The Changing Face of Addiction

by D. Watkins

Yellow face Kerry with the short cornrows liked to carry the same things to the park. A lighter, a tablespoon, a hypodermic needle, a belt that doubled as a tourniquet and sack of dope when he could swing it.

Kerry would strangle his calf with his belt till a few veins popped, then he’d flick, flick — flick the lighter until a sturdy flame hung under his tablespoon. His eyes flared as the fire made the spoon glow orange, the liquid contents inside bubbled, it bubbled enough until it reached a temperature that only he could eyeball. Then he’d dab the tip of his needle into the heated solution until it filled the syringe. The next stop was in that calf vein where he sank the needle and pushed until a little of his own blood flushed in, one more push returned that glob of dope-mixed-blood back into his system as he loosened the belt and slipped into an easy nod.

He’d float away to wherever dope fiends float to as the rest of teens and preteens like myself would play basketball next to the bench he’d lean on. Kerry didn’t scare us, because his presence was normal­­ — junkies, dope fiends, sales, shooters, base heads or whatever your region calls them were normal.

“There’s an awful heroin epidemic sweeping across our country,” a small white woman with big frames in my creative writing class at the University of Baltimore said. “Our kids are quickly becoming addicted and dying!” She removed her frames to catch a tear, before saying how her she never thought her suburb would mirror a drug infested city.

“Maybe it’s new to you!” I replied, “But if you’re Black and poor, the heroin epidemic has been around!”

Nixon’s Drug War planted the seeds, fertilized by Reagan and Bush and then grew into the field of mass incarceration that was harvested and cosigned by the Clintons. John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy chief told Harper’s Magazine that Nixon’s War on Drugs was meant to target Black people.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs?”

Their plan worked as we watched the number of African Americans being incarcerated soar past whites, to be released into society as partial citizens. Partial because drug polices can easily make you unemployable, leave you ineligible for finical aid, and ineligible for public housing and/ or welfare. What do you do for money? How do you assimilate? This is America, and everything costs. Having nothing drives a person crazy, pushing them towards two realities — that of a user, or a dealer.

In Baltimore, 97% of the people born into poverty die in poverty and heroin dealer is one of the few jobs that is always hiring. It’s been like that in our inner cities and will continue to be like that until those unfair drug policies are changed. What my student didn’t know is that white addiction is not a new wave. Many articles have been published on the rampant drug use in white communities, and how it surpasses African American communities, even though the media and stereotypes would lead you to believe the opposite. The wild card is held by these Percocet-slinging pharmaceutical companies who couldn’t wait to have doctors prescribe the drug for anything from a slightly bruised arm to a bad day.

So many people in white communities were going Percocet crazy that doctors were being called out for their role in creating the epidemic and forced to lessen the large amounts that they were shelling out, but it was too late. Percocets are like synthetic heroin so if the doctor cancels your prescription, you can get the same feeling from the street pharmacist and that’s exactly what the white kids are doing.

I well up with depression when I think about Yellow face Kerry and his battle with addiction. White people and more privileged areas are starting to feel the same and even though I’d never wish that pain on anybody, I’m glad this problem is finally getting the attention it needs.

RIP Kerry.

D. Watkins is a professor at the University of Baltimore, a writer, educator, speaker, and the author of “The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir” and “The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America”.