June 5, 2015. A Tinker's Cuss – Russell Pirie

I met Russell Pirie in about 1973 in Christchurch. We shot a lot of speed together. My overwhelming memory of him is that soon after we met we were in Cashel Street on his Suzuki 500 on a bright sunny Christchurch day. The speed had made us paranoid and Russell thought he saw a cop – Jim Marshall, head of the drug squad – and so he gunned the bike through town. We ended up crouched behind a rock out in Ferrymead shooting speed again. I think Jim Marshall was in Queenstown at the time.

Russell was an adopted kid of part Maori descent raised by Pakeha parents. Adopted kids sometimes have a harder time of it. They often have no sense of attachment.

Russell did a detention centre leg and one or two borstals in Invercargill. He was dead proud of all this. He was a real good looking bloke with a heart of gold but looking desperately for something his whole life through.

At one point we were all having a hard time getting opiates and speed so Russell became hooked on barbiturates – Tuinal, Seconal, Nembutal. Doctors used to throw these in the streets like a lollie scramble. They kept inventing drugs that supposedly cured drug addiction and each one was worse than the last.

Russell stepped out the whole public bar in Warners Hotel one day and woke up on the South Brighton bus stop several hours later. One time, high on barbiturates, he dove into an empty swimming pool. He suffered quite severe injuries and climbed out and dived in again. Broken collarbones were his forte.

In 1975 I burgled a chemist shop and found pure Heroin. My co-offender and I ended up dividing it at Russell's flat in England Street. Russell overdosed on what he was scratching up off the Formica counter. He turned blue on the floor. At the time he was going out with the Prime Minister Bill Rowling's daughter. She was on the floor trying to force a fish tank hose down his throat. My co-offender and I beat the feet. My co-offender died of a Heroin overdose at Warner's Hotel the next night. The cops came and got me to identify the body.

But Russell lived. He went on to shoot a man dead in a drug deal and ended up doing life in Paremoremo, a lot of it in D Block. I visited him from time to time. He never stopped laughing.

He got out and received an ACC payment. He bought a Harley Davidson and came off it in South Brighton and died. I miss him.

Addiction is a savage disease. People often hurt themselves and laugh. The devil makes smash and grab attempts at taking them back. But the quality of mercy is never strained.

Here's to you, Russell Pirie. Dude.