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Chapter 1
Introduction
Obviously there are things that I donât know what Iâm talking about but if you asked me something that I didnât know Iâd sit there and admit that I didnât know what to say. But on this sort of subject â crack cocaine â I do know what Iâm talking about and itâs something that I can stand up and get a microphone and speak it because I really do want my voice to be heard. Do you understand what Iâm saying? I really do want people to understand what this [crack cocaine] is all about. Itâs not a fucking joke â put it that way. Itâs serious and I want people to realise. Do you know what I mean? [Gritting his teeth] And it is time for these people [starts pointing at people around the cafĂ©] to understand that, as I said, it ainât a joke. Ok you can say âWell, theyâre doing it themselves. Itâs self-inflictedâ, but at least youâve got to give them some sort of help because the help weâve got now is all bollocks.
(Cuz)
Introduction
Crack cocaine users (âcrack usersâ hereafter) have significant health problems and place a major burden on health and social services, the criminal justice system and drug treatment agencies. They are responsible for significant levels of crime, have the worst retention rate in prison drug programmes and community drug agencies, and remain the most poorly understood drug-using group among UK policymakers and professionals, the media and wider society. This book is about crack use and the realities of usersâ lives. It is based on ethnographic research â observation and interviewing â conducted over the course of 2004 and 2005 in one south London borough, which I refer to as âRivertownâ. It aims to highlight crack usersâ day-to-day struggles as they try to survive in a violent and intimidating street drug scene while trying to take some steps toward making changes to their complex lifestyles. I write this book because this particular drug-using group is the most heavily stigmatised in the UK context.
The chapter that follows this gives you more about the structure of the book but, for now, I would like to try to put you, the reader, in the quagmire that is the world of crack users. Chapter 1 is a reflexive account, using field notes, which contextualises the main players of this book: Dawg, Blood, Cuz and Fam.
Dawgâs crack house and early introductions
We came up in the lift, which stank of urine. I stood crammed in the lift with Dawg, Big T and JC. We walked out across the landing and Dawg fumbled for his key. He apologised in advance for the mess. I guess he felt embarrassed that someone who didnât take drugs was coming in. I felt privileged, as he said he wouldnât normally do this unless someone had crack for him. The toilet was on the right hand side as we went in. There was a fish tank in the hallway because for some reason Dawg thought he might one day have fish. The floor was tiled but hadnât been swept for months. JC and Big T went straight into the living room, on the right as we walked in. Dawg politely showed me his bedroom, which was on the left from the hallway. It was made up of a single bed in the corner, which was white with yellow stains on the mattress and duvet, a broken mirror and a cupboard. The living area was a rubbish dump. There was sawdust everywhere and some pornographic magazines lying around. There was no distinctive smell. The crack-smoking area was around a decrepit sofa Dawg had been given by a church charity. There were small crack wrappers and some crack pipes on the little table near the sofa and a television propped up in the corner. The kitchen, which had no flooring, was bloodstained in areas.
(Field notes)
After several days hanging around in the streets with Bones, JC and Big T, I was finally invited to Dawgâs crack house. While Dawg always denied his flat was a âcrack houseâ, his crack-using associates felt otherwise. They had reason for this because Dawg invited all sorts of strangers to smoke drugs in his flat at all hours. When not in his flat, Dawg lingered outside Connections North (a drug service) asking around for loans of crack or money. This was because he couldnât âgraftâ. Reflecting on their 15-year crack-smoking relationship, Bones described how awkward Dawg was when they were âgraftingâ for money for crack:
Thatâs just him [Dawg], he knows that he canât do anything [cannot make money for crack] and I do all the work. I walk with him so he can give me a bit of smother, block the view so people canât see what Iâm doing [shoplifting], pretending to talk to him, but I am just going in the shop pretending to see who is about. But Dawg isnât going to do anything. I am going to put this stuff in my bag and walk out. Nothing is going to happen to him, even if he did walk out and they grabbed him, he can just go: âFuck off, I donât know that boyâ. Even though there is no danger to him whatsoever, he will still act robotically.
