My Life as a Brooklyn Junkie

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My Life as a Brooklyn Junkie

Heroin is like Aladdin's lamp: it will make you think that your wishes are coming true, that you are in control of your life.

Heroin has come back to haunt the US. Riding on the back of a runaway prescription opiate epidemic, the number of heroin users has doubled in a decade. In the last four years, the number of heroin seizures in the US has risen by 80 percent. Since 2001 there has been a five-fold increase in the number of heroin overdose deaths in America.

The dead can't talk. The stories of those who die of heroin overdoses are largely confined to the dustbin. But when those who have been teetering on the precipice of death manage to haul themselves back, they become expert witnesses of an extreme existence.

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I first came across Anastasia at an international drug conference in Lithuania in 2013, where she was representing a grassroots advocacy organization helping street drug users in New York. A Russian immigrant to the US, Anastasia had fled persecution with her family and arrived in New York aged 13. By 18, she was speed-balling eight times a day. —Max Daly

The first time I overdosed on heroin, my boyfriend left me for seven hours in an unconscious state. He tried to revive me by doing stuff like rubbing me with ice and I don't know what else, but when I came to, no one was home and it was dark outside. He later came home and told me that he had thought I was dead and he was trying to figure out what hospital he was going to dump me outside.

We shot drugs all over Brooklyn, where we lived, everywhere, on the street, in McDonalds, in various stairways of buildings, public bathrooms, in other people's cars. We sharpened our dull syringes on dirty stairs.

There were many highs. I was 19, totally strung out on heroin, going to art school, working in a men's clothing store, and renting a small studio apartment with my college roommate in Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood notorious for drugs and prostitution. At times, I felt like I was on top of the world. I felt like I became one with all the dead legends who walked New York City's streets, like Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and Basquiat. I felt like I could totally relate and understand all of them, I was just like them. I was hurt, I was looking for love. I was afraid to live, yet wanted to live so badly, and with a purpose.

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I had arrived in New York on a refugee visa in 1996 from a small town not far from Moscow, called Alexandrov. I remember being called names in school: I had a dark complexion, because I have a mixed Russian gypsy-Jewish heritage. My brother was nearly beaten to death by his girlfriend's father when he found out he was Jewish.

When I came to the US, I had no friends and spoke no English. I got spat on at junior high for being a foreigner. My family was always arguing. I missed home so much, but I knew that I was never going to be able to call it home again. The only thing I could do was draw; that kept my spirit alive. I ended up studying visual art at LaGuardia, the old Fame school. It was an unconventional place full of immigrants and artists. I felt I belonged.

But I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. I was conflicted about my sexuality because at the time I liked both men and women. Then at 18 I was diagnosed bipolar and given lithium pills. I had a lot of questions about who I was: bi this and bi that. When I tried cocaine with my two friends I was blown away. They liked it, but I was all, "Where have you been all my life?"

Later that year, I fell in love with Sky*, my brother's friend. He was six years older than me, a former model, and a seemingly nice guy. One day we bumped into each other on the train and we started dating. I found out he had been using heroin for a long time. At first, I tried to help him with his addiction, but I ended up shooting drugs with him.

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Sky kept on saying that I should try heroin and not waste my money on cocaine, that I was working myself into a frenzy with coke and I needed to start coming down with heroin. We ended up shooting speedballs non-stop every day for six months. It got extremely intense. We would wake up in the morning feeling sick, needing to get some money before the withdrawal comes in. We hustled during the day, robbing stores and pharmacies. I would steal money from home, or sell my things and get money. Sky lived with his mother and he used to sell heroin. Between us we would maybe do six bags of cocaine and six bags of heroin in one day.

Heroin is like Aladdin's lamp: it will make you think that your wishes are coming true, that you are in control of your life.

I shot so much to the point where I had an abscess on my vein and I could not feel it anymore. It was about finding a vein and stabbing yourself with a needle six times before you can find it. I started having auditory hallucinations. I was talking to a person at home when no one was there. At one point, I thought I could walk on rooftops and not die. I stopped the cocaine and just ended up injecting heroin.

