DOI: 10.3726/9781915734822.003.0006

5: High

Content warning: This story contains a description of substance abuse.

In the living room of my top-floor apartment at 1606 Nanaimo Street, I plop down onto the threadbare, tan-coloured sofa chair I bought from Value Village for twenty bucks, throwing my bare legs over the arm. Across from where I sit, there’s a worn, beige loveseat I dragged in from the back alley and beside that, an overturned red milk crate that doubles as a side table. Reaching over to the scuffed oak wood coffee table, I snatch up The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. I turn to the page with the folded down corner. I heard about this book from Damian, so I bought a second-hand copy at a used bookstore on Commercial Drive.

In The Tao of Pooh, I learn about the basic principles of Taoism through the gentle, uncomplicated, sometimes insightful, soft-voiced, fictional British teddy bear, Winnie the Pooh, brought to life in A. A. Milne’s books for children. The Tao of Pooh is for adults—though, young adults like me who want to practice letting go of anxiety and finding joy in simple living. After all, I just moved to the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia, on the Pacific west coast of Canada. At 23 years old, with my undergraduate degree completed, I’m starting a new life, almost four thousand kilometres away from where I grew up. It’s my life now, and I can do whatever I want.

Pooh’s Cottleston Pie Principle provides some clues to guide me:

1. Allow things to be what they are.

2. Everyone has limitations.

3. Some things cannot be known.

Down below, the front door to my apartment opens and the sound of footsteps coming up the creaky wooden stairs gets closer and closer. Damian appears in the doorway to the living room and smiles at me. He’s staying the night.

“Hey, babe,” he smiles, slipping out of his rubber Merrill sandals.

“Hey!” I say, rising off the sofa chair to give him a kiss.

Damian is gorgeous. Confidence radiates off him like electricity. He’s 5 ft. 9, 22 years old, and walks with straight, square shoulders. He has a cloud of dark curly, brown hair, full lips, a constellation of small dark moles on one cheekbone, and a dark brown beard. His large brown eyes are framed with long brown eyelashes but are often hidden by dark sunglasses.

Back from the 7-11 corner store, he empties the contents of a plastic bag onto the coffee table: The Georgia Straight—Vancouver’s entertainment newspaper—a large bottle of guava juice, a bag of Doritos, a fresh pouch of Drum tobacco, and Zig-Zag rolling papers. Sitting down on the loveseat, he reaches to the stack of CDs on top of the milkcrate side table, tugging out the soundtrack from the film The Harder They Come. Dropping the CD into the CD player, he presses “play.” Horns bleat. Synthesizer chords pulse. Drums beat out a reggae rhythm. Backed by female harmonies, Jimmy Cliff’s smooth voice rings out as he sings:

I wonder why Jimmy Cliff’s lyrics seem at odds with the Cottleston Pie Principle. How come Pooh teaches us that we must allow things to be what they are, but Jimmy says if we want something, we must try, try, and try? Some things cannot be known, I guess.

Damian doesn’t like the music I listen to—Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Tori Amos, Sarah McLaughlin—too feminine, perhaps. But, he would never say that. I also like The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Bruce Cockburn. But, they are too hippie for him. He’s upfront about that. It’s okay. I’m soaking up everything my new life on the west coast has to offer. I listen to reggae now because it’s one of Damian’s favourite genres of music. He knows a lot about music.

Damian reads the newspaper. I read my book. We smoke Drum. Ten minutes later, there is a knock on the front door.

“Come in!” Damian yells. He puts down the paper and stands up.

Footsteps thump up the stairs to the living room. In the doorway of our living room appears a tall, trim, pale, bald man. Simon has bright blue eyes and a wide smile with a dimple beside his mouth. A pair of black sunglasses rests on the top of his bare head. Later that summer, when the film Natural Born Killers comes out, I tell Damian that Simon looks like Woody Harrelson.

“Hey, brother!” Simon chuckles and reaches out for Damian. They shake hands and hug.

Simon turns to me and smiles. I stand up and step towards him, smiling.

“This must be Katie! So nice to meet Damian’s girl,” Simon beams. He walks over to me, takes my right hand in both of his and shakes it.

