 per inmate, per year and ranging from a low of $10,700 in Alabama to a high of $65,599 in Maine. Breaking the cycle of re-arrests and re-incarceration requires breaking the cycle of addiction.

Sonya: Hunts Point, Bronx. Photo from August 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

After having gone through drug-related arrests in multiple states — enough so that she avoids some areas altogether (mainly the Gulf coast) — Sonya doesn’t know what’s next. She panhandles in front of a Manhattan Petco to support her habit, waits for Eric to return from jail to construct widespread dreams of escaping New York, getting off of heroin, maybe going to sea, or just going anywhere. Starting over, somehow.

“I can’t go outside because I’m scared I’ll get locked up. I can’t get locked up because Eric already is, and then we’d have nothing when we came out. I’m not hurting anybody. I keep to myself, stay away from drama. It doesn’t matter though. After a while you get that nobody’s on your side. Nobody’s going to help you.”

Few Inmates with Substance Use Disorders Receive Treatment
Of the 1.5 million inmates with substance use disorders in 2006, CASA estimates that only 163,196 (11.2 percent*) received any type of professional treatment, including treatment in a residential facility or unit (7.1 percent), professional counseling (5.2 percent) or pharmacological therapy such as methadone, antibuse or naltrexone (0.2 percent). Less than one percent (0.9 percent) received detoxification services.

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* Report (PDF):
“Behind Bars II: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population.” Casacolumbia.org. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, Feb. 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.

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In response to the newly-released US 2013 National Drug Strategy (PDF), I’ve written a portrait of those who feel the direct impact of the War on Drugs’ street-level targeting, the same people who find themselves affected in a large way by policy decisions but who rarely find notice in the media. Those mentioned below have all served time in jail for non-violent drug offenses and live day-to-day to fuel their drug habits. Here is a slice of life from the afternoon of April 21, 2013. The outsider noted is me.

A woman approaches on the sidewalk from the direction of the expressway, a bag on her shoulder. She walks stooped. It’s heavy. She approaches a familiar outsider, asks for money. The woman’s been trying to sell clothes all morning, to sell them anywhere, to anyone, and hasn’t had any luck. The woman puts her head in her hands. The outsider takes the bag, walks with the woman the spans of a large block.

Under an alcove, another woman calls out to the pair. She’s dressed in baggy clothes borrowed from a man and has a thin metal stick in her hair, stowed behind her ear. She stays under the alcove, doesn’t move much behind glassy eyes, but smiles. The stick’s for safekeeping, she says.

It’s been a while since she’s seen anyone from the neighborhood, months and months. Now, the stick woman has a double piercing through her chin and matted hair and a waxy face. She tells the woman with the heavy bag that the outsider has white magic. The outsider has heard this before, months ago, when the stick woman spoke of voices — ones that no one else seemed to hear — that would save the world from death. The woman with the heavy bag waves the outsider on. “She looks awful.”

The woman with the stick in her hair: Sunshine. Photo from February 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

The walk continues but the pair stops after another few minutes. The outsider gives the woman $6. The woman needs $4 more. Maybe she can make do with $3. The pair doubles back — the stick woman is gone — and stops at a shop with an apartment above it. The apartment window is open, sheer curtains yellowing and blurring the view inside. It’s windy. The woman yells a name up into the window. A face appears, then a motion with a single index finger.

The pane of the door where the man-who-wants-to-be-a-woman emerges is cracked in a sideways V and resealed with off-white adhesive. The door itself, smooth, has no handle and requires pushing. The woman with the heavy bag greets the man-who-wants-to-be-a-woman as a woman. A woman she is, here.

The man-who-wants-to-be-a-woman: Michael. Photo from August 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

The two women argue on the sidewalk, who has what to buy where mid-afternoon. The first woman, the one with the heavy bag, is dope sick. Does the second woman have $4? Does it look like she has $4? The second woman gestures to her sweatpants and makeup-less face.

Despite her sickness, the first woman decides to work. It’s awful because a dry mouth makes giving a blow job difficult. She uses a cell phone, calls somewhere for 4 bags of somethings. Words under veils. She needs $40. The second woman scurries around the corner and returns a few minutes later with a man wearing too-blue crisp jeans. The first woman and the man walk off together. Business.

The second woman and the outsider sit on a sidewalk tree’s shin-tall fencing to wait.

The second woman catches the outsider up on a few things: the apartment has a new woman roommate (one paying $100 a week for a room, but who isn’t home now because she’s staying in a hotel with her new man — now that her boyfriend’s in jail — because the apartment doesn’t have hot water).

The new woman roommate: Takeesha. Photo from August 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

On Thursday the first woman was punched by the official apartment tenant who now lives away in Red Cross-provided housing after the fire. Also, the apartment no longer has electricity. Even the apartment above, the burnt-out one, where they were stealing electricity by way of spooled-out extension cords, had power cut because the landlord isn’t likely paying the bill now that he’s in jail for drug trafficking.

The second woman wonders if she has a blood infection. She’s had them before and has been tired lately. She’s up to 12 bags of dope a day, an attempt to otherwise not think about her declining health. Yes, $120 every day and isn’t that a lot of money.

A drunk woman walks by with a woman in a floral dress. Floral dress has lip liner outlines darker than her lips. Drunk woman has an Absolut bottle jutting from her bag and wears black suede platform heels with tassels. The shoes kill. She drinks from her Absolut and says she wants to find a half-decent man. She had a decent one for 19 years but then he went and died. She was lucky once and maybe that’s all she gets. She tilts her head at a strange man in a Hawaiian shirt walking by, making a face to be sexy. She stands up to follow him and blows kisses to the outsider.

The drunk woman: DeShawn. Photo from February 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Floral dress goes the other way. The second woman said if you didn’t know Floral dress, you might think she was a normal person going to church on a Sunday.

The woman in the floral dress: Pepsi. Photo from August 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

A very pregnant woman nears with a little girl toddler. The toddler has sparkly hoops through pierced ears and pink pearls around her neck. She hides from the two strangers. The second woman asks the pregnant woman if Vice was still bad out, or if she caught a date today. The pregnant woman says it’s still bad and leads the toddler, who plays with faux buckles on her miniature shoes, away by the hand.

The pregnant woman: Sarah. Photo from July 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

A woman with a bangs-mussed wig waves and yells from down the block. She wears pajama pants adorned with miniature skulls tucked into black winter boots, a tight vest covering her chest, belly button bare. She has a mini bottle of vodka and asks to use a phone to call for a bag of something, like the first woman. The wig woman’s husband is in jail, but that’s ok because he gave her a concussion the other day. She doesn’t care how he’s doing. He deserves whatever lockup brings. The wig woman talks of an apartment where she stays down the street, shows a key made into a bracelet on her wrist.

She leaves to trace the voice on the other end of the phone.

The woman with the wig: Egypt. Photo from December 2012. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

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At the apartment, the outsider becomes immaterial.

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Up, one flight, then double-back on another, into a door. A man sleeps on an L-shaped couch, bare chested, cartoon tiger racing on his pajama pants. On a neighboring couch a woman sleeps, shuttering her eyes to look at the door when it opens. On the left lies an entry to a bedroom, one able to fit a child-sized bed but no more, which it did, once.

The man with tiger pants: Jose. Photo taken April 2013. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Inside now, the man who wants to be a woman sits on a floor-made pallet bed. Cigarette smoke lines up from the Newport in her hand, plumes and drifts. Two women come in, one harried, with heavy bags, the other styled with a black belt the width of a palm.

The harried one hands over tiny squares to the woman on the pallet. The pallet woman has needles waiting. She says not to be a baby and shoots for the harried woman. Harried is new at it, taught only two weeks beforehand.

The harried woman with heavy bags and the woman on the pallets (left to right): Brenda and Michael. Photo from April 2013. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Pallet finds a remaining vein on her own arm, cinches above the elbow with the drawstring of a NYC Marathon Finishline Recovery bag pulled from a brown box. Brown boxes and suitcases are everywhere people aren’t. Someone get Pallet a tissue in one of those boxes, her arm’s bleeding. She can’t get the vein. Belt paints her nails, silver.

Crack emerges from hidden folds of clothes once heroin’s done. Harried needs a stem. Someone give her a stem. Belt has one wrapped in tissue in her vagina, but she’s doing her nails. Can someone else get it? Belt stands. Harried does too, and undoes Belt’s belt. Pants down, Harried extracts the stem and puts it to her mouth. Belt blows on her nails and tells Harried to hurry up, quick, smoke. The stem passes from Harried’s mouth to Pallet’s to Belt’s.

The woman from the couch enters, seeking heroin. Pallet promises, later, later. Sleep now, Couch. Tiger pants sleeps on.

The woman on the couch: Rachel. Photo from April 2013. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

With the stem in her hand, Belt says she’s clean, kind of. She only relapsed yesterday, and it’s just crack, she could quit if she really wants. She lives in the shelter, where she has fellow residents take photos of her posing, photos where she’s pressed against walls, in primary-colored berets and tops that match. She was prettier back then, but she has lupus now. She pulls up her shirt to show how the red eats her body. Her body: patchworked sores, and her shoulder, a deep Valentine’s bouquet. She points to hot spots on her cheeks. Belt feels like she’s on fire.

The woman with the palm-width belt: Jackie. Photo from April 2013. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Harried curses and tells Couch and Belt to get the fuck out of the house. Get the fuck out now. She droops like a leaning flower and sorts through the bag of pants she was trying to sell on the street corner, in search of something she isn’t able to name or remember. Belt and Pallet call Harried crazy.

The harried woman with heavy bags: Brenda. Photo from April 2013. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Pallet cleans the room — she has to clean now, why doesn’t anyone understand– stepping over Belt on the suitcase and Harried on the floor. The room doesn’t get cleaner.

