The World According to Bob

‘He’d give you a little tap on the forehead and wait for you to react. I think he just wanted to make sure you were still with us,’ she smiled.

At other times, she told me, he would wrap himself around my leg.

‘It was as if he was trying to apply a tourniquet or something. It was like he wanted to take away the pain,’ she said. ‘You would never lie still long enough for him to stay there for long. But he knew where the pain was and was definitely trying to do something about it.’

I hadn’t seen any of this. What was worse, whenever Bob had tried to help or comfort me when I was awake, I’d driven him away. I’d been selfish. Bob loved — and needed — me as much I loved and needed him. I wouldn’t forget that.

Lying in bed for days on end had focussed my mind on something else as well. A few weeks after I was back on my feet, I took the most important step I’d made in years. Perhaps in my entire life.

When I’d actually heard the words at a regular appointment with my drug counsellor at the specialist dependency unit in Camden, they’d not sunk in at first.

‘I think you’ve reached the finishing line, James,’ he’d said.

‘Sorry what do you mean?’

I’m going to write you your final prescription. A few more days of taking your medication and I think you’ll be ready to call yourself clean.’

I’d been attending the clinic for several years now. I’d arrived there a mess, addicted to heroin and on a fast track to an early grave. Thanks to a brilliant collection of counsellors and nurses, I’d been hauling myself back from the brink ever since.

After coming off first heroin and then methadone, my new medication, subutex, had slowly but surely been helping me to wean myself off opiates completely. I’d been taking it for around six months now.

They called it a miracle drug and, as far as I was concerned, at least, that’s exactly what it was. It had allowed me to reduce my craving for drugs gently and without any hiccups. I’d been reducing my dosage of subutex steadily, first from 8 milligrams to 6 then to 4 and then 2. From there I’d started taking even smaller doses, measured in 0.4 grams. It had been a pretty seamless process, much easier than I’d anticipated.

So I wasn’t quite sure why I left the unit that morning feeling so apprehensive about the fact that I was about to stop taking subutex altogether.

I should have been delighted. It was time for that soft aeroplane landing that one of my counsellors had talked about. But I was curiously on edge, and remained that way for the next two days.

That first night, for instance, I started sweating and having minor palpitations. They weren’t serious. They were certainly nothing compared to what I’d been through when I’d come off methadone. That had been hellish. It was almost as if I was waiting for something awful to happen, for me to have some dramatic reaction. But nothing happened. I just felt, well, absolutely fine.

Bob was attuned to my mood and sensed that I needed a little more TLC. He wasn’t overt; he didn’t need to perform any of his late night diagnoses or tap me on the head to check I was still breathing. He just positioned himself a few inches closer on the sofa and gave me an extra rub of his head on my neck every now and again.

I carried on with my life as normal over the next couple of days. Bob and I had headed back to the flat in Tottenham where we’d adjusted to life there again. It was such a relief to be able to walk properly and to ride my bike around with Bob on board.

In the end there was a slight sense of anti-climax. Five or six days after I had been given the final prescription, I pulled the foil container out of its packet and saw that there was just one tablet left.

I squeezed the oval shaped pill out, placed it under my tongue until it had all dissolved then downed a glass of water. I scrunched the foil up into a ball and threw it on the floor for Bob to chase.

‘There you go, mate. That’s the last one of those you’ll get to play with.’

That night, I went to bed expecting to have a rough night. I will never sleep, I told myself. I felt sure that my body was going to be racked by withdrawal pangs. I expected nightmares, visions, restless twisting and turning. But there was none of that. There was nothing. Maybe I’d simply exhausted myself with anxiety, but the moment my head hit the pillow I was out like a light.

When I woke up the next morning, I gathered my senses and thought to myself: Jeez. That’s it. I’m clean. I looked out the window at the London skyline. It wasn’t a glorious blue sky, unfortunately. It wasn’t quite that clichéd. But it certainly was a clear one. And, just as when I’d come off methadone, it seemed somehow brighter and more colourful.