Magical Shrinking: Stumbling Through Bipolar Disorder by Christiane Wells

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I’ve written this before, but sometimes I wish I could get inside of different people’s minds to see what it’s like in there. I only know what it’s like in my own head, and it’s a strange place. I feel a little sluggish right now.

I want to learn more about my brain and how bipolar disorder fits into my neurochemistry. I’ve decided to do my final paper in biopsychology on bipolar disorder and neurobiology. Since I have the option of writing it about anything I want related to the field, I might as well do it on something personal.

Biopsychology has been an interesting class so far. It’s deep material, but the author of my text does a great job of applying everything to real life, which is helpful. I’m looking forward to the week we do substance abuse, because no doubt I beat the shit out of my brain with drugs.

On that note, I’m going to dip back into the well of my writing from 1998. This is a description of a time when I used heroin with my friend Buddy. Ironically, we met in drug treatment. Heroin blew my mind, it was unlike anything else. I didn’t like it as much as cocaine, but when I did it, I loved it.

         "I took the syringe into the bathroom, because unlike Buddy, I wasn’t practiced in the art of snorting heroin in liquid form and I was afraid I’d stick my nose by accident – I wanted to watch in the mirror. I snorted it and returned to the kitchen. It hit me like a fucking brick wall. Things became a little fuzzy around the edges, soft, and I sat down to enjoy it. I was watching him snort it like a pro when overwhelming nausea came over me. I went back into the bathroom and vomited.

            This time when I returned to the living room I was so fucked up I could hardly walk. It felt wonderful. I thought, puking is a small price to pay for a high so good. He asked if I was feeling anything, and I had to chuckle. Couldn’t he tell? I could barely form the words to tell him that yeah, I was fucked up. I felt euphoric, like I was on top of the world. I rolled another joint and asked him if I could do a little more. He agreed and set me up again. I went back into the bathroom, and on my way back it hit me again.

            We smoked the joint I’d rolled and watched a basketball game. I was in heaven; he’d scored me a bag of weed, and $15 worth of heroin had fucked me up hard. I was secretly hoping Buddy had AIDS, because I’d seen his blood backed up in the syringe the first time, and I had a death wish.”

Buddy used to take turns shooting it and snorting it. I always used the syringe after him and it always had a little slush of blood in it. I had a therapist tell me I’d be sorry if I ended up with HIV from my drug use. Like I possibly cared whether I lived or died.