Masonik's Paul Pax Andrews Australian jazz icon battled heroin addiction & came back to music - his memoirs recently published.
THE TASTE, 2000 by PAUL PAX ANDREWS
THE TASTE, 2000 by PAUL PAX ANDREWS
The best heroin was in Cabramatta, a suburb
forty minutes south-west of Sydney. The early-morning trains were full
of junkies, mostly sick and hanging out, checking each station and
counting the seconds until our collective nightmares would end for a
moment, any relief. For just one minute. A rolling sick car of very
strange community, huddled, ticket-less. Each of us with our last
twenty-five or fifty… Eager to spend it on the only thing that matters.
None of us were making eye contact but each is keenly aware of the
other. The heroin-dealers were often Vietnamese or Chinese, trying to
make a living in their newfound freedoms, yet mostly didn’t use H
themselves. That is why the deals were consistent. Sometimes we could
get a half a gram for a hundred bucks that would hold us for a day, or
twelve hours at least. We’d knock on a garage door and a hand would come
out from underneath, take the hundred and subsequently push out a tiny
foil wrapped cube of white heroin.
