Going Down Fast

I remember thinking after I had been shooting heroin for about seven or eight weeks, that I'd better stop, because I didn't want to get hooked. I couldn't see that it had already taken over. With all the other drugs I had ever used, there was never  physical withdrawal symptoms that I could identify. But all the stuff I had ever heard about heroin, led me to believe that this drug was different. So one day, I packed my van with a tent, a sleeping bag, and my dog, and left for a weekend camping trip in Vermont. I needed to take a break. It was summer, and Vermont was beautiful. I pulled up off the highway and trekked about 1/4 mile into the woods, along a river, and set up camp. That night it rained very hard, and the whole next day and night, too. I kept waiting to experience the nausea and vomiting I had always seen junkies going through in the movies when they tried to "kick". All I felt was cold and damp, and very bored. After two days, I had enough, and so I broke camp, and drove home. The whole ride, all I kept thinking was.."I can't believe it, they lied about heroin, too". That sixties mentality again, telling me that nothing I had been told about drugs was true...after using the kind of high grade heroin I had been using for over twelve weeks, I thought surely, I should have had a habit. But all I felt was... that I had wasted a perfectly good weekend out in the woods, getting wet, and catching a cold. I had no experience with heroin withdrawal then, and today, I think that "cold" was probably the early stages of acute withdrawal, but I didn't know it. When I got back to Connecticut, I got high. And the "cold" that I had picked up was quickly forgotten, along with any fear I might have had of addiction or withdrawal. I never worried  about a habit again during the next two years. I thought heroin addiction was just another lie, and I had "proven" it to myself...