A Street Cat Named Bob: How One Man and His Cat Found Hope on the Streets

Chapter 17 Forty-eight Hours

The young doctor at the DDU – the drug dependency unit – scribbled his signature at the bottom of the prescription and handed it over to me with a stern expression on his face.

‘Remember, take this, then come back to me at least forty-eight hours later when you can feel the withdrawal symptoms have really kicked in,’ he said, holding my gaze. ‘It’s going to be tough, but it will be a lot tougher if you don’t stick to what I’ve said. OK?’

‘OK, I understand,’ I nodded, picking myself up and heading out of his treatment room. ‘Just hope I can do it. See you in a couple of days.’

I’d been turning up at my fortnightly consultations for a couple of months since we’d first talked about coming off methadone. I thought I was ready for it, but my counsellors and doctors obviously didn’t share that opinion. Each time I’d come in they had kept postponing it. I’d not got any kind of explanation as to why this was. Now, at last, they had decided it was time: I was going to make the final step towards being clean.

The prescription the counsellor had just given me was for my last dose of methadone. Methadone had helped me kick my dependence on heroin. But I’d now tapered down my usage to such an extent that it was time to stop taking it for good.

When I next came to the DDU in a couple of days’ time I would be given my first dose of a much milder medication, Subutex, which would ease me out of drug dependency completely. The counsellor described the process as like landing an aeroplane, which I thought was a good analogy. In the following months he would slowly cut back my dosage until it was almost non-existent. As he did so, he said I would slowly drop back down to earth, landing – hopefully – with a very gentle bump.

As I waited for the prescription to be made up today, I didn’t really dwell on the significance of it. My head was too busy with thoughts about what lay ahead during the next forty-eight hours.

The counsellor had explained the risk to me in graphic detail. Coming off methadone wasn’t easy. In fact, it was really hard. I’d experience ‘clucking’ or ‘cold turkey’, a series of unpleasant physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. I had to wait for those symptoms to become quite severe before I could go back to the clinic to get my first dose of Subutex. If I didn’t I risked having what’s known as a precipitated withdrawal. This was basically a much worse withdrawal. It didn’t bear thinking about.

I was confident at this point that I could do it. But at the same time I had an awful niggling feeling that I could fail and find myself wanting to score something that would make me feel better. But I just kept telling myself that I had to do this, I had to get over this last hurdle. Otherwise it was going to be the same the next day and the next day and the day after that. Nothing was going to change.

This was the reality that had finally dawned on me. I’d been living this way for ten years. A lot of my life had just slipped away. I’d wasted so much time, sitting around watching the days vanish. When you are dependent on drugs, minutes become hours, hours become days. It all just slips by; time becomes inconsequential, you only start worrying about it when you need your next fix. You don’t even care until then.

But that’s when it becomes so awful. Then all you can think about is making money to get some more. I’d made huge progress since I’d been in the depths of my heroin addiction years earlier. The DDU had really put me back on track. But I was just sick of the whole thing now. Having to go to a chemist every day, having to visit the DDU every fortnight. Having to prove that I hadn’t been using. I had had enough. I now felt like I had something to do with my life.

In a way I’d made it harder on myself by insisting on doing it alone. I had been offered the chance several times to join Narcotics Anonymous but I just didn’t like the whole twelve-step programme. I couldn’t do that kind of quasi-religious thing. It’s almost like you have to give yourself up to a higher power. It just wasn’t me.

I realised that I was making life even more difficult for myself by taking that route. The difference was I didn’t think I was on my own now. I had Bob.

As usual, I didn’t take him with me to the DDU clinic. I didn’t like exposing him to the place. It was a part of my life I wasn’t proud about, even though I did feel I’d achieved a lot since I’d first visited.

When I got home he was pleased to see me, especially as I’d stopped off at the supermarket on the way home and had a bag full of goodies intended to get us through the next two days. Anyone who is trying to get rid of an addictive habit knows what it is like. Whether it’s trying to give up cigarettes or alcohol, the first forty-eight hours are the hardest. You are so used to getting your ‘fix’ that you can’t think of anything else. The trick is to think of something else, obviously. And that’s what I hoped to do. And I was just really grateful that I had Bob to help me achieve it.

That lunchtime we sat down in front of the television, had a snack together – and waited.

