A FUNCTIONAL ADDICT’S LIFE
How an Opium user justifies his addiction
BY: Ashley
Gallagher
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| Poppies |
The lighter goes off with a snap, and Henry Orich* snuffs a
little louder, his nostrils filled with Opium. It won't be long before he turns
to the pipe, inhaling and smoking in continuous waves.
“It's for chronic pain,” he tells me, “it’s better than a
doctor’s visit, my back doesn't hurt anymore. That's all. I'm not even high at
all.” He sounds convincing but his speech is getting slower, his voice raspier.
He snuffs a little more from the foil, shifts in the passenger seat of a moving
truck, leans back and sighs.
Orich was introduced to opiates and prescription medication
at the age of 13. By 15, he admits he was a heroin addict, but he says he
managed to still make it through high school, help raise his younger brother
when his parents were missing and held onto a full time job. But after he
graduated high school; Orich went to live with his mom who had left the family
years before when his father was in prison for 10 months. His mother was a
strung out addict and his father, intensely involved with drug cartels just
across the Arizona border. Orich says his father moved over 10 thousand pounds
a week of marijuana into the U.S. and sold the seeds to his providers in Mexico
during the 1970’s and 80’s. The money was good, says Orich, he wanted for
nothing at home.
Orich recently met a guy who shared the same contacts as his
father and bought seeds from the same cartels, seeds his father had supplied.
Orich said that’s why “the buds
coming up from Mexico for [nearly] 10 years were so good.”
But it wasn’t always easy for his father. Orich says his
father told him stories about conflicts he had with the cartel, “he’d been
threatened because people were making up lies about him and when the cartels
confronted him, there was always evidence” to the contrary, that his father was
telling the truth, “he never did wrong by them.” Orich says his father admitted
to being at gunpoint during a game
of Russian Roulette but the cartel members stopped realizing their mistake.
Orich says his father gave up buying and selling drugs with
Mexican cartels after he was released from prison. Ironically, however, he was
rarely around. Orich and his brother were left to fend for themselves.
But moving in with his mother didn’t stop his drug abuse. “I
met my first fiance, the first girl I ever had sex with...but that didn’t work
out, she started fucking around behind my back.” Orich admits he used the drugs
to hide the pain, but he prides himself on his continuous work ethic, “that's
also when I became my most successful in the restaurant business.” Orich worked
in the service industry and became both a kitchen manager and later a general
manager at a PF Changs. He admits he was taking nearly 300mg of Vicodin, 380mg
of Oxcodin and other opiate based drugs every day, but for him, it was
justified because he says, he was able to function and no one could tell him
otherwise, “I was running a 20-million dollar restaurant and I was operator of
the year, two years in row.”
Orich says his only regret is introducing drugs to his
brother, whose childhood face is tattooed on his left arm. “I try to remember
the good times,” Orich says. His brother died nearly 5 years ago, at the age of
23, after years of drug induced medical problems and a drug overdose. His older
sister, he says, is a different story. At the age of 11, she was sent to live
with an aunt and uncle who helped get her clean. His sister graduated
salutatorian of her high school class and received a full ride scholarship to
Iowa State University for Veterinary school. But the college party life caused
her to relapse, and she was hooked on Methamphetamines, sexually promiscuous
and “partied hard” until she became pregnant, for which Orich says, “that day,
and since that day, she's never used it again.”
He brags about his nephew, saying he is “Absolutely
brilliant. He's the smartest wittiest kid you've ever met. My sister, she’s a
great mother; now she just recently graduated college, and she's an RN - she's
doing great for herself.” Orich is quiet for a moment, his family’s fate and
lives are evidently on his mind. He lights his pipe and inhales the opium,
there’s a long pause as he slowly exhales.
Orich’s drug needs became greater over time; he admits
searching for an alternate reality, so he tried his hand at psychedelics, “I
really like psychedelics, mushrooms, and acid.” Orich says he never was a fan
of cocaine or methamphetamines, though he spent several years taking them. LSD
gave him the out of body experiences he was looking for, it was his way of
changing perspective on the world.
As he reminisces over his psychedelic use, he leans over,
lights up his pipe and smokes, “I could look at a cube from all angles and
realize that it doesn't just have 6 sides but there's also a center. You take
things from different perspectives, I mean if you analyze things and come to
different conclusions, then all of a sudden you can see things from other
people's perspective and relate.”
Another long pause, his speech takes more time. When asked
if he thought all drugs should be legalized, his facial expression becomes
defiant, “That's not my stance, my stance is if I want to put something in my
body, you shouldn't be able to tell me fuckin' no.”
His tone is angry, but with another hit of the drug, he
calms and rests his head on the back of the seat.
“I broker weed,” he states matter-of-factly. He buys and
sells marijuana to high paying clients. He explains and he hasn’t had a job in
nearly a year. When a client comes with 125K for a 70lbs of marijuana, he sees
9000 dollars of it. He doesn’t admit he’s taken on his father’s profession.
He’s not providing the seeds, he not involved with cartels. As for his Opium
use, he grows his own and he gives it away. It’s not something he believes he
should charge his friends when they’re smoking it together. Orich says it takes
approximately 6 weeks for buds to start sprouting from the poppy seeds and if
he plants continuously, his opium supply never really runs out. But if he does,
Orich claims he goes weeks without it, often instead, smoking weed or drinking,
“sometimes nothing at all.”
He admits the withdraw from Opium is the same as it is with
heroin. “It feels like shit because opium and heroin, they they cause
constipation, they close your internal organs down so um, you can go 24 hours
without effect. First off your stomach starts to turn uncontrollably, you start
getting cold sweats. You're restless, your legs, uh have you heard of restless
leg syndrome? Your legs you try to hold them still. You feel like you're
crawling with shit. And start kicking uncontrollably You can't sleep for 2 or 3
days. You don't want to move or do anything because you feel so bad, all you
need is one more hit and it'll be okay.” He doubles back, then states Opium
isn’t as bad, not like heroin at all.
Orich pauses, lights the pipe, smokes, and exhales again. He
says he’s never missed a day of work because of withdraw. He knew his
responsibilities and he took care of them. He showed up, worked to the best of
his ability, made money and went on his way.
But that might change now. “It’s time to move on,” he says.
Orich wants to go back to school, become a civil rights attorney, maybe pick up
a part time job and take care of his dad. His father recently called him,
diagnosed with cancer. Orich is moving back with his father, hoping to help
him, and maybe change his own life.
He says he’s ready to give up smoking Opium, this is the
last of his supply, he tells me. I told my friends if I call you up asking for
dope, no matter how much of an ass hole I am, do the right thing and say, stop
being a fuckin' hippie, say no.” He hopes that will give him the friendly
support he needs.
His views on drug use, however, hasn’t changed. “Will I take
it again? Sure I will, but not on a daily basis.” He also admits he has people
who work for him who still conduct business with his clients and he can still
earn a cut from their work.
Orich says he’s able to give up his Opium use “cold turkey.”
He went to rehab for 8 months once, he quit once before, he says, he’ll do it
again if he really puts his mind to it, “You can do anything you want to if you
just believe, people that say I can’t, what they’re really saying is I don’t
want to.”
The question hung in the air, did he want to? His head
drooped low, his eyes heavy, deprived of sleep and the opium takes effect.
*Name changed for privacy of source
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New York is a place where one is expected to be puzzle pieces all in one place - hair and yoga pants included. Everyone has an ear piece, conducting business and the brisk bustle of the streets almost requires underwater survival skills. Fall below the expectations, and you may be not come out alive. People watching is like information overload. The city shadows the sun, but the pockets of rays are a welcome warmth.
