“So that gets me to thinking,” Russell said. “I’m no good at thinking. But that gets me to thinking, and I see, well, I’m in the shit, is what I am, and I can’t personally do nothing about it. All I can do is, I can have the balls and the luck, but the only thing I know about is the balls. I just can’t have no bad days. Only, I don’t know no way to do that. So, I used to come out, and I know, tomorrow I go in again, and the only thing I can think about is, I used up another day. That’s all. So I smoke something. And it helped.

“Then I start looking at them other guys,” Russell said. “I see them, I was still thinking, and they’re all, most of them, at least’re smoking. And them guys that’re doing the grass, you know? Very heavy on it, and they slow down some. I was, I was keeping track of things. I could see it happening to me, it was happening to them, I got it a little bit and I begin to see, that’s what, them other guys, they started on it, it was probably just a little bit for them, too, when they start. You start forgetting things. All you want, you don’t care about things, you know? Very funny thing. And then, some of the guys that’re older, they drink a lot. And pretty soon they’re sick a lot. And that’s bad. Their hands shake. They’re not paying attention either. And you get in there, there’s the wire or the dink or something, well, you’re gonna have to have a lot of time to think about it or else you’re not gonna have no time at all. You can’t let yourself get slow.

“So I try the horse,” Russell said. “You got to have something. So I get some of that nice white shit, and what I did was, I used it after, right? After I come out again. I haven’t got to go back in tonight. First I snort it. Then, a couple times I did it the other way, but mostly I snort it. But I used it. And I liked it.