So Low So High Read online

  Licensing Notes & Copyright

  Copyright © 2015

  2nd Edition

  So Low, So High

  by Pete Sortwell

  Front Cover by Graham D. Lock

  © 2015, Pete Sortwell

  Publisher: Pete Sortwell

  Converted to Kindle by Craig Douglas

  The Characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the copyright holder.

  Dedication

  This book is in Loving memory of Dennis Roper without whom I’d never have been in a position to write it.

  Introduction

  I started writing this book in April 2010 as a way of trying to put into words what it can be like for someone with addiction trying to find a way out. I have written it in present tense so the reader can be with Simon as he makes his way through the final year of his using. He also spends some time looking back over his life, however he is looking back as someone who is still ill, rather than the trend of books I’ve read on the subject where some writers seem to qualify every thought with ‘I now know why I did that’. I wanted to be a little different. It’s been two years since So Low So High was first released and I’m now in a position to re–release with full control resting with me. I haven’t changed much more than the cover and hopefully a few less typos in this edition, however I hope a few more people will get to read it this time around.

  I’d also like to add that although there maybe similarities between Simon and my own experience, this book and the characters are entirely a work of fiction. It is not a biography in anyway whatsoever. Sadly my life isn’t interesting enough to fill this many pages with.

  It’s taken a fair amount of work to get this novel in your hands and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed having written it.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 : In the cells (again)

  Chapter 2 : The ride

  Chapter 3 : In court

  Chapter 4 : Proceedings

  Chapter 5 : Free, but for how long?

  Chapter 6 : Early years

  Chapter 7 : School daze

  Chapter 8 : Kicked out

  Chapter 9 : In a state of reliance

  Chapter 10 : Hostel life

  Chapter 11 : Mental health

  Chapter 12 : My home life

  Chapter 13 : AW-RGH

  Chapter 14 : Kidney stones

  Chapter 15 : Discussions with Mother

  Chapter 16 : Simon of the lodge

  Chapter 17 : Out of the frying pan

  Chapter 18 : Paul at St Paul’s

  Chapter 19 : Serving the patients

  Chapter 20 : Six Months on

  Chapter 21 : One decent night out (the quiet before the storm)

  Chapter 22 : My drug progression

  Chapter 23 : Tiff and heroin

  Chapter 24 : Cashing in

  Chapter 25 : Why me?

  Chapter 26 : A tight spot

  Chapter 27 : Trapped

  Chapter 28 : HMP Subutex

  Chapter 29 : A light at the end of the sentence

  Chapter 30 : A tightrope walk

  Chapter 31 : Late night TV

  Chapter 32 : Saving Simon

  Chapter 33 : Time to go

  Chapter 34 : Time for TLC

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the cells (again)

  Waking up in the cells is never good. Waking up clucking after an hour of sweaty sleep is even worse. Fuck! My legs are in agony. Of course, I hadn’t been involved in a major car crash, nor had I been given some kind of brutal gangland kneecapping down the 212 Club. I’m a heroin addict, a heroin addict who hasn’t used for 14 hours, 37 minutes and 23, 24, 25 seconds and counting.

  When were they going to let me out of this bloody cell? I’ve told them I did it and it’s not as if I’m a danger to the public is it? Not really. I know I nicked half a leg of lamb and an Edam ball from Morrisons, but still, c’mon! Over five hours in here for that? I hadn’t used before I came in either, so this is becoming particularly unbearable.

  I refused to see the doctor when I got here for two reasons. One, to speed things up, as normally if I refuse a doctor and a brief I’m out within a couple of hours, and two, I didn’t want to give that bastard sergeant the pleasure of booking just another dirty drug addict. Yes, I stole four families’ worth of World War Two rations in meat and cheese. But I’ve still got my pride somewhere under the clothes I’ve been wearing for four, five, six days — or is it a week? Anyway, I’ve got my pride and I’m not giving that smug git the chance to look down his nose any further than he is already by ‘calling the doctor’. I will, however, give him the chance to clean up the bog after I leave the cell if my body goes any further into withdrawal and I evacuate my bowels for the first time in more days than I’ve been wearing my socks. The other sergeant here’s really weird too. He just stares at me. I’m sure he’s mental.

  I press the buzzer. I want to go home. They can’t take me to jail for £13.62 can they? I’m told they are taking me straight to court in the morning. I point out that technically it’s morning now (Two forty–five am).

  “Don’t be fucking silly, Simon. You know the drill. You’ve been here enough times now,” PC Pedantic tells me through the hatch. “Now get some sleep while you’re still one to a cell. Ha ha.”

  I know his game though. I’ve had it for years them trying to scare me; a bit of the short, sharp shock treatment. Well, it hasn’t worked the other umpteen times I’ve been here and it isn’t going to work now. HA! I think to myself, feeling all pleased with myself. The victory is short–lived as I soon go back to feeling miserable. All I can think of is the gear. I need it. I REALLY need it!

