Original subtitles

OK, here we go.

This is me, David. It's August 2003

and have been addicted to heroin and

methadone for 20 years. The

drug I've just taken will hopefully rid

me of my long term addiction.

Just feeling a bit strange, bit

dissociated. More so than ever.

The risk I'm taking to end my habit and

get my life back is that this drug could

kill me.

To understand how it got to this point,

we need to take you right back to 1985,

when I moved from the Highlands to

Edinburgh. I was 23 and with

my wife Denise, I became a heroin addict.

I was devoted to heroin, like a convert

to a new faith.

It may sound weird, but being a junkie

gave me a sense of identity.

Amid experimental films about my needle

fixation, obsession with death, my

increasing devotion to addictive drugs.

In 1988, after splitting up with Denise,

I moved to Glasgow where I thought I'd be

able to put my hair in addiction behind

me, but it wasn't that easy.

I found medical help from my drug habit.

Doctor supplied me with a regular

prescription for methadone linctus.

This synthetic drug has been the

government approved substitute for heroin

since the 60s. A replaced

an illegal drug addiction with a legal

one.

From the mid 90s I worked as a

projectionist. My free time I started

to make my own film but other heroin

addicts in order to try and understand my

own addiction.

I'm stabilized on methadone but still all

my friends were addicts.

I met Dennis in 1990. He'd been a junkie

in London back in the 60s.

His son Chris was also a heroin addict.

See, it's junkies are primitive people.

We shouldn't sinks and eat biscuits all

day long. Have you heard your hit? All

right, just like that. Just like that.

Big veins, big poppers, big poppers, big

toppers. Are you feeling what Donor said?

What am I doing now? I'm going to the

toilet, even mine, because he said he's

the blood, Donor said to me when I was

17. You've got nice big veins. So I knew

the end was in my genetics to become a

junkie.

I spent most of my time with them and

their tiny bed set. One night,

an old pal deal turned up.

He was fresh out of Berlin he prison and

had been starved of drugs for four

months. He was desperate for a hit.

Having injected heroin myself and knew

exactly what this craving was like, the

need to escape reality.

With his tolerance rate down, DL injected

a cocktail of heroin and temazepam. I

don't know if you can handle any more

than that.

Well, if you think you're right.

DL this is supposed to be you stayingoff.

Well.

Dennis was desperate to get Deal out of

the house but it was obvious he wasn't

going anywhere.

That was him, well and truly fixed for

the night.

Is this what you've been reading?

Put,

junkies will do anything to make a little

cash. The coolest Midgy Reagan in Glasgow

sifting through rubbish for goods tosell.

For this one.

Hi.

You should leave that, leave that ticket

on to you. You just got that in that

place just because you see Barry Manilow,

boxer.

What's the price at 6995?

Do you think that's going to sell? Ohh,

funny man was quite popular.

We'll sail then, Chris. That means I'm

going to have to walk.

Manuel Yeah,

OK. During the

summer, Deal was a comical character, but

he had a huge influence on the others and

soon had them shoplifting with him.

See that jumper there? What does it do?

Nice one there.

These are the spoils from yesterday.

Did you, are you involved in this DLC?

I was. That's a Nick Faldo Pringle. It's

worth 140 lbs. We'll do it for a

tenner because we're Def jam. That's

worth 140 lbs. Yes, 150 lbs. I mean,

everywhere you go, you start people using

more and more. Magnetic personality.

What is it about you don't know

that the the she mean any drugs?

I watched this. Heroin brought father and

son closer together. Chris would help his

dad shoot up in the neck. Veins in his

arms had collapsed.

Like me, they used methadone. Seen

it for when they had no heroin.

We're sticking to my method and

prescription, but more time is spent with

them the more my resolve began to weaken.

Drug dealers can be persuasive

characters, and it didn't take long

before it was offered a free hit.

A smoked a little heroin

and it felt great.

Soon I was helping people shoot up.

Handling syringes was too much for me.

I started injecting myself and that day,

Sunday 21st March 1999, that was me

at Junkie again.

It was buying heroin in a regular basis

with most of my wages going on. This

stuff you did, you beat out.

