Drug Addicts Are Like Ninjas And Athletes

Soldiering On. 2024. Karina + StarryAI

These events happened in the early 2000s. Toronto and Greater Toronto Area.

Chip hated Georgi and Allen. They once sold him a baggie of smack that wasn’t smack. “There were like threads and crumbs in it. It’s like they swept shit off the floor.”

“That’s probably what they did,” Jake said. Jake did the sound at the Big Bop. He didn’t like Georgi. Georgi was a proud Russian. His Russian hubris tickled Jake wrong. Jake was Czech.

“They could’ve killed me. What if I actually shot it up?”

“Yes. They could’ve killed you and they don’t care,” Jake said, and turned back to his soundboard. During his shift Jake talked to people he tolerated. Sometimes he was in a bad mood and didn’t turn around. That’s when you knew you had to leave.

I smiled at Chip. It was one of those polite smiles one gives before they retreat. I didn’t talk to him much. He looked too far gone in the mind. I don’t think there was a drug he didn’t do.

One day Chip got word of Georgi and Allen planning a heist. They planned to borrow Giorgi’s girlfriend’s dad’s pickup truck and break into a used electronics shop.

“I don’t want to know anything about it!” said Jake. Chip leaned into Jake and kept talking. “Stop right now!” Jake said, and turned his back on Chip.

Chip tried to get Jake’s attention. I shook my head. “Don’t do it.”

Jake hated thieves. For him they compromised the integrity of the artistic drug world. I hung out with Jake after work sometimes. Conversations were good and deep with him.

Chip Goes Ninja

A week later Chip waltzed into the Big Bop, shaved, showered, hair combed, and odorless. A rarity for Chip. His hair looked so much redder without dirt in it. He beelined for Olie and me. Olie was a metal fan that came to the Bop on Friday nights. We were drinking at the bar. When the band stopped playing Chip started talking.

“I did it, I stole from those fuckers!”

Chip waited behind a dumpster for Giorgi and his crew to show up at the used electronics shop. “I waited forever.”

Allen, Giorgi and Giorgi’s girl showed up in the early a.m. hours. They broke in and started loading up the truck. How did they break in? I don’t know. Did they smash the windows? Did someone leave the back door open? I missed that part.

“I saw a computer and I grabbed it!” Chipped laughed, flashing his crooked teeth. “Then I ran. They couldn’t do anything about it man!” His face got redder and redder as he talked.

“You grabbed it from the truck?” Olie asked.

“Yeah!”

“You didn’t go inside?”

“Nah man! They were bringing it to the truck! I just grabbed it from the back of the truck! Ha!”

“Did they know it was you?” I asked.

“I wore a hoodie, but am pretty sure they knew it was me. They couldn’t leave the truck to chase me though! Ha losers! Ha ha!”

Olie had a real job and paid real bills. For him Chip was like some character out of a movie. Frankly, he was that for me too.

“The computer was heavy. I could barely hold it after a while. I had to stop and breathe. I couldn’t stop for long though because for sure the cops were coming. I almost dropped it. I almost had an attack.”

“Do you think Giorgi got away?”

“Nah man, I am pretty sure I heard them get caught.”

“Holy shit!”

“I ran into this backyard, there was a shed or something there and it had a covering on it. I stashed the computer under the covering. There was a tree, like an apple tree or something and I climbed it. I figured it was a good place to wait it out in case the cops were looking for me. Who knows the fuckers could’ve told the cops it was me who organized the thing, I don’t know. Better safe than sorry.”

“Holy shit!”

“Then some teenagers came out to the backyard to smoke. I think there was a party in the house. So I couldn’t leave!”

“Should’ve partied with them!” Olie laughed.

“I was too afraid to. I just stayed in the tree man.”

I laughed.

“I had to piss though. I had like two beers while waiting at the dumpster. So I pissed quietly down the tree like a ninja, as quietly as I could so no one could hear the psss sound. I almost fell down, but I didn’t.”

“How long did you stay up there?”

“I was there till the sun started coming up.”

“So you walked back home with the computer?”

“Nah man. I left it. I wasn’t going to walk out carrying a computer in daylight. It wouldn’t look good. I was tired too.”

“So you just left it?”

“Yeah man, but I came back the next night. I got a buddy to drive me.”

“Where is the computer now?”

“I sold it man!” Chip laughed. “I got a hundred and fifty bucks!”

I tried to tell Jake the story later. He didn’t want to hear it.

