Dear David,

For about a year and six months you were my everything and it’s sad to say that that wasn’t always a good thing, nor was it always out of love. At times I feel like it was out of sympathy, fear, and not knowing any better. When we met, you started out as your average, nice guy but as the months went on you became something different, maybe then at the beginning of our relationship I should have just said that this was it, that you needed help that I was unable to give you but I thought that you’d change maybe on your own, out of love for me, or with my help. That time of change never came. Your heroin addiction took over your entire life and slowly became my burden as well. I began to wrongfully think that your addiction was my fault and my problem to deal with. I will admit I enabled you by lending you money that I knew was going to the wrong things. I think back and my reasoning at the time was so ridiculous. At the time I was scared that if the money wasn’t coming from me you’d steal from your family or other places and that isn’t and wasn’t be problem if you did. I was scared that if you did do something like that that my parents would somehow find out and that I’d get in trouble.

Your addiction not only hurt me financially but also mentally. I can honestly say that I lost numerous hours of sleep over it. What should have been incredibly exciting moments of my life became mundane and horrible for me. Let’s start at the first event that should’ve been enough to realize you were not meant for me, my senior prom. You refused to dance with me, you sat there high and everyone knew it, you got mad when I danced with other people, I was the girl who sat in the bathroom crying about the horrible time she was having. Surprisingly you didn’t ruin my senior weekend, but that’s because you didn’t come for the entire thing. Now, let’s fast forward to mid July when I went on vacation and you made me give you some of my spending money because you knew I wouldn’t be home to give you anything. And then when I got home it was my 18th birthday, you didn’t have anything for me. And I know you’ll say how materialistic of me that is to say but my birthday is a major thing for me and that could’ve been one surprise since you never gave me anything in those months we were dating before that. The rest of summer managed to go off without a hitch, until I moved into my dorm, something I was incredibly excited about… until I realized that I wasn’t gaining freedom but even more of short leash from you. The first night you wouldn’t let me go out with my roommates you claimed they were “sluts” and said that you didn’t want me out drinking and partying with them, but it was my freshman year, it was my time to do what I wanted even my roommates who barely knew you said I was far too good for you. The entire fall semester I did nothing fun. You demanded that every Thursday I spend the night at your house and every Friday to Sunday you’d stay at my dorm… what kind of fun is that? We did nothing. You did drugs and I sat there and watched you in your dazed out state. Maybe that day you got arrested I should have just left you there and called it quits once and for all, I can’t help but be pissed at myself for being so stupid and thinking you’d get better. That whole semester I saw no one. I didn’t hang out with anyone from school I didn’t see my friends from town I was always with you and when I wasn’t I was given a guilt trip. Christmas vacation came, I honestly don’t remember really seeing my friends then either. I do remember buying you an expensive gift and lending you the money to buy a gift for me. I really would have been better off being completely alone.

When I went back to school for spring term I promised my roommates things would change, but you didn’t even give me a chance to. You ruined my relationship fully with my roommates to the point where I moved out of my dorm and was embarrassed to be seen by any of them. I was embarrassed not only of you but because they saw how stupid I was for staying with you. I continued to be your crutch for months after that, and I don’t know if you realize but by the time spring term ended I didn’t see myself as your girlfriend. I was going through the motions because I loved your family and I figured it would be less of a head ache to just stay with you. But the night before you went to rehab and you flipped on me and called me every nasty name in the book I couldn’t deal with it which is why as soon as you left I knew that nothing was ever happening between us again, your stepmom asked me to lie and seem like I wanted you to get better so we could be together because everyone knew that was the only thing that would keep you in treatment which is the only reason I kept any interest. I thought it would give me a chance at a regular teenage life but of course you screwed that up and got kicked out, but I was too far along in realizing that I mean more to myself, my friends, and my family to ever get back with you.