Belt shows a video from her smartphone that someone took in the shelter. In the screen, she pouts her lips, juts her hips. Belt blows her nails, replaces the stem in her vagina.

Harried uses Pallet’s body spray on her neck. It smells like vanilla. Belt takes it, spritzing herself and the outsider’s hair before dropping the bottle in her purse when she thinks no one’s looking.

The man with the tiger pants sleeps on while the woman on the couch rises.

The smoking, shooting friends trail downstairs and disperse without speaking on the sidewalk.

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Different Takes on the 2013 National Drug Strategy:
Drug Policy Alliance
NewsOne
The Hill

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A year since I met her, Beauty smokes more K2 (a synthetic cannabinoid) than she ever has, about three to four packs a day, joint after joint, against the low concrete wall facing traffic.

For Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, she was in jail. Before that, a day’s worth used to be a half pack. Today, she empties all of her money on the grubby brown-green clumps inside shiny foil, $30 – $40 earned daily by taking rides, or walks, with men. To sleep, she stays with a friend in the neighborhood, fed by friends too.

A few weeks ago, Beauty went to jail again for several days, scooped up by patrols, on a misdemeanor prostitution charge. There she felt sick without K2, time spent huddled in her bunk or causing enough fights to get automatic solitary — the bing — next imprisonment.

“I felt like a junkie, like I was addicted to heroin or some shit. It was horrible.”

When the Department of Corrections released her, Beauty found her drug. All better.

Beauty released from jail the first time: Bronx. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Still, the feeling scared her, reminded her of her mom: a crack addict who gave birth to Beauty in an Oklahoma prison. The 22-year-old hasn’t considered K2 anything to worry about (and still doesn’t, mostly), though she stays away from the “hard drugs,” crack and heroin, because of what she saw growing up. She knows how those destroy people, families.

In her mind, as in much of the public’s, K2 is something different. Legal, sold over the bodega counter. Just something to make you trip a little on the neighborhood’s main street, to make you slur and lose your words where grey sidewalk meets grey wall.

Background
“Spice” and other herbal blends were marketed in Germany until January 2009 as substances purportedly exerting similar effects to cannabis, yet containing no cannabinoids. These products were recently forbidden in Germany under the provisions of the German Narcotics Law after they were found to contain undeclared, synthetic cannabinomimetic substances. The authors describe physical withdrawal phenomena and a dependence syndrome that developed after the consumption of “Spice.”

Case presentation and course
A 20-year old patient reported that he had smoked “Spice Gold” daily for 8 months. He developed tolerance and rapidly increased the dose to 3 g per day. He felt a continuous desire for the drug and kept on using it despite the development of persistent cognitive impairment. His substance use led him to neglect his duties in his professional training position. Urinary drug screens were negative on admission to the hospital, as they were again on discharge. On hospital days 4–7, he developed inner unrest, drug craving, nocturnal nightmares, profuse sweating, nausea, tremor, and headache. His blood pressure was elevated for two days, with a maximal value of 180/90 mm Hg accompanied by a heart rate of 125/min. The patient stated that he had experienced a similar syndrome a few weeks earlier during a phase of abstinence owing to a short supply, and that it had quickly subsided after he had started consuming “Spice” once again.

Conclusions

The authors interpret the symptoms and signs described above as a dependence syndrome corresponding to the ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria for this entity.*

Beauty one year later: Hunts Point. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Beauty’s done no other major drugs and doesn’t drink. Still, she works a street circuit, nighttimes, for her fix, a dependence she never meant to get, one about which she didn’t know to worry.

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Background:
Drugmonkey. “Synthetic Marijuana, K2, Spice, JWH-018 And, You Guessed It, Dependence.” Scientopia.org. N.p., 17 Feb. 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.

* Zimmermann, Ulrich S., PhD Dr. Med, Patricia R. Winkelmann, Max Pilhatsch, and Josef A. Nees, Dr. Med. “Withdrawal Phenomena and Dependence Syndrome After the Consumption of “Spice Gold”" Deutsches Arzteblatt International 27th ser. 106 (2009): 464-67. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 3 July 2009. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.

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I suspect this will be something of an annual post for me — this is why I do what I do.

Post highlights from the past year:
Crack and a burned-down house
A life lived in sewage, for heroin
How an addict becomes homeless
Withdrawal on my couch
Speedballing
Shooting up at Thanksgiving dinner
Meeting the parents, a trip home
Addiction on the streets: FAQ

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This post was the start of a collaborative narrative series composed of my writing and Chris Arnade’s photos exploring issues of addiction, poverty and prostitution in Hunts Point, Bronx. For more on the series, look here.

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Original publication, April 11, 2012:

For the past month, I’ve spent several late-nights exploring the South Bronx, in an area renowned in local circles for its prostitution and addiction, and in an overall sense, one forgotten and ignored by the surrounding NYC metropolitan area. Hunts Point is a peninsula, literally across the railroad tracks from passerby on the Bruckner Expressway, home to the police precinct with the worst rate of violent crime in the city. However, what I’ve found with photographer Chris Arnade, frequenting many a sidewalk, bodega, liquor store and on a particularly memorable occasion, a strip club, is a vibrant, unique New York community.

I first went to Hunts Point in the Bronx as an interest lark, contacted by Chris who invited me to go along. I saw the photos on his blog, read the stories on addiction but still gave little thought (to my retroactive shame) on what I was actually getting myself into. Now I’m involved in the long-term project and series, parts of which I’ll post here.

Why post stories of addiction and personal travails on Scientific American? It’s cursory to scientifically recognize heroin as a depressant and crack as a stimulant, far deeper to see the sensitivity and empathy in heroin addicts, the edginess in crack addicts. When talking to crack addicts, you can feel the chord of volatility, the twinge of paranoia and distrust on the edges — can you conceive this in a scientific journal? (Yes, the drugs of choice in Hunts Point are crack and heroin.)

Science is obsessed with mechanism, so much so that the human element is often shoved aside, missed along the track of neurochemicals and frontal lobes, even though that’s what they themselves describe– the forest for the trees. In my last post, I received a hefty mix of feedback, some outlandishly negative, including an array of bitter emails: “Science belongs in Scientific American.” It’s the people who matter, which is why we talk about science. Context, in this case social context, gives rise to the need for science — the context is the people who are affected by the devastation of addiction. I care about science for its humanity, and I think those who equally care about the field should glance back and remember the reason for their study.

I’ve restarted this post at least 10 times. Write a paragraph, erase. Write again, erase. When Chris asked what I gleaned from my first few visits to Hunts Point, I gave something I presume to be the dim-witted or easy transmission of my mental fog. I had no idea what I had learned. I had learned too much, perhaps, a writer who can’t write through the swirling storm of emotion and experience.

After reflection, I can say this: positive spirits shine through and exist everywhere, beyond what I ever thought possible; some portions of the population aren’t given the chance to escape turmoiled confines; we give credibility and platforms to some types of addicts (the prescription drug abusers and alcoholics of the world) far more than others.

I’ve been to Hunts Point five times now and have spent a good portion of nights there. I briefly jotted this personal catalog after my first night in the Bronx, when I was reflecting in the moment on what I had just experienced of street prostitution and drug use, which was a marked departure from my usual mellow keel:

I know I smoked more cigarettes than I have in my life, both during and after. I know I lied down in my shower after returning and remained there, curled immobile, for some time. It [Hunts Point] felt akin to having my insides turned upside down — and I know how selfish it is to say how I was affected by a few hours in the neighborhood when this is a daily reality for many.

Shaken, helpless: me, not them.

The point: the lab knows but a modicum of addiction, in the end. People live the rest of it.

Since then, I’ve returned to Hunts Point, seeking the stories of unique, colorful people who have a straightforward, in-your-face addiction. No, they don’t have Oxycontin dispensed from their general practitioner or a taste for expensive wines, but they do self-medicate like the rest of America.

Science in all its empiricism should see the world and what it studies for what it is — beautiful, pained, troubled and triumphant.

We have enough people covering scientific papers and enough covering science factoids. What we need, and I won’t pretend to say I have the perfect answer, is how science is relevant in our daily lives, struggles and triumphs.

Addiction is a case study in struggles. This is a slap of a reminder of WHY we do science and WHAT we are helping. I will still report upon science news, but I’ll also tear through stereotypes and lend a light to communities and stories, which I think in many ways we need far more than mere news.

These are the human faces to your synapse, neurotransmitter and amygdala coordination, or lack thereof.

I’m proud to be on Scientific American, but I stand true to the people first, the people for whom I write in the first place.

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Here are few of the people I’ve been lucky to meet so far, photos courtesy of Chris Arnade (click on a name or photo to get more of a story on Chris’s flickr site):

To see the photos, please click here to navigate to my original post, where they are embedded.

The collection is fast-paced and interesting, jumping from one nugget to the next, tackling the public’s sweeping questions affixed to addiction today: how do gambling and shoplifting fit into the addiction model? Is there such thing as marijuana withdrawal? What’s up with bath salts? The questions posed and Hansen’s subsequent explorations are concise, supported by evidence, and brave in scope.

The author relates the real life to the scientific, noting his own struggles with addiction, yet doesn’t get bogged down in personal tales. Rather, the writings use life tidbits as a jumping off points for scientific explanation and an overarching discussion of addiction’s media landscape.

A sampling of included posts (there are 73 posts in the volume, I counted):
Impulsivity and Addiction
Heroin in Vietnam: The Robins Study Reexamined
The Biology of Stimulants, or Why You Can’t Stay High All the Time

The posts, too, deftly touch on topics upon which I normally write, those affecting addicts in further marginalized communities — drug treatment in prisons, America’s needle exchange and research’s impact on addiction stigma among them. It’s hard info-packed science with a reader-centric eye, a refreshing read from pseudoscience and memoir-based addiction commentary. Buy it.