(Bones)
Because of his inability to earn money, Dawg bartered out his flat to allow people to use crack in the flat in exchange for a ârock or twoâ. The flat regulars were Blood, who had met Dawg in a hostel; Big T, a large man in his 50s who had spent time in prison for murder; JC, who, in his late 30s, suffered from a rare lung condition but continued to inject crack and a variety of prescribed drugs; and Bones â the thinnest of them all â an adept shoplifter from Ireland. Big T and JC only came to Dawgâs on occasions but Blood and Bones spent long overnight spells, making their money for crack and treating him to a few pipes. What amazed me the most was when Dawg broke into unpredictable, never-ending narratives about his life experiences after smoking crack.
Normally, a ÂŁ15 crack rock would last Dawg about an hour as he didnât like to smoke it all at once and normally preferred to have a Valium 10â15 minutes before smoking crack. If Valium wasnât available, heroin would do. It took him 15 seconds to smoke his first pipe and Dawg went into verbal overdrive, reflecting on imperial times of racism and slavery. He then made another four pipes although he said this was âgreedyâ for him. He carefully broke off âÂŁ2.75 of the rockâ he said, crushed it as much as his shakey hands could, then got the back-end of a knife and continued to reduce the size of the rocks. Once he had done that, he sprinkled the cigarette ash on the foil of the crack pipe so the small crack rocks wouldnât burn too quickly and fall down the little holes in the foil, which was wrapped around the crack pipe. He put it to his lips and inhaled while burning the crack with a cheap lighter. His verbal overdrive continued about incessant âeverythings and nothingsâ about slavery and racism. He started to perspire slightly and his nose became runny; he left it dripping to start with but then just wiped it off with his hand. His eyes became very wide and kept darting in all directions as if he were searching for something. His hands started shaking again and when he got up, his left leg went into a slight spasm every now and then, as if someone had a remote control and was operating his leg without his knowledge. He began to walk around and pick up things that didnât seem to need picking up and put them about an inch away from where they originally were placed. Three times, he picked his coat from the seat only to deposit it back in the same place. While describing a Turkish girl he liked, he proceeded to describe a mole she had on her face and even went looking for a pen and paper to draw me a life-size shape of it. Every time he took a pipe he did the same, walked around picked up things put them back in their original place; looking in the drawers several times for no reason. He was talking so articulately about some things, which I didnât have the first clue about. He did this for ten minutes or so. Reflecting on his pipe yesterday, he said Blood had spoilt it because he interrupted his âbuzzâ. With only heroin available to minimise potential depression while coming down from the crack high, he kept saying to himself: âI wish I had a Valiumâ.
(Field notes)
Dawg had grown up local to the area, but suffered the loss of his father at a young age. It was difficult for the 39-year-old to hide several large scars on his face received from violent exchanges with drug dealers, but he compensated for it, he argued, by dressing smartly. This was important for him because it countered his drug-user image. He said that a stammer and severe dyslexia compounded his problems at school and, soon after leaving with no qualifications, he struggled to find work knowing that his mother and his brother would lend him money âhere and thereâ. His early experiences with drugs in his twenties included marijuana and LSD, but he moved on to experiment with benzodiazepines before heroin. He had been using heroin for ten years before trying crack in his council flat in the north of Rivertown. As his frustration increased at his lack of achievement and lengthy unemployment, so did his crack use, and the flat started to attract more people. His abilities to fund drug use were limited and crack dealers quickly heard about a potential flat to exploit. The police raided his flat in 2002 and he was evicted and moved to hostel accommodation. Perhaps because of his vulnerable âmental health conditionsâ and âsuicidal thoughtsâ, he was re-housed again in council accommodation early in 2004.
Throughout September and October 2004, Dawgâs flat seemed to be the busiest flat on the floor, yet he was always worried that the neighbours would be curious about his out-of-hours social life. However, it wasnât only Dawg who tried to deter community attention. There were also two crack dealers on the lower floors. They rarely left the flat and instead sent out young drug runners on the local streets. On many occasions, I came face to face with the runners on their new BMX bikes. They offered me crack in the estate grounds and seemed to be amused by this; perhaps they assumed I was âon the whiteâ and âbrownâ, because they had seen me while they were doing hallway drug deals with Blood. Dawg and Bones, however, had no association with these dealers or runners. Neither party seemed to want to draw attention to their activities of crack dealing or crack taking. Yet, Blood persisted in dealing directly at their doorstep in attempts to save precious money by avoiding the cost of a call to a dealer. The risk may have made sense. The motivation for many crack dealers to meet people like Blood, for small purchases such as ÂŁ10 crack rocks or even a ÂŁ15 âone-on-oneâ, was generally minimal. Indeed, this seemed to be why many dealers and runners were frequently unreliable, inconsistent and late for drug deals â because it simply wasnât good business for them.