“Hi, Simon. Nice to meet you,” I say, shaking his hand.

Damian sits down on the sofa chair and Simon offers me the loveseat.

“Go ahead,” I decline. I take a cushion off the loveseat and place it on the hardwood floor. I sit down, Simon sits down and Damian snatches his Zig-Zags and the Drum off the coffee table.

“Nah, nah! Here, buddy!” Simon waves at Damian to put down the Drum. Digging into the pocket on his shirt, he pulls out a pack of du Maurier Lights.

“TMs. Alright!” Damian shrugs and puts the pouch of tobacco and rolling papers back on the coffee table. “TMs” are “tailor-made” cigarettes, not hand-rolled cigarettes, like the ones Damian and I smoke. Drum is cheaper than tailor-made cigarettes. You get a lot more tobacco for your money, but you have to roll it yourself. I used to smoke tailor-mades before I moved to Vancouver. Now, I smoke Drum, like Damian.

Simon fishes out three cigarettes. He puts all three in his mouth, lights them, hands one to Damian, one to me, and keeps one for himself. I move the ashtray to the middle of the coffee table. We draw on our cigarettes at the same time and blow smoke out towards the yellowish-coloured ceiling.

Damian and Simon start complaining about work. Damian works under the table as a roofer and Simon is in construction.

“Christ, my foreman is an asshole.” A gust of smoke blasts out of Simon’s nostrils.

“Fucking guy is making me work overtime on the long weekend. We got a contract we have to finish by June,” he grumbles. “I’m so tired.” He sags sideways on the loveseat, the knuckles of his right hand hitting the floor with a thud.

“Shit, man,” Damian replies. “I wish I could work overtime. I need the extra cash. But I work for a cheap bastard.” Cigarette smoke seeps out from between his lips as he talks.

“But, how about them Leafs, eh buddy?” Damian cuffs Simon in the knee. “They’re doing alright.”

Simon shoots straight up from the loveseat, like someone just shot his veins full of adrenaline. The Toronto Maple Leafs are Simon’s favourite hockey team.

“Oh yeah! I’m praying. I don’t believe in God, but I’m praying,” he exclaims, smirking as he folds his hands together, his cigarette squeezed between the first two fingers of his left hand. “Too bad about the Habs, though, buddy. Rough.”

The Montreal Canadiens—“the Habs”—Damian’s favourite team, are based in Montreal, Quebec. “Habs” is colloquial for “habitants,” a French word meaning “people who live in a particular place.” The early settlers in Quebec who immigrated from France were called “habitants.” The Habs and the Leafs made the playoffs, but the Habs were just eliminated. The Leafs are still in the running.

“Nah, it’s all good buddy. The Habs won last year.” Damian flicks his right hand dismissively in the air. Cigarette ash falls to the floor.

“They’ve taken the cup home 24 times. Twenty-four times!” he boasts. “The Leafs, on the other hand, my friend, are a national embarrassment. Maybe this is the year they get their shit together?” He shakes his head, grinning at Simon.

Simon drops his bald head into his hands and slaps it a few times.

“Fuck, don’t remind me!” he groans. “They haven’t won the Cup since ’67! Christ, I wasn’t even born yet.”

“They better make it all the way this year or I give up,” he whines, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Hey Simon, can I get you something? A drink?” I pipe up.

Simon stops talking and turns to me, startled, like he forgot I was there.

“Oh! Nah, thanks, Katie. I’m good.” He pauses, drumming his fingertips on the coffee table. “Do you cheer for the Habs, like your old man here does?”

“No.” I shrug. “Hockey isn’t really my thing.”

“Oh, hmm,” he replies. “Maybe you should jump on the Leafs bandwagon?” His eyes twinkle.

“Maybe,” I smile. There’s something endearing about Simon.

He turns back to Damian. They debate about who is going to win the Stanley Cup this year. They talk about hockey stats and who’s been traded. I listen. I don’t know anything about hockey.

Then, Damian asks about Maureen. Maureen is Simon’s roommate and a friend of Damian’s. Simon’s shoulders slump and he turns sombre, shifting in his seat.