To this day you still attempt to speak to me and I’m sorry but I don’t know if that’s something I could do again because I don’t think it’s not worth people thinking I have no respect or sense of worth for myself by being associated with you. And I hope you don’t honestly think that the mean words you say to me when I ignore you have any effect on me, I know that deep down you’re just trying to feel better about yourself. You’re the one who always said I could do better than you, that is the only time I should’ve listened to what you had to say. I have moved on, I will not go back to the empty shell that you made me. I will never relive another day with someone who makes me feel worthless, like I couldn’t get any better. You robbed me not only of money but of memories and friends that I could have been making if I wasn’t so wrapped up in being worried about you or what you thought of me.

When I think back to those days I think that it would have been much easier to leave you than I thought. If something did come up where my parents found out about your addiction I think they would have been proud of me for leaving you and realizing that your choices were wrong rather than trying to hide and defend them. I would’ve had to deal with you for awhile trying to get me back but I would’ve been away at school having a good time, experiencing what I missed and what I’ll never get back. I know hate is a strong word, but I honestly hate you for that. At least I know that even missing out on the experiences of dorming and now living back at home I will have a more fulfilling life and friends than you will ever have.
With that said I wish you the best, I can say that because I’m a bigger person that you are.

Good Bye,
Kelli

Ouch, right? I can’t say she’s lying either besides a few things. The thing about me getting mad that she was dancing with other guys at the dinner dance, I truly didn’t care that she was. I told her I wasn’t going to dance so if she wanted to dance, I wouldn’t stop her. But most of it is true. I treated her like shit and I’m sorry that she didn’t get to see the real me. The version of me that is NOT plagued by drug addiction and insecurity.

I also have a letter I wrote directed to heroin. It’s basically the same thing that I posted above from my ex but it’s written by me and directed at heroin. I’ll see if I can dig that up and post it.

-legz

Now, I did something VERY horrible in order to attain this money. It involves my grandmother, and her ATM card, and $1,000 dollars. Catch my drift? Okay, so after that was done, I went to the spot and got two bricks of heroin and 200 dollars worth of cocaine. That’s 100 fucking bags of heroin, and about 4-5 grams of cocaine. All the junkies are drooling over their keyboards right now. I had about $200 or $300 dollars left after this and I spent this on a shitty little hotel room for the next three nights and got fucking wrecked. The amount of dope and coke that I was injecting directly into my bloodstream was almost inhuman, but this was how I NEEDED to go out if I wanted to get clean.

You better believe it when I say that after all this ran out, the withdrawals were absolute hell. I was extremely desperate and willing to do absolutely anything to get that feeling back. After I finished everything and had not a pinch of heroin or cocaine left, I did something else extremely drastic. Well, first I begged my mother for money for a few days but the amount she gave me just could not compare to the extreme bliss I experienced a few nights before in that hotel room. I knew I needed another good score and my grandmother (of course) cancelled her ATM card already. So what did I do now? Well, I did something involving her car, and trying to sell it to thugs for a mere $500 dollars or so. This did not happen though, and the car had less than a quarter tank of gas so I was forced to bring it back. I parked it and crept in the house through a basement window so I had some place warm to sleep and shot my last 2 bags. Something told me that this was the end. I couldn’t go on doing these things to my family, and if I kept trying to find that feeling I experienced in that hotel room, I know I would do something extremely desperate and probably wind up dead or in jail, so the next morning, I made a desperate attempt at calling everyone I knew trying to procure some more money to go cop, but after that didn’t work, I crept upstairs from the basement and showed my face. The look on my grandmother’s face was that of absolute terror. She was demanding I bring her car back, and after some refusing I gave in. I was lucky though, because without what happened next I may have never gotten clean.

She called her next door neighbor, who turned out to be a counselor at a Methadone clinic in New York, and he came over and saw the condition I was in. It was Sunday, so he and I knew there was no where I was going today. The detox centers do not accept admissions on the weekend, so I sat there pleaded with my family to just give me $20 dollars and train-fare to get what I needed to make it through until tomorrow, but my father would not give in. “I am not giving you money to get drugs,” I believe were his exact words, and I know it sounds insane, but it was really the only thing they could have done. I told my father that there was nothing else that anyone could do for me until tomorrow, but he wouldn’t give in. Eventually he kicked me out of the house, but I crept back in through the basement window before he could see me. However, once they found I was back in the house, they called the cops and the cops came and arrested me for being in possession of a hypodermic syringe. A stupid misdemeanor charge. The cops weren’t even concerned with charging me. They saw how much of a wreck I was and just wanted me to get me to a hospital. The same hospital my father was actually trying to get me to go to earlier, but I told him that they were just going to discharge me and not let me stay the night.