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Roland: Hunts Point. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Roland’s new to drugs and the street life at 21 — his first lockup (possession misdemeanors, a felony sale charge), non-violent offenses. He did time in Rikers Island jail before choosing a deal: a stint in a long-term residential drug rehabilitation facility in exchange for sentence time. He chose the deal over jail, entering into substance abuse treatment in Brooklyn. A couple of months in, he left treatment one afternoon and returned to the South Bronx. He was rearrested on the street the next morning and taken back to Rikers, back to jail with no treatment.

Five Months Earlier

Roland in the squat: Hunts Point. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Roland climbed over a stained, bare mattress on the third floor of the “squat,” an abandoned house with no electricity or plumbing, a dwelling with eroding floors and drywall dust caked over everything. Within the pile of clothing heaped on one side of the room, between cast-aside books and syringe wrappers, Roland’s hand disappeared and reappeared clutching a tiny jacket. The heroin-glazed man shook the material on a hanger, grinning. “Look what I got for my son.”

It was a thing sized for a toddler, black with puffed, down-filled sleeves and chest. The material looked shiny, new.

He toted it around the room, inched it near his visitors’ faces.

He would see his son soon — he had regular visits. The normally quiet man became a talker. “You should come see my son. When can you come? I see him on Saturdays.”

After talk of his son, silence.

Months Earlier

Roland hefted trash out from under the bridge, sorting and keeping the good stuff, the only resident who would keep the space neat besides Michael. He lived there, under the bridge, he and a handful of others. He silently collected garbage for removal, did his tasks, found his morning drugs the night before. A responsible tenant.

When someone crawled by in the tight space, he would scoot over, nodding. He would help someone find a hit if she was curled-up dope sick. Courtesy and, more than that, kindness.

Even Earlier

Roland spent his adolescence in a Brooklyn group home, after his mother died of a heroin overdose. Eventually, he signed himself out of the teen residence and found drugs on the streets, specifically a heroin habit he promised himself he would never acquire because of his mom.

He had been in Hunts Point just over a year then, homeless.

Earliest, the First Time We Met

“I have potential but I don’t know how to use it,” he said. Hands in pockets, head down.

Now

Roland lags in Rikers Island jail, a fragment of rehab behind him, the streets to re-envelop him moving forward.

Roland and his tattoos: Hunts Point. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

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Opiate withdrawal refers to the wide range of symptoms that occur after stopping or dramatically reducing opiate drugs after heavy and prolonged use (several weeks or more).

Opiate drugs include heroin, morphine, codeine, Oxycontin, Dilaudid, methadone, and others.¹

Charlie‘s shoulders are cast square, her form solid, known, enhanced by an oversized jacket. Or at least it used to be. Charlie’s been on opiates for 25 years, last month marking the first time in remembrance that she’s been off the drugs. For a while it was heroin, then, for years, methadone for maintenance. (Cocaine has always been more her thing, the sharp buzz of stimulants reaffirming the edge she needs on the streets.) She began snorting heroin as a teen in a rough neighborhood.

Charlie: Hunts Point. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Today, her face is gaunt, her skin paler than before. She moves slowly now, with more care, as if she doesn’t want to dislocate or startle a piece of her body. It’s a slowness that’s more than a result of her prison environment* — she’s been there before, behind wrap-wire fences and thick walls.

The other times, though, one of her girls had snuck her drugs, ferrying opiates sewed into packages of clothes. A privilege of being a pimp, perhaps. This prison is further away from her usual city lockup, in Westchester County, about an hour drive from the city, and her girls don’t have cars. And so, she’s detoxing without medication, laying in bed day in and out, sleeping little out of discomfort, unable to concentrate on anything more than not getting sick. The first time in 25 years.

About 9% of the population is believed to misuse opiates over the course of their lifetime, including illegal drugs like heroin and prescription pain medications such as Oxycontin.

These drugs can cause physical dependence. This means that a person relies on the drug to prevent symptoms of withdrawal. Over time, greater amounts of the drug become necessary to produce the same effect.

The time it takes to become physically dependent varies with each individual.

When the person stops taking the drugs, the body needs time to recover, and withdrawal symptoms result. Withdrawal from opiates can occur whenever any chronic use is discontinued or reduced.

Charlie just wants to sleep again.

Early symptoms of withdrawal include:

* Agitation
* Anxiety
* Muscle aches
* Increased tearing
* Insomnia
* Runny nose
* Sweating
* Yawning

Late symptoms of withdrawal include:

* Abdominal cramping
* Diarrhea
* Dilated pupils
* Goose bumps
* Nausea
* Vomiting

It’s more than her presence of notice that’s diminished, crumbled under something. Her attention blinks in and out, better when talking about the streets, something that seems so far away. Wondering how her girl is, how her little brother, the one she haphazardly raised as a teen after the deaths of her parents, fares back in the South Bronx.

People withdrawing from methadone may be placed on long-term maintenance. This involves slowly decreasing the dosage of methadone over time. This helps reduce the intensity of withdrawal symptoms.

Michael after detox: Astoria. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Michael’s been on heroin for five years straight, having detoxed himself during a prison stint. After a recent self-selected detox, a life-change attempt, he inched around my couch, the master of six pillows. Nothing soft enough to ease his body aches, Tylenol taken in excess. He, too, wanted to sleep, having been sent from detox with no follow-up medication. That’s what eventually broke him, the pain and discomfort.

The biggest complication is return to drug use. Most opiate overdose deaths occur in people who have just withdrawn or detoxed. Because withdrawal reduces your tolerance to the drug, those who have just gone through withdrawal can overdose on a much smaller dose than they used to take.

He’s overdosed in a Starbucks bathroom before, and in a McDonald’s, too. He woke up later in the hospital, having fallen over after shooting and begun to twitch. But that was two times, and the damage from an OD was short lived. The pinpricks of withdrawal pain, however, last much longer.

It’s almost not worth it to get off, they think, despite their bodies needing more and more to feel good.

Those withdrawing from opiates should be checked for depression and other mental illnesses. Appropriate treatment of such disorders can reduce the risk of relapse. Antidepressant medications should NOT be withheld under the assumption that the depression is only related to withdrawal, and not a pre-existing condition.

Michael’s been diagnosed with a mood disorder, the heroin helping him to stay away from extreme upset and anger flashes.

For Charlie, it’s a decades’ old relic that lingers.

Both move forward, or backward, in flinches and spurts.

*Charlie was arrested while answering a court summons for 10-year-old nonviolent drug offenses. She’s now serving two years in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security prison.

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¹ Zieve, David, MD, David R. Eltz, and Eric Perez, MD. “Opiate Withdrawal: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia.” Medline Plus. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 23 Jan. 2012. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
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So, graduate school. Cassie has asked me multiple times to write an anonymous guest post on this, so, since it is a science and addiction blog, “here goes nothin’!”

What does a typical STEM graduate student want out of this micro-career of frugality? Frankly, it varies; not far or wide, though. There are students who have ambitions that are exclusive in individual industries, and don’t consider themselves marketable in those respective industries without letters further than those of a Bachelor’s following their moniker.

And then: there are the true believers, among which I consider myself. It’s hard to admit, but anyone telling you that they are doing cancer research because they care about saving the human race is completely full of shit. The true believers fall into one category: we are addicts. Bad ones. Nearly everything about our personality involves excess and addiction. Every day that we generate data, we are the first people in the WORLD to know something. Something that might just DIRECTLY save someone we know and love. Such a train of thought borders on megalomaniacal. We are not chastised and criticized for being addicts, yet we are. Nearly every STEM student would read my preceding paragraph and somewhere, even in their deepest subconscious, knowingly nod their head.

My story echoes this addiction. And I continue to be such an addict. I pursued science from the start, despite receiving offers for multiple art scholarships. It was KNOWLEDGE I truly wanted. Truth or Death. And I’m not exaggerating when I say the pursuit of truth has nearly killed me in multiple occasions and places. Heavy equipment in bad conditions, falls from ledges, etc. etc. But, I will betray the deadliest of all below.

Academia is out to get you. It is designed to do its best to make you fail. It can make your life hell. Here is my story: I have PTSD. I sure didn’t know it until it almost killed me. Three times, at last count. The stress of graduate school as a STEM student brought on depression and anxiety, a fairly well documented phenomenon. Now add an advisor that you dearly love, trust and respect, BUT is an old school Ivy League graduate bad-ass who reminds you of your abusive father in temper and capability of anger. Guess what? That’s PTSD trigger number one. Number two? The funding deadline. Despite storied students of yore taking up to a decade to finish, the current economy is not nearly so kind. You get 5-7 years to get shit done and get the fuck out. And, if you’re REALLY lucky, health insurance (don’t get your hopes up, kids, it’s about as rare as hen’s teeth in STEM graduate programs). Number 3? Public speaking. It has put me in the hospital. Literally. In the mother fucking hospital. All in the name of Science. Or, rather, more correctly, the illusion of science that is actually simple, yet evolved, tradition in disguise.

Before being diagnosed with PTSD, I had already seen a school therapist. I tried to hide my self-medicating with sips of the hardest liquor in America, but to no avail. One morning I ran out. I decided to chug a Red Bull, take a long shower and let the worst be done and over with. One small problem: there are a very few amount of drug types that withdrawing from can be a death sentence. Alcohol is just such a drug. Within 12 hours of my last sip, there were black and white movies playing behind my eyelids. I ended up in the hospital with REAL delirium tremens. Yeah, not the shakes normal people call the “DTs”, this was actual, real siezures, feeling a spider that isn’t there bite the top of your head. Every white noise (think hard about how many you hear in your day) becomes a song from the Lawrence Welk era. Unfortunately, no pink elephants.

