Will Self

I think she was upset.

i think it was and i think i cannot read the diaries from that period up until i went to rehab at 25 because then there was five years during which i was a needle using heroin addict in you know in a very grimy heavy london the london of the early 90s so she must have been hysterical with anxiety can you remember the lowest point of that to describe it to us

Well, I write about it a lot because it was the building... I first went to Stockwell, where I now live, to buy heroin, and I walked there.

From North London.

Because I didn't have any money.

And I'd heard that a guy in a squat in Stockwell, the woman I was using heroin with, knew this guy who might have some.

And we walked all the way to Stockwell.

And we went to this building.

And he was an ex-squaddie.

You'd find a lot of junkies who'd been in the army.

And it was the first time I think I'd seen junkies living at quite that level.

They had nothing in the flat.

Nothing at all.

Not even just sticks of furniture to slump on.

There was a child that had no nappies.

So I remember the first afternoon, the child just squatted and shat in the middle of the floor while we were waiting for him to get back with the heroin.

And I thought, this probably is a sort of nadir, Will, but I've seen worse.

I mean, I've been in a squat in the same period using heroin and somebody saying to me, we ought to get that corks out of the bathtub.

And there'd been a guy dead in the bath next door for a couple of days.

Guns pulled on me in King's Cross.