“Aw, she’s alright, man.” He shrugs, his eyes darting around the room. A twitch tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Kind of struggling right now, you know? She’s trying to straighten up and get off the base, right? She looks a bit rough. All skinny and shit. Sores on her face. But, you know Mo. She’s a tough bitch. She’ll get through it.” He lights another cigarette and takes a long drag.

“Oh shit! I almost forgot!” Simon hoots. He lurches forward, lays his cigarette in the ashtray, reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, and pulls out his wallet. He opens it and fishes out a tiny, folded package of tin foil. He hands it to Damian.

Damian takes a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and gives it to Simon.

“Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.” Simon waves the twenty in the air, sticks it in his wallet, and shoves his wallet back into his jeans pocket.

Turning serious for a moment, Simon warns, “You know to take it easy on this stuff, eh? Some of the stuff around town has been potent lately. Mixed with a bit of angel dust. Rat poison. But, don’t worry,” Simon assures us. “This shit’s good.”

He reaches over and claps his hand on Damian’s shoulder.

“I care about you, brother. I don’t want you and your girl here to get messed up,” his eyes flash widely at me.

“Yeah, no worries, buddy,” Damian smiles. He stands up. “It’s all good. Thanks.”

Simon jumps up and shakes Damian’s hand. They lean in for a hug, and snicker. Simon turns to me, and giving me a salute, kicks the heels of his running shoes together.

“Nice to meet you, Katie,” he grins broadly. “See ya ‘round!”

Then, he spins around and bounds down the stairs.

“Have fun! Call me anytime!” he yells back at us. The apartment door shuts behind him.

Except for the song, The Harder They Come, emanating from the CD player, the room is quiet.

Damian gets up, walks into the kitchen, and pours two glasses of water. Then he disappears down the hall into the bathroom. He returns with the glasses of water and sets them on the living room coffee table. Sitting down in the chair, he moves the coffee table closer to him. I slide my cushion across the floor to sit opposite from him, and crossing my legs, I watch.

Damian digs into the pocket of his shorts and lays a ten-dollar bill, a bank card, and a small mirror on the coffee table. He unfolds the little tin foil paper to reveal the fine, cream-coloured powder inside. He gently dumps the powder from the tin foil onto the mirror.

With his bank card, he slides some of the powder away from the pile and creates a smaller pile. Then, he separates the smaller pile into two even smaller piles. Every few seconds, he taps his bank card on the mirror to unstick minute grains of the powder from the card. He sculpts the two small piles of powder into two neat, short lines about centimetre long and a millimetre wide. Rails, he calls them.

I take a drink of water. Sitting in front of a modest pile of heroin with my boyfriend in East Vancouver, far away from my family and my life in Ontario, feels exciting. Bad-ass. I think about when I used to drink, smoke pot and hash, take mushrooms, and drop acid back in Ontario. Booze and drugs removed me from the awareness of my body. Numbed me. Disconnected me from the omnipresent sense my body didn’t belong to me but rather, to all the men I dated—and even the ones I didn’t. Made me oblivious to the small voice that punctured my mind now and then, asking me if I actually liked men. Allowed me to dissociate when I had sex with them.

Damian puts down the bank card and wipes his hands on his shorts. He looks at me.

“Smack is really strong, Katie. That’s why the lines are much smaller than coke,” he explains. “It doesn’t take much to get high.”

“Okay.” I nod.

He picks up the ten-dollar bill and rolls it into a tight cylinder.

“We can only do a little at a time. Or, we could overdose.” Elbows on his thighs, Damian leans over the mirror on the coffee table.

“Johnny Too Bad” by The Slickers comes on.

With the first two fingers of his right hand, Damian sticks the rolled-up bill into his right nostril and plugs his left nostril with the forefinger of his left hand. With his face two inches from the mirror, he places the bill in front of one of the tiny rails. He sniffs evenly, steadily, forcefully, and the powder vanishes up the bill as he pushes it along the mirror.

He sits up and wipes his nose with his left hand. There’s a trace of cream-coloured dust between his upper lip and his nose. I reach over and wipe it off with my thumb, smiling. He takes my hand. He winces, shudders, and sniffs hard.

