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Roy said we ought to spread them out so they would be harder for the inspector to find. It was too much trouble to walk around from drugstore to drugstore, so we usually ended up taking them to the same place. I was learning to hide my stuff carefully—“stash it,” as they say in the trade—so Roy and Herman couldn’t find it and take some.
    Taking junk hidden by another junkie is known as “making him for his stash.” It is difficult to guard against this form of theft because junkies know where to look for a stash. Some people carry their junk around with them, but a man who does that is subject to a charge of possession in the event of search by the law.
    As I began using stuff every day, or often several times a day, I stopped drinking and going out at night. When you use junk you don’t drink. Seemingly, the body that has a quantity of junk in its cells will not absorb alcohol. The liquor stays in the stomach, slowly building up nausea, discomfort, and dizziness, and there is no kick. Using junk would be a sure cure for alcoholics. I also stopped bathing. When you use junk the feel of water on the skin is unpleasant for some reason, and junkies are reluctant to take a bath.
    A lot of nonsense has been written about the changes people undergo as they get a habit. All of a sudden the addict looks in the mirror and does not recognize himself. The actual changes are difficult to specify and they do not show up in the mirror. That is, the addict himself has a special blind spot so far as the progress of his habit is concerned. He generally does not realize that he is getting a habit at all. He says there is no need to get a habit if you are careful and observe a few rules, like shooting every other day. Actually, he does not observe these rules, but every extra shot is regarded as exceptional. I have talked to many addicts and they all say they were surprised when they discovered they actually had the first habit. Many of them attributed their symptoms to some other cause.
    As a habit takes hold, other interests lose importance to the user. Life telescopes down to junk, one fix and looking forward to the next, “stashes” and “scripts,” “spikes” and “droppers.” The addict himself often feels that he is leading a normal life and that junk is incidental. He does not realize that he is just going through the motions in his non-junk activities. It is not until his supply is cut off that he realizes what junk means to him.
    â€œWhy do you need narcotics, Mr. Lee?” is a question that stupid psychiatrists ask. The answer is, “I need junk to get out of bed in the morning, to shave and eat breakfast. I need it to stay alive.”
    Of course, junkies don’t as a rule die from the withdrawal of junk. But in a very literal sense, kicking a habit involves the death of junk-dependent cells and their replacement with cells that do not need junk.
    Roy and his old lady moved into the same tenement building. Every day we would meet in my apartment after breakfast to plan the day’s junk program. One of us would have to hit the croaker. Roy always tried to put it on someone else. “I can’t go myself this time, I had a beef with him. But listen, I’ll tell you just what to say.” Or he would try to get Herman or me to try a new croaker. “You can’t miss. Just don’t let him say no, because he will write. I can’t go myself.”
    I had one of his sure-thing croakers reach for a telephone on me. I told Roy and he said, “Oh, I guess the guy’s burned. Somebody made him for his bag a few days ago.” After that, I kept away from strange croakers. But our Brooklyn boy was getting balky.
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    All croakers pack in sooner or later. One day when Roy came for his script, the doctor told him, “This is positively the last, and you guys had better keep out of sight. The inspector was around to see me yesterday.