The Italian Dolomite Alps have the unmistakable look of the slow fade to fall.

Whenever I drift out of my deep opiate nod and into hazy consciousness, I look out the window of the train compartment—a first-class smoker that I, thankfully, have to myself—and see dark pewter clouds obscuring the tops of the craggy mountains and foliage that is turning to earth tones. The clouds are lower and darker every time I reluctantly open my eyes.

A storm is moving into this part of Europe from the Adriatic.

A half-hour into the mountains, a steady rain erupts from the sodden clouds. It turns the Alpine gloom darkly beautiful in a way that matches the vibe I’m feeling from my heroin buzz.

I’m very wasted on tan Afghani dope, but more in a depressed way than a giddy one. When I’m doing dope, everything in the world and in life revolves around it. If I have a large supply on hand, I am carefree. If the end is in sight, I am sullen.

Après héroine, le deluge.

I procured a large quantity of dope in Zurich, enough to easily see me through Berlin and beyond. It would have been enough to cover me for my entire trip, except that my rate of consumption has been increasing exponentially every day.

I spent the first part of the train ride—before lapsing into a state that makes reasoning impossible—trying to devise ways to ration the remaining drugs. To the point of jotting down bizarre little equations on a yellow legal pad in a futile attempt to pre-plan my consumption and conserve dope.

To wit: .1@8AM+.05@12Noon+.05@3PM+.1@6PM+.05@9PM+.025@11PM=.375

With “.1” being one-tenth of a gram and total daily consumption coming in at between one-quarter and one-half gram.

If I can stick to this desperate conservation plan, I will make it back to Zurich in just enough time to score more drugs.

The odds of the plan working, however, are significantly less than fifty-fifty. Having less dope does not necessarily lead me to do less dope, just to wish that I’d do less of it. Despite the dwindling supply, I’m still putting so much tan powder up my nose that I can’t remember what I’m doing most of the time, except that I know that I’m spending an inordinate amount of time worrying that I’m going to run out of dope.

I’ve been on a train since I boarded this morning in Berlin. The final destination, around midnight, is Venice.

Venice is an atmospheric and wonderful place, and I make a point of going there as often as I can. Now, I’m dreading it because Venice is a shitty town for dope.

A Venetian friend told me that there were a handful of local heroin addicts in Venice and that they hung out in an obscure and out-of-way piazza, but that the cops rousted them and they’re not there anymore.

The nearest dope spots that I know of are in Milan.

I won’t be in Milan until I pass through on my way to Zurich. By then, it will be a done deal.

I will either scrape through by the skin of my teeth or I’ll arrive in Zurich—via another scenic train trip through the Swiss Alps—dope sick, shivering and puking.

I’ve been snorting up strong dope like a vacuum cleaner for nearly two weeks, so I’m now mightily strung out, despite my firm intention to avoid this fate and to stop using heroin entirely. After my last hideous withdrawal episode several months ago, I threw out about a quarter of a gram of stupendously powerful red Pakistani heroin, swearing that I’d never, ever, ever touch anything again in my life with the power to make me that sick and miserable.

Then, I reconsidered and arrived at a compromise—I swore off using dope for more than three days in a row so that I could do dope, but not get strung out. Three days being, according to junkie folk wisdom, the maximum period of time you can do heroin without developing a jones and experiencing withdrawal symptoms—real or imagined—when you stop. Now, I wonder how I could have been so insane as to throw away some of the strongest dope upon which I have ever laid my hands.

So much for plans.

My long-term goal, at this point, is to avoid withdrawal until I’m back in the United States, since getting dope sick in Europe would have a definite adverse impact on my travels.

Some people come home from trips abroad with odd gastrointestinal maladies.

Or tchotchkes.

Or snapshots.

Or very long distance girlfriends.

I bring home an abominable dope habit.

Outside, the downpour becomes more intense near the Brenner Pass. If this keeps up, Venice—which is built on sinking islands in the middle of a lagoon off the Adriatic—will be intensely gloomy and sodden.

I sigh and consider the bright side.

I have friends in Venice. A redheaded former investment banker chick from Cincinnati who makes cool jewelry. A Venetian guy who runs a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we have all-night drinking and bullshitting sessions.

Venice will be fun.

As long as the dope holds out.

We pass through Bolzano.

It’s raining harder.

We hit Trento.

There’s practically a monsoon coming down.

