Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

If I’d had the means and the energy to dispatch myself yesterday, I’d have been seriously tempted. For the last few days I’ve been feeling like I could drown in my own sweat. My fucking bones … it’s as if I’m inside a car that’s being crushed in a breaker’s yard. It’s just so fucking relentless. And I think about Nicksy and Keezbo, and how I’d have jumped in their circumstances if I was feeling like this. Why the fuck put up with it?

I NEED A FUCKING FIX .

I need it bad .

I only leave my room for the toilet, or for breakfast, the one time detoxers are required to join the others. I take my tea with five sugars, and Coco Pops and milk, scranning it back as quick as I can. It’s about all I can eat here; I usually have the same for lunch and dinner, which I always take in my room .

Last night, or the night before, I got up for a piss. There’s a couple of thin-glowing night lights in the corridor, at skirting level, and I very near shat myself as this uplit, sweating beast came lumbering towards me. Some part of my brain told me to just keep walking, and the monster looked briefly at me, mumbling something as we passed each other. I said, ‘Awright?’ and carried on. When I came out of the bogs the thing had thankfully gone. I don’t know if this was a dream or hallucination .

Day 6

Woken from a jaggy, nightmare-stuffed sleep by an aggressive storm of birdsong. I force myself to rise. Can barely look in the mirror. I’ve been way too uncomfortable to try and shave and I’ve grown a thin, scraggy ginger beard which looks redder and thicker than it is, cause of the spots on my face. The yellowheads are repulsive enough, but it’s two big boil-like fuckers on my cheek and forehead that cause the distress. They throb under the surface of my skin like a Peter Hook bassline, hurting my face every time I try to move it. But my eyes provide the real shock; they seem pushed right back into my skull sockets, a deathly, defeated look to them .

The ‘monster’ the other night was that big biker gadgie, Seeker. Cunt doesn’t look any better in the daylight .

Sick Boy’s been chatting up that hostile Molly lassie. ‘Love’s the most dangerous drug of all,’ he solemnly declared, eyes full of seriousness. Of course, she’s falling for this garbage, nodding away. I was too fucked to enjoy his shite and Spud was rabbiting in my ear, about how detox isn’t so bad. ‘Ah jist keep thinkin thit it’s barry somebody cares but, Mark .’

As I left the table I heard some smirking cunt, probably Swanney or Sick Boy, referring to me as Catweazle, after the crazed jakey on telly. With my straggly hair and beard and stooping gait, I sense that’s exactly how I look. I’m happy and relieved to get back to my room .

Get assessed again by that Dr Forbes, who came in from the community drug clinic. He basically asked the same shite questions as before. Couldn’t stop looking at his head; it’s too big for his body, the Gerry Anderson puppet look .

More Coco Pops for dinner, before retiring to my suite. Happy days. Len comes in and talks for a wee bit, mainly about music. We have a half-hearted Beefheart discussion on the merits of Clear Spot (me — a barry record) versus Trout Mask Replica (him — a shite album). He tells me again aboot the guitar in the recky room .

Day 8

At breakfast I had a wee bit of porridge. With salt. Skinny-Specky made some comment about salt in porridge (she took sugar in hers) and we playfully derided her English habits. She insisted that she was Scottish, but Ted and Skreel told her that posh Scots were, to all intents and purposes, the same as the English. I mentioned that there were actually working-class people in England, and social class supplanted nationality as the parameters of our discussion. (Fuck sake — check the student cunt here!)

The Tom gadgie listened intently, as did Seeker, and a new, dark-heided, pointy-jawed, blue-eyed lassie who was introduced by Skinny-Specky as ‘Audrey, from Glenrothes’, as if she was a contestant on the Generation Game.

NOICE TA SEE YA, TA SEE YA, NOICE!

Audrey has replaced Greg ‘Roy’ Castle, who was the first dropout of the rehab programme. Apparently, he couldn’t handle it and opted instead for residency courtesy of Her Majesty at Saughton. Audrey gave us a fretful nod, then sat in silence biting her nails. I felt for her, just shakily emerging from the detox cocoon of her room, the only lassie but one in the group. She looked even worse than I felt, rattling like a bairn’s toy .

‘ I’m sure you’ll be very happy here, Audrey,’ Swanney said, sarcasm trickling from his tongue, then added, ‘You don’t have to be addicted to hard drugs to stay here, but it helps! ’

Day 9

I take in another dull, fearsome morning. Outside, the white of the daisies on the dewy lawn, and crocuses, yellow, white and purple, spreading like a wave along the bottom of the stone wall. It’s not so bad .

I’m sitting here, writing this shite and wondering why — probably because there’s fuck all else to do. The folders we’ve been issued have two sections; a diary, with one page for each of this forty-five-day programme, and appendices where there’s what they refer to as a ‘journal’. Skinny-Specky explained that this is for ‘developing any themes from the diaries that we may want to explore further’. Apparently the diaries are for our eyes only, and we can put anything into them. The journals we can elect to read out in the forthcoming group sessions. But nobody is going to write a fucking thing (at least not anything important); there are no locks on the doors here and nothing is secure. The fuckers that run this facility haven’t got a clue as to what the cunts in here are like. Keep a private diary when Sick Boy and Swanney are lurking about? Aye, right!

All I can think of is: why the fuck are we here? How the fuck did I get here?

Day 12

WHAT THE FUCK DO THESE CUNTS WANT FROM US?

Day 13

‘ Honesty,’ skinny-Specky says, when I raise the issue at breakfast. A runny egg and toasty sodjirs. ‘You’ll understand more when you join the process review group .’

Well, that’s me telt. I must have flashed a soor pus as she adds, ‘That’s what the diaries and journals are all about .’

But when I get back to my room, I immediately start scribbling. If every other fucker’s writing nothing (as seems to be the consensus) then I’m going to get everything down .

Skinny-Specky pops round and tells me she’d like me to join the meditation group. I agree, just basically to spend more time in her presence. We’re sitting cross-legged on the flair, as she puts a tape on and takes position in front of us. I’m ogling her small breasts through her tight, elasticated black top, awed by the way she stretches out, catlike, arching her back before getting into position. She gives us breathing exercises, and instructions to tense and then relax various muscle groups in our bodies. We should shut our eyes, but I’m watching her, then I see that Johnny has his lamps trained in the same direction. He gives me a collusive sex — fiend wink, so I close my eyes and breeeeaaaattthhhhheeee …

After the session, I chat to her for a bit. She’s telling me that by learning to relax our muscles, we can therefore subsequently reduce agitation levels. I don’t trust any theory that inverts cause and effect, and show little enthusiasm for what she’s saying, but when I get to my room, I try the exercises again .

Keezbo has left us. Spud tells me after lunch, as I’m sitting reading Joyce, looking out the window. The Fat Fort Felly was due to finish detox, but they’ve taken him to the hospital, due to supposed ‘medication complications’, whatever the fuck that means. They say he’ll be rejoining us soon. Fat Jambo cunt’s probably already sitting in the Village Inn with a cold pint of lager now that he’s chemical-free .