“Argh! It burns a bit,” he tells me, pinching the bridge of his nose. Letting go of my hand, he moves the mirror closer towards me. He passes me the rolled-up bill.

“Make sure you inhale hard,” he instructs me, sniffing again. “And don’t breathe out or you’ll blow it everywhere.”

I take the rolled-up bill, stick it up my nostril, and crouch over the mirror. I watch the second rail disappear as I sniff. I put the bill down. My eyes water. My sinuses feel like they’re on fire. My nose runs. I jerk my head back and sniff. An acrid tang floods my taste buds.

“Shit, it does burn! It’s dripping down the back of my throat,” I exclaim. I guzzle some water from the glass on the coffee table. “Ugh! It’s so bitter.”

“Yeah,” Damian says. He leans back in the sofa chair, his tanned arms laying on the armrests. He closes his eyes. “I’m rushing,” he says.

I climb up onto the loveseat. The evening East Vancouver sunlight streams in through our open living room window. The warm scent of summer wafts in—lilac blossoms, salt air, exhaust fumes, a hint of rotting garbage from the back alley. A black string of crows flies past overhead, heading east, cawing. Seagulls shriek from the rooftop next door. Cars, trucks, and buses roar past down below on Nanaimo Street.

A minute later, a surge of warmth spreads through me.

“Oh,” I say. “I think I’m rushing, too. Whoa.”

I tip my head back and close my eyes. A hazy heat undulates from my brain throughout my body, swells in my torso, and gushes out to the tips of my fingers and toes. Every nerve in my body pulsates softly. I feel like I’m levitating into the air.

Silently, I melt into the loveseat.

Then, I break out into a sweat.

“I’m going to be sick,” I announce, pitching forward off the couch. Staggering through the kitchen, my hand over my mouth, I turn toward the bathroom.

I hear Damian’s bellowing laugh behind me.

“That’s normal, babe!” he hollers. “It’ll pass.”

I make it to the bathroom just in time to drop to my knees in front of the toilet. My body heaves. I vomit violently into the white bowl. Another wave of warm euphoria washes through me.

Throwing up isn’t so bad when I’m high on heroin, I think to myself. Not like when I’m hungover from a night of partying. I throw up again and again.

Then, my stomach softens. My shoulders relax. I stand up and flush the toilet. I wash my hands, brush my teeth, and look in the mirror. My eyes look eerie. My irises, steel blue, are enlarged, and my pupils are minuscule black pinpricks. I tuck a few wayward strands of hair behind my ears and reposition the messy dirty blonde bun at the back of my head. I open the medicine cabinet and apply another layer of alum stone to my moist armpits and swipe some cherry ChapStick across my lips.

I drift back into the living room and slide onto the loveseat.

Damian snorts another rail and hands me the rolled-up bill.

“Once you’re sick, you should be good to keep going.”

I pull the table closer to me. I snort another tiny rail. The sting in my sinuses reminds me of swimming in a pool when I was a kid and inhaling chlorine pool water through my nose by mistake. I sit up, pinch my nostrils together, and sniff. I gulp some more water to wash the bitter taste down.

A rush radiates through me again. The edges of reality blur into a gentle, fuzzy fog. A soft feeling of bliss envelops me. My body, weightless, is wrapped in a cottony cloud.

Damian pulls out another CD from the pile on the red milkcrate: Naturally by J.J. Cale. He joins me on the couch and pulls me close to him.

I lay my head on Damian’s shoulder and nuzzle my face in his warm neck. It smells like Dr Bronner’s eucalyptus castile soap. I feel protected with his arm wrapped around me. Time slows to a crawl. We nod off.

We come to. I feel like I’m floating. We smoke Drum, drink guava juice, snort more lines, fuck on the loveseat, swap stories about the drugs we’ve done, and laugh. Around 3 a.m., we slither, naked, onto the futon mattress on the floor in my bedroom and slip into darkness.

The next morning, my eyes flutter open. My temples throb with shooting pain and all of the pores of my body are moist with sweat. I roll off the futon mattress and crawl to the bathroom. I retch over and over into the toilet until all I can do is dry heave. Crumpled on the bathroom floor, I don’t have the strength to stand up and walk back to bed. In all my nights of drinking and getting high, I’ve never been hungover like this. Shaking with agony, I spend the entire day in bed, with a large bowl beside me on the floor in case I can’t make it to the bathroom.

