Alex’s days are completely organized around doing drugs or getting the money to buy them through hustling, running errands for dealers, or committing petty crimes (most often muggings of potential johns). He shuffles from one dingy, depressing apartment to the next, sometimes on his own, sometimes in the company of fellow addicts from whom he hopes to cop a fix — though he frequently ends up getting ripped off himself. These shooting-up sessions usually involve sex as part of the package, but the sex itself seems less a matter of pleasure than a brief coming up for air before plunging back into the depths of the fix. In the hermetically sealed existence that Alex and his associates have made for themselves, the outside world is alien terrain: when Alex is forced to leave an apartment and walk down the street, he might as well be walking on the moon.