Early street days
With the experience of spending time in Dawgâs flat, I took to the streets. Early street experiences were clumsy. A drug dealer pulled a knife on Dawg and me while we were on a drug deal following a visit to Dawgâs mother to borrow money. In a hallway drug deal a few days later, Blood was thrust up against the wall when he laughed at one of the drug runners. This gave me some perspective on how they were treated in the crack scene. On one occasion, Dawg and I walked into a shop for some milk and cigarettes:
People are looking twice at us: Dawg with the scar down his face and striped shirt and black jeans, me with my messy hair, unwashed and smelly jeans and scruffy jumper. As we walked into the shop, two men from the front desk start circulating themselves around the shop as if we are about to steal something. Dawg started talking really loudly and asked the shopkeepers about where things were at every opportunity so as not to cause suspicion, but it seemed to do the opposite.
(Field notes)
These experiences seemed to compound Dawgâs emotions because he was frequently seen as weak. The only person who seemed to suffer as a result of these feelings was Blood. Indeed, Dawg grew increasingly angry with Blood because he brought attention to the flat and jeopardised what Dawg considered to be his ânon-drug-using reputationâ with the neighbours. For this reason, he lost his patience with Blood and, on occasions, often banned him from the flat for short periods. It was during these times that Blood sheltered in what he called the âcrack house squatâ.
Blood was 18 years old at the time of research. Of African origin, he had moved to the UK when he was 14 for a better life, away from the civil war in his home country. He had no experience of alcohol or drugs in Africa. He said he first lived with his aunt in 2000 and joined the Territorial Army (TA). After two years in the TA, aged 16, he left his auntâs house after a dispute. He then moved in with his sister but, with no qualifications or work experience, he struggled to find money to pay rent. He left and managed to get himself into hostel accommodation while he awaited housing. There he met Dawg who introduced him to crack and heroin. When Dawg received accommodation, Blood got impatient and left the hostel to stay with Dawg, and consequently lost his place in the housing waiting list. Between stints at Dawgâs flat and making small amounts of money for crack and heroin, Blood slept rough in squats and on the streets. He found salvation in what he called the âcrack house squatâ which was sandwiched between two arches of a bridge. Blood frequently referred to it as his âhomeâ. My field notes recorded the physical realities of entering this setting:
We [Blood and I] had to climb a wall near an old train bridge under some barbed wire and then almost jump down into what I think used to be a garage. It was slippery because it had been raining. I nearly fell, slipping on the bricks and wood. In the yard there were old tyres. There were flies buzzing around, and a strong smell of piss and shit. As we walked over the broken bricks and wood into the downstairs room, I saw a mattress in the corner and loads of fag butts on the floor. We went upstairs, or tried to, as there were stairs missing and you had to almost jump up. We pulled ourselves up with the help of a rope. Blood warned me to watch where I stood as there were needles and syringes everywhere. It was so dark, I could hardly see where I was going. We pulled ourselves to the top of the stairs; a bird flew out of a hole in the roof. I looked to my left and there was what looked like a bedroom, a couple of mattresses and sofas â half upturned, half torn. The piss and shit smell became stronger. We walked through a narrow corridor to the right and came into what looked like the main room. There was piss, shit, syringes and semen stains all over the mattresses and sofas. Under each step I took, I could hear the crunch of syringes. I was glad I was wearing my heavy-duty boots. I was invited to sit down by a squat regular who was well practised in the art of bike theft. I looked at the sofa, and carefully perched on the arm. The place lacked everything â light, water, electricity, warmth, and it was right under the railway so I donât know how people slept here. Blood had spent the last two nights there since Dawg kicked him out. Now he had lice.