Damian and I do heroin again the next weekend. When heroin is coursing through my bloodstream, the uncertainties I have about my life evaporate. I don’t worry about who I am or who I will become. I don’t fret about how I look, feel, or act, or what I say and what other people say to me and about me. I don’t agonize about how I will earn a living in this new city. I don’t wonder if I’m ever going to be gutsy enough to leave Damian and date a woman. I don’t fixate on what I’m going to do tomorrow, next week, next year, or for the rest of my life. It all dissolves. Heroin gives me permission to allow things to be as they are. Heroin forces me to relax, reminding me that some things cannot be known.

Damian quits his job as a roofer. It’s too hard on his body, he tells me. He goes on welfare like me. We’ll get jobs in September, we say. We spend the summer hanging out on Commercial Drive, drinking coffee, smoking, reading, and playing backgammon—Damian teaches me how. We go to Hi-Life Records and look at CDs and used vinyl.

Some days—later in the afternoon, because Damian is not a morning person—we drive out to Wreck Beach. Sitting on a brightly-coloured batik blanket on the sand, we lean up against giant driftwood logs. We face the Pacific Ocean and Bowen Island across the water, reading, smoking, and drinking mango juice. Sunlight sparkles on the water and the waves retreat as the tide rolls out and the beach expands. Sand sticks between our toes and fingers and we kiss each other’s salty lips. The wind tickles our tanned, sweaty skin as we frolic in the cool sea water.

When we can afford it, we go to a trendy restaurant called WaaZuBee on Commerical Drive. The front of the restaurant has large windows that open onto the street. Inside, the walls are painted black and the lights are turned down really low. Through the dim light, candles burn in tall glass holders with images of Jesus and Mother Mary painted on them. We order French fries with garlic aioli and drink coffee and Damian jokes around with the staff.

My guitar collects dust in the corner of my living room apartment. I haven’t played much since I got to Vancouver. I thought about trying my hand at writing a song—my first song—but I’m too busy spending time with Damian. I pawn my Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan CDs and give up my tickets to go see the Grateful Dead in Eugene, Oregon with a bunch of other friends so I can stay home with Damian and get high. I’m over the Grateful Dead anyway, I tell myself. And besides, I’m in love.

One night, with a few friends, Damian and I go to a rave downtown hosted by the owner of WaaZuBee. All of the WaaZuBee staff are there and the room is packed with bodies. We take ecstasy for the first time. The booming rhythmic beats of hardcore techno, acid house, and dance music throb in my ears and thump in my chest. The dark, humid room vibrates and everyone looks exquisite. A vibrating mass of damp, gyrating bodies, we sweat, smoke, grind our teeth, smile nonstop, and drink copious amounts of water, basking in the buzz saturating the room.

Around 4 a.m., people meander outside from the party. Our friends left a couple of hours ago. Damian and I decide to leave and walk for a while because we need the fresh air.

“I’ll hail us a cab in a bit,” Damian says.

It’s warm for late summer. The sky is still a dark black-purple, but in the east, a pale blue glow hovers above the horizon. A couple of cars race by. I traipse along the Granville Street Bridge, a few feet behind Damian. Ninety feet underneath us are the salty, deep waters of False Creek.

As I stop to peer over the edge into the darkness below, a dense, viscous dread saturates my flesh. A voice in my brain commands, “Jump, Katie. Jump.” Terror courses through me, like an electric current. I grab the handrail, knuckles white with fear. My lungs feel as though they’re being squeezed and something is wrapping a dark, heavy cape around my body. The voice whispers again. “Jump, Katie.” Death is swirling around me, trying to swallow me up.

“Don’t do it,” I hiss out loud to myself. “Don’t do it.”

“Damian!” I yell, my fingers like a vise grip on the handrail. “Damian! I gotta get off this bridge. Now!”

Damian turns around and strides back to me. He puts his hands on my shoulders.

“What’s the matter, Katie? Look at me,” he demands, shaking me. “Look at me!”

