Permanent Midnight

Opening scene: Writer Jerry's voice, talking to recovering addict Kitty: "Smack is like the leisure suit of the nineties." Jerry, sitting on a toilet, injects his arm using his belt as a tourniquet."
"OD'ing in the rec room."
"Traded my cumberbund for two bags and a rig."
"You ever read that interview with William Burroughs where they asked him why he shot heroin? He said, 'so I could get up in the morning and shave.'"
"Gettin' 'm bounced out of rehab?" (0:00)

Kitty asks fast food cook Jerry, "Hey, you're one of those rehab patients, aren't you?"
"You're too sad looking to be just another reatard in a pink visor." (0:02)

Jerry: "I wish I was high."
"I've never done this straight before. "Trust me, with smack I was a real stud."
Kitty: "The first time anybody touched me after I got clean, I thought, Jesus that's why I needed drugs."
Kitty: "hit the needle and ended up in rehab."
Jerry: "The TV geek part is just a little side effect... I thought, I'll move out to California and get away from drugs."
Kitty: "You went to LA to get away from drugs?"
Jerry talks about Nicky who was "kind of a drug buddy... I was popping so many of his pills..." (0:03)

Jerry and Nicky lighting a bong. (0:07)

Kitty: "Were you getting high?"
Jerry smokes a joint while he works. (0:13)

Jerry takes some pills from a prescription bottle.

Voice from television: "Suicide is one of the great mysteries of our time. When Warren Stahl took his own life...."
Funeral in black and white on television show. (0:14)

Jerry takes more pills from a prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet. (0:16)

Kitty: "What about... doing coke in limos all night..."
Jerry: "Try... eating his pain killers..." (0:18)

Nicky: "Where are my pills... Percodan? They're gone."
"If I was Percodan where would I be?"
"Benny comes in, steals the drugs... high as a kite."
Jerry's sister leaves him a message that his mother died. (0:18)

Bar patron Dagmar removes a plastic bag of syringes from a box. She injects Jerry then herself. (0:23)

Kitty tells Jerry, "I went clean."
"You're what, fifty days clean? That's nothing. You're still a... junky. That's why you have to go back to rehab..." (0:26)

Jerry with needle in his arm.
Kitty: "You shoot heroin and run five miles?" (0:28)

Jerry cooks his fix with a syringe in his mouth. Dealer Dita removes a tourniquet from her bare arm. (0:30)

Kitty tells Jerry, "This from a man who shot up black tar."
Jerry: "blow all of it on dope and cop a habit the size of Utah."
Sandra interrupts Jerry shooting up in a toilet. (0:33)

Jerry shoots up in the toilet again, nods. He hallucinates Mr. Chompers voice, then Mr. Chompers head poking in the door." (0:36)

Jerry tells Kitty "It was getting to the point where I had to shoot six bags to turn on the... typewriter... Dita couldn't keep up with my habit."
Jerry shoots in a stairwell. (0:39)

Production assistant Sandra brings Jerry drugs she had hidden from him. (0:41)

Actress Pamela tells Jerry, "Everything I made when I was young I either drank away, snorted up my nose..."
"I want you to write for my show if you can get clean." (0:45)

Dr. Lazarus asks Jerry, "Think you can kick?"
"Methadone'll get rid of the shakes, but you're basically trading one habit for another one."
"How long you been using?"
"Twenty one day detox. Show up here once a week and piss in a cup." (0:46)

Dealer Gus shows Jerry a bottle of crack cocaine. (0:47)

Jerry smokes crack in a pipe with dealer Gus, both subsequently display intoxicated behavior. (0:48)

Gus tells Jerry, "Look what I got you." He hands him a prescription bottle.
Jerry: "What's that?"
Gus: "Dilaudid." (0:52)

Jerry puts pills into liquid in a bottle, shakes it, draws the solution into a syringe, nods. (0:54)

Jerry tells Kitty, "I was pretty much intoxicated the whole nine months." Jerry shoots up while sitting on a toilet. (0:56)

Jerry tells Kitty, "One night she called when I was Jonesing like a lab rat (1:00)

Jerry shoots up in a car while his baby watches. Unable to find a vein in his arm he injects his jugular vein. (1:05)

Men share a joint in the back of a bus. (1:11)

Jerry tells Sandra he's "never seen LA straight before." (1:12)

Talk show host explains about Jerry: "He had a $6,000 a month heroin and cocaine habit... out of the depths of his habit."
Jerry: "I'd come bouncing in with my heroin and syringes."
"That's what you do when you're a junkie. Your number one job is to shoot junk."
"Heroin abuser" Damian admits to "the damage with heroin."
Jerry alludes to "the worst 3AM narcotic hell."
Talk show host introduces "Jerry Stahl, junkie." (1:20)