Well, when the ambulance dropped me off and I told them what I was there for, they gave me a quick once over and what do you think they did? They fucking discharged me just like I said. They said I was not withdrawing because I was on 2mg of Xanax. So I called my father, furious, and told him that they were kicking me out of the fucking hospital and I needed a place to stay for the night. My grandmother agreed to let me sleep there after all I put her through, and the Xanax I took earlier was enough to let me get some sleep through the night.

When I woke up the next day, I begged my grandmother to give me money for the “train” but I spent this money buying a few bags. I scraped to get by the next few days by actually getting some money from my mother, but I realized that what I was doing was useless. I was just delaying the inevitable, and I needed to go to this Methadone clinic.

On February 9th, 2009, I shot my last bag of heroin in a stall in a homeless shelter in NY, and did the unthinkable. I actually went to the Methadone clinic and got admitted into their program. I have relapsed one time since then, but other than that I have been clean from heroin and cocaine ever since. Since getting clean, I have been attempting to mend most of the relationships that went sour during my addiction, and the people that truly care about me are so happy to see me doing better that they were actually able to forgive me for some of the truly horrible things I did to them. A lot of my friends that I lost touch with during my addiction are supportive of my recovery, and even though I am not with my ex-girlfriend KB anymore and things still are not great between us, I have a new girlfriend who I absolutely LOVE and loves me for who I am, even with all my mistakes. I have a job, and an apartment, and life is absolutely great. I am still on Methadone, 100mg actually. I am working on tapering down and lowering the dose gradually so I can be completely substance free in a few short years.

I really don’t even want to think where I would be now if I never would have gotten clean, and believe it or not, if it wasn’t for my “last run,” I like to think I would still be chasing that feeling. My last run helped me see that that feeling of bliss that these drugs supply you with is extremely temporary and short-lived. You can be much happier if you find something else to replace the drugs with, otherwise you will be stuck chasing that stupid feeling that you experienced that ONE time. There’s a lot more to life than that, and I hope anyone that is currently addicted to drugs and reading this will find some kind of help in what I had to say. If not, at least I kept your mind occupied for a little while.

I called my father first and broke the news to him. Of course he told me I was shit out of luck and that I could not come home. So I called my grandmother since I could not remember my mother’s phone number, and had her call my mother to break the news to her. My mother was not too pleased as well, and she basically said the same thing, that being that I was not welcome at her house either. My grandmother didn’t know what to tell me either, but I had a feeling that if I showed up at my grandmother’s house, that she would not be able to turn me away, so that is exactly what I did. I managed to convince two conductors of two trains to get me to Central Jersey and they did just that. I showed up at my grandmother’s house at around 11pm and just as I guessed, she couldn’t turn me away. I did my last bag of heroin as soon as I got there and immediately stole 4 of her xanax to send me into a coma. She noticed the Xanax missing and immediately knew that nothing had changed with me. I was still a fucking mess and now I was in her house. So I basically stayed there for 2 weeks, using every few days until the end of the second week. By that time I was already back to stealing from her and it didn’t take her long to catch on and give me the boot (once again).

