JACKO AND THE QUEST FOR A SPEEDBALL
Some dayz you wake up and wonder if you didn't truly escape hell. by the same token did I just wake up in the one I created. ah man... I got to get out and get together a speedball...and not that redneck cocaine-bathtub speed, but the real deal from South America unadulterated and pure rocks and Mexican brown or some China White. Now I knew where to get an 8 ball, 1/8 ounce of high-grade coke because the dude was into making base rocks. And loved to tell ya the who process before he'd get your goods, step by step. Swear the guy shoulda been a teacher. He knew his shit, had a huge good rep...but only wanted to do a limited amount.
Kinda felt like "Ratso" Rizzo, from Midnight Cowboy, minus the limp. So had to hustle up someone to by 1/8 an ounce, I had a little scratch but not enough for the 8-ball (1/8 ounce) and I was trying to think who'd go in with me, so that's 7 grams and I could cover close to three grams and the other bit over 4 grams. now there was a ballon I'd been saving, (usually, a couple of hits depending upon your jones, but see where some strung-out enough to do several bags at a time, a sure death wish for a novice.
But as in life's pulsating tapestry, things kinda went into place... I had tried to get in touch with some people but it's like it was a day for all to take a field trip, no one home, I tried one couple I knew as the last resort and it was off the sunset strip, which means in this case, down the hill aways and I was on foot, it was one of those L.A. days where the smog was this overhead shroud-like covering and the air at times seemed thick and had that foreign odd, you know it ain't good for you an odiferous tang that kept reminding you by wafting into your lungs and even with a dry heat, it had the filmy sweat that was not helping whether you took a shower or not. So I made it to the apartment, there were little houses, but a lot of apartments took over as they were there for the people who were acting and trying to break into a series, film or the production aspects, the behind the scenes people. And musicians, roadies, groupies and music industry behind the scenes people had become a large part of the area too. It was in a classic and well kept Art Deco building which at times reminded of the old coll theatres on Hollywood Blvd. Like being thrown into a time-warp. I got into the bell there were several rolls even that looking original and a sculpted metal relief with names and doorbells there (before cell phones or video cameras or talking through any speaker.) So there I was, just sucking in L.A.smogs, with that slimy sweat some money but not enough and a case of the I need a speedball blues.
Frustrated and seemingly out of options, I suddenly hear "Jacko, Jacko!!!". And look towards the street and there was Speedy Shades, a nomenclature because he wore the sunglasses so dark we never figured how he saw out of them and speedy because he drove like he was saving someone's life and taking them to the hospital.
So he jets to the curb and says hey I wanna get an 8-ball
but I'm short and I got an old connection who has Columbian and not stepped on. I thought to myself, is this considered a miracle?
So, I jumped in the car, air conditioning was rolling the window down.
So shades tears away from the curb and had some more tidbits that made the day all that much brighter. It seems the connection, had his ounceS of heroin (was called tragic-magic by some) come in cheesecloth
and told shades he could have the cheesecloth and there was dope saturated into it.
So at shades usual breakneck speed, where it seemed, we were oblivious to the speed laws, or rather focused on a speedball.
The thing about connections apart from the obvious they don't want to meet people, it was also a lifesaver being the only one who could go to the connection and you'd get a taste for your efforts and sometimes a bit of cash.
So, even with the windows rolled down, the metal of the cars just radiated enough heat to make the waiting a preview of the 6th circle of hell. Now you get a tad paranoid when you are sitting in a car waiting to cope. So with one eye peeled for cops and the other eye peeled for the door to the apartment entrance open, it took a little of the tedium away. But still, time always felt like molasses-slow and dragging.
That filmy type of sweat seems to start to percolate as I sat doing my best not to look as if I were squirming although a true act of futility. As my mind wandered, in the thick fog of impatience, I thought back to the late '60s in San Francisco, when the attack on the love generation was set up by the Administration itself and CIA was to flood the Haight and the whole Bay area with China White from the Burma and Laos areas, Air America went and set up a charter airline and they flew the pure raw opium to be processed into heroin Marseille France was another Mecca of China White heroin where Corsican Gangsters smuggled and processed into China White heroin
and was made famous from the film "The French Connection" But it also flooded the San Francisco area and is both a cause of serious overdoes and a staggeringly higher rate of addicts which did, as one would expect a negative effect upon the area and the generation. As an aside, the real estate of the Haight Ashbury area went down and somehow the mayor Alioto and his wife brought much of the area for a pittance.
Snapped out of my daze by the door opening and Shades had a grin from ear to ear.
We were heading back, but Shades wanted to stop (kinda make the anticipation of the brown and coke greater) and get some new outfits (needles-and too a spoon matches lighter and cotton))
so we headed to somewhere in the sunset hills. We knocked at the door several times, about ready to leave and the door swings open and some guy is in a panic say help help... we looked at each other and followed the guy, to the living room and the was a girl on the floor looking passed out, he says she od'ed and didn't know what to do, with our limited knowledge we took her to the bathroom tub, put on cold water and asked for salt, we quicked cooked (out in a spoon with water and heated with a lighter) it up and I gripped her arm to raise a vein and Shades shot some salt into her....it took a few moments but she began to rouse and open her eyes
The guy Shades knew thanked us profusely and we said cool you got some new points(needles)
..he went back to a room and gave us a few...
