So by 14 I was fully struggling with a heroin addiction along with my friends. We spent every moment we could finding ways to get it and school fell to the side. We managed to get good enough grades that at this point made it seem like we were trying. This lasted a lot longer than I thought it would though during this time I also became addicted to the lifestyle. The obtaining of the drug just as bad as using the drug, but not quite as wonderful as the ritual of injecting it. Doing this anywhere and everywhere I could get away with it which was usually out in the desert or a park bathroom at this time. Occasionally a convenience store and the like. The life of getting the drug and using it was life for about two years or so with no casualties but plenty of cpr and other random ways you learn to keep someone breathing. All the while we also drank and partied. Hard. We all drank a bunch which honestly is hard to accomplish when on heroin but we managed. Some nights we would pass out for minutes or hours at a time only waking up to smoke a bowl or a cigarette, and other nights we drank and went wild sometimes throwing giant parties or bonfires in the desert. The point all along being that I didn’t want to see, think or feel things, and it worked. At the same time feeling like an invincible teenager because no one had died yet. I know it went to my head. Enough that I and a couple of my friends began pushing the limits. Trying to escape in the most efficient way.
This led to tolerance building and having to get more money. This led to the selling of drugs mostly weed at the time but something ( I can’t remember what) brought me to my first charge against the law not involving alcohol at age 16. I’m trying to remember and if I remember correctly it was possession of Marijuana just under the amount for distribution and yet the charge landed me on probation and it’s difficult being a heroin addict that gets drug tested. I landed myself in juvenile detention. Where I waited 2 and a half months to get into rehab. The withdrawals at this time were significant but nothing compared to future me. I guess I should also mention I tried a number of drugs, some excessively. The only one I can think of that I did not is Crack. Meth by far was my second choice. I often used it to try to slow down or stop heroin use. A bizarre thought process, I know.
So after two and a half months locked up I got in to a rehab my parents had found. Not much to say except I turned 17 in this rehab and spent 6 months there. The most notable of events was my first, and worst death. My best friend died of an overdose and it absolutely broke me. All the progress I had made almost instantly washed away in pain and sadness and then anger at the rehab for not letting me go to his funeral. It is then, I now realize, that I had resolved to failure. That I was not yet done. That it just added to the list the things I wanted to bury. And I tried. I failed. I tried to bury a great many things that just didn’t seem to go away. It started to become clear drugs were not the solution but I wouldn’t fully admit or realize that for a few more years…
TheLostGirl1989 