Norwegian Drug Addicts
An addict once told me, if i was to try heroin for the first time i would more than likely not be addicted due to the fact i would know when to stop.
It seems hard to believe but yet true. But i guess i am not a heroin addict, i asked many questions as to why some of these people become addicted to heroin, near on all of them had the same answer " escape", escaping from family traumas, bad relationships, rape, and the list goes on. One of the women i was photographing told me as she was preparing to inject that she had a 9 year old daughter, and that she had to lie to her each time she left the house, i asked her if she loved her? she replied as the needle entered her upper left leg, of course i do she replied, as she slowly injected 20 milligrams of heroin in to her leg, i asked her but isn't your daughter a good insanity to stop using drugs? she just looked at me with a blank look as her eyes started to go glassy, her reflexes slowing as she uttered the words , i never want my little girl to know, it would brake her heart, then how do you stop that from happening i asked? i just don't know she replied as she took another syringe she had prepared and started to inject it between her toes.
I followed some of these people over the corse of months seeing what would change for them, to me it would come down to an inevitable death, which brings me to one of the man within this set of images. He had been a heroin user for sometime so he seemed to know a lot about the drug and how to use it, he told me, if you inject in the same spot for too long it can damage the vein and sometimes permanently, he said i know this because it has happened to me, i asked him which vein? at first he laughed and said do you really want to know, sure i said, how bad could it be. He told me that he had been injecting in to his penis so that he would not get found out whilst working at the job he was doing at the time, whilst he was telling me about his life, at the same time he was preparing a cocktail of drugs, i had to ask, what is that you are preparing because i have seen what heroin looks like within a syringe, but what you are doing looks nothing like anything i have ever seen, he told me this is what you call a speed ball, a mixture of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy in the one syringe, you are kidding me i replied, that's just suicide, but that did not seem to stop him, at first he tried to inject it into his vein on his hand as by the looks of this he has had many times before, as the needle entered the vein, the vein suddenly collapsed, but still that did not seem to stop his determination for the need to be high, he call over someone he knew so that he could help him inject. What came next still today haunts me, he gave the syringe to his friend and asked him to inject it in to his neck, at first his friend looked a little confused as where to put the needle, but the man blew his cheeks out and held his breath so that the vein in his neck protruded so that it could make it easier to see where to put the needle. To me it just didn't seem right, for one, the cocktail of drugs that he had placed within the needle, and two, where he was putting it at the time, to tell you the truth it scared the hell out of me and not just for me but him as well, it did not take too long to see things were going bad for him, i watched as his eyes round back into his head, and how he seemed to lose all sense of where he was as he collapsed and started to lose consciousness, two hours from the moment his friend injected him in the neck he died of an overdose.
Whilst collecting these images i learnt that Oslo Norway has at least 3000 heroin addict, from the working class to the homeless, and at 10 euro a hit per person that adds up to being 30,000 euro a day, near on 11,000,000 euro a year.
The Norwegian government is trying to help stop the flow of heroin, by helping the addict by opening methadone outlets so that the heroin user can go into one of these outlets and be helped by the staff and be supervised whilst using methadone.
Janne prepares herself for a night of work, to make good money i need to do things that require me to sell myself on the streets she tells me.
Janne 46 in this picture has been using Heroin for up to 20 years of her life.
Drug dealer allows me to photograph whilst selling drugs. Reason for allow me to photograph is that he wanted me to show the world that Oslo has a real problem, he said to me I will be in Jail in 2 days time for selling drugs.
Sometimes drug deals don't always go to plan, scammers out there on the streets selling fake drug, putting something in its place to make it look like a drug, this is whats known as a bad deal, meaning some scammers get court.
Norwegian police in Oslo arrest a suspected drug dealer, for the police in Oslo it is an everyday event when it comes to the drug trade, taking one person off the streets means that 2 others will take there place.
A cocktail of drugs all round into one, its quite common that most drug users will mix there drugs into one needle, Speed, Cocaine and Heroin a the most popular to take in one hit, drug users call this a speed ball.
Janne and Janne's boyfriend Loffe sometimes go to the injection room in down town Oslo, to most this is a safe place to inject, its run by doctors and volunteers, and has up to 3000 drug users registered there.
