Intelligence Addiction

When I became Homeless, I was forced by the necessity if the situation to interact with other homeless people primarily because common social etiquette and decorum dictates that when someone approaches and speaks to you in a polite, civil manner, that you respond in kind. Not responding or responding in a rude or condescending manner can and often does trigger an extrem extremely hostile, negative response often tinged with the threat of violence. Since I was living in my car, and it was a distinctive red color and easily identifiable, this could paint a target on me where the person decides to take advantage of the situation when they find me sleeping somewhere. Many of the people I chose to interact with on a regular basis were genuine, kind and mostly an asset but for everyone of those kind of people, I would encounter two or three that can only be described as dirt-bags or scum-bags or my least favorite, the Fucktard. Which category that they fit in to was completely dependent on their mental health, substance use, substance abuse and addictions because not all addicts are the same nor do all addictions cause people to behave in the same way.

The three main substances that drive the addicts are tobacco, alcohol, methamphetamine, and opiates with each one having a different level and effect on the addict with tobacco, followed closely by alcohol are the substances that are the least likely to cause extreme behavioral issues. The majority of the opiate addicts graduate from prescription pain medication to heroine rather quickly because it is cheaper and easier to acquire. Wherever you can find methamphetamine, you can usually also find heroine which are often referred to as White and Black respectively. Methamphetamine is also commonly referred to as Shit and both are sometimes collectively referred to as Work. Do you have any Shit? or I have Work I’m trying to sell or trade being examples of how those terms are commonly used.

Not everyone who commonly used methamphetamine is truly addicted while everyone who regularly uses heroine is addicted to it. How the addict or casual user consumes the drug often determines how intensely the addiction changes their personality driving their behavior. You will often hear someone say “I’m a smoker, not a poker” or “I’m a poker not a smoker” to refer to how they consume methamphetamine or heroine. Those who smoke are way less intense usually then those who poke which is probably directly related to the level that is consumed at a given time. Smoking doesn’t deliver as much to the body and thus the brain as does poking a needle in to a vein and injecting it directly in to the blood stream. This has the added effect of making the high, the behavior and the withdrawal significantly more intense. Thia definitely makes the undesirable and untrustworthy behavior more pronounced. Most heroine addicts who poke, almost immediately begin to get consumed with the next fix as soon as the initial euphoria begins to wear off. If that were not enough of a problem there are some heroine addicts who’s use of that substance isn’t mutually exclusive with many doing what us referred to as a dirty shot where they have mixed methamphetamine in with the black. Regardless of how they consume it, heroine addicts are extremely s etctlf-centered, selfish and have a penchance for extremely shady and dishonest behavior, the kind where they will steal anything from anyone that they think can help them score their next fix. Seeing an addict go through withdrawal, what they refer to as being dope sick can easily provide a bit of understanding to why this is.

Methamphetamine users, often referred to as tweakers, tend to get obsessed with something that drives their attention and behavior while they are high and it is usually based around the same thing that motivates the heroine addicts, scoring the next fix. The intensity of how hard they are tweaking is totally dependent upon how long they have been awake, how much they have consumed and the method of consumption with pokers being at the extreme end of the spectrum. No matter how hard they are tweaking or how they consume, on average methamphetamine users rarely come close to being as dishonest, untrustworthy and shady as those who poke the black stuff.

I am a voyeur by nature, I enjoy observing people and I have seen multiple people prepare shots of all varieties, white, black and dirty. I have also watched a few actually do the poking and am always left in awe about how little attention they pay to sterility and the purity of what they are poking in to their veins. I have yet to encounter a poker who cleans and or uses something to sterilize what they use to mix the shot, the syringe they are reusing or the skin where they are injecting. This often has given me the heebeejeebies as I have watched someone use some of the liquid at the bottom of my beverage after I have consumed it to mix the shot. It could be from a Starbucks Iced Coffee or a fountain soda but it doesn’t matter to them. I have seen someone use a piece of a dirty cigarette filter as the “cotton” they use to pull the shot through, out of the cooker where they mixed the shot. Methamphetamine will dissolve in water and a shot can just be stirred to mix it with the liquid. Heroine requires the water to be heated to soften the black so that it will then mix with the liquid. The heroine addict will save and reuse the cotton multiple times, often “washing” it with liquid to try and squeeze another shot out of it to ease the symptoms of being dope sick. It amazes me that they don’t get severely sick or have horrible infections far more often.

