Heroin Couple Lives With Highs, Lows

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. a0523

r abx ^AMHeroin Life, 1st Add,0526

HAMPSTEAD, N.H.: 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.''