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Life of an Addict (Pt. 4)

How it All Began

By Fellow KneePublished 5 years ago 5 min read
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What Was Once My Only Bad Habit 

I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let me go back to where and when, I decided to take the road to ruin. I was a good child brought up by two wonderful parents. I have a sister who is seven years my senior that I loved to terrorize when I was young. But, we were very close throughout our lives. I made good grades in school and was even put into an honors class in the fifth grade because I tested extremely high in the IQ test I was given at that time. I'm sure I was the last of my peers, anyone would have thought would end up going through the things I have.

I had an aunt that I was extremely close to. She was my mother's sister and like a second mother to me. She and her family were pretty well off financially. So, she made sure I had anything my own parents where unable to provide for me, plus more. I loved her so much and not just because she bought me things. I was raised to know that life wasn't about material things but, about love and family. And even as a young child I was very respectful to my elders and never really in trouble like some of my friends. When I was about 12-years-old, I started to notice that my aunt was not well. She was in bad health for a few years before that but that is when I remember noticing. It wasn't until almost a year later that my mom explained to me that she was given a blood transfusion about 10 years earlier, during a surgery, and contracted the HIV virus. That was pre 1983, before blood was checked for the virus because at that time they were still very uneducated about it. I remember my aunt taking me and my parents to Daytona Beach, Florida for vacation. I know now it was because she wanted to do something with us before she passed. Because it was only months after that trip that she was taken off this Earth to be with the Lord in Heaven.

I was crushed. I had never lost a family member. More less, one that I was so close to. Looking back on it, now I know that was the turning point in my life that made me take the path that I ended up taking. Within a year I was drinking, smoking cigarettes and experimenting with marijuana. I remember actually having pot in my pocket as I walked the halls of my middle school. Yes, I said middle school. I still kept my grades up and gave off the image of the good kid that I had always been before that time in my life.

Now I'm not going to go through every school year telling you stories about drinking and smoking weed. But, I will say that by the time I was in the 11th grade, I had already done coke, crack, LSD, shrooms and probably taken every prescription pill that would get you high. I'm not going to blame all of that on my aunt passing away, I just always wonder if she would have been in my life in those early teenage years, would I have done all those things at such a young age. Because she always knew how to get my mind on the right path. And for me to have tried all those things just proves that my mind was far from on the right path.

Even though I was into all the things I should not have been into as a teenager, I still managed to graduate high school in 1997, with a 3.0 GPA. Not too bad for someone who liked to party the way I did. But, I kept it in my mind that, no matter what, I would never drop out of school and I would graduate and maintain my good grades, even if I didn't plan to continue my education by going to college. I did however, take a couple night classes through college, to rebuild computers. At the time, that was a good paying job, to be A+ certified. Right before I graduated high school, I met a girl and we both fell head over heels for each other. So much so that we moved in with each other within the first six months and were married about three years later. I still don't understand how it all unfolded the way it did. Because it was with her that I tried prescription pain pills and later moved on to heroin becoming an opiate addict. We were on the drugs and off the drugs, cocaine included. We spent more time on than off. Like everything else, it was just experimental and I figured we could stop any time we wanted to. It wasn't until one night I was at my band practice and we were recording a demo. I was supposed to lay down a bass track, but was feeling terrible. I felt like I had the worst flu I had ever had and kept complaining of stomach pains. "Drink a beer and quit whining. You gotta lay down this bass track," my band mates kept saying. That's when a drug buddy of ours walked in and sat down beside me. He heard what was being said and looked at me and whispered, "You been sniffing those OC's (oxycontin) quite a bit lately, huh?" "Yeah almost every day for the past couple of months," I said. "Your goin' through withdrawal bro," he said assuringly. "What, withdrawal? Yeah right." I said back to him,"I've been on every drug there is and quit like it was nothing. I'm not going through no damn withdrawal!" My buddy reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue 80mg oxycontin, washed the coating off of it and crushed it up on the table. He put half in one line and the other half in another. He rolls up a $10 bill and sniffed one of the lines up his nose. "Do the other one," he said as he handed me the bill. I leaned over and snorted the other line and handed him his bill back. "Now watch you will be better in a few minutes," he said. That's when it hit me. As that awful flu-ish feeling I had, seemed to just leave my body and that warm wonderful rush of dopamine washed through my brain and all my pains and worries began to disappear, I thought, "Oh shit, you done got yourself into something real bad this time!"

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About the Creator

Fellow Knee

Paraplegic artist that has been through more than 20 men go through in a lifetime. I want to share my life stories with you to let you "live my life" through my stories

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