HANNAH AND HER STRANGER
TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains autobiographical fentanyl & overdose related content
Before you ask, yes that blue thing is a tampon applicator. They work better than straws for snorting and smoking heroin/fent.
This post is about an incident that occurred during one of the last times I grabbed heroin/fent.
I arrived at the motel where my dealer lived and saw that his car was gone. I called him and he said he was half an hour away and would be back asap. Waiting a half hour for heroin is pretty much par for the course, and in fact isn’t a big deal at all compared to other durations I’ve had to endure (I once waited eight hours outside a different dealer’s apartment in January, calling him every ten minutes in a vain attempt to get him to wake up).
I was sitting on the steps of the motel smoking a cigarette when a short blonde woman sauntered over to me and asked, in a broken voice, if I “had a toke.”
I know that a lot of people think “toke” is cannabis nomenclature, and it is, I guess, but when someone who looks a little ragged uses the term, they are more likely referring to crack. Because of the neighbourhood I was in, and the motel I was at, I assumed she was looking for crack, and I was right. I told her I didn’t have any, and that I was waiting for my dealer to get home so I could buy fent. “Can you help me please?” she asked. “I’m really sick.”
Now, those who know me know that it is my general policy to help someone when they ask for it, especially when/if they are dopesick. I only had $10 on me that night, but I’d been good about not asking my dealer for fronts, in fact I hadn’t asked him for a spot for months, so I figured he would probably spot me a point, maybe a point and a half, and I could therefore give half a point to this woman, who was obviously hurting and sick. Never mind that she probably wouldn’t have helped me if the situation were reversed, and never mind that in eight hours she would be right back where she started, sick again, and broke, and needing to find a way to get the money to buy drugs; despite all these incontrovertible facts, my heart went out to her and I decided to help.
While waiting for my dealer to get back, we talked about our respective addictions, and how long we’d been using. She told me her name, which was Hannah (not her real name). She said she’d been doing opiates for five years, and that she preferred actual heroin to fentanyl, because fent sometimes made her ex-boyfriend growl in his sleep, and the growling frightened her. I’ve never heard someone growl in fent-induced sleep, but I have heard cries and screams from fent-induced nightmares. I developed a weird sleep paralysis thing pretty much in tandem with my opiate use, and the nightmares have tapered as my use has declined, so I think the two things are related.
Hannah told me she was a “booster,” which means shoplifter, and I told her I was currently in between jobs and struggling and hadn’t eaten in days. At this she said “I’ll be right back,” and toddled off. I fully expected to never see her again, but she returned ten minutes later with a pack of donuts from the nearby Wal-Mart, and a large Kit Kat bar. She’d “boosted” both items and split them with me. Opiate addicts crave sugar like mad, and we devoured the donuts and the Kit Kat. She was obviously a nice person and I felt good about my decision to help her.
Eventually my dealer made it home (after 45 minutes, not 30), at which point I went into his room and asked him for a front, which he gave to me. Back outside, me and Hannah went behind the motel where I snorted a point of bright blue fent off my journal, using the cellophane from my cigarette pack as a straw, and she smoked the half point I gave her using her crackpipe.
The fent hit almost immediately, within ten seconds or so, and I felt instantly warm and safe and happy. I closed my eyes for about thirty seconds and let the drug do it’s thing. This is the moment drug addicts beg, lie, suffer and steal for…so you might as well enjoy it when it comes. It’s typically only going to happen once a day, and it’s the reason why you struggle, so don’t fight it or guilt yourself in that moment. Otherwise there’s no point to maintaining your addiction.
When I opened my eyes I saw that Hannah was alarmingly fucked up. Like…her eyes were almost shut and she was weaving and staggering. She couldn’t speak without slurring and she was drooling. This was not good. She was really really high, in the danger zone of overdosing, and I was the one who’d given her the drugs. I really should have listened to her more. She’d told me she preferred heroin to fent, and although I warned her I’d be getting fent, I don’t know if I told her to be careful. I had assumed she was a veteran opiate user because of her bona fides.
Like me, she had no cellphone (I was using one I’d borrowed), that desperate searching hungry expression, and she was clearly dopesick when she came up to me. Moreover, she talked about heroin with the elan and familiarity of a longtime user. It didn’t even occur to me that half a point might dispatch her. So now I was with somebody who could barely walk, who had no fixed address, and we were miles from any hospital and anyway I didn’t have the money to cab her to one. I was two subway stations away from my Naloxone kit (I hadn’t expected to use at the motel, usually I brought my drugs home and did them there…but I did the fent with Hannah because that’s what drug users do with each other…they use drugs). I touched her shoulder and she looked at me through half-shut eyes.
“Do you need me to call an ambulance?” She shook her head. Fuck, I thought. (To those who think I should have called anyway: She said no, and I had to respect her decision. I had no way of knowing what her previous experiences with police had been like. If she’d lost consciousness I absolutely and without hesitation would have called 911. But she hadn’t given me consent to do so, so I did not do so.)
