Cotton Fever : Trials and Tribulations of a Drug Addict

     It glistened in the dull fluorescent glow of the flood light. "Get on the f--kin ground now!!" Oblivious to the nine millimeter gun pressing to the back of my head, the only thing in my mind was that I was about to watch the love of my life's brains painted red on the humid cement.

     For Gods sake, her and I only just got out of our first detox the day before. Arrested a few months earlier on the "bab" (Ali Baba Blvd, the main drag in one of Miami's worst ghettos) my mom sprung for a posh detox for my first go at getting clean. When we got out we weren't dope sick, just obsessed with the beige granular powder that seemed to be penetrating my every waking thought.

    You can detox the body but it's a little harder to detox the mind. And I assure you at age 19 I wasn't nearly done.

    "Empty out your pockets! Stay on the ground!" The muggy South Florida humidity hung in the air as my throat tightened. I fumble around in my pocket and two bills fall to the ground.

     "Is that it?!" I cringe at the thought of my car parked on the other side of the fluorescent blue tarp that lined the mangled fence in the dark back alley. For sure we'd take bullets to the head if they found out that I'm not telling them my keys are in my pocket too.

      "Yeah that's it." To think a mere three days ago wwe were sitting comfortably in a jasmine scented hydrotherapy bathtub dosed on 'the red stuff', the curiously delicious concoction made of benzos, barbs and opiates used to ween you off heroin more easily.

     But now all I could envision was my mother getting the dreaded phone call in the middle of the night that they've found my body riddled with bullet holes.