ritual.

After a surprisingly short period of time you find that you can't talk to God anymore. The highs are still incredible, but they aren't enough. This is when you have to start upping your dosage. God wants you to work for this communion.

Pretty soon all you are doing is shooting up or sticking up, you're either high or planning out how to get high again. All the most basic of human feelings disappear and you find it hard to think about anyone or anything else. I ceased to be an addict and officially graduated to the realm of the junkie.

The mind of a junkie is a sick parody of humanity. All you want is your fix and nothing else matters. God won't hear you any more, and you are finally getting stoned simply because you have to. Everyone who does heroin ends up here, it's just a matter of how long it's going to take and how much of your humanity it has to consume first. For me, I had already lost everything worth keeping.

She had been hooking for us, and when I could keep my hands straight I was still sticking people up. Knowing that she had turned to whoring almost killed me when I found out. I remembered the story she told me about the native guy she lived with, and how he could degrade her like crazy and she stayed, but the moment he tried to make her a whore, she left him. And I guess degrade is the best possible word. I never asked her about what he did to her, but I've heard people talk about him, and he likes doing things like taking a shit on people.

When I found out, I got so angry at her. I wanted to make her understand that she wasn't a whore, that she was better than that, and that I didn't want anyone else to have her. I screamed and I cried, and she just sort of stayed silent. When she got tired of listening to me, she pulled out two syringes and a baggie that held some of the best heroin I have ever had. The most disgusting thing I have ever done was to let the woman I was closest to on earth become a twenty-dollar whore to support my disease.

Shell died in my arms a few weeks ago. I didn't even know she was sick. She probably didn't know either, so I can't really hold anything against her. The police said that she had hepatitis, and she could have been cured if she had gone to a clinic and got tested. It turns out that before she died she gave it to me, so I try to remember to go to the clinic when I can. Sometimes when I get high on bad heroin I can just feel my liver breaking down. It should scare me, but it doesn't. Dying just means that my life is over, but I don't think that what I have could be called a life. All I am living for is to feed the beast, and when I die it'll just find another fool to consume.

Mortality brings clarity. Once you realize that you are going to die the world sort of swims into focus. I got into a methadone clinic, and I've been doing all right. The doctors say that my hepatitis is still treatable, and that I'm lucky I never caught HIV with all the shared needles I have used. They've been pretty nice to me, giving me clean needles and methadone. I try to think of these doctors pulling me from the jaws of the dragon, but that only makes me feel good when I'm high. Generally I feel like crap all the time.

Remember when I told you about the smoker who quits and then falls off the wagon? Well, a week ago I took all my methadone in the morning and had a wicked head. When I came down I realized how stupid I was, and that the sickness was going to start in on me pretty quickly. I had to go out and get some heroin this time just to keep the sickness away so I could go back to the clinic tomorrow. I haven't been back.

I found a victim in an alley, a businessman hurrying to a meeting with a client. I tried to put my knife to his throat, but I wasn't able to make much sense and my hands were shaking, so I just shoved it in his neck and pulled. I tore a big chunk out of his throat. It didn't matter, he had money on him and I could feel the sweat coming up on my neck. When the contents of the dropper swept through me, God remembered me if only for the briefest of