Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [64]
Threatening Pattie was futile and childish, but it was all bluff and had nothing to do with me actually becoming a heroin addict. It just doesn’t work that way. I have known and met many people who took just as many drugs and drank just as much booze as I did, but who never became addicted to anything. It’s a mysterious phenomenon. Besides that, I would never have deliberately set about going down this road because, since my days with Cream, I had had a healthy regard for the perils of smack. Ginger had often lectured me like an older brother, threatening that if he ever found out I was using heroin, he would have my balls, and I believed him.
I just assumed I was in some way immune to it and that I wouldn’t get hooked. But addiction doesn’t negotiate, and it gradually crept up on me, like a fog. For a year or so I thoroughly enjoyed it, taking it pretty infrequently, while indulging in lots of coke and other drugs as well as drinking. Then suddenly, from taking it every two weeks, it was once, then twice or three times a week, then once a day. It was so insidious, it took over my life without my really noticing.
All the time I was taking heroin, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. In no way was I the helpless victim. I did it mostly because I loved the high, but on reflection, also partly to forget both the pain of my love for Pattie and the death of my grandfather. I also thought I was endorsing the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. In spite of Ahmet’s warnings, I enjoyed the mythology surrounding the lives of the great jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Ray Charles, and bluesmen like Robert Johnson, and I had a romantic notion of living the kind of life that had led them to create their music. I also wanted to prove that I could do it and come out the other side alive. I was very determined and wanted no help from anybody.
I remember George coming to see me one night, and he had Leon with him, who got very angry when he saw the state I was in and demanded to know what the hell I was up to. I told him that I was on a journey into the darkness and that I had to see it through, to find out what was on the other side. I can’t begin to imagine how they must have felt hearing that. These were people I knew well and who loved me. But my addiction had cut me off from the feelings of other people. The concerns of others meant nothing to me because I was feeling great, and I would continue to feel great as long as I had the powder.
The stuff I was using was pretty strong. It came from Gerard Street in Soho and was raw and pure. The first time I realized I was completely hooked was when I had promised Alice that I would drive up to see her in Wales. It suddenly occurred to me that driving stoned two hundred miles in a Ferrari would be impossible. I told her I would come in about three days, because I knew that was the amount of time it would take to come off the drug.
I remember the first twenty-four hours of “cold turkey” as being absolute hell. It was as if I had been poisoned. Every nerve and muscle in my body went into cramp spasms, I curled up in the fetal position, and howled with agony. I had never known pain like it, not even when I was a kid and had scarlet fever. There was no comparison. It took all of three days, and not a wink of sleep in that time. And the worst thing was, being drug-free and clean felt terrible. My skin felt raw, my nerves all stood on end, and I couldn’t wait to take some more, to slip back into comfort. But I had promised Alice, and I was still this side of gone, where I could hold on to the rational world and make some decisions I could commit to.
On that occasion I managed to come off and move back into life, but from then on, and as my frequency of using began to increase again, I didn’t come off very often. It was just too difficult and painful. Alice came back to live with me, and once she became part of