Susan was an artist in her early thirties, designer and had a great life going for her until she had an argument with a Paving slab while working on a landscape garden design of hers. As I remember her story, she spent a some time in hospital but the pain relief medication prescribed by the professionals could not deal with the pain she was in when she got home. After a while her employer, a small business had to sadly let her go which sent her on a downward spiral into depression, she couldn't work which was her passion because of the pain she was suffering. Somewhere around this point after about a year someone turned her on to Heroin which fitted the bill perfectly, no physical pain, no mental pain, bliss. It changed her life instantly but there were the obvious long term effects.
I first met Susan when she was homeless, after the horse had bolted so to speak, no fun, maintenance dosage, occasional Snowball as a treat and having to come up with a good deal of money to stay straight each day.
She was hanging around with the younger lads who were always a little frantic and still at the stage of change from ‘Hey this is fun’ to ‘We need more to feel the buzz over our maintenance dose’. When you need to find money for your drug you’ll find it and they still had the energy to run about an score. Susan was looked after by these lads and helped out with the float where she could by vending the Big Issue mostly. There was for me certain comfort she’d be o.k. at night, no woman should be alone on the streets but I’m sure it didn’t help her habit.
She came to see me for a while, about two months perhaps twice a week and we chatted. At one point she was controlling her habit sensibly, it was her plan when she came to see me. I listened and encouraged and she was doing it. Then she went missing in action at the end of the summer, I left messages for her at the front desk but she never engaged again, she was heading down.
My girlfriend at the time worked at the Big Issue as well and had far more front line dealing with our homeless. The front desk where the magazine was sold was also a first aid stop, crisis counselling, listening to problems and sometime repetitive boring stories. When you worked there you could see daily who was in crisis or over time see deterioration in someone. I asked her one night if she’d seen Susan recently and she said, ‘Dug, she doesn’t want to be helped, I shouldn’t get your hopes up’. I didn’t want to believe it but I knew she was right, she was a natural where people were concerned and her prediction eventually became a reality.
I last saw Susan at the ICU in an induced coma while dying of Pneumonia. I spoke to her, the team there always advised it. As I left I said ‘Come on Susan I know you’ve got more fight than that’ but my voice tailed off at the end as though I could feel she was happy to move on.
She died later on that week and for me there was some sense of relief obviously mixed with the selfish sadness that you won’t see that person again. However I always have a mental picture to remember her by, she was a talented hard working beautiful women with a career which she enjoyed. I picture that Susan, when she spoke about it I was speaking to Susan and not the drug.