Straight Life - Art Pepper [103]
AP: Well, I started horning it at first. I didn't shoot it. In other words, I sniffed it through my nose. At first it was all right. I could make it just whenever I would run into it. If somebody would have some, I'd make it and I was all right. Maybe next day I'd feel a little funny, but I was still juicing and everything and felt fine. But then, just little by little, it got more and more-and I got to the point where my nose would bleed constantly and my stomach was getting upset from swallowing the mucous... I realized I just couldn't make it to horn it anymore, so I fixed and that was it.
The minute that I fixed-from that moment on it was just an everyminute thing. My whole life was just stopped. Everything that I'd ever wanted, everything that I'd loved was destroyed... You become selfish, you care for no one but yourself. You're scared of everyone, of everything. You don't trust anyone. You can't possibly enjoy any type of an emotional or intellectual scene at all because your mind is so completely taken up by the fear and pressure that you're under.
Being hooked on junk becomes a way of life. You exist for it and it alone. Nothing else matters because it gives you a purpose in living. And that purpose is to get more junk. You haven't got a true, honest thought in your head. And as far as creating anything, it's impossible. There's no creation at all.
JT: Besides heroin, what else did you shoot?
AP: Everything. Even pills. But shooting pills has a very bad effect on you.
JT: Art, when was the last time you worked steadily?
AP: That was in November, 1954, at jazz City. I was guest instrumentalist with the Barney Kessel quartet. I'd come on and do just about 15 minutes.
DC: When did you get arrested the first time?
AP: 1953, in Hollywood.
DC: How long were you in that time?
AP: I did 15 months. A little time in the county jail, then I went to Fort Worth. That's a public health service hospital.
DC: Was it a gradual withdrawal?
AP: No, just a cold turkey. You got arrested and just thrown into the county jail to sleep on the floor and sweat it out.
DC: Was there any treatment there? Did anybody talk to you about treatment or about anything that could help you?
AP: At Fort Worth, yes. But outside of Fort Worth there's no treatment.
DC: What did you do when you got out?
AP: Well, I got out in May of '54 and felt I had things pretty well under control. But during this time my wife sent me a divorce and had remarried just before I got out. I think I used that as an excuse to go on heroin again. I still hadn't gone through enough agony ...
JT: When were you arrested the second time?
AP: Dec. 7, 1954. I spent nine months in the county jail, then about 10 months in the federal pen on Terminal Island for parole violation. Of course, this makes me a two-time loser. If I goof again and get busted, I can get 30 to 40 years in prison under terms of a new federal law... At the end of 1954 I was using 40 caps of heroin a day. I was really in terrible shape. Weighed 128 pounds and I wasn't able to do anything. I couldn't play at all. My blowing was-was just cold. There was no soul, no nothing in it. It was just something I was doing because I needed the money.
JT: If you were using 40 caps in a 24-hour day, how often did you have to take heroin?
AP: Well, I would fix maybe five or six caps every time. Actually, I could've been using maybe a hundred caps a day in another month if I had access to that much, because the demand just builds and builds. Using that much junk you're just the same as you are right now. You know, it's like getting on one of those little assembly line things that are moving. You get on it and you can't get off.
DC: Do you think that working in clubs was part of the cause for your falling into this?
AP: Yes. Yes, definitely. But with me there were other things, too. I got married at a very young age, when I was 17 years old, and in a way I was successful too quickly. Things were too easy and I think it was a little overwhelming to me. I started playing professionally and almost right