So now I was on the street, and I called my mother and asked her for help. She actually did all she could and put me in a hotel for about a week while we tried to get me into a detox. All we could manage to do was get on a 2 week waiting list for a 28 day program, but my mother was not in the position to pay for my stay at this hotel for 2 weeks. She was also supporting my habit while I was there because I manipulated her into thinking that my piss had to be dirty in order for them to accept me into a detox, and that is not even a complete lie. Your urine must be dirty with heroin if you are to be admitted into a detox unit. I’ve actually seen them turn people away because homeless people like to go to detoxes to get a warm place to sleep and eat for a few days, so I wasn’t being a complete scumbag by telling her this. After my week stay at this seedy hotel, my mother tried to get me into a Salvation Army program but they all had waiting lists as well, so there was nothing I could do. Like any junkie would do, I told her to give me money and just take me to Newark, NJ, aka the heroin capital of the East Coast. I was home(less). Get it? Ha! As soon as I got there I went straight to the dope spot, spent every penny I had and got high all day, and by the time night came, I tried to get myself admitted into a detox out there and thought I succeeded, until 8PM when the doctor came up to me and told me I was being discharged. Now I was homeless and sort of banking on getting into this detox, so I spent the night in the waiting room only to awake to a cop telling me to get out of there at 8AM the next morning. I explained to him that I was homeless and asked him to help me find a homeless shelter over here. He handed me a list and actually personally called them all until he found a place for me to go. The Goodwill in Newark, NJ. This place was to be my home for the next 2 months or so.

The Goodwill was an absolute shithole. You slept on these skimpy ass mats on the floor in the chapel, and had to be in by 7:30PM if you wanted to spend the night. They served you a shitty, skimpy meal at 5PM and this was usually the only meal I ate all day. They also served oatmeal and muffins with coffee in the morning. They also made all the residents take a shower every night. Sounds amazing right? A homeless shelter forcing bums to take a shower? It was fucking horrible. You stood in a line while people stripped down naked right in front of you and hopped in one of the 3 shower stalls. It was absolutely disgusting, and it blew my mind that this is what my life had resorted to. I was still using everyday while I was here too. In order to get money, I ran scams with other junkies, or panhandled at the train station, and I also went to detox twice while I was at the Goodwill, but the reason I was going to detox was because I wanted a nice bed to sleep in, 3 meals a day, and a clean place to shower, rather than going there to get clean. As soon as they discharged me I found a way to get money, usually by having my mom pick me up to give me money before I lied to her by telling her I was going to an inpatient program and just needed a little bit of money to get by. This went on over November and December, and then the person in charge at the Goodwill had enough of me. They knew I was a drug user, and I was constantly nodding out inside and making it blatantly obvious that I was using drugs. I was only supposed to be allowed to stay there for 14 days, but I kept swearing to them that I was going to detox and that I just needed a little bit more time. A little after Christmas, my time ran out and they gave me the boot. Now I was rightfully on the street with no where to go and a nasty drug habit to support.

Over January of this year, I was sleeping in airports or in the subway system, and finding ways to use everyday. The cops came to know me as a homeless junkie so I had to watch where I showed my face, and life was absolute hell. Everything didn’t get better until my last run, but I am going to save that story for my next entry.

So until then, Legz is out.

I was lying to everyone at this time. My dad & step-mother so they would not kick me out of the house, my girlfriend so she would continue to support my habit, and my mother so she would give me money when no one else would. I convinced my girlfriend somehow that I wasn’t using and that I was paying back drug dealers money that I had owed them from when I was using. This was anything but the truth though. I was still shooting up constantly, and I kept up this charade for 4 or 5 months before she caught on and I had no choice but to tell her that I was, in fact, using. She was devastated, of course, but she STILL did not leave me. That blows my mind when I think of it today. I think it was because I promised her that I would go to a detox and get clean as soon as I could find one to accept me.

I turned 21 somewhere around this time, and I was still using everyday and living at my father’s house. Then one night, we had an electrical fire that started in the attic. I awoke from my nod on the couch on the deck to see my dad and step-mom running around frantically and calling the fire department. I spent the night at my girlfriend’s house, and a few weeks later we moved into a temporary house less than a mile away from our home. The fire did not cause much damage, but the water damage was horrible. So horrible that it made living in the house impossible and we were forced to live in this temporary house for about 9 months. Well, I did not make it the whole 9 months. By the time we got there, my dad and step-mom started to notice money missing and were on to my habit again. My girlfriend had just about given up on me and we were at a very rough patch (like the rest of our relationship wasn’t just a big rough patch, but this was even worse than that) and I was on the look for a detox/rehab to go to. My parents told me I was either to find a detox to go to or I could not stay there any longer, and KB told me that she would not stay with me unless I did what my parents told me. So I was looking for a detox, barely. I basically just faked calling places for a few weeks just so I could keep using, and then, something horrible happened.

