The following is an excerpt from VICE drug columnist Maia Szalavitz's forthcoming book Unbroken Brain, published next month by St. Martin's Press.
I opened the door with a needle in my arm.
Seven plainclothes narcotics cops burst in, five burly men and two women, all shouting. I hastily finished my shot and threw the works down, attempting to be discreet about it. I had been expecting my friend Lina, who should have been returning with money for the cocaine Matt and I had just fronted her. I was also suffering from a painful ear infection, which is how I'd obtained the drug I was shooting. It was Demerol, a narcotic I'd been prescribed by the Columbia Health Service. I must have been quite ill: The doctor prescribed me an opiate as well as antibiotics, even though I'd told her that I had a history of heroin use.
Of course, I wasn't supposed to be injecting the Demerol. In fact, I'd actually managed up until exactly that point to abstain from drugs almost entirely for a few months, in hopes of being readmitted to college after my "year off." Now, I was clearly off the wagon, and life was about to get exponentially worse. My idea that I'd recovered and could safely use drugs occasionally was about to be definitively falsified.
[For more of this story, written by Maia Szalavitz, go to http://www.vice.com/read/the-n...ou-really-hit-bottom]
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