The impressionable should not read: Gastello on the “holy nineties”
Today in liberal circles it has become fashionable to remember the 90s as a time of hope and opportunity, contrasting them with the current situation. Either these people lived in another country, or they were so uninterested in everything that happened outside their refined social circle that they did not know how the country walked over the edge of the abyss in those years.
Below is real evidence of time - an excerpt from books by Nikolai Gastello “Nobody Needs Racketeers”. The book is ironic, but it was this passage that caught my attention, which, without any irony, with vivid images, reminded me of the genocide that was carried out in these very 90s by the “demon of heroin.” If you are too impressionable, don’t read.
...His slave can break free. Make some unimaginable leap towards freedom. And become human again. A year, two, three will pass. A person will give birth to children. Get a job. Maybe he will just avoid people like himself. And he will be absolutely right.
There is nothing wrong with this for the demon. Heroin can wait. His demon will always be there. In some kind of rotten raincoat, in torn socks, from which dirty feet and black nails on these feet stick out. And up through all the veins on his legs, lines of injections crawl like a snake.
He has eyes, but he has no eyes. If you look at the demon himself, instead of eyes he has black holes, from which poisonous pus flows, yellow in color, like the color of dried boxes around which bright scarlet petals lived until recently. If you look into the demon’s eyes, the pupils shine in the black holes, and in them there is pain and the sharp cold of rigor.
Black dirt falls out of his fingernails and never ends. The demon stinks wildly, but a person does not feel its stench. Only sometimes some kind of anxiety seizes, but after a moment the person drives it away. But at this moment a person feels this vile stench. And it terrifies him. He still remembers how it was. And in fear he returns to normal life. And he forgets everything.
But the heroin demon came closer to him. And it comes close. He doesn't gloat, he doesn't rejoice. He doesn't care, he knows how to wait. And so the person finds himself visiting friends. He didn't know that they were slaves too. But it's' too late. One of them filled the syringe, the other tightened the tourniquet on his arm. And they got into trouble with him. Three persons.
But he doesn’t. He just ended up in the same kitchen with them. But the demon came close to him and put his hand with punctured veins and rotting flesh on his neck. It grabbed his throat with rotten black nails, plunging the man into its fetid breath.
The person has not yet taken a dose. But he, the man, is no more. There is a slave to the demon of heroin. And the children whom he madly loved 30 seconds ago are already somewhere far away. He will forget about everything. He will take a “accordion” with the remains of heroin and the blood of other drug addicts, and give an injection. And even an insignificant dose after a long break will return him to this hell.
And if there is no dose, the slave will go looking for a dealer. And the demon will lead him to him. He's in no hurry. Heroin knows how to wait.
Heroin, morphine, poppy straw, black, opium, khanka, shirk. He has many names. And there is no difference.
Heroin is always divorced by everyone who sells it further. When new wholesalers appeared, for example, military personnel from our Tajik contingent, not knowing that everyone was using blood, they gave away pure heroin, and others diluted it insufficiently to the usual dose. And such deliveries could be tracked through the chain of overdose deaths. They began to dilute it as needed, and the deaths stopped. And the dealers continued to say that their heroin was the purest.
But the devil doesn't care. The darkest black brew and the purest medical morphine subjugated people to the demon equally.
I have seen this demon many times. I wasn't afraid of him. I hated him. But he couldn't do anything about it. He continued to subdue and kill people around him.
I looked carefully at the Head. And I realized that I couldn’t explain anything to him. He grew up in a different world. He graduated from physics and mathematics school and even worked as a night watchman in the Historical Library. He didn’t pretend to be sick so as not to go to his classmate’s funeral.
I didn’t pass my stop on the bus so as not to run into a former friend who was walking like a dead man and looking at parked cars, hoping that someone had forgotten the radio, and the stolen radio would be enough for 2-3 doses. It is impossible to explain to the Head how it will be tomorrow. And how cruel he is today, calmly laying out folders in order to more easily attract the heroin demon to his side tomorrow.
Golov looked up from his files and asked:
– What do you think the mark “system” means?
- Why think about it? Heavy heroin addict. They call this “on the system” or “system specialist”.
“Yeah,” Golov put the folder on top, “I’ll know.” The weak link.
I felt like I had betrayed a stranger. It was too much. I didn’t teach him how to shoot drugs and I didn’t make him a bandit. I pushed away my sympathy. Nothing can be changed. If the “system specialist” is detained tomorrow, he will have to go to this hell in any case.
The entire book can be downloaded for free on the author's website https://reketbook.ru Listen to an excerpt of the audio version on the Gastello telegram channel.
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