How I Beat Heroin Addiction, Became A World Traveler, And Started My Own Business

I think a lot about October 2014.

A little over four and a half years ago, I was sitting in a Jackson, Mississippi hospital bed with tubes all over my body.

I woke up with my hands tied to a hospital bed to suppress my sporadic but unconscious furious hitting and arguing. I don’t remember waking up and trying to climb out of bed, I don’t remember shoving my nurse, I don’t even remember arriving at the hospital. But I do remember injecting opiates in my arm a night or two before.

I overdosed and nearly died.

Now, I was laying in front of my family with my god-awful secrets laid out in front of me as clear as water. I kept the lie of drug addiction hidden away like a magic trick that only revealed itself when I was alone or to a chosen few. At that moment, everything was transparent. I messed up, and my future seemed bleak.

At least it seemed so at the time.

October 2014 marked the end of my drug addiction and the beginning of the greatest time of my life. Without getting into gruesome detail, my addiction lasted a few years, and at its peak had me begging for coins on the street and unable to hold a job. I stayed in the hospital for nearly two weeks to monitor the damage I did to my…