Go ahead. Is

that?Song.

DL turned the camera on me as I suffered

the effects of too much heroin.

Yeah, that was a good idea.

Well.

Enemy The life of an addict is

but full of ups and downs, and

some of the downs are down the

toilet pan.

And these such is life. I could

no longer be objective. I was one

of them again. No better, no worse.

We were all taking the same risks

now.

What's happened to him, Dennis?

Ruth.

Umm, seriously?

Because.

Every serious addict suffers the agony of

a dirty hit from contaminated needles.

Today it was DL's turn.

Umm.

There you go.

Ohh no ohh.

I was leading a double life at a job

and a girlfriend who didn't know I was a

junkie.

For my friends, being a junkie was a full

time job getting hold of her and wasn't

easy and involved complex arrangements

and a lot of waiting around.

It generally meant visiting some grim

places. Rock Hill

and Postal and Glasgow were dangerous and

you continually had to watch your back.

I followed Chris as we tried to score 1/2

gram, about 25 quids worth. Should

have been enough to hold us together for

the day.

But there was a suspicion that the drug

squad would close by.

As we lay, we found out just how close.

I was charged under the Misuse of Drugs

Act and spent a couple of nights in the

cells. I was getting in too deep.

Nearly every addict gets pulled up by the

police at some time. Charges against me

were eventually dropped, but many addicts

spend their days evading the police or

the drug dealers they're in debt to.

Came across a family on the run sleeping

Rough Bear railway line in Glasgow's East

End.

They've lost everything to heroin.

Think people see you from the train?

I think they'll know what you're doing

really, won't they?

Sorry for swearing, but honestly I don't

care.

You don't care about yourself anymore.

Since she lost her baby. No, you lost

your baby.

Mom, Son, Daughter, mom.

Son. Daughter.

The daughter wanted to show me some of

the damage caused. Bear addiction.

Actually, no getting the vein properly.

It's an Abscess. I missed the vein. So

what are you hitting up? Coke and heroin?

As a junkies veins collapse, they need to

shoot deep into their groins. Using dirty

needles can lead not just to abscesses

but also to gangrene and the amputation

of limbs. This shocked me.

It made my life, and those are my

old junky pals, seem stable in

comparison. I was getting through more

than £100 a week on heroin, more than

half my wages. I needed to escape this

existence once and for all.

In summer 2001, I decided to wean myself

off the needle and took my last smoke

of heroin.

Nothing great.

I was back on methadone. It was a godsend

that stabilized me, but it was a strong

drug with its own side effects and it

began to wear me down.

A crusade of the hellish routine. Going

to the doctor, get my urine tested,

picking up the meth room from the

chemist. I was

taking dose after dose to keep topped up

in the drug. Got me off heroin but I

found this chemical was affecting my

mental health. People start

to notice my erratic and strange

behaviour. My relationship

ended, I felt isolated and

lonely. That green

liquid keeps me together.

That is what keeps me together.

I had mood swings, manic highs,

crushing depressive lows. My temperature

fluctuated wildly and I felt ghostly

and out of touch with the

world. That

pupil should look much

larger. It's constricted by

methadone, by opioids.

That is affecting my eyesight to some

extent. Everything has a slight unreality

to it.

I'm completely and utterly

sick of. Being an

addict, simple as that. I do

not want to be a methadone

addict. I'm not. I'm not using

any illegal drugs whatsoever. I'm

completely. Tired of it?

And I know it's my fault and I

know that I got into it, purposely got

into it, but I'm just so *******

desperate to escape it now. These

depressions are are.

Are borderline suicide. That

I'm not the only addict that was talked

about. It's there are plenty of other

methadone addicts that say withdrawal

from methadone is such. That you

do. Have these very

bleak?Depressing

thoughts. And

they do involve.

You do have involve thoughts about

killing yourself.

In summer of 2003 I cut my dose of

methadone down and left glasses to travel

up to see my mum. Slight withdrawal pain

was hitting me already.

My mother has been there for me so many

times in the past, but now I felt guilty

about involving her in my drug problems.