The methadone generally lasted for around twenty hours so the first part of the day passed easily enough. Bob and I played around a lot and went out for a short walk so that he could do his business. I played a really old version of the original Halo 2 game on my knackered old Xbox. At that point it all seemed to be plain sailing. I knew it couldn’t stay that way for much longer.

Probably the most famous recreation of someone ‘clucking’ is in the film Trainspotting in which Ewan McGregor’s character, Renton, decides to rid himself of his heroin addiction. He is locked in a room with a few days of food and drink and left to get on with it. He goes through the most horrendous physical and mental experience you can imagine, getting the shakes, having hallucinations, being sick. All that stuff. Everyone remembers the bit where he imagines he is climbing inside the toilet bowl.

What I went through over the next forty-eight hours felt ten times worse than that.

The withdrawal symptoms began to kick in just after twenty-four hours after I’d had my dose of methadone. Within eight hours of that I was sweating profusely and feeling very twitchy. By now it was the middle of the night and I should have been asleep. I did nod off but I felt like I was pretty much conscious all the time. It was a strange kind of sleep, full of dreams or, more accurately, hallucinations.

It’s hard to recollect exactly, but I do remember having these lucid dreams about scoring heroin. There were a lot of these dreams and they always went the same way: I would either score and spill it, score and not be able to get a needle into my vein or score but then get arrested by the police before I could use it. It was weird. It was obviously my body’s way of registering the fact that it was being denied this substance that it had once been used to being fed every twelve hours or so. But it was also my subconscious trying to persuade me that maybe it was a good idea to start using it again. Deep in my brain there was obviously this huge battle of wills going on. It was almost as if I was a bystander, watching it all happen to someone else.

It was strange. Coming off heroin years ago wasn’t as bad. The transition to methadone had been reasonably straightforward. This was a different experience altogether.

Time ceased to have any real meaning, but by the following morning I was beginning to experience really bad headaches, almost migraine-level pains. As a result I found it hard to cope with any light or noise. I’d try and sit in the dark, but then I’d start dreaming or hallucinating and want to snap myself out of it. It was a vicious circle.

What I needed more than anything was something to take my mind off it all, which was where Bob proved my salvation.

There were times when I wondered whether Bob and I had some kind of telepathic understanding. He could definitely read my mind sometimes, and seemed to be doing so now. He knew that I needed him so he was a constant presence, hanging around me, snuggling up close when I invited him but keeping his distance when I was having a bad time.

It was as if he knew what I was feeling. Sometimes I’d be nodding off and he would come up to me and place his face close to me, as if to say: ‘You all right, mate? I’m here if you need me.’ At other times he would just sit with me, purring away, rubbing his tail on me and licking my face every now and again. As I slipped in and out of a weird, hallucinatory universe, he was my sheet anchor to reality.

He was a godsend in other ways too. For a start, he gave me something to do. I still had to feed him, which I did regularly. The process of going into the kitchen, opening up a sachet of food and mixing it in the bowl was just the sort of thing I needed to get my mind off what I was going through. I didn’t feel up to going downstairs to help him do his business, but when I let him out he dashed off and was back upstairs again in what seemed like a few minutes. He didn’t seem to want to leave my side.

I’d have periods where I didn’t feel so bad. During the morning of the second day, for instance, I had a couple of hours where I felt much better. Bob and I just played around a lot. I did a bit of reading. It was hard but it was a way to keep my mind occupied. I read a really good non-fiction book about a Marine saving dogs in Afghanistan. It was good to think about what was going on in someone else’s life.

By the afternoon and early evening of the second day, however, the withdrawal symptoms were really ramping up. The worst thing was the physical stuff. I had been warned that when you go through ‘clucking’ you get what’s called restless legs syndrome. In effect, you have incredibly uncomfortable, nervous pulses that run through your body, making it impossible for you to sit still. I started doing this. My legs would suddenly and involuntarily start kicking – it’s not called kicking the habit for nothing. I think this freaked Bob out a bit. He gave me a couple of odd, sideways looks. But he didn’t desert me, he stayed there, at my side.

That night was the worst of all. I couldn’t watch television because the light and noise hurt my head. When I went into the dark, I just found my mind racing, filling up with all kinds of crazy, sometimes scary stuff. All the time my legs were kicking and I was feeling extremes of hot and cold. One minute I was so hot I felt like I was inside a furnace. The next I’d feel ice cold. The sweat that had built up all over me would suddenly start to freeze and suddenly I’d be shivering. So then I’d have to cover up and would start burning up again. It was a horrible cycle.

