“INTRODUCTION” TO
THE ORIGINAL “JUNK” MANUSCRIPT
In this book I have written what I know about junk and the people who use it. The narrative is fiction, but it is based on facts of my experience.
When I say junk I mean opium or derivatives of opium; morphine, heroin, pantopon, Dilaudid, codeine are the opium derivatives generally used in the States.
I would not write about junk unless I had something special to say on the subject that had not already been said. The action of junk on the user is generically different from the action of any other drug. I think that junk is transitional between living and dead matter, between animal and vegetable life. You cannot avoid the feeling that junk is in some way alive.
I can walk around in a strange town and say, “This is a junk neighborhood.” I don’t have to see junkies waiting around for the connection to spot junk territory. When I pass a place where junk has changed hands the junk in my cells ticks like a Geiger counter. My junk counter is generally accurate, but sometimes I spot a place that used to be junk territory and is no longer in use. The counter tells me: “Junk here,” but does not say when. Why doesn’t the counter tick when I pass a drugstore? Junk needs a host before it can take on its special junk qualities, because junk is a parasite that can live only in the blood of a user.
The dependence on junk is not confined to addicts. Many narcotics agents and non-using peddlers are as much hung up on junk as any addict. They may not use it, but they need junk, and not just to make a living. The zeal of some agents derives from a special relation to junk. They are addicts at second-hand, and for that condition there is no cure.
Anyone who has ever been an addict will always look like junk to anyone who can see junk. He may not have used it for ten years, but the junk is still there.
Official propaganda opposes any factual statement about junk, so that almost nothing accurate has been written on the subject. When newspapers, magazines and movies deal with junk they seldom deviate from the officially sponsored myth. I will go over the main points of this myth.
1. All drugs are more or less similar and all are habit forming. This myth lumps cocaine, marijuana and junk together. Marijuana is not at all habit forming and its action is almost the direct opposite from junk action. There is no habit to cocaine. You can develop a tremendous craving for cocaine, but you won’t be sick if you can’t get it. When you have a junk habit, on the other hand, you live in a state of chronic poisoning for which junk itself is the specific antidote. If you don’t get the antidote at eight-hour intervals, and enough of it, you develop symptoms of allergic poisoning: yawning, sneezing, watering of the eyes and nose, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, hot and cold flashes, loss of appetite, insomnia, restlessness and weakness, in some cases circulatory collapse and death from allergic shock.
The junkie needs junk like the diabetic needs insulin. Junk creates a deficiency so that the body cannot function without more junk at regular intervals. It seems that junk takes over the function of certain body chemicals, and that the body does not produce these chemicals during addiction. Withdrawal of junk creates a deficiency condition which continues until the body gets back in production on the chemicals that were replaced by junk. When I say “habit forming drug” I mean a drug that alters the endocrine balance of the body in such a way that the body requires that drug in order to function. So far as I know, junk is the only habit forming drug according to this definition.
2. A drug habit is formed instantly, on first use, or at most, after three or four shots. From this notion derive the stories of people becoming addicts after using a few “headache pills” given them by the Sympathetic Stranger. Actually, a non-user would have to take a shot every day for at least a month to get any kind of habit. The Stranger would go broke handing out samples. But a cured addict, even if he has not used it for years, can get a new habit in a few days. He is allergic to junk.
3. Once the habit is formed escape is almost impossible. Actually, a habit is easily cured. The usual cure takes from ten days to three weeks. You don’t need any “will power.” If the cure is done right there is very little discomfort.
4. Addiction ruins the health and leads to early death. As I read in a magazine article, “Morphine addicts have numbered days on earth.” Who hasn’t?
The addict enjoys normal health and lives as long, or longer, than the average. Junk conveys a considerable immunity to respiratory complaints. During the “flu” epidemic of 1918 junkies were found to be immune to flu and some addicts were let out of jail to help care for the sick. On the other hand, all users suffer somewhat from constipation and loss of appetite. Most of them lose weight, often running from ten to twenty pounds below normal weight during addiction.
5. Addicts never get enough. They have to keep raising the dosage. They need more and more. Finally, I quote from a recent movie called Johnny Stool Pigeon. “They tear the clothes off their skinny bodies and die screaming” for more junk.
This is preposterous. Addicts get enough and they do not have to raise the dosage. I know addicts who have used the same dose for years. Of course, addicts do occasionally die if they are cut off the junk cold. They don’t die because they need more and more. They die because they can’t get any.
6. Addicts want to get others on the stuff. This silly idea seems to be universal. Every time I take a fall the laws say to my wife: “It’s a wonder he didn’t get you on the junk.” Why in hell should I? I have enough trouble keeping up my own habit. Of course, a peddling addict wants to get other people on the stuff so he will have more customers.
7. There is a clear line between addict and peddler. The authorities pity the addict and are out only to get the peddler. I have never seen an addict who did not sell, or a street peddler who did not use. There is no line at all. The authorities make no distinction, and the penalty for selling and possession are about the same.
8. Peddlers try to get high school children on junk, or marijuana. A recent magazine article depicts peddlers slipping laudanum into the Coca-Cola of teenagers.
This is utterly ridiculous. No peddler wants kids for customers. They never have enough money, they talk too much and they cannot stand up under police questioning. The best customers are the old-timers. They know all the angles and generally have some source of revenue.
9. There is a connection between junk and insanity. Addicts turn into maniacs when they cannot get junk.
Actually, I have never seen or heard of an insane addict. For some reason, the two conditions do not occur together.
10. There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes.
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn’t easy to get up $10–15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day’s supply of junk in the U.S.
Any anti-narcotic legislation is considered a good thing by the public. For this reason the field of narcotic legislation has become a testing ground for a type of law new to this country but familiar in police states. In the states of Louisiana and Kentucky it is a crime punishable by imprisonment (La., two to five years; Ky., one year) to be an addict. This is police-state legislation penalizing a condition or state of being. In the Louisiana law, no time or place is specified, nor is the term “addict” defined.
A cure is now available for addiction in the antihistamine drugs. Withdrawal sickness is an allergy, and the new anti-allergic drugs relieve its symptoms. The old-type reduction cures all use habit forming drugs, and withdrawal symptoms return after the drug is finally cut off. But antihistamine drugs are not habit-forming, and when these drugs are used there is no return of withdrawal symptoms. The antihistamine cure is not in general use. I have seen no mention of it in any medical publication. It would appear that this cure is being deliberately withheld from the public. Federal and state narcotic authorities put every obstacle in the way of addicts who want a cure. No reduction cures are given in city or state institutions. Two hundred dollars is minimum for a ten-day cure in a private sanatorium. Hospitals are forbidden by law to give addicts any junk. I knew an addict who needed an operation for stomach cancer. The hospital could not give him any junk. Sudden withdrawal of junk plus the operation would likely have killed him so he decided to skip the operation. Lexington and Fort Worth are the only two public institutions in the U.S. that give reduction cures. Both are usually full. According to bureaucratic regulations, anyone seeking admission to either hospital must send an application (in triplicate, of course) to Washington and wait several months to be admitted. Then he must stay at least six months. In Louisiana a man could be arrested as a drug addict if he applied for the cure.
I do not intend to correct popular misconceptions about junk by presenting the facts that are already known to anyone informed on the subject. I am using the known facts as a starting point in an attempt to reach facts that are not known.