The downpour becomes even more torrential as we get to Verona, and I start to wonder if the Italian news is featuring footage of formerly picturesque villages sliding down mountainsides.

I hit the fetid toilet and do another couple of lines of dope while the train is sitting in the station at Verona and, then, head back to my seat. There’s a little more than an hour left before we hit the Stazione Santa Lucia in Venice.

I slump back into my seat and light up a Marlboro. The train pulls out of the station. I put out the cigarette and close my eyes.

The next thing I know, the train is stopped and quiet. It is sitting at the platform in Santa Lucia.

Damn. I must have nodded off. I wonder how long we’ve been in the station?

The train lurches like an engine is being connected or cars are being removed.

I spring to life and grab my bags. One of them is weighted down with five bottles of boutique brands of schnapps I copped in Munich.

I sprint through the train in one of those just-woke-up hazes compounded by a really solid dope buzz, desperate to get off before it starts moving and I have to escape from an Italian rail yard.

I get to the door and take a step down the stairs.

This is when gravity conspires with my own questionable equilibrium and takes over.

Damn.

The heavy bag pulls me off the stairs and down to the platform.

The swan dive to the concrete below happens in that nasty, disembodied sort of slow motion that occurs whenever something truly bad takes place. It’s not unlike going to the instant replay and watching it happen to someone else. Particularly in my frame of mind.

Fuck.

It occurs to me to drop the bag—the hell with breaking the bottles of designer German booze—but this does nothing to lessen my becoming one with the platform.

Double fuck.

I hit the platform on my left side, roll once and end up on my back staring at the dirty awning overhead.

Now I know where the pigeons live at Santa Lucia.

I’ve staggered off a train or two in my time, but I’ve never fallen off one before.

I move my legs.

I check my arms.

I feel for any warm fluids that would be blood.

It doesn’t feel like anything is broken and I don’t seem to be bleeding.

“Are you okay?” a guy shouts in Italian.

“Unnnhhh,” I say.

“Are you okay?” he says again.

“Uhhhhhh.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“That was a bad fall,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Big fall.”

“Si,” I say. My left side feels like I just fell three feet and became one with the platform. “Bottiglie di schnapps. Tedeschi.”

Bottles of schnapps. German.

“Schnapps?” he says.

I explain that I have five large bottles of schnapps (peach, apple, pear, etc.) in my shoulder bag and that I tripped, the extra weight causing me to interact poorly with gravity.

He nods, looks down at me, offers his hand and helps me to my feet.

“Grazie,” I say.

“Prego,” he says.

I pick up my bags and drag my bruised body down the platform, through the deserted station and out to the stop for the vaparetto—Venetian waterbuses that are boats that function like buses—on the Grand Canal.

Venice is warm and damp, although the deluge has stopped.

My destination is the Hotel Marconi, which is on the Riva del Vin on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge. My jewelry designer friend Ami got the room for me at a very reduced rate because she and the owner are friends.

Normally, I’m excited when I arrive in Venice, feeling like I’ve exited the real world and entered a very special one. I relish the boat ride down the Grand Canal.

Not tonight. I simply want to get to the hotel and die. A vaparetto arrives. I board and look glumly at the darkened palazzi lining the canal.

The deluge has started again by the time the vaparetto gets to the stop at the Rialto Bridge. It’s almost one in the morning.

Venice is magnificently deserted.

I open and umbrella trudge through the pouring rain and murk along the Grand Canal, sorely tempted to throw the German booze that almost killed me into the drink. I drag myself through the entrance to the Hotel Marconi and into the little lobby full of antiques.

A sleepy looking guy in a nice, dark Italian suit looks up. He stares at me curiously.

I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I look like I’ve been through a war.

“Long train ride,” I say in Italian. “I came from Berlin.”

“Very long,” he says.

I give him my name. He finds my reservation. We do the paperwork.

He hands me the key to my room. It’s a nice room, he says. It is on the third floor.

No bellhop. No elevator.

I thank him and start the long trudge up the Venetian staircase, calculating how much dope I should do before bedtime and wondering how long the rainstorm outside will last and how many days I will be in Venice before I run out of dope and the deluge inside begins.

Robert Guskind has been writing for a long time. An award-winning Washington-based journalist and contributor to major national magazines and newspapers, he now lives very close to Manhattan, where he continues to write, shoot photographs and work on a book based on his travels and experiences as a reporter and formerly disreputable dope fiend. He is all better now and is a regular contributor to Cherrybleeds.