That started out making a film by other

junkies but now realized this was a film

about me. I wanted to know

what my mother's first memories of my

addiction were. What was it that?

That made you first realize that I was a

drug addict. Because it was

quite traumatic, wasn't it? Ohh. It was

the day after your father's funeral. You

came up from Edinburgh for your dad's

funeral in 1985. Oh yeah. And Ian

was downtown and he met somebody who

said, do you know that your brother

is taking drugs? And Ian said. Ohh

no not David. And he said hard

drugs and Ian immediately came home and

said to me and I said go

and look in his rucksack and sure

enough needles.

A Turnkeys.

And it was just absolutely devastating.

It was far, far, far worse

than your father's death. Because

all I could think that you would be dead.

They had a good upbringing. There's

nothing there that would predict an

interest in drugs. I felt

cared for, did well at school and

eventually graduated from university.

I don't know how much that had an

effect upon me, my father dying, but all

I know is that my drug addiction.

Escalated. And.

I didn't care. I didn't care because I

didn't have his opinions. And

his judgments, too, bother me any

more.

I made a conscious decision to become a

junkie. It was a rebellion against all

had previously been an attempt to

recreate myself. Had

grown tired of that image and now I

needed to change my life.

Bloody fool. I don't know what what? I

don't know why I got into that, that

that way of thinking. I don't, I don't

know what possessed me because I was

quite a straight, normal guy.

And it just got taken over by

this demon, you know, and it's.

Well, I don't understand it. I really

don't understand it. Why became a

complete and utter obsession with me.

There must be a very good feeling to

kind of it wasn't really that all the

time. It wasn't that great.

It really wasn't that great. It was time

to face up to it. Methadone was making

me a shadow of what I felt it could be.

This was it. Of this

stuff. The crazy thing

is methadone is more difficult to get off

than heroin. I decided to lock myself

away for a few days to try and break the

habit. Ohh God I'm

feeling bad. I slept all

night last night, but um.

This this cold reality is hitting

me. And that's.

It's feeling pretty bad.

This is methadone withdrawal.

Ohh hell I hate it.

If this is day three, you imagine

day four, day five, day six, day

7. And you know it isn't

going to get any better.

It's going to get worse, and the

dreams and the visions and the pain

of walking and talking and being.

Just being alive is a complete and utter

chore.

Being alive. Just

doesn't seem worth it.

It's stupid. I'm

too old for all this now.

Guess what? That lives straight life.

I would just want to desperate to go away

from this.

Cranky.

Ohh my doing to myself.

Yeah. Gotcha.

The withdrawal was too much, had blown

it and was back on methadone.

Was impossible to cope with it and needed

something much more radical.

I first heard about Epic Game from my

brother when he was living in New York in

the late 90s. There were reports that

addicts had been helped by this drug.

Perhaps this could be what I was looking

for. I've been doing

a little bit of research and.

Found. A lot

of material on the Internet.

The drug is derived from the powdered

root bark of a W African shrub. The

poetic people use it to induce a deep

trance state as part of their initiation

rituals into adulthood. But further

research told me that people had died

taking this drug through poisoning and

heart failure. I still felt it was my

best bet.

And to me, that is tremendous, the fact.

That that possibility is out

there. It's what

I want to go for.

Because withdrawal.

The accepted method of

withdrawing from methadone.

It's horrifically painful.

Willing to take this chance anyway

because I'm not happy with my life and I

need to move ahead.

So I really hope that this ever again.

Gee whiz, I really really really want it

to work. I need it to work.

Because I'm completely desperate for this

lifestyle. I can't. I mean, I'm all right

now. But I

just fear those painful

mornings without.

Ohh God.

I'm just going to cut off at it.

I felt I needed to tell my mom what I was

planning. She'd also heard that ibogaine

could be dangerous. Wanted to ask

you about that. Are you all right?

Umm.

Well.

Well. I can't see

David. I mean, I'm frightened in case

something happens to you. When were you

planning to do it?

By the end of August.

And there will be a doctor in attendance,

make sure of that. Yes, I think so. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll do that. Well,

you'll just have to do it, David,

because. You can't go on

the way that you are. It's depressing me.

