Rockers, Models And The New Allure Of Heroin

I never tried heroin, but I used to think I wanted to. White and middle class, just out of college in 1987, I read Jim Carroll's ""The Basketball Diaries,'' a cornerstone of modern heroin mythology: he made it seem like the ultimate rite of passage, a drug that made you funnier, wiser, cooler and full of hilarious stories about running wild on New York's Lower East Side. I listened obsessively to the Rolling Stones' ""Exile on Main St.'' and read accompanying literature like Stanley Booth's ""The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones'' that told how strung out Keith Richards was during this peak of genius. I even knew someone, a musician, who did heroin. For a long time he didn't do it around me. I nagged him to let me try it, and he laughed. ""You're not starting,'' he said.

When he finally did use it around me, my romantic image of heroin collapsed. He nodded out on my couch midway through a sentence; he threw up in my bathroom; he went face down on a restaurant table in front of my friends. From then on, I hated heroin. When at last he offered it to me, holding a knife point piled with ivory powder under my nose, I backed away. ""I thought you wanted to try it,'' he said. ""Not anymore,'' I said. Now I'm old enough to know better. I have a husband and a house and a nice life. When I hear that a musician I admire uses it, I'm concerned but no longer curious. When I hear of a tragic rock overdose, like Jonathan Melvoin of Smashing Pumpkins, I feel sad and shake my head, just like anybody would. I can enjoy a heroin movie like ""Trainspotting,'' and all the while I'm secretly thinking: Whew! Glad it's not me!

Yet no matter how smart we think we are, heroin's allure persists. In the past two or three years, its presence in pop culture has risen dramatically. Maybe it's Kurt Cobain's fault. His was the most high-profile drug-related rock-star death since the '70s, and he was battling heroin when he committed suicide in April 1994. Maybe it's his wife Courtney Love's fault: her torn dresses, matted hair and bruisey demeanor put a fashionable spin on junkie chic. Maybe it's the rock world's fault. In the past few months, Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland and Depeche Mode frontman David Gahan have all been busted for heroin and/or cocaine. (All three pleaded not guilty; Weiland and Gahan entered rehab.) Aerosmith could be the latest drug-troubled band: they just fired longtime manager Tim Collins, an anti-drug crusader credited with helping singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry get off heroin in the mid-'80s. Sources say Tyler may have relapsed this year. NEWSWEEK has obtained a copy of a pained letter the band wrote to Tyler in June, citing his childishness, negativity and denial. The band members threatened to break up Aerosmith, telling Tyler to ""get the help that you need'' and ""reach out'' for counseling. The band is said to have spent weeks with Tyler at Steps, a treatment center in California. Tyler denies all this. ""I'm still sober and have remained sober for the last nine years, going on 10,'' he says. ""Sometimes the creative zone and joie de vivre I get into throws people. If that's what they see in me, so be it, but I'm as sober as I'll ever be.'' Collins hopes Tyler is clean. ""Steven's an icon of recovery,'' he says. ""If he dies of an overdose, the people around him are going to be in big f-ing trouble.''

The resurgence is Hollywood's fault, too. Quentin Tarantino revived John Travolta's career when he cast him as a dope fiend in ""Pulp Fiction.'' (And we got to watch Uma Thurman's lips turn overdose blue.) ""Trainspotting,'' a techno-color trip through Scotland's junkie underbelly, is the most hyped film import of the summer. Actor Robert Downey Jr., so effective on screen as a druggie in 1987's ""Less Than Zero,'' got busted in June for coke and heroin possession, arrested in July when he wandered into the wrong house and now resides in a lock-down detox center. (He's pleaded not guilty to the June charges.) CAA, a top agency, has dropped three clients because of alleged drug use, including Downey.

Meanwhile, there have been growing complaints about ""heroin chic'' in fashion. Designer Jil Sander drew flak when her catalog showed a druggy-looking woman with one sleeve pushed up. Waif extraordinaire Kate Moss has made a career out of looking wasted. Model Zoe Fleischauer, 21, developed a heroin habit almost immediately when she moved to New York three years ago, and she says she wasn't alone: ""There are a lot of junkies in the industry. It's very hush-hush.'' Now clean, she blames the fashion world for glamorizing the problem. ""They wanted models that looked like junkies,'' she says. ""The more skinny and f-ed up you look, the more everybody thinks you're fabulous.''

What all this cultural noise means is that heroin is back up from the underground. Back in the '80s, higher prices, lower purity and the AIDS-crisis fear of needles kept it out of the mainstream. Part of the resurgence is simple economics: heroin is now cheaper and purer, and the volume being imported into the country has doubled to around 10 to 15 metric tons since the mid-'80s. Abundant supplies of high-grade blends attract everyone from hipster rock stars to Wall Street executives to inner-city addicts. A new government report scheduled for release this week will show that overall drug use among those 12 to 17 years old has risen almost 80 percent since 1992 (page 57). Baby-boomer parents may be shocked by the new casual attitude toward heroin, which even in the drug days of the '60s carried a stigma that seemed to set it apart from pot, acid and the Summer of Love.