As much as it pains me to say it, graduate school is a crucible intended to break you. And as it evolved, it has evolved to be very adept at just that. And yes, I’m happy about that. Who do you want working on those cancer drugs? To quote Carl Sagan: “self-correcting, ever-changing, with this tool we vanquish the impossible.” Who do you want swinging the hammer, so to speak? Of course not a drunk that ends up in the hospital, but ponder this:

Do you think I knew I had PTSD or anxiety doing group assignments and sleeping until noon on a Wednesday? Of course not (although I did hold 3 jobs at one point, just to stay enrolled as an undergraduate). Now, after almost 11 years of below minimum wage living, learning the new misery and bane that is a panic attack, learning how to fail, AND that I had PTSD on top of all that, I face the edge of the cliff that is the real world. Was it worth it? It was like any other addiction: you see yourself at your worst, you lose relationships, there are a few good stories involved, and you end up with a LOT of regrets. That’s my confession and my STEM graduate school story. And why I give addicts in all shapes, sizes, stages and condition their due credit.

Because we don’t like to talk about addiction, a single story perpetuates. The one where the addict should choose better but doesn’t. But addiction isn’t a world with a fixed narrative. It has threads, black and sticky, that web and and reach out to run through lives, surprising and fragmenting them. It’s among the loneliest of diseases, effects, choices and strain difficult to explain to those uninvolved. As someone once asked me, “what else has the strength to separate mother and child?”

Addiction isn’t yet a full-frontal issue of national public health. It will be. Other countries are currently doing it better (sorry, U.S.). It’s something we, as the public, need to address. To begin, we need to talk about it more and understand why perception change matters so much. It matters because of all the people addiction affects.

In light of that, I will share stories, stories of family and individual and public and private. We have wonderful writers like Dirk Hansen, David Kroll, and Maia Szalavitz who discuss issues and mechanics of drug science. But I’m after the humanity, stories of rich, poor and in between.

A woman whose love for her lost daughter urges her to work to save others, a man who became a leading scientist after coming back from near-death alcohol abuse and withdrawal, a car company executive with a penthouse in Times Square who once could barely function from pills. A homeless heroin addict who felt effects of withdrawal on my couch, a woman despairing after a hit of crack was lost in a McDonalds bathroom. Late-night notes from a woman who reaches children of addicts (after having grown up in a home riddled with addiction-based abuse), and a blog written through the mail by a man not allowed technology in rehab. Each of these people and their paths, and the many more I’ve been honored to encounter, astound me.

After many years, I’m now able to say I’ve been hurt terribly by the disease of addiction. I can, in a quiet voice, tell you that it’s ripped me apart and set a course for my life — writing and discussing addiction — that I don’t think I would have wanted otherwise. That the past year, detailing and trailing the lives of street addicts full time, has all but done me in. But that’s what addiction does to those it touches: it smothers the good and dredges up moralities and makes you question yourself, looking for someone to blame.

I believe that stories, that the anthropology and psychology of addiction, change minds, derail stigma and, in a small way, heal. Addiction isn’t what you think it looks like. It doesn’t always grab who you expect.

There are those who recover. There are those who function. There are those who don’t. There is trying. There is stumbling. There is trying again. It is a land of extremes. On the other side of a disease of great darkness, though, in the hope for recovery, there is a force of great love. Love and faith that someone has for her family, her friends and, ultimately, for herself. Irrepressible.

I write about addiction because I hold fast to the belief that people need to hear it. That those touched by it are not so alone, that a struggling friend or family member isn’t a fiend, that addiction isn’t an issue of morality, right or wrong. It’s an issue of public health, one we need to recognize and give voice to.

Why? Because people are worth it. Here, I simply quote a poem from Tatiana, a young woman struggling with heroin dependency:

What does the disease of addiction mean to you?
It means we’re strong to still be standing after
all we’ve been through.
It means we’re wise, if we learn from our past.
It means we’re innovative — we will find
the means & ways to get what we want.
It means we’re persistent.
…
It means we can do anything
ANYTHING
we want
in this life.

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A little about me: I left science because I missed people, then I later left TV media for the same reason. For the past year, I’ve been half of a photo-documentary project exploring Hunts Point, Bronx, chronicling, among other things, issues of addiction in extreme poverty. Largely because of this community, I now teach science in South Bronx public school, and I write, always.

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In late January, Michael traveled with his friend Pepsi, Chris and I to visit his parents in upstate NY. Both Michael and Pepsi are homeless heroin addicts. The italicized are things Michael did or said out of sight from his parents over the course of the trip.

Michael’s stepfather gave him a motorcycle when he was young. Back before, before he was Shelly and she. Michael wrecked it, like he wrecked most things. He hit a tree, a dog, a deer, a mountain. Michael, the boy with excuses. But still, his stepfather tried: tow trucks, pickup trucks, sports.

The span between that childhood and tonight’s dinner was one of 25 years, the interim comprised of drugs, prostitution, calls to and from the police station, failed rehabs and interventions.

Michael searched the car, rabidly turning over objects and spilling out bags. “Shit, Pepsi threw out her crack in the McDonalds bathroom. It was in a tissue. We still have the dope though. We need to make sure it lasts, so we’re not sick on the way back.”

Pepsi smoking crack: en route to upstate NY. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Michael’s stepfather and mother live in a raised mountain home, one they carved into the rocks a few years ago, with heated floors, big rooms and an elevator. The couple owns and operates a towing company in their tiny Northern town, a life’s work.

By contrast, Michael lives homeless in Hunts Point, time spent beneath a bridge or on the sturdiest floor of an abandoned house without electricity or plumbing. A life constantly on the move. Still, wherever he goes, he seems to take in others, giving them shelter and clothing, sharing the food he steals, the persona of a caretaker, a mother.

Michael shot up dope in the bathroom, pulled up the sleeve of his sweater for a vein, the only usable one left, the one inside his left forearm. “When I was little, I always used to play Store and be the mom. Ha.” He licked away the stray blood leaking down.

“Michael never did an honest day’s work in his life,” Michael’s stepdad said, gruff words paired with kind eyes if they met yours, which they often didn’t.

At a diner, Michael and Pepsi disappeared for 45 minutes, enjoyment found in equally dividing a bag of heroin in a closed-off bathroom. When they returned, Michael stole packets of grape jelly and Sweet ‘N Low, all his pockets could hold. “I wouldn’t take the waitress’s tip. Are you kidding me?”

When he was young, Michael dreamed of being a surgeon and went to costly lengths to protect his hands. At least, that’s why he told his parents he couldn’t do any outdoor work for the company. He was a bright kid, one that could sneak out of tasks with a sly word or loophole.

Around the house, between Mickey Mouse trickets and Nutcracker collectibles, hang photos of Michael’s sisters’ graduations, weddings and families. Michael’s photos were easily spotted, the ones yellowed from the 1970s and 80s, not fresh, computer-spat white like the others. His images exist only as relics of childhood, life development stunted when he ran away at 15. There was one recent snapshot of Michael, photo shot in the jail parking lot with his mom: his release day, 2004.

Michael and his mom present day: upstate NY. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Over the hum of a “Two and a Half Men” TV episode and homemade spaghetti, his stepfather, Eddie, looked up from the head of the dinner table. “He always has an excuse. He can’t blame other people for his mistakes.”

“I do want to get clean, but it has to be on my time and on my terms,” Michael said. “It has to feel right.”

The problems, his parents noted, began with Michael discovering a different form of sexuality, when he started to like boys and wanted to dress the way girls did. The drugs and addiction followed suit.

“When I was 13, I used to go hang out with my friend who was a stripper in the next town over, next to all the car dealerships. I loved it.”

His mom believes he could get clean if he straightened the rest of his life out, that is, find happiness as a heterosexual man.

“I like being a woman and prostituting. I don’t want to stop. I’m good at it, and I like the thrill.”

Michael was once clean for a seven-year stint, back in the early 2000s. His parents set him up with a rehabilitation center in Manhattan after his release from jail, where, by nature of being incarcerated, he had been through a forced detox. It stuck for a while, until he found Hunts Point and its heroin.

“I hate the drugs. It’s a choice to live like he lives,” his mom said. “The first time he relapsed broke my heart, the second time shattered it, the third time I couldn’t even find all the pieces to put it together.”

Eddie’s speech on the subject was quiet, rare and measured, words of a man whose philosophy was built upon hard work, providing for many loved ones, for kids not even his. Michael’s father had left when the kids were small. Eddie had been there through it all.

Though he wasn’t sure Michael had ever been truly clean, he felt that if his stepson had been once, he could do it again. The barrier: Michael’s excuses.

“If I get clean, I could work in a laundromat. I like folding clothes. And on the side, Cassie, you could be Pepsi and I’s madam. What do you think? We could pay you $500 each a month to bring dates to your apartment. And Queens isn’t Hunts Point, we don’t know how to get drugs easy there.”

“I’ll always have hope for him and will always pray for him. He’s my baby boy,” his mom said. “And the way he is, Michael will always be a child.”

“I love my mother and my stepfather, but they don’t understand what it’s like. I could never wear my tits in front of them. But that’s okay, they’re good people.”

Weeks Later

Michael had been through a seven-day detox, and an appointment awaited him at an in-patient rehab facility after an eventful three-day gap period. He applied and removed mascara only to reapply because it looked bad. He scrubbed counters and boiled water. He hauled clothes out of an abandoned house for storage, lobbing disdain at those helping him.

“I am really stressed out. I’ll be fine as long as I get off the dope, which I want to do, of course. What’s the harm in doing crack in the meantime? I’ll always do crack. Dope’s the problem.”

Michael in relapse after detox: Hunts Point. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Michael didn’t go to rehab. Maybe another time when he feels ready, when he feels as if he won’t disappoint himself and those he loves. He can’t do that again.