Everything, umm, I can't stand it.

Well done, Take care.

That was it. I told my mother and my

brother I had made-up my mind to go for

it.

In Glasgow, I prepared myself for the

ordeal ahead. I heard that the Epic game

could seriously slow the heart rate right

down. But dad had died of

heart failure, so I decided to get a

cardio check. These are all.

Herbs that help me detoxify. This is from

my heart. This is Hawthorne.

Put 10 drops in this in.

That's plenty of that. What

I do is say.

Daily regime of.

Juicing as well so.

Kill these carrots a bit. Broccoli,

apples, oranges. And I suppose it's

ironic because they've been taking.

Hard drugs in the past and I'm

still taking methadone.

Do a bit of exercise using my bike.

It was the weekend before the epic game

treatment and my story was in the

Scottish papers. Documentary

maker may film his own

death. These Sunday newspaper articles

are pretty lurid.

This is.

Really concentrating on the.

Very slight chance that I could be

filming my own days. It's

bizarre, but seeing in print scares me

even more. Obviously the newspapers

are going to go for this death

angle. Not realizing of

course that I'm completely demented

taking methadone and will not don't

want to live. Alive

taking methadone. Our

crazed epigene induced

rave of dewitty

tribesmen. And this

is, I suppose, what I'm going to be like.

The morning of the day I travelled to

London for the treatment.

I took my last dose of methadone. Without

it I couldn't imagine how I would cope

with the noise and chaos of the city.

Death seemed a very real prospect, and I

realized I had to make a will.

Ohh boy how do you make a last will and

******* testament?

Ohh boy, right?

Here we go, 12.

Last will and testament

recorded by David Graham

Scott, Thursday 21st of

August 2000 and 3/12/23.

Approximately 12:23

PM. I would

like. My

flat. The proceeds

from that. To

go to my mother. For the suffering she's

had to go through all those years with

me. And.

Hopefully.

I'm sorry.

I'm really sorry.

I'm sorry it's had to end this way.

His empty bottles of methadone.

I don't know why I've collected them

but.

OK, well I guess if

it got really stuck, ran

out. I could get

the dregs at the bottom, see there's tiny

little bits at the bottom, but I just

need to get rid of them now. Just sit

there.

Linked with this stuff.

That's a clever doggie, right? You've got

to go in here for a few days

and I'll come back to see you and

I'll be all right, Carla.

OK, I took my weed dog over to friend's

house and set off to London for the

treatment.

There was no going back.

Here I am in London, Kings Cross just

walked out and luckily the guy doesn't

live that far because.

As you can see, I've got a heap of bags.

That's on my camera equipment.

There we go.

I've made contact with Edward, one of the

underground network of people willing to

treat addicts with their began this legal

but unlicensed substance.

The night before the full treatment,

Edward prepared a test dose of the drug.

Wasn't expected to feel much but it was

important to see if I would have an

allergic reaction.

OK, here we go.

There's a warrant.

Hmm.

Feeling a bit strange, bit dissociated.

More so than ever.

So here I am, back where we began this

film, tagging Epigen, which feels like

the most crucial thing I've done to

myself since my first shot of heroin.

I'm frightened about the enormity of

losing myself and not being aware.

That loss of

identity in supreme.

Drug use. You know,

and a supreme moment, I meant to

say.

Lose yourself in the Ohh, yeah, that's

right. Geez, I'm starting to, I can't

remember what I'm saying a little bit

now. Losing a coordination

of my thoughts a little

bit. Probably

quite something. 10 times that amount.

15. 15 times.

Do you think I need that

made correct dosage is between 15

milligrams to 18 milligrams per kilogram.

For your body weight, OK, but it's going

to be a.

OK, lasting drug annually.

That doesn't mean it's necessarily bad.

The morning of the treatment. I'm really

apprehensive about the prospect of taking

such a huge dose of ibogaine.

But with methadone withdrawals sitting

in, I have to go on.

That's what we're going to do. We're

going to stagger the dose will gauge how

the effects of our Yeah, I'll ask you a

number of questions, but also there's a

consideration for nausea in case you're

maybe sick.

