A Junky's Story

Heroin is a sensory deprivation tank for the soul. Floating on the Dead Sea if the drug stone, there's no sense of pain, no regret or shame, no feeling of guilt or grief, no depression, and no desire. The sleeping universe enters and envelops every atom of existence. Insensible stillness and peace disperse fear and suffering. thoughts drift like ocean weeds and vanish in the distant, grey somnolency, unperceived and indeterminable. The body succumbs to cryogenic slumber: the listless heart beats
faintly, and breathing slowly fades to random whispers. Thick nirvanic numbness clogs the limbs, and downward, deeper the sleeper slides and glides toward oblivion, the perfect and eternal stone.

That chemical absolution is paid for, like everything else in the universe, with light. The first light that junkies lose is the light in their eyes. A junkie's eyes are as lightless as the eyes of Greek statues, as lightless as hammered lead, as lightless as a bullet hole in a dead man's back. The next light lost is the light of desire. Junkies kill desire with the same weapon they use on hope and dream and honour: the club made from their craving. And when all the other lights of life are gone, the last light lost is the light of love. Sooner or later, when its's down to the last hit, the junkie will give up the woman he loves, rather than go without sooner or later, every junkie becomes a devil in exile.

- Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram