For my friend

I am rewriting this for a friend whose father died of a heroine overdose, she’s told me in depth the story and said she finds it hard to put into words and therefore I am writing it for her as accurately as I can. I hope I do you justice sweetheart…

There’s this moment, this moment that to me is froze and fragmented in time. I carry it with me always, even when I pretend that it’s buried within the deepest section of my core, it still haunts me. It writhes within me and I’m aware that it always will. My Father was a heroine addict, he dedicated fifteen years of his life to a drug, and he dedicated fifteen years of it to neglecting me.
I refer not only to his addiction in the past tense but to him. My Father died last year of an overdose. Upon reflection and ironically it’s probably how he would have wanted to go. For obvious reasons my Mother barely let my brother and I see him and therefore his death hit me in a most unexpected manner and for want of a better expression, it broke my heart. I found him, cold, dead and with the needle still in him. The thing about addicts is people lose sight of the good in them and stop caring about them and I lost sight of my Dad.

He’d been dead for two weeks when I let myself into his flat, I used to take him food because he never ate, not that he had a craving for food, it didn’t quite quench that unstoppable thirst, that only heroine could. My Dad had long since destroyed the veins in his arm, as is often the case with users and he relied on the haggard veins in the soles of his feet. I cannot in any way describe or illuminate to another human being how destructive a scene like that is, it eats at all your happy thoughts and replaces the hope and light in your life.

When I actually manage to sleep my heads riddled with nightmares and I am forever carrying round a pendant of guilt which rests on my heart. My father died alone in a flat that stank of his own faeces that wasn’t fit for a person even as low as him and he died alone. People don’t think about what drugs can do, they try them due to peer pressure, curiosity or just because they are searching for something to fill a void but they are dangerous and can pull everything apart. Heroine will always destroy, it can in no way mend, fulfil or cure, this is a drug that cannot be taken without consequences, please bare this in mind.