I awoke on Monday morning, June 19, 2006, exactly a month after my 21st birthday, in a particularly jubilant mood because the first sight for my weary eyes was the sleeping beauty that was my girlfriend at the time.

Nothing quite compares to the sight of your object of affection represented in the soft, smooth flesh that characterizes life down to the very core of being. When one can observe the embodiment of love, peacefully wandering through the infinite fields of non-duality within her sleeping body, one can only silently stare and smile to oneself. Unfortunately, I cannot know for sure, but this day may have been the catalyst that began the beginning of the end of our relationship, but also began the beginning of a new beginning. Unbeknownst to me, June 19th was to become a day to remember, a day of joy, death, tears, rebirth, renewal, and the beginning of my climb from the bottom.

I would’ve liked to have kissed my girlfriend in her sleep without waking her, so that I could see the adorable way that women stir in their sleep after being so kissed. That little shuffle women do while letting out a little moan through their slight smile always touches me in a way that reminds me of a balloon rubbing against my head. But I had not been successful and she awoke, which was all well and good, I just would’ve liked to see that smile. But enough of all this, without further ado I will begin to tell the tale which forever altered the course of my life, a tale which I wouldn’t, for anything, change at all.

After leaving her abode, I traveled to my house to get ready for another rigorous day at the pool company. It was about 5:45 AM, and five seconds, and I was expected at work around seven o’clock. Luckily, I live just across the street from the headquarters of the company, where we would all meet every morning, and be dispatched to carry out our various duties. Today, there would be no duties for me. Today, all the work I was to be doing was to be spiritual. Today, with no way to alter the course of this part of my life, I was going to be letting go of any sense of control I thought I had, and letting the ebb and flow of my life take me forward, then back, then forward, then back, but always moving slightly more forward than back as the moon of fate pulls me towards my end destination. In another hour, life threw a curveball that only my brother had the ability to hit. It wound up rolling down the baseline, and luckily didn’t go foul because… well… that would’ve been the end of me.

I hadn’t even finished getting ready for work yet because I had other work to go about doing first, which happens to be the type of work that is much easier to carry out without a shirt on. I set out to do this work in my usual thorough way. I grabbed a fresh, room-temperature water bottle from my basement, a fresh Q-tip from my bathroom, a cotton ball for after the deed, and a belt. I closed the door to my room behind me, locked it, and set to work.

I removed a slim, but fairly long, folded up wax paper baggie from my wallet. I gripped the tip of the baggy between my thumb and index finger and let it unfold, succumbing, as everything does, to the forces of gravity. It was the same gravity which would be felt in the next 15 minutes by everyone who was unlucky enough, but fortunate enough to be in the proximity of the immense “weight” of the coming event. I had used half the contents of the bag the night before, so I was well aware of the effects I was about to feel. I was also well aware that what was in this bag was not exactly what I would have preferred; I knew this baggie contained a chemical called fentanyl. In addition, I knew what this fentanyl could do. But there was no way that risk was going to keep me from “eating my breakfast.” People drink their coffee despite the risk of burning ones’ mouth. There is no difference with this risk in the mind of the user. So, without any hesitation I emptied the other half of the bag, drew some water into my sharp vacuum of sorts and emptied it into the bottle cap which I had emptied my drugs into. Upon mixing with water, this solution took a dirty brown color that only darkened as I stirred it with the plunger of my needle. I took a few seconds to smell the sweet, bitter aroma of my impending doom.

Now I must take a short interlude from the story to discuss the seemingly paradoxical idea of a sweet, but also bitter aroma of impending doom. How can this paradox be true? I can tell you that it is true because I know it to be. And now, I shall prove it. You may be wondering how an aroma of impending doom could even be sweet in any way, or you might be wondering what the aroma of doom smells like. Or you’re an addict or a recovering addict and you’re already well on your way to understand this phenomena. Let’s dissect this sentence word-for-word, and define each one.

The word sweet might make you think of a red, jelly-like candy with sugar sprinkled on it, and in the shape of a bell. If not, then some other sweets come to mind, or perhaps you can relate to my feeling of the sweetness of my vice. I have always thought that potent heroin, when dissolved in water, gives off a double-sided odor. The sweet side symbolizes the sweetness of my experience of addiction with dope: the sweetness of the high (during infant stages of addiction), my sweet disregard of my worries and seemingly meaningless responsibilities (during adolescent stages of addiction), and the sweet outcome of overcoming my addiction (when my addiction became comatose). On the other hand, this experience had been quite bitter, resulting in my whole world being crushed in the contracting cheeks of my face, as if my existence at the time existed within the prison of my mandibles. The bitterness experienced by the expense of my lifestyle, the bitter disappointment of the high (during adolescent and late stages of addiction), and the bitterness one experiences when ones actions cause them to start the long upward climb of life from the very bottom instead of the higher precipice that one was at before the downward spiral of addiction are the key sources of bitterness. The “impending doom” is not to be confused with my demise. Yes, death did occur that day, but since I am here typing this right now, almost a year later, one can infer that I am very much alive right now. The impending doom is more sweet than bitter, because my addiction was inevitably going to contract cancer on this fateful day. Only a type of cancer could begin to kill the beast within me, and within thousands of other people.

With that said, I feel it would be appropriate for me to move on with my story, before further interpretation of “the sweet and bitter aroma of my impending doom.” After enjoying the aroma, I removed a small amount of cotton from the Q-Tip, rolled it into a ball between the tip of my index finger and thumb then, I dropped it into the bottle cap. The cotton piece immediately became brown in a very systematic manner as the molecules of the dope infused themselves into the dryness of the cotton. With this measure taken, I could rest assured that I did about all I could to keep any impurities from entering my body (using the word “impurities” loosely of course). Then came the time for me to slide the metal shaft into the soft mass of cotton, and extract the color of my desire. The same color of shit which, until I met heroin, I had never desired in any way except to see it in the bottom of the toilet. With the shit of my passion safely secured in the plastic vacuum, I pointed the metal shaft to the sky and flicked all the air to the top. I pushed the air out which, as always, ejaculated with a delightful wisp that always created a feeling of giddy anticipation of the coming sublime.

The grip of death then tightened on my bicep as the tip of the ticks mouth slid effortlessly between the clouds and landed in the internal freeway of my body. The red atmosphere of my inner world exploded into the shit-color of my desire. When the red mushroom cloud hit the peak of its ascent, my desire and myself became one. With ecstatic dizziness, death filled my body, my eyes rolled back, and everything became black.