This is an excerpt from “Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me,” on-sale from Park Row Books on Feb. 25.
Park Row Books
New York City, August 1997
It was 5:00 a.m., and I was wide awake — the kind of awake with edges so sharp that sleep is carved away. Chills marched on my skin like an army of ants, and I searched in the dark for my green sweater.
I had been wearing that sweater incessantly since I’d returned from Paris. The sweater went on and then was pulled off, repeatedly, each day, in my desperate, yet half-hearted, attempts at kicking. It was pale green, woven of silk and cashmere, bought in one of the shopping sprees I went on to distract myself from the hundreds of dollars a day I was shooting in my arm, and it filled me with comfort and disgust in equal measure.
It wasn’t even a great color on me; it wasn’t really me. Maybe that’s why I bought it. Hiding had become my occupation.
It was August in New York. There may be no worse time and place to kick than August in New York. Heat and humidity and intense smells amplify withdrawal symptoms. Everyone has their AC on full blast; you’re continually flipping between hot and cold. The changes in temperature, outside and in, grated on me, irritating my prickly skin. And so, the green sweater went on and off, on and off.
I’d come back East to visit my dad, and also to try to coax myself into kicking. It was a bad idea. Why did I always think that kicking dope on vacation would work?
My dad had moved to Rhode Island but was in New York on