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Please Read Related: Policy Made Me Involved: We Need a Better Public Health System (Michael’s gap between detox and rehab)
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In the beginning, I said that I was a documentary writer, chronicling stories of addiction in one of the poorest communities in the United States. Strictly situationally based to tell a story, someone else’s story. I’ve been near-obsessed with removing myself from the narrative, an observer but no more. I haven’t, and still don’t, believe in adding myself, an unnecessary figure in an already complicated community’s tale.

Now, though, I wonder. Michael is sitting next to me on my couch as I type, awaiting transition to rehab. A 37-year old transsexual heroin addict who has lived homeless in the Bronx for years.

He was released from a seven-day detox facility on Staten Island yesterday morning, not anticipating a gap before rehab intake on Monday. A full 48 hours of freedom. Michael, like many, has no place to go, no family or friends to take him in. Though treated with suboxone in detox, Michael now has no drugs in his system, prescription or otherwise. His body is a nest of aches, even the smallest movement labored. The last time he detoxed, over 10 years ago, he was in jail and given methadone. Yesterday, he was poised to return homeless to the Bronx, chemically naked for the first time in decades.

Michael clean: Staten Island. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

When we neared Hunts Point, the place he’s called home for years, he began speaking of needles, just one hit of crack to say goodbye. Just one. No more heroin. Just crack. Just a needle in the skin one more time. He was babbling, barely coherent, tearful.

Jarred, we left the neighborhood, the clothes he came to fetch and any notion of his staying there the weekend. To remain clean, Michael wanted and needed to leave. He wanted out but didn’t know where to go. He set up camp at my house, a place without the allure of prescription medication, a different neighborhood where the location of drugs was unknown. And so he’s on my couch. I can’t write this, what I hope to be the story of Michael’s recovery, without including myself.

Policy has made me imbedded because of the few, if any, options the people I cover have, those homeless on the streets of a major city, a city seemingly ill-equipped to cogently deal with conditions of mental health for the disadvantaged. Michael is an adult who wants to get clean but has no place to go. Or, at the least, is unaware of where he could go and lacking the resources — like a phone, a computer, or stable friends or family — necessary to find out.

Over time, I’ve understood: this is the story. We — Michael, Chris and I — are the story. The bad policy and methodology of getting clean without aid, a near impossibility. The beginning of a documentary project that spilled into something akin to social work. My shame, journalistically, of being involved this way. My transition from journalist to writer/advocate/friend/ally.

I’ve spent the last year immersing myself in Hunts Point and have yet to meet anyone on the streets who has begun successful addiction recovery. There’s been no story of independent success, no phoenix rising from the depths of poverty, incarceration and consistent drug use.

Readers sometimes ask, “where are the good stories?” The truth is, there are very few. “Better” is gauged in fits and spurts, in the few days after jail release, or after a stint in rehab. “Better” lasts a few days if someone’s lucky.

There are gaps in the system hindering those who want to make a change, gaps that fuel arrest, rearrest, periods between treatment, continual homelessness. Resources are pebbles in the dark.

I never meant to be involved, but out of compulsory humanity, I’ve had to be.

Michael clean: Astoria. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Now, it’s early Sunday morning. The night was rocky, with both Michael and I scarcely sleeping. Michael periodically begging for methadone or benzodiazepines, spinning occasional romantic sentences about suicide. My half-hearted humor back. “Stop it, Michael, I like my rug and you too much.”

What about a pill, just a little something. It hurts. Is it supposed to hurt? My helpless google attempts at answers: “what to do between detox and rehab nyc.” My tries at coping with his depression, listing what being clean will do. My inability to promise him a sound future or a hopeful trajectory from rehab to a stable life.

In my head, I can at least say that he’s not on the streets, back to what would have been immediate drug use in Hunts Point. That his efforts in detox and his dreams of a new life weren’t wasted. That at least one person might, against the odds, escape the neighborhood.

There is no better judgment here, no staying objective and distanced while retaining compassion. I’ve never wanted to save anyone, only to record. But in a population in such desperate want of a helping hand, only to find one lacking, I can’t stay in a box seat.

Public health policymakers, please take note.

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“Move along if you’re standing here. You don’t need to be standing here getting in the way of business,” said the man exiting the laundromat, neck heavy with chains. He got to the corner, turned to look at the group ignoring him. His left boot slid in the snow, eroding his menace, as he walked away. Drunk, with an edge of a stimulant. The stuff he sold, probably. 1 a.m.

“Go sling your crack somewhere else then,” Michael muttered, pencil-lined lips in a smirk. The group near the storefront didn’t move but stayed under the building’s umbrella of dim fluorescence, made hazy in the chilly night mist.

Michael stepped back and forth, cold in a zip-up sweater. He and his friends had been evicted from an apartment on the block earlier that day, one that was set on fire a few hours after the fact. The fire lit on the top floor, at lip of the stairs. Flames breathed through the wall of the vacant apartment, and water from the fire trucks flooded the two floors below. No one was hurt, just annoyed and stuck standing around.

Water and rubble made into mud trickled down the stairs of the burnt structure, next to the bodega with the plastic lazy susan steadily doling out soda and cigarettes. After hours, customers weren’t allowed inside.

People milled by, glancing into the black of the open building door. Evidence of the fire was all but invisible from the outside, minus a few broken windows and the sodden floors. Even then, it was within the realm of normal, shattered glass and building disrepair commonplace to the street, despite it being the main avenue crossing town.

If pedestrians craned up past the foyer, they could see a light, an orange extension cord trailing through the wet to light a bare-bulbed lamp at the top of the stairs. If they were to climb, they would see flowered wallpaper curled and blackened, handrail spindles dislocated from the floor, thin boards jutting from walls. The owner and tenants shuffled in and out, hefting charred luggage down and a plastic tarp up to cover the gaping roof.

Michael, post-fire. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

The original rumor said Pepsi, a homeless addict and a friend of Michael’s, did it, Pepsi high on crack, smoking on the top landing of the stairs. A gaggle of police officers stood around while a couple of their number held her for questioning. Usually staggered around the neighborhood, the police seemed content to stand together. Company, for once.

Onlookers were few, arrests on the block too numerous. After the police lingeringly dispersed, shrugging off damage and accusations, Pepsi ran off to get high, or so everyone said. Stressed. Her friends set off after her, group mentality intent on teaching her a lesson, though, one-by-one, individual rage crumbled. Other things to do. They weren’t paying rent for the apartment anyway. 1:15 a.m.

Still, at the scene, people stood. A high pimp wandered by to stare too intently, his gaze bleary and unfocused. Six inches away from a face, “I’m $mere. Do you know who I am?” A friend, who professed a career in the music business, grasped his shoulder and steered. 1:40 a.m.

The crack dealer with the chains returned, to saunter in circles or affirm territory. “I am the biggest drug dealer in Hunts Point.” Arms up, voice loud. Michael paused. “Well, it’s true. He does have good crack.” 1:45 a.m.

Mary Alice, a normally talkative heroin addict, passed through, swift with a silent male companion at her side. She had recently moved, a 10-minute drive from the neighborhood, to housing set up by the local homeless shelter. Now she was back, dressed up prettily all in black, stiff with a swagger. Going somewhere. 2 a.m.

A man dubbed “Curly” dragged a tarp from an invisible place around the corner, a thick black snake tripping sidewalk stragglers. He and other neighborhood addicts were paid in crack to help clean and sort debris. 2:10 a.m.

Curly with tarp, post-fire. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

“Clear the sidewalk. Cops will come if they see a group like this. It’s hot out.” Those standing around were once again addressed, this time by a different drug dealer waiting for snacks to cycle through the plastic carousel. 2:15 a.m.

In the distance, a SUV veered into the avenue’s median and banked itself. Smoke and a bad smell permeated as two policemen hustled by, running the opposite direction. 2:20 a.m.

The night continued, activities funneling off in fingers.

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The Fire

The later version of the story had someone related to the building at fault, a man who sold crack to the residents and ran a hidden gambling den, someone who wanted an insurance payment. Other rumors questioned whether the building had insurance, whether the first responders to the fire actually were the ones to set it, and whether or not whoever had set it had been paid off in crack. Everything included crack.

Two days later, Pepsi remained disappeared.

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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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Shooting up, Hunts Point, Bronx. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Measure out a hit of heroin. That’s to kill the withdrawal. To stop the shakes and the nausea you feel every day. So you can move again. So your head loses its hammers. The opiate’s absence is enough to make you cry and move from corner to corner with $10 worth of $1 bills and small change, even with police out. Take to the powder with metal and a flame.

Parcel out the same amount of crack. Cut with citrus. No lumps. Lumps are a vein’s enemy, the heart’s too. Mix with what you cooked. Tremble in anticipation. Don’t miss a vein. Find a good juicy one high up the body, one that hasn’t folded away. Don’t you dare waste by missing. What if they’re crap drugs? Inject.

Doctor your formula over time. Keep life in balance.

Think back to the days when heroin brought pleasure, when it wasn’t your shackle. To feel, combine it with the upper. Tell your brain to rocket up and down at the same time. Tell your heart.

Aim for three minutes of tethered bliss, all you can make happen. Forget your scars for a moment, concepts of family and rent and sexuality and religion.

Feel the loss of the crack. Un-spin. Mourn.

Wait for a few hours, for the heroin to wear off and for immobility and rabid need to creep back again. Think how to game your system. Sleep to stave it off.

—- For Millie, Michael, Egypt, Takeesha, those seeking to feel
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Review:
Leri, Franceso, Stewart, Jane, and Bruneau, Julie. “Understanding polydrug use: review of heroin and cocaine co-use.” Addiction. 98 (2003): 7-22.