(Field notes)
In the months after my visit, the location was raided under the Rivertown policeâs crack house protocol and the eight residents were emptied out on to the streets without the offer of treatment. Some months later, I spotted some thoughts poignantly written on a wall by a former resident: âPlease respect my home and u [you] will all be welcomeâ.
Increasingly, I spent more time on the streets and, after spending some time with outreach workers, I was reunited with Cuz who I had met two years previously in prison while I was conducting another study.
Venturing out with Cuz
Cuz looked a young 37 and talked of a complicated past. Originally from Cyprus, his family was involved in the importation of heroin consignments from Turkey and Cyprus. Having abandoned school at an early age, he had little idea of work other than the family business. He worked for them up until the age of 25 and, although he had periodic employment with various manual contractors, he also worked for his family on these imports. When he started to experiment with heroin, his family ostracised him. He continued to get temporary work and started experimenting with crack. However, as his crack use increased, he continually lost ad-hoc jobs, then his tenancy and became homeless in south London. The years that followed were composed of prison sentences for robbery, burglary and shoplifting and several drug-free spells in prison. He had also attempted to âget cleanâ and had attended several rehabs: he was accused of theft and disqualified in one and relapsed several times in others. This had severely dented his faith in these establishments and had made him angry. When he had subsequently tried to engage with community drug services in Rivertown, he was excluded after missing three appointments. He was made homeless again in February 2004, and started injecting crack and heroin before gaining access to hostel accommodation in July 2004. We had much to talk about:
I didnât recognise him at first as he was skinny and his eyes seemed to have sunken into his head. His skin looked glazed and plastic. He had lost a ton of weight but somehow he recognised me. He told me how he had been homeless, had lived in a crack house for months, was thrown out of rehab and, because he was in rehab, how he had to give his flat back to the council.
(Field notes)
On learning about the research I was undertaking, he started making promises about accessing potential interviewees and about ensuring my safe entry into crack houses. Indeed, without Cuz, I could not have broadened the sample. He quickly introduced me to hostel life, where I met BA â an airline engineer who started using heroin and then crack after his son was murdered in Scotland â and Deaf â a tall thin Irishman, who required âtranslation servicesâ from Cuz, because no one could really understand what he said. They had all met through the hostel and relied on each other for money, drugs and paraphernalia. My involvement with Cuz grew quickly and he was quite happy for me to accompany him on crack deals.
Cuz and I walked down the high street. When he reached the junction on the right hand side, he phoned his dealer, who ran a car park business but also sold crack. Cuz phoned again and waited another ten minutes. We seemed to be in very similar kinds of dilapidated estates to those where I had previously accompanied others on street deals in the north of Rivertown. We were told to wait in the ânormal placeâ, which to me looked too open; then, after another phone call, the drop location changed. Cuz thought that because the dealer was taking his time it meant he would attend in person. However, as we reached the new location behind a cafĂ© on the high street, a boy no older than 12 or 13 emerged, smoking a spliff, and went behind the garage. We followed and the deal was done in seconds just as someone walked past. Cuz scored two white (ÂŁ15) and one brown (ÂŁ15) but got the lot for ÂŁ25 as he had known the dealer for some time. Cuz said the dealer didnât like to make public his crack business and had never run a âcrack houseâ as it were. As we walked back down the high street, Cuz started to question whether the boy he had met was the dealerâs runner. He started unwrapping the crack on the street to make sure it was crack. It was the real deal, but he struggled to wrap it up correctly and put it back in his mouth (to hide it). This seemed to make him nervous. Even though we were walking, my bike somehow got a puncture and Cuz suggested we go to a nearby pub. He pointed out the Kingâs Head pub which, he said, until a few years ago, was a notorious place to buy crack. Last year, it was raided by police and Cuz said crack dealers had moved behind the nearby post office. We went in and bought a drink, and Cuz went to the toilet. There were large cubicles and he locked himself in there for 20 minutes while he smoked crack and heroin on a piece of foil. On his return, he said was finding it difficult to control the âbuzzâ but was somehow keeping it together. We drank our orange juice and he went down to smoke again. He came back and didnât ev...