“I-I-I don’t know.” I shiver. I look at him and then I look away. “I felt like I was going to jump. I gotta get off this bridge. Please.”

“Okay, okay. I’ve got you.” He puts his arm around me as a truck thunders by, shaking loose the murky hallucination that gripped me.

“Let’s go. You’re okay. Just walk with me. I’ll hail a cab.”

****************

At the end of the summer, Damian moves in with me. He gets a full-time job as a high-rise window washer in the business district downtown. He gets Simon a job too and they work together. I get hired by the Vancouver School Board as a full-time Special Education Assistant in a grade four class in a school a few blocks from where we live.

Damian and I do begin doing heroin one night of every weekend. We agree that if we only do it one night a week, we’re not addicts.

Months and months roll by. Every now and then, our heroin use spills over onto a weeknight.

A year goes by until one late spring Thursday morning, my alarm goes off at 6:45 a.m. I am still high.

I slip out of bed and get ready for work in a daze.

As I ride my bike down Lakewood Drive towards the school, I realize I’m losing control of my life. How can I work in an elementary school with little kids and have a heroin problem?

Once I arrive at the school, I hurry to a single-stall bathroom near the office, stick my finger down my throat, and make myself throw up in the toilet. I fish my toothbrush and toothpaste out of my knapsack and brush my teeth again. Popping an extra-strength Advil will help keep the headache at bay. I sign in at the office. Thankfully, the student I work with needs to take breaks from the classroom and likes to go outside a lot. Several times that day, he and I go outside to walk around the schoolyard.

After school, I ride my bike a few blocks to Trout Lake and sit by myself on a wooden dock among the bulrushes. As I look out at the water, my head is throbbing. Dread washes over me like a tidal wave.

I am trapped. I have a drug addiction, and a boyfriend with a drug addiction and friends with drug addictions. Working as a Special Education Assistant in a public school doesn’t inspire me. Even though I’ve been living in Vancouver—a city flanked by mountains—for a year now, I haven’t gone backcountry hiking or camping at all—something I have long dreamed of doing since I was a child. I don’t know what I want to do with my life and I cannot envision my future. I remind myself that some things cannot be known. But, I know I don’t want to keep going the way I am. Tears brim behind my eyelids and roll down my face.

I sit on the dock for a while, until I begin to feel cold. Hopping back on my bike, I ride the few blocks home.

I tell Damian that I’m quitting drugs. He says he is going to stop too. I feel relieved. It will be easier if we’re on the wagon together, he says. I agree. We hug.

A couple of months later, our relationship is over. He wants to stay in Vancouver, but I want to move out of the city for good, to get away from the party scene we are still immersed in, to start a new life and live in the mountains. I heard about the Kootenays, a mountainous region in the southern interior of British Columbia, from my sister’s boyfriend. I want to move there.

Damian and I pack up our things separately. We clean the apartment: sweeping the floors, wiping down the walls and kitchen counter, and disinfecting the bathroom. Carrying the loveseat and the sofa chair outside, we leave them in the back alley. Someone else might be able to use them again. Damian helps me stack my stuff, including the red milk crate jammed with CDs, into the bright yellow GMC camper van parked on the side street that he and I bought for 400 dollars from an ad in the newspaper a few months ago. On the sidewalk, we hug one last time.

With a laundry bag full of clothes, and a large backpack hanging off his shoulders, Damian lights a cigarette, turns away, and saunters west on Graveley Street towards Commercial Drive, his broad shoulders square, smoke drifting up past his dark brown curls.

I go back into the house and plod up the creaky wooden stairs. The June sun shines into the living room window. I look around the quiet, empty apartment, an ache in my heart. What happened to us? To me? We had so much fun in the beginning. We were so in love. What am I going to do now? Tears sting my eyelids. Everyone has limitations.

Doing one last check of the apartment, I walk back down the stairs for the last time. Pulling the door shut behind me, I lock it and put the key in the mailbox for the landlord. I step over to the van and slide in, jamming the key in the ignition. I start the engine and pull away from the curb, heading east out of Vancouver towards the Kootenays.

Driving towards Highway 1, I wonder what’s in store for me. Allow things to be what they are, I remind myself, as I focus on the road in front of me.