A Functional Addict's Life

A FUNCTIONAL ADDICT’S LIFE

How an Opium user justifies his addiction

            BY: Ashley Gallagher

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