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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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Millie, Hunts Point, Bronx. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Millie held up her bottle in the car’s backseat, a small see-through one with a childproof cap, no taller than her pointer finger. “See?” She had gone into the drug building to buy “meth,” methadone, not drugs, before traveling to her mom’s home further away in the Bronx. She’s been trying to ease off heroin for a while.

It looked as if she had bought a shot of medicine.

Methadone, a means to recover from opiate addiction, is something both admired and hated by those suffering from substance dependencies. Some, like Millie, prefer it to other methods of addiction coping, while others do nearly anything to avoid it.

Here’s a bit on how heroin and methadone work from an earlier post:

Despite the desperate want to be rid of the needle, the opiate enslaves parts of the brain’s message transport system. Heroin (a few biochemical processes down) triggers the overproduction of a neurotransmitter in the brain called dopamine, eliciting a euphoria that heroin abusers come to crave. As users become reliant on the drug, the body adapts to the heightened amount of dopamine and seeks what has becomes its normalcy: a raised level of the neurotransmitter. Over time, addicts need more and more of the drug to feel the same initial high, and when off heroin they become “dope sick,” feeling the debilitating drop in dopamine production. The perpetual upping of the drug dosage ante becomes a reckless cycle, both in life and in neural pathways, causing chaos in the brain’s signal transport system.

In Hunts Point, Bronx, addicts like Roland occasionally find themselves court mandated into rehab programs, many of which include methadone treatment, a form of opiate-abuse therapy that stabilizes the amount of dopamine released. After a pattern of opiate abuse, the brain cannot fill the divots of dopamine shortage on its own, and needs a physical crutch to stabilize the neurotransmitter level swings associated with heroin cravings. If such a crutch isn’t found, an addict reaches dope sick withdrawals — nausea, headaches, insomnia. Methadone stops the craving cycle, taking residence in needy receptors that have previously been occupied by heroin and regulates dopamine release. Once taken, methadone blocks heroin’s violent highs and malaise lows.

The trouble is, like most things, methadone can be abused, but also, it must be consistently sought and taken. Patients start with a dosage ranging from double digits to several hundred milligrams then ween themselves off over time, sometimes over a period of years.

Some on the streets find methadone worse than an original heroin addiction, while others find the maintenance system workable. The documentary “Methadonia” interviews those in NYC recovery. For those curious, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to those I speak with every day, an accurate portrayal of life for low-income residents struggling with heroin addiction and recovery. Take a look for the stories.

You can watch in its 88-minute entirety below, or on Netflix Instant.

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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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Michael walked into the bodega, hand at his sternum. Loud inhales, softer exhales. He said it hurt to breathe. He wanted a lift to the hospital.

Two days ago, drug dealers beat him up, guys called Mellow and Snap. Michael owed them $10 and couldn’t pay. Knowing what was coming, he ducked into a corner of a building and covered his face while the two kicked and punched his back and chest.

From then on, when alone in his bedroom, blood laced his spit. That morning, he began to show trouble breathing. He asked to sit instead of stand, and shuffled slowly, in opposition to his usual hurry.

He sought the hospital, despite not having been in a while and his lack of Medicaid benefits.

Before leaving, though, he needed a fix.

The neighborhood wisdom said hospitals don’t offer reprieve for dope sick patients, no methadone or subutex tie-over. A few months earlier, Charlie and her girlfriend Jen were jumped and beaten by a group of men. Bleeding, swollen and concussed, they managed to cop drugs on the way to the ER. “You have to wait at hospitals for hours sometimes.”

Because of his trouble getting around, Michael asked Eric, a former street roommate, to buy heroin for him. Eric was clean, freshly out of detox and careening around the streets, invigorated at the prospect of turning his life around, at staying away from triggers. Still, Michael begged. After a deliberation riddled with gaps of silence, Eric left with the money, an act of selflessness. He knew how it was to be sick.

As Eric returned, the Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) slid out of a black car and pressed him against the wall, searching. Michael shrugged and spoke of karma amidst his laughter, glad he himself wasn’t getting caught.

The police found nothing, as the dealers had been tipped off that cops were around and, thus, weren’t selling. The neighborhood was hot today.

Michael, seemingly immune to his friend’s near arrest and subsequent anger, scurried to a pay phone, inserting coin after coin for another dealer. No answer.

Michael at a pay phone. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

His walk was getting faster, his insistence, more forceful. He wasn’t going to the hospital dope sick. His breathing no longer sounded labored.

He left to find someone, anyone, with heroin.

After a few street sweeps, he reappeared, a pinched cigarette in his lips. He had flattened it like a joint in his anxiety. More names and directives tumbled from his mouth — tents, buildings on certain streets, people in front of certain stores. His face suddenly pinched like the cigarette, tears building. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired. I’m tired. I just want…”

He put his palm to his nose, fingers over his eyes to stifle the tears before regarding the world again.

It took Michael another hour and a half to palm a hit, to find a dealer worth taking the risk of a sale, and for all the effort, the quality wasn’t good. Still, he eased back to himself after shooting, body and personality melding, the ride to the hospital full of jokes.

While navigating buildings and corners, his health symptoms had waned. Now, he speculated: maybe his hepatitis was acting up. He had the European strain, so it never went into remission. But maybe he punctured a lung. He had had collapsed lungs before.

Whatever it was, he dragged on a cigarette outside of St. Barnabas, pinch gone.

Michael outside of St. Barnabas Hospital, Bronx. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.
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Sonya and Eric live in the basement apartment of a three-level row house, a space rented from the drug dealers that dwell above. They were proud to move from their other house, an abandoned one where fence-climbing and casing stairs through the dark were required. To make their $80 in rent each month, the pair does “plumbing work” on the building, though their own foyer and apartment bulk are submerged under several inches of untreated sewage.

Sonya and Eric’s basement apartment entryway. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.
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Half a block away, check for loose ends, untied shoelaces, undone hair. Note the nonchalance in deep breaths and that the Crayola row houses look inviting. Stop at the moss green one. Nod at a supposed-gang member at the upstairs entry. Enter a peeling black iron gate your height.

Yell names. “Erik! Sonya!” Don’t breathe. Notice the mop against the wall. Wonder how long you can take it.
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Sonya and Eric’s foyer. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

The basement itself slopes up at a slight angle, leaving the back bedroom, alone, above liquid level, giving the apartment the appearance of a sinking ship. Even in dry areas, brown liquid stains mar five inches up the wall. Electricity lights the back.

Inside, an exposed pipe wears a necklace of soda tabs as decor, next to a wall boasting a torn piece of black plastic that closely resembles a giant insect. A litter box lies amongst trash below, small for two or maybe more cats, next to an oversized Arm & Hammer cat litter container. The cats, Moba and Boo Boo, don’t adhere well to the litter policy, leaving the apartment speckled with cat waste.

In the bedroom, the walls are bare save for two religious prints, stray needles and tacks. A small TV perches on a shelf at the foot of the double bed, proof to Eric that he and his wife are making better for themselves.

A wall of Sonya and Eric’s bedroom. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

A knock at the door, mid-day on a Sunday, announces a building inspector, there to deem the premises unlivable and to remove the tenants. The basement had a history of violations dating back at least a year. Others had been kicked out before, too. Living conditions were “unfit” — there weren’t proper exits in case of fire. Eric and Sonya needed to leave within the hour.

Eric’s hands became planes sharply waving, refuting the couple’s ability to move on so quickly. They had everything they own here, the TV and cats, and Sonya wasn’t even home.

The visitor spoke of Red Cross options, about how the couple could return to collect items, just couldn’t return to sleep. He then retreated to his car, sitting to wait. The inspector needed the pair to leave to fasten a sign to the door. He saw this kind of thing all the time. He cracked dead cat jokes.

For a few minutes Eric stood alone, hands through his hair to rest on his head, then down to emphasize points with his plane hands. Sonya appeared lugging a cat carrying case, their month-old kitten inside. She had been to the vet downtown. Made tense from her husband’s state, she paused at the edge of the sewage line.

Her eyes touched Eric’s across the apartment length before voice levels erupted, each fighting for the verbal dominance over the other.

Amidst the argument — where to go for the night, what to do with the cats, the likelihood of fooling the inspector, whether they should go to detox — one agreement surfaced. And to meet it, Eric whisked out of the building, off to buy heroin. If they just had an hour, they needed to cop drugs quick.

When he returned, he shot himself up first, in the arm, before turning to Sonya on the bed.

When Eric moved away from his wife, the skin between her knuckles was a taut, white throb. She grasped her wrist to ease the hand’s trembling, though the whole of her body was a tremble. Hunched on the bed, she snagged on the exhale of her sobs until she lost breath. Her face didn’t lose the sob, though. Eric had hit a nerve with the syringe. So much for the ease of the heroin. The dope was more for preventing sickness than for pleasure these days anyhow.

Sonya’s hands, a nerve hit with a syringe. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

They wouldn’t take the Red Cross options. It was likely a scam. They could go to detox, if they figured out what to do with the cats that had become their kids. If no one would steal their stuff in the basement. If they didn’t have to make decisions so fast. Was the hour up yet? What time was it? And so they sat, polarized members of the scene: she overcome, he detached, both immovable.

Sonya and Eric on the bed, post-eviction. Courtesy of Chris Arnade.

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Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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I’ve become more tied to street-level addiction in 2012, and I often get many queries in life and in email– some good, insightful questions, some woefully uninformed and some offensive. It’s odd for one’s thoughts and time to be dedicated to something so out of the mainstream, so here’s my attempt at answering.

Takeesha, a heroin and crack addict and prostitute, and I with a stray cat I later adopted, upon her encouragement.

1. Aren’t you afraid?

Regardless of how many times it’s posed, this question always surprises me. No, I’m not afraid, not in the least. I leave my answer at that. I ask in return: if you carry the disrespect of fear for an area or group of people, how can you expect not to be treated aggressively in kind?

