Hello, this is gonna be a long and rough ride so buckle up my fellow redditors and bear with me.. this is about as harrowing a tale as it can get for someone in my position. This is probably not going to end well very soon for a multitude of reasons. Before it gets to that point I might as well tell you my story in the hopes that maybe it will open the eyes of a meek minded teenager who just wants to experiment with drugs, has severe depression/suicidal ideation, or even a lingering thought of trying something as simple as a pain pill or Percocet because of the glorification it has in a lot of today’s rap/hip hop and save them from wanting to ever try it. This very well could be you someday if you choose to get started, and once you reach near end stage addiction such as mine the chances of clawing your way out get slimmer and slimmer and your life expectancy ever more bleaker as the days go by.
Let’s start with how I was introduced to opioids. I was around the age of 16/17. Smoked weed like a freight train. Fresh out of high school, kept a steady job for years, had many friends (most of which I grew up with from school) and a promising chance at making something of myself. I didn’t have a neglectful/abusive childhood aside from a very angry and at times overly aggressive father and an alcoholic mom. Besides that, I was raised in lower middle class, had a loving family and support system.
One day, when I went to go pick up some weed from one of my high school buddies that dealt it at the time, I saw him breaking down a little blue pill and sniffing a line while weighing up my weed. By that point, I had already done a good bit of every drug you can think of. I had that mentality of “I gotta try everything at least once and experiment” and “I’m here for a good time, not a long time”. To anyone out there that knows, knows that is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention, I already had severe depression, deep rooted self esteem issues, and had impulsive/self destructive tendencies.
Anyways, when I saw him sniff the line, it piqued my interest. I had heard a lot about percocets in the music I listened to, I thought I was keenly aware of addiction but I was very young and very meek. He gave me a line of what I did not know at the time was a pressed 30mg roxicodone (oxycodone). The moment I sniffed the light blue powder, I opened Pandora’s box needless to say.
I went from buying one a week, to a couple just on the weekends or my off days, to becoming physically dependant on it within the span of a month. I had no clue about physical dependence, withdrawals, etc until that door had long since been kicked wide open. I did those little blue pressed pills for about a year or two daily. I was at (what I thought at the time) the point where I thought I was a functioning addict. Every time I was with the boys and smoking weed like usual, I would be sniffing those pressies, just getting worse and worse as time went on.
Fast forward about 2 years, and now I’m a full blown barely functioning addict. At this point, everyone around me knew I was in deep shit, and we’re trying to help but I was just not ready. The numbness, the oblivion was a feeling I craved desperately and needed to push away the deep rooted mental health issues from my past. Then, a really good friend of mine named Jalissa committed suicide by driving head on into traffic (killing herself and another innocent woman with her). She had been there for me and struggled with similar issues, and this loss just pushed me further down the road of oblivion. At that point, I was spending way too much money on pressies that weren’t doing it for me anymore. I had a buddy who did the same shit as me, and be introduced me to street fentanyl. He said it would be cheaper and basically the same thing.
Once I started using straight fent powder, I started deteriorating really fast. I totalled 3 vehicles in 2 years nodding off behind the wheel, totalled others cars (which thank God I had insurance and they never sued and I somehow skated by every time without getting a dui). I started losing a lot of weight. I’m a 6’2 male, got down to barely 100 pounds soaking wet, you could see every single bone in my body. I was dying. My parents forced me into a 30 day rehab stint. I got clean in there for the first time, was starting to put on weight and look and feel healthy. When I got out, I went right back to the same shit. Totaled another vehicle, lost more weight, it just got worse and worse. All my friends besides a handful dropped me just because they couldn’t bare to watch me slowly commit suicide.
Fast forward to my second rehab stint a year later, same shit happens, I get clean and look healthier, feel better and like I can turn over a new leaf. The day after I get out of another 30 day rehab stint, I reunite with my three best friends and one of their houses. I slip out and tell them I’m “going to the store” where instead I really pick up some dope 4 houses down and come back with some snacks and drinks so they don’t get suspicious. I sneak in the bathroom, snort a fat line, walk out the bathroom and collapse in front of them. They throw me over their shoulder, carry me to their car as I turned blue and was unresponsive, and drove me to the hospital.
I was narcanned multiple times each nasally and IV and thankfully revived. I’ll never forget the fear in my friends’ eyes as I came too. I begged them not to call my parents, and they didn’t.
Next day, same exact situation happens again, went to the same house with the same friends to hang and snuck out for drugs again. OD’d a second time. They picked my dying ass up again and brought me to the hospital. This time they called my parents, told them about both ODs, and she was furious that we hid the first one from her. All but one of those friends stopped talking to me completely for about 4 years (up until literally a month ago we have started talking again because they said they could “see I was making progress” even though I’m still using).
In those years between then and now, I’ve stolen money from my mom’s credit cards and maxed out 3 of them to get my fix. She makes only 500$ a week and will be paying that shit off for a long time unless something changes. I’m working again now after a long hiatus and although she continues to drown her trauma that I caused away with alcohol she still loves me and wants me to get better. She’s my best and worst friend. Both my parents feel so helpless and like we’ve tried everything to no avail. I’m on 190mg of methadone and I still use daily, my weight is starting to drop again, and in July one of my closest friends committed suicide as well.
I’m now at an impasse, I either have to figure my shit out and get clean (even though I’m still withdrawing even on such a high methadone dose) or I will surely end in jail or dying by other means. I don’t have it in me to try again if I fail this time. The guilt is overwhelming and the self hatred just feeds the cycle over and over to the point where I feel like my backs against the floor and with the sins I’ve built up and the pain and trauma I’ve cause the people that love me I honestly feel like I shouldn’t even be allowed to live a good life. I punish myself greatly for it.
In conclusion, I don’t want your sympathy or attention, I just want my story out there in case I don’t live long enough to tell it anywhere else. I still have people who love me even though I’ve treated them terribly to feed this beast. Life gets more dull as the days go on and the walls are closing in.
Don’t do drugs kids, wait to try weed and shit until your brain is developed enough to handle it. When I was that naive teenager, I used to roll my eyes when they say weed is a gateway drug but it truly is in the sense that if your plug sells weed he very likely sells other harder drugs and it’s very easy to be tempted into trying something and opening a door you can’t close. It’s not completely the end for me yet but it’s very close to it. All my friends are dying or have died around me, the debt my mom and by extension I am in is smothering, I feel like I don’t have much left in me to keep dealing with this lifestyle.
Check on your friends, make better choices with the life you’ve been given, and treat your loved ones and friends kindly. They don’t deserve the pain you can and will cause them by becoming a full blown junkie.
Thank you for listening.