Tutors
What heroin did for my education was what I assume steroids do for a professional athlete’s career.
An Essay by Matt Andersen
The first time I ever saw heroin, I was studying for a math exam.
But let’s not start there. Let’s go to sixth grade—back when I thought cigarettes were a hard drug, and that “heroin” was something Mulan was. When our class had returned from recess, a giant table of multiplication problems lay on each of our desks. This was advanced stuff. We’re talking 35 x 43. 18 x 364. Problems that only got harder the further along you went.
Up until that point, I had failed to grasp how anyone struggled with school. Teachers gave us the rules, we just had to follow them. Simple. My eleven-year-old mind had only developed enough to see the world in this black and white, G-Rated framework.
Either you’re smart, or you’re stupid. You’re good, or you’re bad. You either go to church on Sunday, or you smoke cigarettes and you’re going to Hell.
I knew which side of the line I fell on. I went to church on Sunday’s and Wednesday’s.
Then Tyler ruined everything.
Tyler? He was a backseat-of-the-bus kind of kid. The kind of kid who drew dicks on the fake leather seats. Or at least, I assumed. He was one of those kids I kind of wanted to be like but would never admit to. In order to preserve my Disney-esque worldview, it was easier to assume he was a villain (or at least a henchman.) He was someone who vandalized property. He probably stole his Dad’s cigarettes and certainly didn’t go to church.
But when our class had that math quiz, he was the first to finish.
What a showoff, I must have thought. No way did he get through all those problems so fast. He probably just scribbled down random numbers. But when the teacher went to look at Tyler’s answers, his eyes scanned row after row without pause.
I gripped my pen. My knuckle stung from the pressure, this bump of a blister that had formed over my finger from the six years of schoolwork I had under my belt. The teacher congratulated Tyler. He got every problem right. I stopped trying to solve the problems on my own sheet. They had turned into another language.
I suspect what happened next isn’t entirely true, but the way I remember it, some red-nosed, front-of-the-bus type kid stood up. He stood up, our unspoken class leader, cleared his throat and said, “Tyler is the smartest kid in class.”
Now we can fast forward.
Nine years, and hundreds of cigarettes later, I had figured out that heroin wasn’t just another name for a Disney princess. As a sophomore at the University of Washington—and a rebel against my Utah, Mormon upbringing—I had done my fair share of drugs: Weed, LSD, Adderall, etc. But heroin? That was a line that I wasn’t going to cross. A rule no one should break.
You’re either good or you're bad. You’re either a decent member of society, or you smoke heroin.
These were my rules.
Only smoke pot after I’ve finished your homework.
Given the choice between shrooms or acid, choose the acid.
Cocaine is okay, but only if it’s sprinkled in with my tobacco
If I’m going to take Adderall, I have to be studying
Limit any all-nighters to once a month
(And of course) Don’t do heroin
In short, don’t do anything that would interfere with my education. This was the motivating factor. Any rule could be updated or bent, and in some cases even broken, as long as my intentions were good. As long as I followed the spirit of the law (and not the letter) any negatives would be offset by the positives.
-1 + 1 = 0.
My updated and revised worldview. The one I was operating under the night I first saw heroin.
Sitting in my friend’s apartment, hunched over his dining room table, studying for an upcoming calculus exam. Math was still a foreign language for me, even with those nine additional years of school under my belt. Translating wasn’t easy, but it was manageable. The blister on my finger pulsed and ached with each equation I tried to scribble down and unpack. But it was a necessary pain. One I’d learned to ignore.
I was good at ignoring a lot of things. So good, in fact, that I hadn’t realized my friend had left in the middle of our study session. It was just me at his dining room table. Throbbing knuckle. Stiff neck. I took the opportunity to take a break—see where my friend went.
It didn’t take long, he wasn’t outside smoking or picking up food, he was just in his bedroom. Door open. Sitting there, in plain view, struggling with what a cop would’ve called drug paraphernalia. A lighter, some tinfoil, and a leftover cardboard tube of what used to be a roll of toilet paper.
It was a circus act, what he was doing. My friend juggled all three of these things around, really putting on a show. Lighter in one hand, and tinfoil in the other, he lit a flame. Whatever was on that foil bubbled up into a puff of white smoke. As it did, he dropped his lighter to the floor, and snatched the toilet paper roll. Tube to mouth, he sucked up the wisp of smoke before it could get away.
A regular Rube Goldberg.
I asked if he needed an extra hand.