  Deep down I do wonder if this will be the time they either lock me up properly or force me into rehab. If I had the choice, and in this wet, limp–wristed Labour–run country I do, I’d choose prison any day. Better than all them caring, sharing, sandal–wearing hippies sitting in circles holding hands, praying to stay clean all day, day in, day out, and stinking of joss sticks. Oh no, give me the landing and the occasional pool–ball–in–sock attack (as long as it’s not on me) for entertainment. I’ve seen Porridge. I know what it’s all about inside.

  Definitely that over the alternative — not using! Yeah, in prison you can still get your gear. Frail Pete told me when he did six days for not paying his council tax. Speaking of which, he owed two and a half grand. Looking at the maths of that, it’s a ruddy good daily rate of pay if you think about it as it was all wiped when he got out. Well chuffed he was. Two fingers up to them unscrupulous debt–collecting henchmen of the court too. They’d been round to Pete’s loads of times but he’d just infuriated them by hanging out the top window refusing to open the door and calling them all sorts of names, while filming the events in case they somehow managed to drag him out and give him the beating he’d been so richly begging them for. They’d turned up at court too probably hoping to catch up with him in the car park, but all they saw was Pete pretending to scratch his face as a cover for giving them the wanker sign whenever they looked over to the box. Replaying this story, I entertain myself for the next half hour or so before going back to trying to sleep as much time away as possible.

  I toss and turn for another hour or so before the first hot sweats of withdrawal visit me. I then spend the next two hours wishing I was having a cold sweat, then a hot one, then cold, then hot and so on. You get the picture. Christ, withdrawal sucks. It’s about now I start thinking, I’ve st
arted the cluck so I’ll finish. Everything’ll be OK then. I won’t have to nick cheese, meat or nappies anymore. I won’t have to deal with smarmy coppers. I can even settle down. Keep the flat tidy, get a job, visit my mum. Yeah, being clean is starting to sound like the decent option.

  The pleasant thoughts soon disappear when I feel the first stomach churn of what turns out to be the second longest projectile vomit I have ever done. I’ll tell you about the first another time, but right now I’ve got some serious heaving to do.

  “Eeerrrrgggh, eeerrrggh.”

  God, I’m glad my bowels ain’t give way yet. They will, though, then I’ll have something else making me retch as I sick out my rattle.

  “Eerrgh, eerrrrrrrrrrrghh.”

  If I retch much harder I’ll shit myself as I am, kneeling on the cell floor.

  “Eeeerrrgh.”

  I’m interrupted mid–‘ergh’ by PC Smarm opening the hatch and peering in.

  “Still not wanting to see the doctor then, Bruce Reynolds?” he asks.

  Cunt.

  He thinks he’s being funny, calling me names of infamous criminals from the 1960s. Bruce Reynolds, Reggie Kray, Ronnie Biggs ... the list goes on. It’s because I never admit I’m a drug user. It’s the great unsaid (by me) — they all know though, everybody does. I just don’t admit to it. It’s not that I’m ashamed of who I am. I quite like me. It’s just ... err, just ...

  “Pride stopping you, Simon?” Smarmy says, breaking my thought.

  “Fuck off!” I offer by way of reply, and finish the ‘off’ with ‘errrrrrrrr’ as I lean over the cold steel bucket they pass off as a toilet in my local police station.

  “You really should see one, Buster. He could stop that sickness like that,” he tells me, and clicks his fingers. The click echoes round the cell.

  “No. I fucking dooo–eeerrrgh–n’t! Now piss off, Burnside,” I shout at him.

  Falling back, I sit on the floor leaning against the concrete excuse for a bed we have in our wonderful English police stations. I then pull the thinnest blue gym–mat in the world from the bed and half lie, half look like I fell from a great height, on the floor with my head facing the bog. The way you do when you’re chucking; it makes you feel slightly safer being close to the pan somehow. There’s probably a scientific reason for this, but I have no idea what it’s called.

  While I was making myself comfortable I didn’t notice that PC Collins (real name) was still at the hatch. I ask him the time.

  “Six forty–five. John will be in soon. I take it you would like to see him?”

  I groan something that sounds like ‘yes’ and the hatch closes.

  ‘John’, as PC Collins called him, was PC John Fisher. My former best friend. We were like brothers growing up. I used to nick his bike without asking and everything. Close as any friends could be up to the age of about seventeen when our lives started to take VERY different directions. He’d drawn the line at pissing in the post box and smoking the odd fag, getting hammered up the field on alcoholic appleade; the sort of thing all teenagers do for a while. The rebellious stage Freud might call it. Well actually, he’d properly call it something perverted like the ‘penis envy’ stage or something. He was a right weirdo.

  We’d stopped seeing each other every day when I’d started smoking weed. He’d been in the group when we decided we were going to try smoking a joint just once to see what it was like. There were four of us and we’d planned it like a military operation. I’d been tasked with getting Rizlas — large blue ones. John was on fag detail, and Wally and Denim Steve were charged with finding some puff. We all chipped in. And after much waiting for various workmates of Denim’s to sort us out, we finally set a day and time to meet under the old railway bridge round the back of the Sports and Social Club. We were full of nervous excitement and paranoia before we’d even smoked anything. We were doing something ‘naughty’ and I fucking loved that feeling. Nowhere near as much as I loved the feeling of being stoned though. After we’d walked to the bridge we realised no one could actually roll a joint. So another hour and another recruit to the stoner army later, we finally had two long thin resin joints ready to smoke. Wally lit one and our new member, Andy, had the other.

