I Survived Addiction (Part 1)

Addiction... mental illness... the two go hand and hand. I have struggled with mental illness my entire life. Anxiety, PTSD, depression, I've struggled with them all. It has never been easy but for most of my life, I've managed to maintain a happy life in spite of my mental illnesses. That was until something happened in my life and I completely lost sight of who I was. Life hits hard sometimes... and on this particular occasion, it hit me harder than it ever had before. In the immediate aftermath, I was under the false impression that I was at my lowest point. I didn't think my situation could possibly get any worse. The problem is that I was mistaken and as time went on, my "lowest point" continued to get even lower. Every time I thought I was at rock bottom, I quickly discovered that there was another level below me. Throughout all of this, my anxiety, PTSD, and depression became too much for me to bear. I didn't know who I was anymore, all I knew is that I was broken and I wasn't sure what I could possibly do to fix things. So I gave up... and made the worst decision I had ever made in my entire life. The decision to begin using drugs to suppress the intensity of my mental illness.

First Steps Down The Road To Hell

At first, all I did was take pills, oxycontin, Percocet. If you would've told me that the choices I was making would lead down the path I ended up on, I probably would've gotten offended and punched you in the mouth. My wife had just left me and to make matters worse she was pregnant with another man's child shortly after; we hadn't even filed for divorce yet... So, as far as I was concerned, if I wanted to take a couple of ten milligram Percocet to cope with my depression, I was entitled to do just that. There was no way I would allow my habit to get any worse than it was, right? Wrong! I quickly went from taking a couple of pills every now and then to calling my dealer every single day to bring me 4 to 6, sometimes even 10 pills. He really loved me, why wouldn't he? I made him a fuck ton of money. The pills were my escape from reality, when I was high I was fine, my anxiety and depression were locked away. Although, whenever I was sober, they would come rushing back with a vengeance. There were times where I would be sober and I would randomly start sobbing uncontrollably out of the blue. The pain of my wife taking our daughter and leaving me was so intense that I would just cry.

I was going through an extremely hard time and because of that, I had convinced myself that I was a victim. This mentality was my way of justifying my use of opiates and other drugs. The days of me just being a pothead were behind me. I was becoming the worse kind of drug addict there is... one who believed he had a reason to be. Eventually, I had taken opiates so often that I built up a tolerance for them. They were no longer suppressing my emotions as effectively as they once had. I needed something stronger, something that would keep the sadness at bay. I would soon find exactly what I was looking for, Roxies or as we called them Blues...

Blue Devil

There was something about the taste of smoking an M-block Blue that made me fall in love. Sure, the high was strong enough to replace the 10mg Percs I started with but it was the taste of them that really fueled my addiction. Unlike Percs, I knew that smoking Roxies was bad. I had no doubt that my closest friends would be upset if they found out about my new habit. At least, so I thought. It turned out that two of the guys from my group, Manny and John, had been indulging in the same habit as I was. At the time, I was relieved to find out because now a secret I had kept to myself became one that the three of us shared. At the time, I thought that this had made us closer but looking back now, I realize that it was actually leading to the end of our brotherhood.

We used to wake up every day on the same mission; we really believed that between the three of us, we would always find a way to obtain our favorite drug. Again, we were wrong and it didn't take long for my "brothers" to be replaced by two guys who would lie and steal from me so that they could fulfill their greed and support their habit. I'm going, to be honest, very rarely had I ever allowed my addiction to opiates to make me betray someone I cared about. Don't get me wrong, I've definitely done things that I wish I could take back but I'd only need one hand to count how many times. However, these two guys that had been my friends since we were kids, had no problem taking advantage of every opportunity they got to fuck me over. The worst part about it all is that, in spite of this, I continued to hang out with them every day. In my mind, getting high with two really shitty friends was better than getting high alone.

The Repercussions Begin

Aside from my two fellow drug addicts, I tried as hard as I could to keep my habit a secret. There were 5 other people in our group and the last thing I wanted was for them to find out. Unfortunately, the more Blues I smoked, the worse my addiction got. As that happened, I began to slip more and more until it became obvious to everyone what was going on; the fact that I lived with two of them didn't help any (I lived with Ryan and Tubby, not Manny and John). The cat was out of the bag and you better believe my group of friends didn't hesitate to let me know how they felt about the situation. I'll never forget what Dalton, one of my two best friends, said to me when he found out.

"Nothing good comes from those pills, take it from a guy who's been through it. Look your grown and I know you've been through too much this past year but Blues are not the answer. I really wish you'd stop but I'm not going to give you a lecture, if you are going to keep doing what you're doing then just be careful please, you're playing a dangerous game."

I remember thinking that there wasn't anything to worry about, that I was in complete control. Like so many times afterward, I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.

Initially, things were alright, even though my secret was finally out, life seemed okay. Aside from a few clever jokes, my friends didn't give me too much shit about it. Also, due to our "business operation", I had plenty of money to support my habit, at least I did at first. I was unaware of the fact that there was no limit to how bad my addiction would get. I got to the point where I was spending a few hundred on Blues every single day. This was a problem...

While Ryan may have been my other best friend, we both knew that went out the window when it came to business. I went from being his best runner to coming back short on every payment. The first few times he shrugged it off but eventually the amount of money I owed him became too large for him to let me off the hook. He gave me several chances to make it right but my addiction always took priority over my debt to him and so he finally made the decision to stop working with me all together. I was far from reasonable back then and wasn't happy about his decision at all. This made living together even more difficult than ever. I began driving for Postmates again in order to support my habit, so I was rarely ever home. When I was home I was high on Blues and my decade-long friends began to resent me more and more. On top of everything else, not having the same amount of financial freedom introduced a brand new problem. A problem I had never had to deal with before... dope sickness.

Going through opiate withdrawals is one of the worst things I've ever had to endure. You literally feel uncomfortable in your own skin, as if every atom in your body is desperately trying to tear apart. Every time I was forced to deal with being dope sick, I'd stay in bed for days, only getting up to get something to drink or take a shower. I would get cold and seek warmth under my blankets, then seconds after that I'd begin sweating like crazy but when I took the covers off, the air would hit that sweat and make me even colder than I was to begin with. Another symptom of being dope sick is restlessness, especially restless legs. No matter how you lay down, you're always uncomfortable and since you feel too shitty to get up and walk around, it's hard not to feel helpless. Being dope sick is partially to blame for me having to move out of the house Ryan, Tubby, and I, all lived in. They got tired of having to put up with me constantly being in that pathetic state. At first, Ryan tried to take advantage of the situation and help me quit but every time he would put his time and effort into helping me, I'd throw it all away by smoking another Blue. The tiny pills had officially made my life ten times worse than it already was... Not only did I lose my family but feeling sorry for myself and getting high took from having a place to live and making good money to being broke and living in my car. You would think that I'd learn from this right..? Wrong.

Goodbye Blue's, Hello Boy

Given the circumstances I was in, Blues became way too expensive for me to support my habit. Not only that, when I left my house and stopped living with Ryan, I ended up back with my junky brotherhood, back with John and Manny. They were in the same predicament as me and couldn't afford Blues anymore either. However, they had already found a solution, China White... Basically a form of heroin, China got us twice as high as a Roxy and was only a quarter of the cost. It was the answer to our prayers and also the gateway to our addiction to heroin. I was starting to run out of options in Miami and made the decision to move in with my mom up north. Deep down I know that I was really looking for a way out of the horrible life I was living. I thought moving back to Brevard was the only way I could better my life and leave my addiction behind. Turns out running isn't how you deal with addiction. No matter how far away you get, it always manages to find you.