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9.7 Milligrams of Heaven

Barry Cooper

Summer 2006

I watched the movie Praise while bombed off my face on codeine tablets late the other night. I like the codeine tablets. They make me able to laugh at things, and when I get real tense in the shoulders they help me relax. I am worried about my kidney or liver though, and my piss in the morning is real yellow. Sometimes I get a pain in the right side of my body down near my stomach, but I don’t know if that’s because of the codeine tablets or not. You can’t wank with the codeine tablets in you because you don’t feel like it. You go around the next day with real red eyes that have a glassy surface to them too.

I island-hop between chemists to get the tablets. The chemist-brand ones are the cheapest, but I can’t seem to find them lately. I don’t know if they are still making them or what. The next-cheapest brand has a blue-and-yellow cover and they have 9.7 milligrams of codeine in them, and 500 milligrams of paracetamol, too. The doctor told me the paracetamol is more dangerous than the codeine for the liver or kidney. I tried taking codeine and Nurofen, but the Nurofen gave me stomach cramps.

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  • In Print
  • Online Only
    • Latest Pieces
    • Reading Trails
    • What I’m Reading
  • Read
    • The Meanjin Papers
    • Poetry
    • Essays
    • Fiction
    • Memoir
    • The Meanjin Interviews
    • Experiments
    • State of the Nation
    • The Year In…
  • Books
    • Reviews
    • Australia in Three Books
    • What I’m Reading
  • Writers
    • Interviews
  • Buy
    • Subscribe
    • Where to buy
  • News
    • Announcements
    • Events
  • About
    • About Meanjin
    • First Peoples First
    • People
    • Editorial Advisory Panel
    • Copyright and Payment
    • Partners
    • Get Involved
    • Contact
    • Privacy
  • Search