  Roller’s rights, you see. Whoever rolled it can light it. And, as I was to come to learn over the years, usually smokes most of it while everyone else sits on the edge of their seat waiting for their go. Anyway, I ended up with one of Andy’s dodgy looking ‘halves’ and pulled away on it like it was an asthma inhaler. Wally, John and Denim had been far more equal and had passed it round, having two pulls each. ‘Puff–puff give’, it’s called, and it became my much preferred way of sharing, if I had to share at all.

  Wally, John and Denim were lying on the grass enjoying the buzz off the resin; we went over and joined them. It was Denim who’d suggested it. “Let’s make a pact,” he said.

  “What you on about, Denim, you weirdo?” John laughed.

  “Well, we’re here having a great experience, and none of us are going to be off to uni.”

  “I am!” exclaimed Wally. Wally was a bit of an “I’ve done everything better than you’ merchant. A decent bloke, but he could go on a bit.

  “Anyway, what you mean, Denim?” I asked, ignoring Wally’s primal urge to talk about himself.

  “Well, the way I see it is, Wally will be the only one shaking cocks with his housemates and wearing rhubarb socks to get into his boys’ club,” Denim explained, causing laughter from everyone; well, everyone but Wally.

  “I won’t be holding cocks!” Wally almost shouted, upset that we were all laughing at the thought of him holding a cock.

  “We won’t get the lifetime bond that all them university lot get. We’re basically fucked,” Denim continued, putting more of a downer on things than I had seen coming at the start of the story.

  “Brilliant. What do we get then?” Andy asked, reaching for the Rizlas.

  “Well, fuck all, mate, that’s what I’m saying. Unless we make some sort of pact now, like that we’ll always look out for each other.” Denim didn’t get any further because I questioned his motives.

  “Bender, I’m not holding your cock or wearing my mum’s veg for no one.”

  “I don’t mean that and you know it, Si,” Denim told me, but it didn’t stop everyone laughing. “I mean that we just agree now that we’ll look out for each other for life, help each other out whatever happens.”

  “Won’t we do it anyway, though?” John asked, taking the joint off me and just handing it on without smoking any.

  “Well, that’s what my brother’s group said. Then within five years there was only him and his mate Johnny Morris left that spoke. The other five went their separate ways,” Denim explained.

  “Sounds OK,” I said.

  “How do we do it?” Wally asked.

  “Oh, you wanna be in it now, do you?” Andy asked.

  “Yeah, I’d rather this than have to hold cocks any day,” he said, explaining his reasoning.

  “Yeah, right. Ha ha ha,” John said, from the ground. He’d assumed the foetal position.

  “Anyway, what we do is all just agree to always look out for each other. You know, if we’re skint sort out a loan, if we don’t have a job get each other one, that sorta thing. We’ll just make a little contract now,’ he said, producing a bit of crumpled paper from his pocket.

  “I’m in,” I said, as did the others. John, on the other hand, was up again, white as a sheet and standing hands on knees, almost doubled over, dry–retching. Being the concerned best mate, I offered him the water I’d taken along for the dry mouth Wally’s workmate had warned him about. John sank half of it, and do you know what? It had the exact opposite effect to what I had intended. John stopped dry–retching and started wet–retching. Wally, Denim, Andy and I moved ten odd metres downwind leaving John to it, and Andy rolled a couple more, pocketing what was left. As this was only going to be once, the rest of us didn’t mind him keeping the leftover gea
r. Now I’d moved and was no longer distracted by John trying to get his arsehole out of his mouth I started to feel the puff ... WHOA!

  I loved it. We all got the giggles and I felt fucking amazing! Well, John didn’t, he carried on having his lie down. All the problems in my fifteen–year–old brain went away and I felt comfortable to be Simon — probably for the first time in my life. Once John had picked himself up from his impromptu outside snooze we all went home after agreeing, once more, that we would all look out for each other. From what I can remember, we all ate mountains of sandwiches. Well, John didn’t. He’d confessed all to his mum, fronted the bollocking, and lay awake on the sofa, sweating. But by fuck I did! Wow, the ham even tasted better! I’d lain in bed that evening waiting for sleep to take me and thought to myself, I am doing this again. I felt so comfortable and relaxed; the most I had ever felt of either. There was no worrying about the state of the world and the thoughts of making something of myself. It all just wasn’t there. Next morning, with the added result of no hangover or ill feeling whatsoever, I phoned Andy BEFORE I rang John to see how he was. I wanted the leftover.

  I rang John later to ask him if he was coming up the field under the bridge that afternoon.

  “Not on your fucking Nelly,” he replied. “That shit’s awful.”

  He asked if I was really going to smoke it again. I instantly felt the disapproval in his voice and the first of many, many lies to John started: “No, no nothing like that, J–boy, just going to chill out. You sure you don’t wanna come?” I said, praying he’d say ‘no’ so I could smoke in peace.