T is a white smoker, and the most extreme addict that I have ever had regular interactions with. He is always chasing his next fix or another source to supply white in the hopes of getting a better deal, a larger, heavier sack for his buck. I used to think he could be trusted, was relatively honest and didn’t do shady and dishonest shit until recently. In retrospect, I realize he has always been this way and I was just naive to reality. It explains why he has so many people who dislike him or are openly hostile towards him, because of things he has done to them in the past. I learned that this past weekend when he gave me a ride to a friend’s house so I could retrieve some clothes I had stored there. It was over 108 degrees in Sacramento on Friday and he knows about my hospitalization and my health issues. He even commented on how heavy and labored my breathing was after I got in the car, which I explained was entirely caused by the intensity of the heat index. When I exited the car, he told me not to take forever and I explained I had no intention of doing this and that I would be back as fast as I could. I explained I had to grab some clothes and other items. I was in the house less than ten minutes and as I was exiting the house carrying two bags, he was already halfway down the street leaving. Ultimately he turned around and came back about five minutes later but the stress caused my heart to begin pounding and my bood pressure to skyrocket because my wallet, limited cash, wifi phone and bus pass were in the car that was driving off.

When I retrieved the duffel bag of clothes from the house and sat it by the car, I asked him if he could open the trunk and help me put my shit in the trunk. As he was opening the trunk, he smiled at me and asked if I had any shit. I almost lost it, bit my tongue and explained that I hadn’t had any since before I went to the hospital and that I had no desire to possess or use it again. I explained I was a casual user who used it when I became Homeless to stay awake because sleeping was dangerous and often resulted in my stuff getting stolen. His addiction and my generosity, I often had it but didn’t use it and gave it to him freely, excited him that I might have his next fix. I wanted to yell that I wouldn’t give or even sell him shit after the stunt he just pulled.

T’s girlfriend, M lives in a trailer in a trailer park on the cusp of Citrus Heights. When i met him and her, she lived with her mother there and he lived in a RV that she had purchased for him to recover from prostate cancer. I became good friends with her mother, who enjoyed conversing with me and telling me what Citrus Heights and North Highlands was like in the 70’s and early 80’s. M & T and I had a falling out because T was running a rolling tweaker paradise of a meth house in the RV with a horde of addicted tweakers trying to secure regular access and those with regular access trying to run things like some rolling lord of the flies experiment. We didn’t talk for about three months and when T approached me, to extend an olive branch, it was to tell me that my friend, M’s mom had passed away and that’s how we reconnected.

I needed a house address to send a copy of my American Express Bluebird Card and M said that I could send it to the trailer park, which i did while I was in the hospital. I confirmed with her that it had arrived a week before I went to Sacramento to retrieve it. When I we got to her house, they couldn’t find it and weren’t overly concerned about it.

Out of necessity, I had to leave two of the bags that I had retrieved from.my friends house because the heat had drained me too much to be able to carry all of it on the bus and then carry it from bus stop to my house. The bag with the most valuable items was secured with combination luggage locks and previously I had told T the combinations but there really shouldn’t have been any reason to open the bag. He messaged me Sunday night telling me something in the bag was beeping and if I didn’t make it stop, or provide him th3 combination that he would cut the lock off. Keep in mind the bags were supposed to be left in the trunk of M’s car, which would have made it impossible to hear any beeping. Not that there really could have been anything in there that was beeping, since it hadn’t been touched in more then two months. See, I knew he was tweaking and curiosity made him want to see what was in the bag and the locks thwarted him because he couldn’t remember me telling him the code. I gave him the code, after I explained how shallow his beeping claim was and how shady his behavior was. I went on to tell him how fucked up it was that they still hadn’t found the Bluebird Card and that when it was missing, that he offered to let me use his PayPal card after inquiring how my money my sister was going to send me. It is Wednesday and they still haven’t found the card nor has he told me what was beeping in the bag.

T is the poster child for Dunning-Kruger, someone who thinks they are way smarter then they are. On Friday, a mutual friend exited the car and drove off with a friend because he had some tasks he needed to accomplish. This friend had offered to get T a ten sack, and when this happened before he got it, T lost it. He tried to blame me for the mutual friends leaving, saying that I took too long getting the clothes, and that the friend was angry at me. I laughed at him and told him bluntly that he was full of shit and a fucking idiot. He then drove around for ten more minutes trying to think of a source for a ten sack and looking for people he knew who might have one. After I said what I did about the beeping, the bag and Bluebird Card, he said that he used all.his gas driving me around. my response was to tell him he was fucking retarded.