Every now and again, I’d have moments of lucidity and clarity. At one point I remember thinking that I really understood why so many people find it so hard to kick their drug habits. It’s a physical thing as well as a mental thing. That battle of wills that’s going on in your brain is very one-sided. The addictive forces are definitely stronger than those that are trying to wean you off the drugs.

At another point, I was able to see the last decade and what my addiction had done to me. I saw – and sometimes smelled – the alleys and underpasses where I’d slept rough, the hostels where I’d feared for my life, the terrible things I’d done and considered doing just to score enough to get me through the next twelve hours. I saw with unbelievable clarity just how seriously addiction screws up your life.

I had some weird, almost surreal thoughts as well. For instance, at one point it occurred to me that if I was to wake up with amnesia I’d get through the withdrawal, because I wouldn’t know what was wrong with me. A lot of my problems stemmed from the fact my body knew exactly what was wrong with me and what I could do to fix it. I won’t deny that there were moments of weakness when it crossed my mind, when I imagined scoring. But I was able to fend those thoughts off pretty easily. This was my chance to kick it, maybe my last chance. I had to stay strong, I had to take it: the diarrhoea, the cramps, the vomiting, the headaches, the wildly fluctuating temperatures – all of it.

That second night seemed to last forever. I’d look up at the clock and it seemed at times as if it was moving backwards. Outside it seemed as if the darkness was getting deeper and blacker rather than brightening up for morning. It was horrible.

But I had my secret weapon. Bob did annoy me at certain points. At one stage I was lying as still and quiet as possible, just trying to shut out the world. All of a sudden, I felt Bob clawing at my leg, digging into my skin quite painfully.

‘Bob, what the hell are you doing?’ I shouted at him a bit too aggressively, making him jump. Immediately I felt guilty.

I suspect he was worried that I was a little too still and quiet and was checking up to make sure I was alive. He was worried about me.

Eventually, a thin, soupy grey light began to seep through the window, signalling that morning had arrived at last. I hauled myself out of bed and looked at the clock. It was almost eight o’clock. I knew the clinic would be open by nine. I couldn’t wait any longer.

I splashed some cold water on my face. It felt absolutely awful on my clammy skin. In the mirror I could see that I looked drawn and my hair was a sweaty mess. But I wasn’t going to worry about that at this point. Instead I threw on some clothes and headed straight for the bus stop.

Getting to Camden from Tottenham at that time of the day was always a trial. Today it seemed much worse. Every traffic light was on red, every road seemed to have a long tailback of traffic. It really was the journey from hell.

As I sat on the bus, I was still having those huge temperature swings, sweating one moment, shivering the next, my limbs were still twitching every now and again, although not as badly as during the middle of the night. People were looking at me as if I was some kind of nutcase. I probably looked unbelievably bad. At that point I didn’t care. I just wanted to get to the DDU.

I arrived just after nine and found the waiting room half full already. One or two people looked as rough as I felt. I wondered whether they’d been through forty-eight hours as hellish as those I’d just been through.

‘Hi, James, how are you feeling,’ the counsellor said as he came into the treatment room. He only needed to look at me to know the answer, of course, but I appreciated his concern.

‘Not great,’ I said.

‘Well, you’ve done well do get through the last two days. That’s a huge step you’ve taken,’ he smiled.

He checked me over and got me to give a urine sample. He then gave me a tablet of Subutex and scribbled out a new prescription, this time for some Subutex.

‘That should make you feel a lot better,’ he said. ‘Now let’s start easing you off this – and out of this place completely.’

I stayed there for a while to make sure the new medication didn’t have any odd side effects. It didn’t. Quite the opposite in fact, it made me feel a thousand times better.

By the time I had got back to Tottenham I felt completely transformed. It was a different feeling from what I’d experienced on methadone. The world seemed more vivid. I felt like I could see, hear and smell more clearly. Colours were brighter. Sounds were crisper. It was weird. It may sound strange, but I felt more alive again.

I stopped on the way and bought Bob a couple of new flavoured Sheba pouches that had come on to the market. I also bought him a little toy, a squeezy mouse.

Back at the flat I made a huge fuss of him.

‘We did it mate,’ I said. ‘We did it.’

The sense of achievement was incredible. Over the next few days, the transformation in my health and life in general was huge. It was as if someone had drawn back the curtains and shed some sunlight into my life.

Of course, in a way, someone had.