What Comes After Heroin Addiction

A new drug is supposed to block heroin addicts from getting high, no matter how many opiates they take. Which left Gabriel with only ordinary life to contemplate - in all its beauty and banality.

- Genevieve Smith, photos by Graham MacIndo

The first time Gabriel overdosed on heroin, he was technically homeless, crashing on a friend’s couch. One morning, the friend went out for groceries and Gabriel shot up. When the friend returned, Gabriel was blue. After coming to in the hospital, Gabriel was stunned that he’d been so close to killing himself, in such a stupid way, and he felt guilty for the pain he’d caused his father, Martin, who had not realized the extent of his son’s addiction. Gabriel decided then that he was done with heroin.

The next five times Gabriel overdosed tend to blur together. Sometimes he wouldn’t even go to the emergency room. He’d just sort of wake up someplace and someone would tell him he’d stopped breathing. Sometimes he’d stay clean for months before slipping up again. But mostly he kept using. He kept using heroin after his son, Jared, was born. He kept using after two friends overdosed at the same time and he had to administer CPR to one, then the other. He kept using after one of his best friends died from an overdose. And he kept using after he went on Suboxone, an opioid relative of methadone. He realized he could take Suboxone in the morning, quiet his heroin hunger pains long enough to go to work, and still shoot up at night. He did this for a couple of years until his doctor refused to continue filling his prescriptions.

The last time Gabriel overdosed was in September 2014. He stopped by his dealer’s house after a recovery meeting. On his way home, he went unconscious, and the car swerved into the guardrail on a bridge. The medics had to saw him out.