Please see: Statistical Chances of Harm
Drugs Don’t Cause Violence

But you’re a woman.

Yes, I am aware of that. My gender won’t impede me from entering an area. No, I don’t have more fear because of this, but nor am I reckless. I carry awareness for my surroundings, as anyone of any sex should in a new or uncertain environment.

Pimps have tried to recruit me, and johns often try to pick me up. The reality is, women in the area are often asked if they work the streets. Being female allows me to understand this a bit more.

However, as far as personal interactions go, men have respected me far more on the streets of the South Bronx than they have in Midtown Manhattan. They speak to me politely (as opposed to many mid-level finance executives), and I’ve never been groped, unlike in the subway or in Manhattan. I’m harassed much more by men in suits and by hipsters than I am in Hunts Point.

2. Doesn’t seeing addiction on the streets depress you?

No, it shows me how resilient people are, how, as brutal and bleak as life gets, people can find humor and friendship.

3. What have you learned about addiction from being in the Bronx?

Addicts are some of the strongest people I’ll ever meet. I respect those that struggle with addiction enormously.

The vast majority of women who work the streets in Hunts Point have been severely abused by men in their lifetimes. They turn to drugs to deal with their past suffering and the fear, uncertainty and disgust from the sex work. Addiction often (though not always) comes from coping with immense pain — emotional, physical and psychological.

4. Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch something?

See question 1 about respect. Many of those I speak with battle Hepatitis C or HIV/AIDS, and so what?

5. What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you in Hunts Point?

Police harassment.

6. What’s the most danger you’ve put yourself in?

I’ve gone in several gang-controlled drug buildings, upon invitation of a resident.

7. How do you deal with the bad people you meet?

I don’t believe anyone’s truly bad, just as no one’s all good. The innate stereotypes I came harboring have fallen away over time. For instance, however much I could have doubted it, I’ve become close to, and fond of, a pimp. She’s cried on my shoulder, fearing that her little brother might get into her line of work. No one’s one-sided: people are complicated and wonderful.

Charlie, a pimp (left); me; and Jen, her girl (right) outside of Rikers Island jail. Charlie let me wear her sunglasses.

7. What are you doing with all of this?

I’m writing a narrative non-fiction book.

8. What do you hope comes from your time in the Bronx?

I want to reduce the stigma surrounding those who live on the streets and who struggle with addiction. I want people to have a greater awareness of the level and cycle of poverty in America, the entrapment of some communities.

9. What can I do to help?

You can share the story of your addiction. You can temper your fear of poor or drug-ridden communities. You can acknowledge the level of societal judgment that exists for those combating addiction and work to change your own mind and/or others’. You understand that, because of genetic and financial luck, life’s a lot easier for some of us.
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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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Neecy clean. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Neecy had been a lot of things lately: dead from a john’s gunshots, dead with cancer, alive and in a New Jersey detox.

Neecy was the type to jokingly ask, clean and off the streets, if you wanted her to do a sexy pose. She still had it. She would hug long and show you her cross necklace, tell you of the church woman who was sick, the one she was on her way to help. She’d say that’s why she was back in Hunts Point from New Jersey. Plus, she wanted to see the neighborhood. When looking at you (she was the type to look hard), she’d hold you by the arms excitedly, unable to show more teeth.

Two weeks later, she was under a bridge, shooting up in places of her body she had hoped you’d never see again, her face hidden amongst the darkness. She couldn’t go back to her family like this.

Neecy relapsed. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Her triggers, circumstances and situations aiding her relapse, were returning to the neighborhood, seeing the dealers mill on their corners, watching familiar people slip into buildings for thimble-sized plastic baggies. Being around her friends, her street family, those that smoked and shot up. Leaving would mean abandoning her entire life, all that’s familiar. Getting clean would mean giving up everything she had known for years.

Clean meant loneliness.

If only she stayed away, people said. If only.

Friends in the neighborhood called her foolish: she has a family that cares for her in New Jersey, the pillars of support. Eyes lit by cigarettes in the black, they say, “if I had that, I’d be clean.” When shivering on sidewalks, on the way to get a hit, they say, “I wouldn’t be on the street. No way. Quitting ain’t that hard.”

They collect beneath a bridge, among stolen candles and pipe-greased clothes to gossip and say, “I love Neecy, but maybe she’d be better off dead.” They could make a list of how their situations were worse. They had kicked her out of their makeshift space a few days before and hadn’t seen her since. They couldn’t feel bad.

They had heard she stays with Frankie. If Neecy’s there, she’s safe with him. But she must be making money because Frankie doesn’t let people stay for free.

Frankie’s apartment has tall bongo drums and milk. Milk is everywhere: a half-liter of red-capped whole on the floor, a quarter-filled bottle on a table, a near-empty plastic tumbler on the cheap rolling chair. Frankie speaks slow and falls asleep while talking. He’s done a lot of dope. His building is a crack building and his neighbors don’t like him much. He’s been raided and he’s due for another. Every now and then, his heels, standing on the backs of his slippers, crunch heroin syringes scattered on the floor. Neecy’s fine and will be back soon, he says. She just went out.
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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

Hi folks. I am a friend of Cassie Rodenberg (one of the friends that thinks she should have stayed in science). She has let me appear as a guest poster on her White Noise blog, because, I feel, given the events of the last week, it’s time to have a dialogue about mental health. It’s time for people to STOP being afraid to tell someone you have a brain issue. Name me one person who would be afraid to discuss their double bypass or cardiac issue. I dare you.

Personally, I am diagnosed PTSD, general anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and life-threatening panic attacks from blood pressure spikes.

I am also a successful scientist undergoing effective treatment.

The best advice I can give is to see a doctor if you feel nervous or depressed. Even if it feels mild, like a lump in your throat. That was the crux my Facebook post. I want mental health stigmatization to disappear. Not just as an angry sufferer, but to try to do some part, small as it may be. My Facebook thread below (anonymized) follows this introduction.

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Takeesha. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Just before Christmas, Takeesha got a new apartment, one just across the expressway from the streets she works and the drugs she buys.

The 40-year-old had moved from her old home, a fourth floor apartment in an infamous gang-and-drug-infested structure, because she was told to leave. Before that, she lived in an abandoned house operated by a few crack dealers.

This was the nicest place she and her boyfriend Steve had lived in four years.

Inside, her new home was kept neat.

Her small kitchen had a window, working appliances and food — cold cuts, Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch, microwaveable dinners.

In the living room lay a pallet-bed for a friend who had gotten kicked out of the nearby homeless shelter for drug use. An array of suitcases and boxes ran along the living room wall, the top box open and filled with books. Otherwise, the space was bare.

The bedroom had more life: a double bed; a vanity and chair; and a small TV stacked atop a DVD/VCR combo. She and her boyfriend Steve watched the free channels, mostly sports, and action movie DVDs with Denzel Washington. Steve played video games (Tetris derivatives) on his phone. The bed was their lounge and nexus.

And so, it happened that the bed was where Takeesha smoked and shot up. Less than she used to, but still a necessary component of life. A few bags total a day.

She stood next to the vanity to smoke. Steve sat propped on the bed, immersed in his slide-phone game.

After a full hit of crack through the pipe, smoke rising through steel wool mesh, Takeesha exhales only once, languidly over 15 seconds, some coming out in bursts of laughter. She calls it a psychological dependence, the feeling not great anymore. A sickening sweetness smell meanders through the room.

After injecting or smoking it, crack hits the body within 10 to 15 seconds, as opposed to the 10-to-15 minute trajectory of snorted cocaine. The high is brief: 15 minutes on the best of days.

Crack users feel a euphoria.

Takeesha Smoking. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

She has no mania, exhibits no paranoia and carries on with normal conversation. She does another hit and a half. “I act pretty much the same on drugs.” She goes on to speak about work, how regular “dates” are often more dangerous than strangers, how they expect price cuts and harbor jealousy.

Like most under the influence, Takeesha doesn’t realize her different states. For her, though, heroin is the stunner — a couple of hours after the crack, she does three bags. Mixes the white with water, watches the white turn brown; heats it with a tossed-over lighter; slides it up her arm. Each day, she shoots heroin to avoid being physically sick from withdrawal.

The opiate makes her rock backwards and forwards, near-trance, close to a window overlooking the raised 4, 5, 6 trains below. She picks up band aid paper as if in a vat of glue. Questions are answered briefly, eyes crescents, weakly open.

Asked if tired, she shakes her head slowly. It takes about an hour for Takeesha to come down, an hour spent sitting, slowly cleaning up her shooting trash. She comes out hazily and doesn’t remember being apart from herself.

Later, over dinner in a Mexican restaurant, she downs two bottles of Heineken, a rarity. She doesn’t usually drink alcohol. She’s giddy, jumping outside, making schoolgirl references to sex with her boyfriend, demanding a radio station change in the car — what is this shit? — dancing in the backseat. The first time all day she’s appeared happy from a drug, a hollow look at the party girl she might have been.
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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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This year, I invited people from Hunts Point, Bronx to my Queens apartment for Thanksgiving. Michael, a homeless transsexual heroin addict, alone, came.

Twenty-four hours after Thanksgiving dinner, I found myself staring into my fridge with its leftover mac ‘n cheese and green bean casserole, crying.

I extended holiday offers to several people from Hunts Point, people who have become friends over this past year. I was happy to take whoever would come. Two days ago, Jen, a prostitute, texted me and declined for herself and her pimp, Charlie, saying that she was sick, that she couldn’t make it. Sick, not scared or uncomfortable.

My text with Jen. Me in green, her in white.

Another Jennifer, a crack addict, said she was cooking a big meal for her family, that she was working the streets to save money for all the food. Food, not drugs.

