Hurricane Sandy & November 2012

On October 29, 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit New York City. It was one of the worst hurricanes I’ve lived through and we lost power for 10 days. Gas stations were closed, supermarkets, stores, banks, everything was shut down. No power anywhere, at least the first few days. I slept through the 12 hour ordeal, doped out of my mind. I remember laying in my bed in my cold, dark room because the power had shut off at some point in the middle of the night. And all I heard was the howling winds, rain splashing down and things banging around outside all night. I woke up the next day to a candle lit house with no power. We prepared very little, so we suffered those first few days. It was way worse than expected. But my drug dealer was good and he was around and that’s all that mattered. I took the last $50 dollars I had in my wallet and drove through empty, eerie streets. It was so fucking weird. There wasn’t many people on the roads, there were trees down everywhere, power-lines down everywhere, none of the traffic signals worked. It was chaotic. But I remember driving to score that day to meet JoJo on 5th Ave and Broad St. in Bethlehem, PA. It was like 10 or 11 AM. I couldn’t get gas for my car or a hot meal if I wanted to at that very moment, but I could sure as hell get heroin mere hours after a major hurricane hit and caused over $60 billion worth of damage in the US alone. And I saw JoJo the next day on Halloween and the day after that. I went 10 days without power in my house, some people less, some people MORE. People are dead, scrambling to survive a hard time and here are my drug dealer and I doing the same thing as always. I vividly remember those 10 days. It all starts to blur together after a while. The cold bedroom because there’s no heat and it’s November now; the end of autumn. The stale breakfast sandwiches from McDonald’s every morning. No internet, TV or computer. The long boring wait, hoping the power would return any second. The first few days I was generally OK. I could cop my dope in the morning sometime and be well into the night. Then I’d wake up sick and do it again. But, as the days wore on and the situation grew worse, the money and resources ran out. Nothing was open so I couldn’t shoplift or pass a check at a bank. JoJo was becoming more unreliable, and I am sure he was running low on product unable to re-up. By the week mark, things were very hard and not only was I uncomfortable because I didn’t have basic social and human necessities, but I was growing dope sick unable to make a move and score for a day here and two days there. My job was shut down so I couldn’t even go to work or ask for an advance on pay. It sucked so bad I went out to Allentown to my uncle’s apartment to stay for 2 days on my last bit of gas and bags on credit. He had power back after 2 days because he lived blocks from a hospital and was on a more urban electrical grid. When I returned home 2 days later, dope sick and to a house STILL with no power I was at my wit’s end. Somehow I managed to find 2 roxy 30mg pills and 2 10mg methadone pills. The very last drops of what I had drug or money wise. I remember cooking those two crushed pills up in my cold, dark room. Trying to hit a vein in the dark so so hard. I remember having to use a little flash light. Then I went upstairs and laid on the couch, trying to enjoy the little, tiny bit of euphoria I had, waiting and ready to get sick again in another 12 hours, when suddenly the whole house buzzed on. The lights went on, TVs came on and central heat hummed. Finally. I vividly remember those days. More so than others. I was in a rehab in Fort Pierce, FL weeks later just after Thanksgiving. November of 2012 was a rough month.