As we drove off, I told shades, thanks for the near heart attack, he said he didn't fare any better, but we were surprised the guy didn't know to do that to save the girl...so as callus as we can be at times we were glad we did help.
Went to my place and got out outfits together and Shades brought out the linen with the Mexican Tar heroin that had saturated it and we had the 8 ball of coke so we were gonna do a speedball so we squirted some hot water from a needle on the linen and got some dark residue in our spoon and then added just a pinch of coke.
Usually it was the coke rush then the heroin (was called tragic magic by some) nod to even the edge off the coke-well we both got the brew ready and proceeded to fix it, well turns out the heroin from the linen was so strong that we nodded first and we actually slurring out words and were hoping we would end up like that girl at that other pad. China white was so strong back in the bay area that people od'ed often, but this reside from the Mexican tax heroin was about the closest we ever came to od-ing! We nodded out and startle ourselves awake and tried to keep talking so we wouldn't go out, we were so out of it we didn't even want to try more coke to counter the monstrous nod from the heroin, being used to daily heroin we were spared the trouble of a puke that accompanied many who system wasn't used to heroin.
So we spend hours nodding off and keeping each other awake..... nod then awake...nod...then awake...
Today the drug companies are trying to run the heroin market with opioids
- Codeine (only available in generic form)
- Fentanyl (Actiq, Duragesic, Fentora, Abstral, Onsolis)
- Hydrocodone (Hysingla, Zohydro ER)
- Hydrocodone/acetaminophen (Lorcet, Lortab, Norco, Vicodin)
- Hydromorphone (Dilaudid, Exalgo)
- Meperidine (Demerol)
- Methadone (Dolophine, Methadose)
- the more dangerous of these are
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine. Pharmaceutical fentanyl was developed for pain management treatment of cancer patients, applied in a patch on the skin. Because of its powerful opioid properties, Fentanyl is also diverted for abuse. Fentanyl is added to heroin to increase its potency, or be disguised as highly potent heroin. Many users believe that they are purchasing heroin and actually don’t know that they are purchasing fentanyl – which often results in overdose deaths. Clandestinely-produced fentanyl is primarily manufactured in Mexico.
never understood how getting someone addicted to methadone was anything but supervised and big pharma's first control of heroin addits was a good thing then opiods were created and then the drug companies had the heroin market in terms of an alternative, no better just Big Pharma running another source and truly making it legal whereas making heroin is illegal-go figure......there have been alternatives to this
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
Street drug–related deaths from overdoses drop and the rate of HIV cases crashes
In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.
Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.
"Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.
Under the Portuguese plan, penalties for people caught dealing and trafficking drugs are unchanged; dealers are still jailed and subjected to fines depending on the crime. But people caught using or possessing small amounts—defined as the amount needed for 10 days of personal use—are brought before what's known as a "Dissuasion Commission," an administrative body created by the 2001 law.
Each three-person commission includes at least one lawyer or judge and one health care or social services worker. The panel has the option of recommending treatment, a small fine, or no sanction.
Peter Reuter, a criminologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, says he's skeptical decriminalization was the sole reason drug use slid in Portugal, noting that another factor, especially among teens, was a global decline in marijuana use. By the same token, he notes that critics were wrong in their warnings that decriminalizing drugs would make Lisbon a drug mecca.
"Drug decriminalization did reach its primary goal in Portugal," of reducing the health consequences of drug use, he says, "and did not lead to Lisbon becoming a drug tourist destination."
Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal "appears to be working." He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, "because it smacks of legalization."
Drug legalization removes all criminal penalties for producing, selling and using drugs; no country has tried it. In contrast, decriminalization, as practiced in Portugal, eliminates jail time for drug users but maintains criminal penalties for dealers. Spain and Italy have also decriminalized personal use of drugs and Mexico's president has proposed doing the same. .
A spokesperson for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, citing the pending Senate confirmation of the office's new director, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also declined to comment on the report.
Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.
"Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.
Under the Portuguese plan, penalties for people caught dealing and trafficking drugs are unchanged; dealers are still jailed and subjected to fines depending on the crime. But people caught using or possessing small amounts—defined as the amount needed for 10 days of personal use—are brought before what's known as a "Dissuasion Commission," an administrative body created by the 2001 law.
Each three-person commission includes at least one lawyer or judge and one health care or social services worker. The panel has the option of recommending treatment, a small fine, or no sanction.
Peter Reuter, a criminologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, says he's skeptical decriminalization was the sole reason drug use slid in Portugal, noting that another factor, especially among teens, was a global decline in marijuana use. By the same token, he notes that critics were wrong in their warnings that decriminalizing drugs would make Lisbon a drug mecca.
"Drug decriminalization did reach its primary goal in Portugal," of reducing the health consequences of drug use, he says, "and did not lead to Lisbon becoming a drug tourist destination."
Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal "appears to be working." He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, "because it smacks of legalization."
Drug legalization removes all criminal penalties for producing, selling and using drugs; no country has tried it. In contrast, decriminalization, as practiced in Portugal, eliminates jail time for drug users but maintains criminal penalties for dealers. Spain and Italy have also decriminalized personal use of drugs and Mexico's president has proposed doing the same. .
A spokesperson for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, citing the pending Senate confirmation of the office's new director, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also declined to comment on the report.
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