What heroin did for my education was what I assume steroids do for a professional athlete’s career.
With all my pain receptors blocked, I could tune out the world even more than was possible before. I’d hunch over dining room tables for hours, or sit crossed legged on my bed for entire days. Throw in all the other stimulants I was using, and I couldn’t be stopped. The once foreign language of math and all its different dialects gave way. Integration by parts, differential equations, Fourier Series; they became my second language.
It all culminated in my first 4.0. Then my second. There I was, finally giving eleven year old Tyler a run for his money.
And others noticed.
I don’t remember how it happened, but it somehow came to light that I had scored the highest on a recent Physics midterm. As a result, a group of peers asked me to join their study group. Me, this skinny wet-dog of a kid who only showed up to class on exam days. This kid who was more comfortable studying between 3 and 6 in the morning when the rest of the world was asleep.
But I told them, yes. Count me in. Because despite all my social aversions, I was still a skinny wet-dog who needed approval. Ego petting. Positive reinforcement. I had been waiting nine years for someone to finally stand up and say Matt is the smartest kid in class.
And I returned the favor by treating my new friends the way I treated everyone else in my life.
They invited me to parties, but I only went when convenient. I’d ask them to turn in my homework for me, because I was too sick to go to class (when in reality I had smoked the last of my dope and needed to pick up more before the withdrawals set it.) I’d show up at study hall high as a kite and offer no input.
Wasn’t my presence enough?
It’s been two decades now, since I’ve been in sixth grade, and I’ve never forgotten Tyler’s name. But my peers? These people who saw a lonely, back-seat-of-the-lecture hall kind of kid and tried to take them into their fold. I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t recall a single one of their names.
Let’s reset our clocks again.
Back to that first night with the heroin. Back in my friend’s bedroom with his toilet paper roll and tinfoil. It was there that I first learned the importance of Dramamine and Grapefruit.
“Grapefruit juice will increase the high,” my friend had said. “But it can make you dizzy.”
Then, over the next few months, it was us meeting at his apartment once a week. Me and him. Then me and him and his roommate. Eventually some old acquaintances joined in, followed by some new ones. A regular study group, teaching each other this new language. Teaching each other words like smack, dope, h, tar, horse, balls, dimes, tooters.
Tooters.
That was a word that stood out. It means: a small tube used to smoke or inhale drugs.
I don’t remember when I first heard it. Perhaps it was that night when I asked my friend about the toilet paper roll. Maybe it was weeks later, when our group realized it was easier to use small straws. Or even later when we replaced those straws with gutted pens.
Tooter was the word someone had said. But that wasn't what I had heard, not technically. The word I had heard was tutor.
There I was, taking apart the same pens I had been using to calculate math equations and draw force diagrams so I could instead use them to get high. Trading one type of tutor for another. One that could draw lines and revise rules for one that couldn’t—for one that had no ink.
The clock says it’s 10:51 in the morning here. It’s a surprisingly cool summer day, and I’m typing this on my laptop. No pen in sight. I’ve been sober for over eight years now, and that calloused bump on my finger has all but disappeared. All that’s left is a smooth circle you can only see if you know to look for it.
Perhaps this would have been a better essay had I written it long hand.
I still think things like this. I’m not entirely free of Tyler’s clutches, but I’m not entirely trapped either.
When I got sober, one of the first things I remember my sponsor telling me was, “You may only have a week under your belt, but that means you have the knowledge that someone who has only been sober for one day might need.”
Green’s Theorem, Newton’s Laws, multiplication tables, and drug slang; there’s plenty I’ve learned in life that I’ve forgotten. But so far, what my sponsor told me hasn’t been one of them. There’s no teacher who isn’t a student, no student who isn't a teacher. We’re all tutors.
It was hillbilly heroin, and it made me awesome at my job. In hindsight, it didn't actually make me better at the job at all. The truth was that it helped me deal with being in a room full of inauthentic, vampiric human beings under fluorescent lights, eating garbage, and never seeing the sun.
PS: Eating an actual grapefruit, especially the white part of the rind, is much more effective than drinking grapefruit juice. Especially if you're taking something orally that destroys most of the drug during first pass metabolism.
Also, the right kind of unwashed bulk poppy seeds can stave off withdrawal.
I wish I didn't know shit like this.
Ah. This essay brings back memories. lol I loved smoking heroin so much. I loved it so much I got down to 78 pounds and nearly died in the hospital. One of my worst fears was dying sober. Isn't that bizarre? Thank you so much. Great read!