Dawn
The roaring of the crowd was the last thing on my mind as we broke from our pre game talk and prepared to exit the locker room. This was my perfect opportunity as I grabbed my Ziploc bag out of my backpack and ran into a stall. I turned the baggie upside down and 3 opal white pills fell into my sweaty palm and I quickly discarded the baggie down the toilet. I set the trio on a toilet paper dispenser and crushed them up to a beautifully straight line. I smiled as my heart pounded and took them all in one fell swoop.
Tip off approached and I felt the warm giddiness envelop my body and the buzz which was like no other took over. A few thousand people were at that game, and I’m guessing I was the only one that wasn’t present.
I had a double-double and we lost the district championship game at the buzzer, but the game was the last thing on my mind.
Throwing up in the same bathroom I consumed the pills in after the game from pure exhaustion, the only thing I was upset about was that my high was over and I didn’t have any left.
It all started innocently enough, as most things in life do. I was rummaging through my dad’s dresser to look for something unimportant and my hand hit a bottle. Flipping it over to read the label, the title read “Vicodin”. As if I had touched a hot stove, my hand flew off the bottle and I quickly closed the drawer and exited the room as quickly as I had entered it.
Pain killers? Spoken aloud, the phrase was near blasphemy to my conservative, Christian household.
I made my way back to that dresser a few more times and looked at the bottles like forbidden fruit, only to place them back in the same spot and walk away with more questions on my mind then answers.
It all changed when I told a good friend of mine and we convinced each other to take them together.
I grabbed some when my dad wasn’t looking and the rest is history.
A feeling that is unmatched by anything this world has to offer followed soon after consumption. Comfortable warmth eases itself through your body, as a sensation only synonymous with pure jubilation takes over every ounce of your being.
My friend and I laughed hysterically at this newly found secret and promised this would be a one-time thing. After all, we were only 16 and this was something we both subconsciously knew was more powerful than we could handle.
By the end of the year we had gone through all of the bottles in my dad’s dresser.
All was well until my friend had stolen a few Oxycodone from his mom and we decided we’d crush it up and snort it.
This changed everything. From casually popping them, to needing it, I had now entered into the realm of what an addiction looked like.
Truth was nonexistent when I was high, or looking to get more. Rationale was absent. I’d steal money from my mom’s purse, I’d ask for money to eat, and go a day without food in order to get a 10 milligram Percocet just to get the buzz back, even if it was just for a few hours. We did things I think only God can forgive us for.
Every single football practice, every game, every school day I needed them more and more. One was never enough.
All of this was kept up while trying to maintain a normal life: hanging out with friends, going to classes, playing sports, all while feeding the addiction that never gave anything back.
I broke my shoulder during a football game and had reached a low I had never experienced.
With broken bones comes a wave of pain killers and the next few months were an absolute blur.
Waking up and snorting 3, 4, 5 at a time before class was a daily routine and something that keeps me awake to this day simply out of shame.
The next few months went by and I did things that no 18 year old should ever have to do in his life in order to keep the charade going.
Throwing up some days because I didn’t have any to take, skipping class to lay in my car because I felt so sick I couldn’t move without getting nauseous all began to turn me into something I never thought.
In our lives we always look at a person, or a situation and say “that will NEVER be me” only to discover that maybe you had become a version of yourself that you had never wanted, or expected.
The funny thing about life is, nothing ever seems to go to plan.
Graduation came and I discovered my friend I had been doing this with was addicted to heroin.
I never touched another painkiller after that.
The withdrawal sickness came and went, but the gut wrenching fact of seeing a friend turn to a drug we had never imagined doing was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with in my short lifetime.
He is now recently clean and has a beautiful child and girlfriend. The joy I feel to see him turn his life around is amazing, and something I cling on to when I feel hopeless at times.
I’ve witnessed indescribable things that I pray no one else has to see, and even lost a friend to an overdose that shocked an entire community. I lost friends, trust of my parents, and threw away opportunities that many people would have been grateful to have.
Maybe I’m writing this out of selfishness by trying to get something off my chest, maybe I’m writing it as a warning. But most importantly, I’m writing this as a sign of hope. As I close in on a college degree, I never imagined myself in this position just a few years ago and wouldn’t be here without help from a lot of people who helped me save a sinking ship.
There is always hope you can turn things around. Hope for a better life, hope for happiness, or even hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
Changing your life can be a terrifying prospect, but one that is almost always necessary.
