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My addiction story starts at the age of 12, not as early as some but certainly not late, and I’m 36 now. The first drugs I ever took were Percocets 5 and I snorted them. I’m not even sure I got high now that I think about it. I didn’t do another drug until I was 14 and it was just marijuana after that. I didn’t do anything else really until I was 16 and I had a kidney stone the size of a walnut and I had to undergo several surgeries to break it up. The doctor gave me a script of 30 percocet 5s. I went through those in a week, every week for a month and a half. That accelerated my drug addiction and my hustling as well. I think I got more addicted to the hustling aspect of it and being the guy that everyone who needed something would get in contact with to get something. If i didn’t have it on hand, i could find it for you.
My addiction story starts at the age of 12, not as early as some but certainly not late, and I’m 36 now. The first drugs I ever took were Percocets 5 and I snorted them. I’m not even sure I got high now that I think about it. I didn’t do another drug until I was 14 and it was just marijuana after that. I didn’t do anything else really until I was 16 and I had a kidney stone the size of a walnut and I had to undergo several surgeries to break it up. The doctor gave me a script of 30 percocet 5s. I went through those in a week, every week for a month and a half. That accelerated my drug addiction and my hustling as well. I think I got more addicted to the hustling aspect of it and being the guy that everyone who needed something would get in contact with to get something. If i didn’t have it on hand, i could find it for you.
I lived in a rural area and my high school only had maybe 500 kids total. So everyone knew everyone and there was anything you can imagine at that high school. So I breached out and my tastes for drugs increased. That’s where I got a taste for benzos, between klonopin and xanax it was what helped me get through. I did have extreme anxiety and I ended up getting prescribed them at the age of 18 and I took them as prescribed because my mother would take them and give me 2 a day to take.
All through my 20s I would just consume every drug that was available except meth. It’s a really hazy time in my life. I ended up getting engaged but I was high when I proposed. That’s just how it was for me, every day I would have to be high on something and I wasn’t picky. My favorite was still marijuana but surprisingly it was one of the harder things to come by. I could get pills at any time, day or night but I had a hard time getting marijuana.
I started shooting up at 26 or 27 and oxies were my new best friend. I’m not even sure how i had the money to keep myself in oxy as much as i did. I did at least 40 mg a day or else i wouldn’t function and adding in benzos, I’m surprised I didn’t overdose. I came close. I would take xanax and oxy at the same time almost daily. if i didn’t i didn’t feel like a person.
When I lived alone I just let anyone stay with me and come party at any time, it was a constant party. Around this time is when I would experiment and try meth out and try making it as well. Some people that were staying with me would make meth to sell to get money for opiates and I joined in on that. They stayed and taught me how to make shake n bake meth which is some backwoods technique to make it. I made it a couple but I stopped because there was too much risk involved.
At 28 I couldn’t keep myself together without drugs. but they had to stop making oxies so readily available so I had to change my drug of choice to Opana. I ended up selling them and doing them until I got to the point where I did more than I sold and I was in the hole. I was lucky that I had one person in my life that wouldn’t give up on me and that was my mom. I shot up so much that I had scars and a couple abscesses where I missed the vein. She was so worried for me. She even got a mental hygiene warrant put out against me. I wasn’t mad surprisingly and I never held it against her. They took me to jail and held me for the rest of the day until it was time to meet a mediator. I promised I’d get clean and stop shooting up. I tried but I ultimately enjoyed the high too much, it felt like I was a cloud when I shot up Opana.
One random day after my childhood best friend came around and I shot up in front of him and he was worried about me. This was when I realized I really had a problem. I decided on a day I didn’t have anything that I was going to quit. He told me I could come to his house a state away and stay for a couple weeks to help me get myself clean. I called my mom and I told her I wanted to get clean and I wanted to go to the childhood friend’s house to do so. I stayed at his house getting myself off of opiates. I won’t lie, I was still prescribed xanax and that helped with withdrawals and so did marijuana. After that I cut off contact with everyone that I was involved with at that time and moved another state away to my aunt and uncles. It’s where I only used marijuana and xanax at the time. I was clean from opiates for the first time in over 10 years and I was clean from meth.
I moved back to my mom’s place after a year of living there. where I started going to a psychologist who found some undiagnosed conditions including bipolar. I only had contact with 2 or 3 of my friends from there still and they didn’t use opiates. It was difficult living back in the rural area. It was so boring but I kept on being opiate free and would just take my xanax as prescribed for several more years. It was calm before the storm.
a couple years ago, my mother died and then my step dad kicked me out of the house on the same day. I never really had a chance to grieve properly because for the first time in my life, I was homeless. so i fell back into old habits. hustling and using drugs to escape reality and seem happy. I wasn’t happy as I found out time and time again. I became a dumpster for drugs. anything people had i’d want from heroin back to meth. It was the easiest way I found that people would let me stay with them if I gave them free drugs. I contacted my psychologist which I was going to for 8 or so years and I still keep in touch with. She ended up getting me a hotel room in a different city. It was there that I finally got to have a second and find a place to live. I moved in with someone I knew through mutual friends. He said he was clean and I was prepared to get myself . He wasn’t, and me and him would use meth together almost every day. Of course I never twisted his arm to use it and most of the time I told him it was a bad idea. He still ended up getting some every day almost. He would shoot up and I would only snort it. Then his girlfriend found out that he was using again and told his parents. His parents didn’t know I was living with him at the time and they kicked me out and actually flushed the xanax I had and I was homeless again.
It didn’t last as long this time. I told my cousin several states away what happened and he sent me money to get a bus ticket back to my aunt and uncles and my cousin’s house again. I did and the next day I was headed there. I had been using meth every day I was homeless and with my last roommate. My aunt and uncle had rules that I had to follow because my cousin had a mental breakdown episode and at the time I was just happy to have a home again so I followed them. It was about 6 months of being completely clean and then my best friend had a wedding so I came back and ended up stockpiling some xanax, weed and a little meth. it was enough to last me for a month or so and I was back to being completely clean again.
This lasted for another year and a half and I got a plan to move in with my friend that just got out of the military. I no longer had a prescription to xanax either. He shared with me that he enjoyed meth. I didn’t know what to think but I also have no willpower with anything really. So I joined him and smoked meth with him. He didn’t shoot up but one of his friends did and ended up moving in with us. I’m not sure what it was or anything but I ended up shooting up again. Not with him either, it was just me, by myself. I had fully relapsed and I continued doing that out of sight from everyone. I ended up hiding the fact I shot up again and I normally do. I don’t leave scars anymore and i know to eat enough so that i don’t look sickly unlike last time. His friend got arrested so he doesn’t live here anymore. I realized I needed to quit shooting up and I’m still trying to quit that. The other drugs. . . not so much. I realize it’s a problem that I have but I kind of have one foot out of the door about life in general now. I’m not actively looking to die but I wouldn’t mind if I did. I also don’t have my bipolar medication and nothing else helps.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully get over my drug addiction. I certainly won’t certainly be in the same place I am. The only thing that really helped me was moving away from the area and away from people I knew. I think I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to drugs and addiction because I notice when I start to spiral out of control I just embrace the free fall.
Recently, I’ve decided to quit for good and not touch anything. I’ve been completely clean since Christmas. December 25th 2021. Almost 50 days as I write this. It hasn’t been long but it’s a start. I’m still in the same living situation and i’m not sure how long i’ll last. I found just keeping to myself and distancing myself from everything is helping but it’s still a struggle every day. I just finally decided to myself that enough is enough, nothing really helped me get here other than the disappointment in myself that i feel every day for letting it get this bad.
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