Jennifer on Thanksgiving Eve. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

In this manner, Thanksgiving invitations and promised appearances dwindled to only Michael from the neighborhood.

Initially, my concern, selfishly, was for me. I had vague peripheral worries — what if Michael stole something? what if he brought drugs to the house? what if he freaked out the non-Hunts Point folks at the dinner table?

Today, I found nothing stolen, not that I’d mind so much if I did. Michael did shoot heroin inside the apartment. He and my normal-life friends talked New York and made jokes, perhaps out of deference to me, me who wanted it to work so badly.

Thanksgiving didn’t happen like I thought it would happen. It didn’t go smoothly with a ramshackle and awkward mix of people.

My friends and I were cooking the turkey when Michael entered the house, escorted by Chris Arnade who had driven from Brooklyn to lend a ride. The slight 5’1″ man was weighed down with bags fastened by knots. He abandoned his cargo in the hallway and ate a proffered red velvet cupcake, lamenting the difficulty he had found copping drugs, before shirking away to shoot up in my bathroom. My friends, warned as they had been, exchanged glances. Chris and I went to observe the drug use.

Michael after shooting up in my bathroom. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

After his hit, Michael overturned his bag on the tiled bathroom floor, a cascade of travel-sized bottles to sort. He gave me “Being Sexy” hair gel. I gave him a pair of socks.

Michael sorting. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

I offered him a shower and handed him a towel. (It wasn’t the food he really wanted, it was the shower.) He came out of the bathroom nothing short of two-and-a-half hours later, after having turned it into a spa. His hair was the cleanest I’ve seen it, soft brown tresses past his shoulders. He opened the bathroom door to call me for a once-over before presenting himself at dinner: fresh makeup, thick mascara and dangling earrings. “Do I look like a total prostitute?” He was proud.

He looked beautiful.

Over his two plates of dinner, he and my friends joined in to make fun of me: they talked fashion, labels about which I knew little. Afterwards, we ate dessert, played Candyland and watched Edward Scissorhands on my couch. Michael painted his nails purple-grey then fell asleep against my shoulder, legs curled. It felt sweet, routine; absurd to how I see him every day on the streets.

I packed food in tupperware for him to take back, for others he saw, for himself later. Before returning with Chris, he commented on how quiet my street was, how nice a neighborhood.

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Yesterday was wonderful, probably my best Thanksgiving ever. That’s what I want to say. In reality, I don’t know if what I did was good. I thought it was something small I could do, to offer food to those I consider my friends. But by reaching out in such an intimate way to those in Hunts Point, did I unintentionally create discomfort, or lend a look into how life could be, only to snatch it away? Was it a selfish thing (me with my house and shower) to have done, to appease my own guilt of having a Thanksgiving dinner, my way of coping with the supreme inequalities that exist ten minutes from my apartment? I wonder if Michael came along to appease Chris and I, a small sacrifice to make us happy. I should have recognized the difficulty he, and others I invited, faced beforehand, but in my excitement, I didn’t. Now, I can only hope the day didn’t make him miserable.

Those struggling with addiction and ensconced in poverty have needs that often run in opposition to one another: housing and stability, freedom and self-awareness, an environment that won’t enable drug use. Besides encouraging rehab and detox, perhaps we who work with them can never know exactly what we can do to help, offer no sure-fire life balm. Maybe positive help is an offer of companionship on a holiday. Maybe it’s a shower. Maybe it’s driving food to Hunts Point. Maybe it’s simply being a friend who visits the neighborhood to hear everyday stories.
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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

Ethan Perlstein is using a crowdfunding model to raise money for his lab’s initiative, unconventional but necessary in a system that doesn’t have deep pockets for addiction research.

From his site:

Everyday millions of people take amphetamines, and millions more are touched by brain diseases and addiction. Yet most psychoactive drugs used today, whether legal or illegal, therapeutic or addictive, are just tweaked versions of drugs discovered decades ago. But that means we know how these drugs actually work, right? Short answer: no, not really.

For example, we know that amphetamines such as methamphetamine (“crystal meth”) interact with many different parts of a brain cell, yet we’re far from full, useful knowledge. Specifically, we need to know all of a drug’s interactions plus all the cascading effects of these interactions on how brain cells function. Without complete, basic understanding, scientists won’t be able to create more effective, personalized treatments for brain diseases and addictions.

I’m encouraged by the idea, a cool one, in the hopes that we get closer to cellular answers as they relate to those who struggle with addiction. Neater still, the lab’s planning on sharing their data and answers with the public along the way via a weekly video and blog. This is new for science. As an advocate of an open lab model and addiction research, I’m thrilled to support it. The funding time frame is nearing its last days, so donate to help us gain knowledge on a still-mysterious drug that could go far to help the real people who need it.

Here’s a video of the lab’s proposal:

Crowdsourcing Discovery from Crowdsourcing Discovery on Vimeo.

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Last week, Chris and I visited a crack house, Diana and John’s apartment. Here’s a 10-minute look inside, at the languid humanity we found within — radio, Phil Collins, the worry of where they’ll stay next. The two discuss Diana’s job as a prostitute, her income and John’s role. I chose a longish sequence to convey the civility and measure behind something societally known as dark, mysterious and filled with “bad people” — a crack house. Danger exists (Chris and I were warned mid-way through this video), but it’s not omnipresent.

This is a companion piece to my writing on Diana and John’s vagrant way of life. For background, please read that first.

The pair left quickly after they smoked, feeling paranoid. Diana returned to the streets to prostitute.

The flashing sounds are Chris’s camera clicks. Many thanks to Diana and John for graciously allowing us to film.

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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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Addicts, by nature, lead lives as vagrants of some description to cope — in search of a new doctor to fill a prescription; a new partner who better understands; a new recovery program that will be more effective; a new bar away from prying eyes. To look at this ubiquitous concept of search and tumult, I’m exploring the literal example of vagrancy: the nature of home.

The low-income addicts of Hunts Point, even those with current housing, flit from place to place, seemingly without the expectation or sense of spatial connection — professional vagabonds. Through a week following Diana and John, here’s a look into the intangible nature of home and stability as it relates to their drug, crack.

Diana in front of her building, Hunts Point. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

Sunday

A wooden boardwalk led Diana inside her new building, an extended 30-degree slope of plank past a handful of drug dealers. As she pulled open the building’s heavy metal door, one of the number lurking against the entry quietly voiced an insult. Diana strode by in today’s wig, a long, curly, honey-toned one, and a houndstooth hat. Into the elevator she went, pressing level 3.

Exiting at the third floor, she walked left, stopping at a door halfway down the long hallway. Voices punctuated the hall’s silence, behind the row of doors. She hammered on the door, expletives, “Johnny, let me the fuck in.”

Her husband answered, dressed in a navy sweatshirt and grimy white brief underwear. Dressing, he walked from the door to their rented room in the apartment — $80 a week — past a small kitchen. He muttered something about their renter, a Ghanian (or so he thought) who valued neatness, who could handle drugs but not tricks in the apartment.

A white sheet divided the couple’s room from the rest of the space, door gone. Other sheets, colorful ones, covered the windows. The smell of bleach overthrew the air.

Inside the dorm-sized room, a filled air mattress leaned against the far wall. A table with a black-marbled pattern sat near the door, three chairs scattered. The bulk of the room bared faux-wood linoleum floors, deprived of furniture. Near the table stood a person-sized decorative cat. Diana claimed responsibility for only the air mattress.

She took off her wig and hat, resting one on the plastic sculpture to throw the other on the table. Taking a seat, she took out the newly-copped crack and a lighter. This space marked the first time she and her husband have had a roof overhead in over a month. Sure, the tenant is obsessive, and a bit paranoid (bringing white people in made John keep an ear open), but for $80 a week they couldn’t complain.

Crack on the table, Hunts Point. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

The crack came out in ziplock bags too small for thimbles. Taking the rocks onto a fingertip’s ledge, Diana brought them to the pipe’s mouth, placing the fragments on the stem’s tip, vertical, tapping them down. Eyes open, staring into the flame for the hit of the high. She greets the feeling with a faint nod, her hands roving a check around her body — perhaps a search for a reminder of her skin, or one of paranoia.

Vacant, blank.

Then, meticulous, a marionette cleaning her pipe stem with a brush.

Diana and John smoking, Hunts Point. Photo courtesy of Chris Arnade.

The apartment shared nothing beyond her habit, no vestiges left to present evidence of a 20-year-old inhabitant and her husband. Her purse held her important things– Medicaid application, condoms. New clothes could be bought on demand with the day’s earnings.

High dimming, her irritation turned. “Okay, time to go.” The building, with its occasional yells from one floor or another, was a place of shelter only — one to sleep and to smoke without heckle. Leavings and enterings were whiplash sudden.

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Saturday

Diana crossed the street just after dark, blonde wig again, arms full with a plastic black bag and a bottle of white wine. “A trick just gave me this. Do you want to come up to our place? I’m going to be an escort soon. I’m celebrating!” Her low chuckle joined her snaking sway across the street, onto the sidewalk, an already-tipsy path home.

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Sunday, One Week After Move-In

John paced the major trucker intersection on the other side of Hunts Point, hoodie drawstrings tied tight against his face in the cold. He’d been waiting for Diana to return from a date for over an hour and feared she postponed returning to smoke crack. “Tuesday’s our last day in the apartment, if not sooner. I don’t think she’s taking that seriously and saving her money.”

Long-winded, clotted reasoning told that they weren’t getting along with the man who rented the room. Time to go, just like that.

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Here’s a companion piece to this post, a video taken inside John and Diana’s apartment.
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More Hunts Point Addiction Writing
Writing Beyond Addiction in Hunts Point
Chris Arnade’s Photos and his Facebook feed

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