Dying to Survive by Rachael Keogh

Author:Rachael Keogh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dying to Survive
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan
Published: 2011-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

NOTHING CHANGES

Mountjoy was stuck in a time warp, with the same people coming and going year after year. I saw so many familiar faces this time, but no matter what I did to fit in, I still stuck out like a sore thumb. I was tall, blonde and still reasonably smart-looking, in spite of having wrecked myself on drugs: to most of the girls I was a snob and some of them would call me ‘Little Miss Make-up’. But I had changed a lot since my first visit, at fifteen. I was older and more street-wise. I was clever and I knew how to protect myself in prison by hanging around with girls who took no shit from anyone. I guaranteed myself safety, and prevented withdrawals, by having a regular supply of drugs and I always made sure to sort out a couple of the girls, as they did with me. And my own, from Ballymun, always looked out for me.

Derek was my life-line. Every couple of days he would smuggle me in grams of heroin. Sometimes he would put the heroin into a tennis ball and he would throw it over the prison wall, making sure that it landed in the women’s yard. But this way usually caused trouble because everyone would know that I had heroin and they would be around me like flies on shite. So we decided to take the risk of him kissing it over to me when he came to visit. But there was no physical contact allowed on visits, so Derek would count to three and we would both lean over the counter. We would lock our lips together as he flicked the heroin into my mouth. The officers would grab me by the throat in an effort to stop me swallowing the drugs, but I always managed to get rid of them. They would throw me in a padded cell for a couple of hours, which gave me a chance to vomit the drugs back up. By doing this I lost my visits with Derek, so he resorted to sewing the heroin into the hem of the clothes he brought me when visiting was allowed again.

We always found a way to get drugs into Mountjoy, but getting needles and citric acid inside was much more difficult. I had always promised myself that I would never share a needle with anyone, but my habit had become much bigger and my withdrawals were more severe, so I felt I had no choice in the matter. Myself and my two friends shared our needles between us. We made sure to clean them as well as we could and sometimes we would have to burn the top of the needle to get rid of any bacteria. The needle would be like a blunt nail after a while and I found it harder to get a hit. My veins already had thrombosis from using, so when I saw how easy it was for my friend to get a hit into her groin, I asked her to do the same for me.

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