This is a short story Todd wrote detailing a day in his life of a Scottsdale Tweeker, it was not included in his memoirs, so I though I would post it here…

Confessions of a Scottsdale Tweeker

It’s three o’clock. He should be here by now. I swear he comes late on Tuesday on purpose. I can’t keep going like this. My kidneys hurt so bad. It hurts to even breathe. If he doesn’t get here soon, I’m going to die. How did I get to this point where my life depends on the mailman? I haven’t smoked since Sunday morning and its Tuesday afternoon. I slept for thirty hours, woke up, guzzled about a half gallon of water, ate some stale dry cereal out of the box, and crashed again until a couple of hours ago.

I feel like shit. I’m shaking so bad I could just put my toothbrush in my mouth and my teeth would brush themselves. I get these electrical shocks that make every muscle in my body spasm simultaneously. Just like clock-work, every fifteen minutes, my ears take on this insatiable ringing that just won’t stop. I avoid the mirror at all costs. That’s not me in there. My eyes look evil. My face is sucked up. I am nothing more than a hollow demonic shell. I’m white as a ghost. I am a ghost.

“Where in the hell is he?”

I’ve been sitting here by the door, sweating and shivering, rocking back and forth like an autistic child. Something as simple as getting up and walking to fridge to get some water requires fifteen minuets of hard thought and careful planning, in order to make the trip with the least amount of pain. I just need my check. I just need to score. I just need to smoke and I’ll be OK. I remember that when I was about seven they used to have an ad campaign that said, “Speed Kills.” I was at friend’s house once, and when we walked into his older sister’s bedroom there was a note written on the wall in crayon.

“Speed doesn’t kill; it just helps you live faster”

Is that what I’m doing? Living faster?

No. I’m dieing here. I’ve known it for a while. I’ve smoked meth everyday for over a year now. I know people that have smoked everyday for five years and they’re a lot better off then I am. I do it, and I do it, and I do it, until it’s all gone. I smoke an eight ball all by myself, never stopping for sleep, or to eat, or for anything else until it’s all gone…for seventy weeks straight. My unemployment checks come every Tuesday. I usually catch the bus to the bank, then transfer to North Scottsdale to meet my connection. All of his clients are on Bell road between Tatum and Scottsdale, and he won’t take the drive through traffic down to Camelback where I live.

Today, I have to call Discount Cab. I’m too dope sick to stand in the hundred and five degree heat, waiting for the bus. I’ll pass out for sure. It happened to me last week. I’ll be able to catch it back. As soon as I take a couple of hits, I will be miraculously healed.

“Where in the hell is he?”

Just when I’m ready to say fuck it and crash again, right here on the floor next to the front door, I hear the magical sound of crackling paper from a hand full of junk mail being stuffed into a mailbox that’s way too small. I pull myself up and dial 200-2000 on my cell phone as I open the front door. I’m blinded by the sun. I can’t see a thing, but I carefully check for my check. I only go out in the daytime once a week, so it’s hard for my eyes to get used to the sun. Discount Cab always says the same thing, “five to thirty minutes.”  In ten minutes I am back on the floor in a fetal position.

“Where in the hell is he?”

This time it’s the cab driver instead of the mailman. The hardest thing about being a drug addict is that you’re always waiting to get high.

My kidneys are killing me. I just can’t stand this anymore. I’ve tried to kick, but between the shivers and shakes, being dope sick, the kidney pain, and the electrical shocks I never make it more than a couple of days. It’s not jones’n for the drug that keeps me smoking. I have to smoke to stop the pain.

Finally, I hear it. It’s the rap on the door. I grab the door knob and the arm of the couch, and pull myself up. I get my check and my driver’s license from the table and open the door. Smoking tweak makes your joints stiff. Laying in bed for thirty hours doesn’t help. So, I walk out of my door like a hundred year old man, bent over with a crooked spine and a hand on one kidney. Just before I get into the cab I have another electrical shock. I start convulsing.

“Am I taking you to the doctors or a hospital?”

“No, to the bank.”

We get half way to the bank and I realize I forgot my pipe.

“We have to go back to my apartment. I forgot my ID.”

Smoking tweak makes you forget everything. I used to always pay for gas, forget to pump it, then go back to the station and try to get it with no luck. That was before I lost my vehicle.

When I finally make it to the bank teller, I look like such a tweeker that she double checks my ID, double checks my check, and then calls her manager over to check it. It’s only two hundred dollars, but tweekers are notorious for check fraud, so I don’t really blame her.

When I’m back in the cab I tell the driver to go to Fry’s at Tatum and Bell. Then I call Beto, my connection, from the back seat of the cab.

“Que onda muchacho! Triente minutos at Fry’s?”

“Cuantos?”

“Un octavo”

“Esta Bien.”

You never say too much over the phone with Mexican dealers. They can tell who you are from caller ID. They already know what you want. They just need to know how much, where at, and what time. The driver looks at me through the rear view mirror. He knows exactly what’s going down. I don’t give a shit. Beto’s already waiting for me when the cab drops me off, the driver offers to take me back but I decline his offer.

I lean in the widow of Beto’s car. I hand him a c-note and he hands me two little bags with a sixteenth of glass in each of them. I feel better just holding it. He pulls out and I walk over to Circle K and go behind the dumpster.

Beto kicked down. These sacks are awesome. There’s nothing but crystals, just like the ones they sell in the gift shops of Sedona, only miniature. My fat fingers won’t fit in the tiny little zip lock, so I just shake some out into the palm of my hand. I pick a good one and shove it in the stem of my pipe and shake it down into the glass bowl. I carefully heat the bottom of the bowl until it melts. It is every bit as clear as water. This shit is getting way too good. It used to be copper colored when you would melt it, and then it got to be gray, now it’s always crystal clear and strong as fuck.

I slowly heat it until it starts to smoke and then suck on the pipe as the liquid starts to boil. I fill my lungs as full as I can, but my kidneys hurt so bad I have to stop half way. I hold the hit in as long as I can. As soon as I exhale I feel the pleasure starting to begin. Finally, my ears quit ringing. I can hear again. My kidneys still hurt, but not as bad. I take a couple of deep breaths. It’s a combination of Jaguar exhaust and Circle K dumpster…nothing like the great outdoors of Scottsdale, Arizona.

I hit the pipe a couple of more times. Most people would be flying with this much, but I am just starting to feel normal. I stretch like I just got up and was looking for some coffee. I no longer feel desperate. I no longer feel like I am going to die. I feel great, with a false sense of well being. Best of all, my kidneys quit hurting, and there are no more electrical shocks. Strangely enough, I’m hungry. I take a couple of more great big hits and high tail it into Circle K to get a hot dog, a big gulp, and a pack of smokes.

I am extra friendly with the cashier. I eat my hot dog while chatting with her. I step outside and have a smoke. Then I sneak back behind the dumpster for a couple of more hits. I smoke until I start to get paranoid. I take my tennis shoe off and hide the meth under the sole. I throw my pipe in the dumpster (I have more at home), and cross the street to catch the bus.

It’s five fifteen on Tuesday. I’ll stay up smoking until early Sunday morning when these two sacks are all gone. When I wake up next Tuesday morning, my kidneys will hurt more then they did today and the electrical shocks will be worse.

Then after a few more weeks of this, I won’t wake up at all, but it can’t be any worse then where I am at now.

For more information on methamphetamines please go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth. They have put together an exceptional online resource with a lot of great and interesting information.