I took her arm and started walking her slowly down the street. Because she didn’t have a cellphone, I figured there was a good chance she had a few phone numbers memorized. Fortunately, I was right about this. I was able to get her to tell me the number of a friend of hers who lived two minutes away. Hannah’s eyes were now completely closed, and she was leaning on me to the extent that if I’d moved suddenly she would have fallen over. I called the number she gave me and a man answered.
“Hi,” I said. “You don’t know me, but I’m with Hannah and she’s really fucked up. She just smoked some fent and she’s not doing good. I need to get her somewhere where somebody can keep an eye on her. I don’t think she’s overdosing but she’s close.”
“Where are you?” the guy said sharply.
I told him.
“Stay right there!” he ordered.
Thirty seconds later a very large man came huffing and puffing down the street. He was wearing a big baggy jacket and his hands were massive. Watching him approach, I thought for a second he might hit me. (After all, I was the one who’d given Hannah the drugs). But he simply grabbed her and said “put your arms around my neck, babe. Put your arms around my neck.”
Hannah complied, and the man turned and ran off without a word, presumably to his house, carrying Hannah in his arms.
Shaken, I went home and called the number a few hours later, just to check if Hannah was okay.
“She’s fine,” the guy said, and hung up.
Sighing, I called back.
“Dude, what do you want?” the guy snapped.
“Can I just speak to her myself for a second?”
A sigh.
“Hello?” asked a weak voice. It was her though. It was Hannah.
“Just checking,” I said. “Just needed to hear your voice.”
“Oh okay.”
“Take care, okay? Be safe.”
“Okay.”
Jesus. My policy of helping my fellow drug addicts almost got a girl killed. I knew then that I needed to change my life or I’d end up either killing myself or someone else. Not one week later I overdosed.
The fentanyl looked fine to me, same bright blue it always was. I’d grabbed shortly after midnight, went home and used around 1:00AM. I snorted a line and smoked an equal amount off a sheet of tinfoil (2 points or less).
And that’s all I remember until waking up 15.5 hrs later @ 630PM.I have NO memory of a bad reaction. Not even a 2-3 second “woah, I don’t feel so good…” BLACKNESS. I recall NOTHING at all. This TTC subway map poster on my wall was torn down, suggesting I was in some kind of distress (balance? trying to reach my phone? No idea, but the poster is a gift I treasure from my ex-partner, so I wouldn’t have deliberately torn it down). I woke up in my bed fully clothed and on top of the blanket, suggesting I walked over to the bed and lay down. But I have no memory of doing so. I was alone. Not using with anybody.
This OD was very frightening to me because, as a former alcoholic (drunk daily for more than 10 years) and 6-year opiate user (3 years Oxycodone, 3 years heroin), I have NEVER blacked out. Not once. I remember everything, even from the 2 previous ODs. But this time…nothing. At first I thought maybe “hmm…well if I don’t remember anything, maybe I was awake and moving around and just in a fugue state?” (this seemed less scary somehow). I checked my phone. No texts sent, the ones received hadn’t been read. No history in my browser. No posts on Instagram or Twitter. I can only conclude that I was lights out that whole time. From 1AM to 630PM…that’s 15.5 hours. More than two full nights’ sleep. It scared the shit out of me.
I called my drug dealer immediately after waking and told him he may have a bad batch. “Yeah I think so. 3 of my customers died today.” Not his fault. He didn’t know. He would never knowingly sell lethal drugs. He told me I could return the bad fent and he’d give me a diff strain. I was too spooked to even do that. Felt fucked up and weird for several days afterwards.
I’m thinking it was a benzo. Not bragging, but I can take a LOT of opiates. I’m on the highest dose of methadone a single provider can give you in Ontario. You CAN go higher than 120mg, but you need two doctors to sign off on it, a complete physical, and a compelling reason to convince said doctors. I’ve drank 120mg of methadone and used 3 grams of heroin in the same day without feeling sleepy. 3 grams = $600. And benzos have been showing up in fentanyl and heroin with alarming regularity since 2020, probably bcuz border shutdowns have made moving drugs more difficult. (This chart is admittedly from BC, but Ontario is every bit as affected by COVID border shutdowns and lockdowns.)
The two events (Hannah’s overdose and my own) occcured close together that I figured whatever new fentanyl was out there was Russian Roulette.
And it has helped keep me clean since. I saw Hannah on the subway a few weeks later. I waved. She made no indication that she recognized me. I admit that hurt a little but I also understand that women get a lot of unwanted attention and she probably didn’t really look at me. I was just some lust-filled creepy guy. She wasn’t dead though. And neither am I.
Whatever it was, it probably a lot of killed people if it knocked me out for 15.5 hours. it probably almost killed me. I’m very grateful that it didn’t. I’d been using alone for so long without a problem that it didn’t even occur to me that night that I was in danger.
But that’s how slight the margin for error is with fent. If I’d injected, I have no doubt that I’d be dead right now. Brrrr. Be careful and always have Naloxone and always use with someone else if you can. Your spotter should ALWAYS wait 5-10 mins before doing it, just to make sure YOU aren’t ODing. I know that feels like an eternity when yr dopesick, but it’s better than being dead for eternity. What the fuck would my cat Cookie have done if I’d died?