By J.M. HIRSCH
Associated Press Writer
HAMPSTEAD, N.H. (AP) Linda is 41. She is middle class
and white, with a degree in psychology, a successful
background in business and a raging heroin habit going back to
when she was 12.
That first time, her older brother wielded the needle. "It hit
me and I threw up, but I felt wonderful after. It was the best
feeling I'd ever had, and I immediately fell in love with it."
Her boyfriend, Hank, is 57, a former restaurant manager and
cook who struggled most of his life with alcoholism. It was
Linda who introduced him to heroin three years ago, and now
he is devoted to her, to her habit and to his own addiction
and not necessarily in that order.
He's going out to find drugs, and it scares him.
"The cops are after you, the dealers are after you," he says.
"There's no respect. There's no camaraderie. It's a miserable
game and the guy with the money is the guy they want to kill."
Linda tries to explain why she and Hank risk so much. She
has stolen from friends and family, shoplifted, been fired from
jobs and busted for dealing, and sometimes gone homeless.
Twice, she nearly died from overdoses.
Still, she cannot turn away from heroin.
"It's all you want, all your waking hours. You spend all your
time trying to get it. ... You prostitute yourself. Not just
sexually; it's a life prostitution," she said.

There is a certain dull familiarity to the lives of Linda and
Hank. Through much of this century, heroin has been bane and
temptation, and its users have degraded and humiliated
themselves.
But experts in the field say the number of heroin addicts in the
United States now is 2 million, up from about 500,000 in 1970.
They are rich and poor and in between; they come in all colors
and with every accent.
The rise in heroin addiction is attributed to plummeting prices
(Linda says the cost of a bag has dropped from $30 to $10) and
increased purity.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says Colombian
drug traffickers are manipulating cost and quality to steal
market share from Asian gangs.
By raising heroin's purity, from 10 percent to nearly 100
percent, they enable new users to snort and smoke the drug,
making it more tempting for those who would shun needles.
Hank and Linda do not shy away from needles. And their use
of the drug predates "heroin chic," recent advertising campaigns
that glamorize the drawn, emaciated look associated with
heroin addiction.
The lives of Hank and Linda are nothing like a bluejeans
advertisement.

Hank has been searching for hours, driving around Lawrence,
Mass., but his dealers are temporarily emptyhanded. One
promises a new shipment from New York by evening, but that's
four hours of withdrawal away.
Rather than wait, Hank visits Cathy, a 39yearold prostitute
addicted to heroin and cocaine. Her apartment serves as a
shooting gallery.
Hank joins Cathy at her kitchen table, which is littered with
razors and traces from lines of cocaine. She looks tired and her
arms are swollen and bloody; she's been shooting up most of the
day.
Normally, her apartment is a safe haven for a dozen addicts
who store their drugs and use them there.
But the night before, Cathy's husband was arrested for
dealing. The police didn't take any of the drugs, however, which
Cathy says is a sign they're staking out the apartment.
"The pleasure here is we like the high. But it's scary. There's
consequences," Hank says but he admits the risk adds to the
excitement.
Cathy nods in agreement as she persuades another addict, a
homeless man dying of AIDS, to shoot her up. It takes him 20
minutes to find a vein in her arm, probing with dirty hands and a
needle he licked clean.
"You never know when you're gonna get busted," Cathy says,
leaning her head back as the rush hits her.

