DOSE:	repeated		Heroin	(daily)
	repeated		Cocaine	(daily)
	repeated		Alcohol	(liquid)
	repeated		Cannabis	(daily)
	repeated		DXM	(liquid)

I am six months clean as of today. I am eightteen years old, and I am still in treatment for my addiction to drugs. My story is long and complex, but genuine. I am taking some time to reflect on what I've done to my family, my friends, and myself for the past 5 years.

I started using somewhere between the ages of 12 and 13. As usual that's the age where adolescents start to expose themselves to the wonders of alcohol and drugs. I had no previous expierence with either of the two accept for a sip of beer on new years my dad gave me when I was 6. I vividly remember a party my friends and I were having. We invited some girls over, and we got a case of beer and some liquor. I took a few sips of liquor with some soda, and had about 4 beers. I got drunk for the first time that night.

Normally being a socially awkward and very introverted person, the alcohol I consumed made me feel good. It made me feel more comfortable with myself, and therefore more comfortable in a social setting. I was talking to girls, smoking cigarettes, ect. Just being one of the guys, it felt good. I continued to drink at various parties all the way through 7/8th grade. Things started to change at this point, I started changing the way I dressed and shifted away from my friends, and tword the dirtbag type of people. Mainly because I felt comfortable and less pressured around these seemingly mellow ladies and fellows. They introduced me to Marijuana.

Me and 2 of these kids walked up to a cemetary and smoked a few bowls. I didn't get high, but I continued to smoke with them reguardless, just to feel comfortable around them and for them to like me. After several nights of this, I did get high and I laughed untill Tears came out of my eyes. I loved it, I loved the feeling of not caring, just looking at even the most serious of situations and just cracking up. All my worries were pretty much phased out when I was high, and I liked this.

By 9th grade I started smoking weed on a regular basis. Throwing down on a bag after school, buying my own pot, getting my own bowl, papers, dutch, bong, whatever. I started to smoke everyday, to the point where I was pretty much in a 24/7 stoned state. More importantly I started smoking on my own, and prefered it that way. Many a night I would just sit in my room, high, watching tv, and be perfectly content with the world. My parents started to worry, grades were dropping, money was missing, but they never found enough evidence that an excuse coulden't handle. Besides, I had the upper hand, what parent wants to think there kid is smoking pot?

The cicle rolled on into summer, when drugs were very abundant in my town. I had a part time job, and allot of friends. Parties every weekend ect. I started getting offered different substances, things I'd never heard of. I found erowid.org, and did some research on drugs.I discovered and had my first taste of Painkillers. Vicodin's, Oxycontins's, whatever my friends could get from there parents medicine cabinets.

By tenth grade, I was in a band with some kids I met from another town. They were pretty down and out people, but being the dumb ass I was I thought they were the shit. They offered me some Meth which I tried and indulged into slightly, but I never did enough to get really hooked. Eventually I tasted LSD, and Mushrooms through the same group of people. There was a shortage of pot in our town, so me doing my research came across DXM which I took pretty much every week from the time I tried it, onward. Drugs pretty much became my life at that point. In every social setting I presented myself to be a drug addict, to look cool, but also, because deep down, I started to feel like one.

Once the summer came about again, I had ditched my girlfriend and met up with a kid who was into doing coke. I told him I could get him some, not really being serious, and next thing I know he's at my house telling me to round up 30$ (coke fiends really are that desperate). I got some money and we threwdown on a gram we got from some of those friends of mine. He cut up the lines in a bathroom of Dunkin' Dounuts, and sniffed them infront of me. He offered me a line and at first I hesistated. But peer pressure took control, as did my growing addiction and I snorted a big fat line. I scurried out of there saying to myself 'It's over, it's done with, nothing happened'. When the effects began to take hold.

I was feeling like a fucking GOD. I was walking around and I was everybodys best fucking friend. I was highfiving and hugging people I never even met. Talking up a fucking storm, I loved it, I was the shit now, I was the guy everybody loved. From then on coke become priority #1. I spent all of my job money on coke, All of my friends money on coke, stole, robbed, lied, pawned my possesions, whatever I could to get more coke. It was the the point that 3 months down the line I didn't feel shit from coke, So I got the bright idea to start smoking rock.

I cooked it up using an online tutorial, literally in my kitchen. I smoked out of a stem one of my friends gave me to hold onto. I was fucking flying. I thought coke was the epitome of pleasure, but I was oh so wrong. Rock is totally different from coke, yet similar. The feeling is so much better, but just when your getting a full fledged taste, it's gone and you need more. Around this time I had a girlfriend who did coke with me, and we were on a 500$ a week habbit. We'd buy it, part ways, I'd smoke, she'd sniff. My addiction was out of control, It was either rock, pot, DXM, pills, or any other interesting things that were around town that week.

Eventually the new thing became Heroin. People started going into the city and scoring a bundle or 2 and coming back and selling it to us kiddies. A friend of mine we can call E was pretty much a full fledged junkie at this point. I gave him some money and he got me a bag of dope. I sniffed it and wow.

I was used to doing coke, so when i saw what a bag amounted to in a line I thought it would be nothing. Man was I wrong. I was fucked up beyond all belief. More importantly I totally didn't care. I could lose everyone I loved and just shrug it off. That feeling is just to strong, more powerfull that any emotion I have ever felt. I nodded off a dozen times that night, and eventually found a friends place to crash at and puked up a storm in his garbage pail, and passed out. I continued to give E my money hoping for a score. He ripped me off several times (junkies really are that desperate).

The few times I got it I sniffed it, but eventually I started going right to the people who were giving it to him. I payed them my money and got my moneys worth. Bags were coming in left and right, I watched them shoot it, and became intrigued. Thought about it for a second, and tried it. Ahhhhh, that rush, that fucking chill that goes down your spine when dope enters the bloodstream and just rearanges your dopamine and serotonin. So much faster, so much stronger than snorting it. I was hooked. Dope and Rock, my two new best friends.

Eventually I was nothing anymore, I walking shell of my former self. If I didn't have my fix for that day, I was begging for money, or stealing from somebody. My friends, my real friends, finally told someone about the shit I was doing. I got called into the principles office, they searched me and, I disovered how fast the cops can get to your school when they hear the word Heroin. I was arrested on possesion of Heroin and Marijuana. This was last March(2006). I entered Rehab and turned my life around.

I got clean, I worked on allot of my issues that I was using drugs to cope with. I expressed my insecurities without being fake or hiding. I became a person again. I realise what I did to everybody who loved me was terrible, and I'm so fucking lucky that they love me enough to forgive me. I am happy now, and I have a future ahead of me. Even though I know I may live the rest of my life wanting a hit, I know that for today I don't need it.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 60705
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 23, 2010	Views: 70,646
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Alcohol (61), Cannabis (1), DXM (22), Cocaine (13), Heroin (27) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Addiction & Habituation (10), Various (28)