A week later word came that Allen, Giorgi, and Giorgi’s girl were caught and arrested. Giorgi was still in jail. Allen and Giorgi’s girl were out.

Chip never got found or arrested.

Jenny Gets Her Crack

I met Jenny at the Vatikan Goth club. There was an art exhibition there. I had a table. She liked my art and told me that if she had money she would buy a print. I loved her long glossy PVC boots. Her boyfriend bought them for her. But she was not with him anymore.

She lived in the West end and asked me for a ride home. I didn’t like giving people rides. I once agreed to give a fellow metalhead a ride because it was snowing. I thought he lived a few blocks away. He lived an hour away. The snowstorm was so bad it took me three hours to get there, then three to get back home.

One girl at a club I was working at asked me if I can pick her up the next day. She offered me gas money. When I picked her up she had a baby in her arm. I didn’t even know she had a baby. She said we need to go pick up diapers then drop her off at grandma’s. It was an hour ordeal and we were late for work. Never got gas money.

I had people light up cigarettes in my car and get mad at me when I asked them to put them out. Jenny was officially the last person from my club days that got a ride.

On our ride home she talked without taking a breath. She told me how her mom beat her and how her dad once tried to kill himself and ended up in a mental institution. She doesn’t know where he is now. She saw a guy on the street that she thought was him. She ran after him, but it turned out to not be him. She only eats every two to three days. She had a dog but someone stole it. She didn’t tell the cops because the cops never believe her.

At one point on the highway I zoned out and missed a chunk of her stories. It was late and I was tired. It was either her stories or the road. Dropping her off after a 40 minute drive felt like heaven.

The next day she called me and asked me for an emergency ride to the other end of the city. She needed to get from Brampton to Scarborough. A distance of about 50 kilometres. Technically another city. I told her I couldn’t. She said she would pay me back the gas money next week. I told her that I am busy.

What was her emergency? Well her new Brampton crack dealer was out of crack and her old dealer lived in Scarborough. Old dealer told her that she had exactly 1.5 hours to get there before he closes shop for the night.

Jenny wanted her crack. She only had enough money for the crack. None for a taxi. None for public transportation. Of course there was no way public transit could get you to Scarborough from Brampton in 1.5 hours. We are talking several buses and a long subway ride.

But Jenny was not deterred.

Jenny ran, hitched, ran, stole a cab ride, and ran some more. She was a soldier on a mission. A contender on her own Amazing Race. Did she make it? Yes she did. I know this because about two hours later she called me from Scarborough. She told me she was dying of thirst and asked me if I was less busy now. Her voice was super raspy. No doubt she was thirsty. But there was something else in the voice. There was elation and relief. She got her crack.

“Sorry, I can’t get you,” I said.

She called me five more times as she meandered through the streets back to Brampton. I never spoke to her after again, although she called many times.

The Talent Of Addicts

Addiction forces you to find a way. It awakens potential. By persisting in the behavior, addicts develop skills.

Jenny getting to Scarborough without money took faith, fortitude, and athleticism. I heard stories of other addicts biking through parks and highways in record time to get their fixes.

Chip wanted revenge, but more than anything he needed money for his fix. Running with a computer and hiding all night silently in a tree is ninja stuff.

Most addicts have skills that are not commonly recognized and appreciated because they are seen in relation to drug seeking. But if you divorced those skills from the drug seeking behavior, you can see how amazing they are.

This doesn’t just apply to drug addicts. Maintaining any addiction over time requires skills specific to procuring the fix of choice and coping with the consequences of use. But with drugs being illegal and expensive, a whole nother level of skills become needed.

Addicts often feel that they wasted a chunk of their lives. Sometimes this feeling of having wasted life feels so bad it dissuades one from getting treatment. Sobering up inevitably forces one to deal with this feeling of having wasted life, as well as guilt for having hurt people along the way.

If You Are An Addict Struggling With Accepting Your Past, I Propose A Reframation

Instead of thinking of it as time wasted, why not reframe it as getting a PhD in Drug Use? Or an apprenticeship in Street Life?

That drive to get drugs can fuel a pursuit of something good instead. I know a few powerlifters who were former addicts. They chase athletic goals now.

Those acquired skills can be used for good.

You cannot change that you hurt people, but you can change so you don’t hurt any more people.

Plus once you drag yourself out, you become someone that can show the way to others still struggling.

And let’s not forget the stories. You have stories that can be turned into books and videos. In modern talk: you have content.

Your life is absolutely salvageable. It is not too late to become what you want to be.

Thank you for reading.

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