Hello might seem crazy but I know what

I'm doing.

Becoming a ghost.

I'm gonna come out of this and take it

off. I'm no longer the

ghost that I was.

I'm not a methadone ghost anymore, and

that's the idea. It's a ritual.

Ohh, my own devising really.

It will end.

When I take this makeup off. As

soon as this is off.

My method of addiction is finished.

OK, you might still do scam.

10:20 AM I take the first of the

capsules. Put it off.

Here we go.

40 minutes in, experience the first

effects. A wave of fear hits

me.

It's OK.

Ohh. Let

yourself feel the fear. Umm.

OK.

Understand.

You're fine.

Just came to me, it's OK.

You're allowed to be scared.

11:30 AM The drug really kicks

in. Feels like I'm dying.

Ohh. Ohh God

this is a strange substance.

Booty,

booty.

Rules.

Plea. Town.

Face.

Today. I

don't know what I'm saying. Sucking.

Mixed up.

You haven't ******* clue what's going on.

Good God.

Just release me from this please.

Somebody, something, somewhere.

And. WAVY

lines appear around bright objects and I

hear a strange hum in my head.

I need to go to the toilet.

An hour and a half in and my legs feel

like Jelly and I lose all sense of

balance and coordination. I feel nauseous

but I'm desperate not to throw up the

precious ibogaine in my stomach.

Ohh God help me.

We decode it.

Within a couple of hours you'll lose all

sense of identity. I don't want to go any

further, I've had enough.

Ohh God. Come

on. But I still need to complete the

treatment with more capsules.

It's very little in it.

Come on. No, take it. You need to take

it. The last of the capsule

send me spiraling into a very strange

space. This is what the Beauty tribe

called the Dream phase. I can't

think who or what I

am. The ******* bizarre drug

getting some funny booty distortions.

Spaceships.

Orange boots.

The strange visions grow stronger. My

pulse rate slows right down.

Umm.

The intensity is now over.

Thank God.

Good tensity is over. Yeah,

frightening stuff. Yeah.

And through the first day of treatment

and I'm alive. But now I'm worried that

the drug hasn't worked. If

you have no eye began, you've just gone

straight into this.

Method of withdrawal at this period of

time, what would you be filled by

comparison? Ohh, a lot worse.

Lot worse.

And worry I'm only imagining I feel

better. But I begin to notice

the withdrawal gradually subsiding.

Satan Day after the treatment, I'm able

to get up and walk about.

Managed to go out and wash my face and

have a shave. And

that felt good. But

generally. Twitchy legs,

but there's still quite a good feeling

within me.

Reborn feeling day three and I'm ready

to start living again.

But even the simplest things need to

be relearned. The methadone withdrawal,

which normally lasts for weeks and weeks,

has almost disappeared. Really hard

walking.

That could hardly walk couple of days ago

and I can walk, you know, a bit better

and a bit better still a bit.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's

definitely worked. There's no doubt. It's

definitely worked. Edward, You've done

well. I mean, I, I know that I would

never get over that treatment after all

those years of taking methadone and never

be able to kick that habit, and you've

done it. Just stick my hand

out.

Cheers.

Speak to you soon.

I've now had a decent couple of nights

sleep. I feel little of the usual hellish

withdrawal from methadone. But time will

tell if I'm completely rid of my

addiction.

Seven months now since I've done the

treatment and I feel there's so much more

alive. It's great, it's fantastic and I

feel like my brains rewired with this. I

began treatment. Recently caught with

Chris and Dennis. They're off heroin and

onto the methadone program. DL's in

prison but he's due out soon.

I know I'm drug free but why should

anyone else believe me?

Results.

Drug tests, Urine sample I gave

last week.

Oh oh, bit nervous about this.

Feel it could be some residual drugs

have been laying there for seven months

hopefully. All right.

Amphetamines negative.

Methadone negative.

Opiates negative. Cocaine

negative. Drugs of

abuse? None.

Him reported

1413. State

reported 29304.

You're going to read

just what you're SO.