Linda's apartment is in Haverhill, Mass., just over the border
from Hank's home in Hampstead. It is meticulously decorated.
Lace doilies cover every piece of furniture and porcelain cats
crowd every table and shelf. The outside is not so nice it is
Haverhill's drug zone, a neighborhood of decaying homes,
blaring music and car alarms.
She gets money from Supplemental Security Income
payments for disabled addicts and earns extra cash from odd
jobs.
Linda's childlike face belies the needle tracks on her arms and
neck. Her life has mirrored the highs and lows of the drug she
abuses.
The same brother who introduced Linda to heroin also had
raped her when she was 9 an attack her abusive mother
accused her of inviting, Linda says. After that, drugs and
alcohol were her escape.
"At first, heroin made me happy. It lies to you and tells you
you're wonderful, you're beautiful, you're confident. It gives you
some of those things, but only for a little while," Linda says.
On the surface, Linda appeared successful for many years.
She owned successful hair styling and catering businesses and
held good jobs.
But through it all, she used heroin.
Whenever she stopped, she'd be overwhelmed by depression
and would start using again to numb her emotions. At the
height of her addiction, Linda says she was shooting up about
20 bags of heroin a day at a cost of about $200.
But after realizing she didn't feel a thing even as she watched
someone stabbing a friend of hers to death, Linda decided it
was time to stop.
For five years, Linda successfully controlled her addiction.
She went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and even got a job
as an addiction counselor. But the lure of the drug proved too
strong and she lapsed again.
In fact, Linda met Hank at the addiction clinic where they
both worked.
Like Linda, Hank grew up in an abusive home. He was kicked
out of the house when he was 16. By then, he knew he was an
alcoholic, like his mother. "I was abused by alcohol for the first
16 years of my life, and I abused alcohol for the rest of it," he
said.
Ten years ago, he nearly was crippled by a strain of
pneumonia that damaged his knees and ankles and left him with
chronic pain.
After his health insurance company denied him surgery that
could have relieved the pain, a doctor gave him a prescription
for Percocet, a synthetic opiate. But the pills quickly lost their
effect.
Then Hank met Linda, and heroin.
"Within two days, I was hooked. But it was the first time in
years I was without pain in my body. ... Within several months,
(Linda and I) were like everyone else, doing whatever we had
to do to get it," Hank said.
But not forever, Linda said. Six months ago, she decided once
again to aim for sobriety and began weaning herself down to
four or five hits a day.
"I'm going to stop tomorrow. When I had my five years (of
sobriety), it started on the 25th of March. And I have a lot of
hope today will be the last day I use and keep my old sobriety
date. It seems as good a time as any," she said.
Hank returns to Linda's apartment hours later than expected,
and enters smiling nervously. Cathy's connections came
through; he pulls a handful of tiny heroin bags from the lining of
his coat.
Moving into the bedroom, Hank and Linda begin the ritual
that will be repeated every 30 minutes until their supply runs
out.
Sitting in front of a coffee table draped with a silk cloth,
Linda lines up the half a dozen ceramic boxes in which they
store their "works." Hank lifts the cover of one and reveals two
silver teaspoons, about a dozen syringes and tiny balls of
cotton.
After dissolving the powder in water, he draws the solution
into a syringe through a cotton ball. Linda mistakenly believes
the cotton will filter out bacteria and impurities.
Hank prepares and inserts another needle into his arm. When
he releases his grip, it jerks in rhythm with the beat of his heart.
As the time between tremors shortens, heavy drops of sweat
roll down his forehead.
After injecting 22 cubic centimeters of cocaine twice his
normal dose he withdraws the syringe from the crook of his
elbow and inserts another, this one filled with heroin.
"If I do a (hit) of coke, I'll have a heroin made up ... and ready
to go. (The heroin) will bring me down fast and bring me back
to normal," he explains, panting and gripping the sides of the
armchair.
Linda, kneeling on the floor, keeps one eye on Hank and the
other on the needle in her own arm. Drawing the plunger back
and forth, she mixes the heroin with her blood inside the
syringe.
"I'm getting too high. My heart's pounding and my head's
swirling. I've got to come down quick," Hank says, giving
Linda a panicked look as he strains to breathe.
Linda runs to the kitchen and comes back with a handful of
ice to swab his neck and chest. "The ice cools the system down,
slows your heart rate, slows your pulse," he says.
When his breathing slows, Linda relaxes and returns to her
own needle. Another overdose averted; time for another hit.
When they are done, they promise each other that they will stop
using heroin, once and for all.

A week later, they are at Hank's house in Hampstead, which
he shares with his wife. She knows of her husband's
relationships with Linda and the drug, but seems to have
stopped trying to end either one.
They still are using, and they are disappointed with
themselves. Linda asks him to go to Lawrence to get more
drugs. Hank thinks doing so may kill them both.
He wonders: Is he holding Linda back, keeping her from
getting clean?
"The drugs are holding me back," Linda says, staring at the
floor.
"You know I'd go out and (cop) for you. But I don't want to.
I don't want to do drugs without you. I don't want to do drugs
with you, either. I can't take it anymore. I hate myself," Hank
says.
Linda nods: "I want to have a life. Because right now, when
I'm in fullbloom addiction, that is my life. That's all there's
room for. I feel horrible ... I don't want to lose any more."


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