Like most addicted to A-class drugs, the preferred place they would rather inject is in the vein beside the groin, as it takes effect immediately once the drug is injected.
Janne collapses in a park after taking a hit of herion, she tells me when the herion is black and you can not see through the needle this means that it is really strong.
Now that the weather is changing in Oslo and becoming much colder, people like Peter take to small heated malls to shoot up.
Injecting in the same shot for many years can have an adverse side effect on the body. One disease called Crocodile which eats the skin and bone from under the skin is one of the biggest problems addicts face which can lead to loosing limbs.
Desperately Hansy injects as he has just spent the last 2 years in rehab, he takes a half dose of heroin so that he does not overdose.
"Lief," the man in the center of this picture has been a user of heroin for 6 years, Lief with his fiery temper looking to find the next hit.
Local hang out in central Oslo where Heroin Addicts love to congregate to shoot up.
Families and passers by witness the obvious problem, as drug users take to the parks to shoot up.
Lief helps a friend to inject a speed ball into his neck. Its 12 years on and I still cannot find Lief, I am still looking for him.
Addicted to the life of pain, torn between two ways of living, each one an addiction within itself, dark world of drug uses, the other is family. Addicts tell themselves each day that they can stop, but yet they have not found the way to just stop.
Irine only 23 has been using drugs since she was 16, she told me that her mother died 2 years ago and that she missed her with all her heart, my father found out that i was using Heroin and he kicked me out of his home, she went on by saying in tears that she was extremely closes to her father, he taught me everything i know especially about animals as he is a veterinarian.
Irine lays under a tree whilst under the influence of heroin whilst others continue to inject.
Some drug addicts would say smoking Heroin is cleaner than injecting, the results are virtually the same except injecting is much more powerful and faster, smoking is a little slower for it to take its full effect.
2016
Celine is only 23 years of age, she comes from an upsetting back round due to the fact that she is a Heroin baby, born into this world needing drugs because her real mother was a user, Celine told me that she has spent most of her life in and out of foster care, she went on by saying the first time she met her mother, she handed a needle full of Heroin, we injected together me and my mother, Celine said that was the last time she ever saw her again.
2017
Seeing Celine again gave me hope, by seeing her changes, she told me that she had just come out of rehab, yet by her body Language I noticed that there was something going on with her, as time passed I realized that she was selling, both Celine and myself talked for hours, she told me many things about her life, she told me what changes she wants to make within herself, as she was telling me her future plans the words, I will not change in this city as there are drugs all around me at any given moment, for me to change means i will need to leave Oslo.
This is a continuing story.
He tells me that he is frustrated, I asked him why, he told me that he can not find a vein. We stood in a part whilst he continued on trying to inject.
As Heroin usage is quite high in Oslo/Norway, the government of Norway has set up methadone outlets, so that the drug users have somewhere to go, so that they can be given the right help. The outlets have one main rule: No Heroin.
The outlets supply new clean needles and syringe to help stop the spread of diseases, but that was 2006, now in 2017 these injection rooms allow the uses of heroin to be injected, the rule now is that the user can only use heroin and no other drugs can be mixed into the same needle when in the injection room.
Man lies died after overdosing in central Oslo.
Hearing nothing, absolutely out of breath. I started rubbing his chest to get a reaction, the moment I saw that it was not working was the moment I slapped him in the face to find a reaction, still nothing, I yell to a women standing across the other side of a small river, please ring for an ambulance I asked the women, the ambulance came as fast as a snail in a head wind, by the time they arrived the man was not looking like he was going to make it into tomorrow, the ambulance came and took him away and that was the last I saw of him.
Up to 300 people die a year in Norway of drug related incidences, it has become a real problem in the eyes of the public as it has become so noticeable, some say it is an everyday event to see drug addicts dying on the streets of Oslo, but yet very little is being done to prevent it from stopping.
She sells herself to pay for her drug habit, she is now trying to get away from using Heroin, by using methadone.
Unexpected moments played in real time in the moment of doubt, used needle lays on the street as a reminder of the problem that people live around each day.