Sky was a real piece of shit. I realized that all along he had wanted to get me addicted to heroin just to have someone to share the whole drugs and money thing with. I later found out that he had other women and people coming into his apartment and he would use with them, so I was nothing special, I was just one of the people he used drugs with and occasionally fucked. After he unsuccessfully set me up to be gang-raped in return for some free drugs for him, I started being much more cautious around him. But still, I stayed with him.

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Sexual violence, especially for a female user, is a constant danger. I would get sex proposals every week from either a dealer or other people I would score from. I have to say that one thing I promised myself was to never engage sex for drugs, because for me that would be my lowest point; I would rather kill myself than start doing that. That was one of my rules. That said, I still suffered sexual violence on a few occasions. I was lucky to have made it out alive and unharmed for the most part.

I went through withdraws cold turkey multiple times because I refused sex for drugs. I could not get on methadone because I was underage, so I used to buy it off the street to get me over on days when I could not find dope. But if I stayed using longer, maybe ten years, I probably would have eventually broken. That life leaves you with no spirit, just a body.

Death is all around you in that world of clinics, detoxes, hospital wards and the street. You always hear of someone dying, mostly from an overdose, other times from HIV or some violent death. Someone got knifed when they went to score, or killed and got their money stolen, or fell asleep at home nodded out with a cigarette and burnt up their house and themselves in it. Those stories are all over you when you are in the life. That's why people usually see no hope.

I had to retrain myself, like how to love and understand myself better, how to talk and relate to people, how to trust people and be myself again.

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One time we got stopped by the SWAT team, put on the ground, and asked to take most of our clothes off. Our car was taken apart piece by piece. It was an outside three-hour interrogation, because the cops were looking for drugs. They took our syringes and arrested my boyfriend. I had drugs on me but they didn't find them, and they let me go. I was 19 years old. That was a pretty traumatizing thing for me, four muscled dudes in black, with guns, just jumping on you.

By the age of 21, I was a ghost walking the street, waiting to die. I had no past and I had no future. I was locked up in psychiatric wards after I tried to kill myself twice, once with a whole bunch of lithium and wine, another time when I slashed my wrists.

I tried cold turkey a hundred times but I could only make it to four days and then I would relapse again. I went to counseling sessions still high. I tried everything: detoxes, rehabs, and groups.

Heroin is like Aladdin's lamp: it will make you think that your wishes are coming true, that you are in control of your life. In reality, people on heroin are usually stuck in some godforsaken bathroom with a syringe in their vein, homeless, broke, and lonely. It spins your head around to make illogical things logical. It makes you lose track of time.

Thing is, I didn't want to die in the street with a needle in my arm.

I started trying to quit not long after I started being addicted. In total, it took me over three years to get off the drugs. I found a good counselor who worked with me relentlessly to make sure I got better. She recommended I try a naltrexone implant, which was very new then. I forced myself to get it three consecutive times. Then I was taking naltrexone pills for the next nine months. I also saw a therapist and was on some mild psychotropic meds.

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READ: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Is Making Money on Your Overdose

My treatment experience was hell but I had nothing to lose. I had panic attacks and no sleep. I honestly thought that I was going insane. During my recovery, I enrolled back into college with every intention of graduating. I painted at night to keep myself occupied and went to school studying psychology during the day.

My first clean year was when I was 22. I had to retrain myself, like how to love and understand myself better, how to talk and relate to people, how to trust people and be myself again. I made a decision to get myself off the bipolar pills. By age 25, I was done with them for good.

Since getting clean nearly 11 years ago, I've received a BA in psychology and an MA in criminal justice. I spent about six years working with homeless and at-risk youth at VOCAL-NY, then I worked as an advocate and a direct social service provider for active substance users. Now I'm doing research on drug abuse among Brooklyn youth with the National Development and Research Institutes. I never stopped painting, and I was able to exhibit some of my work. And last year, I had my first, long-awaited son, Nikita. He was named in honor of my grandfather.

* Names have been changed.

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