Realizing the Drugs Take Over your Life Rapidly

By Alec, from PA

I’m 16, I smoked weed for the first time at 14 and began smoking daily at 15. I was using marijuana for my clinical depression. I felt awesome and thought I was so cool because my friend and I were the biggest pot heads in school. At 16 I didn’t have very many weed dealers. The number of people who sold marijuana decreased dramatically after summer of 2012.

I began trying any drug I could get my hands on. I began doing opiates, benzos, and coke daily. If I didn’t have one, I’d have the other. I didn’t have money and got fired from my job at a pizza shop. I told my dealer that I barely had any money, he said I should just get a bag of heroin for $10. I would like to note before I started doing harder drugs than Marijuana, I was still fiending and looking on carpets for weed and stealing things.

I got kicked out of my Mom’s house 3 times. I went to my Grandparents, the only people who would take me in, everytime. I treated them like shit I liked just as much I did to my mom, the difference between my mom and my grandparents are that I actually love and care about my grandparents. After 6 months of smoking in my room and doing coke on my desk in my room, I was kicked out of their house. My mother realized the only person that would take me in was herself. So I’ve been living with her.

When I really fucked up was on a monday, that saturday I was going to pick up the bag of heroin. I was out of drugs. I went into my Mom’s room and snorted 12 expired ativans that my mom had been prescribed for her anxiety a year before. Before this I’d been to gateway outpatient, which I quit after 3 days, and a psych ward for trying to kill myself.

This time I did it to become completely numb and forget about everything. In the back of my mind I wanted to die, but I wouldn’t consider it a suicide attempt. I took the ativan monday,woke up at the same psych ward at 8pm tuesday. I can’t remember anything but apparently I went to school and I was falling and could only walk “2mph” as my friends told me. I went to chemistry and stared at the ceiling with my tongue out while everyone else was doing a lab.

Everyone dragged me to the nurses after the first period, and my mom picked me up and took me to a hospital. The only thing I can remember slightly was screaming fuck at the top of my lungs. The doctors came in and told me to be quiet because I was scaring the other patients. That night I was put on a stretcher and taken to the psych ward. I was there for two weeks while my mom was trying to get me setup for rehab as soon as I got out.

The normal stay is 5 days. I got out from the isolation, no tv, no internet, nothing but board games. I felt like I was in a new world when I walked out those doors. I lit a cigarette as I was walking out of the lobby. The next day I was taken for an evaluation at the rehab center. I lied about the drugs I did, and the situation I was going through. That even wasn’t enough to stop them from trying to send me to outpatient.

At the time I was three weeks clean so I convinced and pleaded them to let me go for partial. That means waking up at 6:00am, going straight to rehab which is a 35 minute drive, and getting picked up at 4:00pm to get driven home. I’ve been going for 6 weeks now, in two weeks I am going back to school. In all seriousness, it was the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Going to a place where all the kids and counselors are supportive. Not only have they helped me through my addiction, but they also helped me better myself in general. I feel slightly happy for once in 6 years. All the suicide attempts and embarrassing moments as a drug addict mean nothing now. I go to rehab to make me feel better. I look forward to it. I have good friends there now.

I’ve been clean for sixty days. Now someone who is sort of a friend, but I never truly liked him, is calling me a bitch, pussy, and loser for getting clean. That was this night. It made me mad, but I know I’m better than him so I responded with control and gave smart answers. I don’t even care though. I don’t judge people, but apparently he does.

He will wake up one day and realize how big of a fucking idiot he is one day when he’s out of highschool. I feel great. Sixty entire days clean in two days. I will never touch another drug and thats a promise.