I was upstairs in my room and I just finished scraping my brick of heroin baggies (that’s 50 bags for the non-junkies) to get the remaining powder that is always left stuck to the inside of the wax-paper baggies. So I scraped them all, loaded up the brown liquid into my dull, over-used syringe, and by this time, my veins were pretty shot, so I was poking around in my arm trying to find a vein for a good 20 minutes. There was blood everywhere, and I must have looked like an absolute mess. Well, during this time, apparently my sister crept up the stairs to look for something and saw me, sitting on the bed with my belt tying my arm off, poking around with a needle trying to hit a vein. I did not even hear her though, but she went back downstairs and told my step-mom what she saw and now she crept upstairs to see if she could still catch me in the act. Just as I heard her, it was too late. I tried to take the needle out of my arm and the belt off but she saw me, and the only thing she said was “Why?” She wanted to know why I was doing this to myself. Why was I throwing my life away and becoming a slave to something so small yet so powerful, and I could not find an answer. I said something along the lines of “I’m fucking sick, and I need to get right!”

That’s when she gave me an ultimatum. I either go to an inpatient rehab for a few months or I hit the streets. I agreed that I couldn’t do this on my own and that I would go to a rehab. For once I finally picked up the phone and got into a program the very next day. My girlfriend and I were practically broke up at that time, but I begged her to supply me with enough money to get me through until tomorrow morning when I would be going to detox, and that is what happened. I picked up 5 bags and a dime of coke and got high for what was supposed to be my very last time.

I entered detox the very next day and got through most of the day before hitting withdrawals. I stayed in the detox for 3 days, and then they found me an aftercare program to go to. They failed to mention that this rehab program turned out to be a Christian based program and was more like a homeless shelter than any kind of rehab. Their idea of rehab was letting “God” take care of you. That just did not work for me. God would not get me clean, I knew that, but I still tried to tough it out. After I was in the program for two weeks, this little fucker by the name of, well, we shall call him Itch, came to the program. He was a 22 year old kid there for the same reason I was, smack, and he had no desire to get clean. Once you’re in the program for 30 days, you’re allowed out for 4 hours a night, and of course, I was allowed out before Itch was, so what do you think he asked me to do the first night I was allowed out? Yup, go score some dope and coke. I had no money, so I told them that but of course they told me that as long as I went they would take care of me. C’mon, about 30 days clean and do you really think I already had the willpower to say no? Fuck no! I went and got a bundle of dope and two dimes of coke. The coke turned out to be bunk but the dope was all I needed to start me itching for that feeling of supreme bliss again. The leaders of the program became instantly suspicious of our little clique and piss tested us but we cheated it and got away with it the first time.

So over the next few weeks at the program, I made using a thing to do on the weekends, but during the whole week that was all I could think about, so I knew I was in trouble once again already. I tried calling my father and telling him “Dad, listen, there’s people in here getting high, and I don’t know how long I can hold out for,” and do you wanna know what we told me? “Dave, this is what you’re going to have to deal with when you’re out in the real world, so no, you can’t come home.” I did not even want to come home for good either. I wanted to go home until I found another program to go to, but nope, that was not an option. That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard also. Sure, I have to deal with being tempted with drugs in the real world, but it will not be as close to me as it was in fucking rehab! The guy in the bunk to the left of me was shooting up for fuck’s sake! How was I supposed to resist? It wasn’t long before I broke curfew one night when I was out copping dope and could not produce a urine sample. They kicked me out at midnight and was basically told to fend for myself. That’s mighty Christian of them, isn’t it?

Well, that’s where I am going to leave you for now, but trust me when I say that this is not the end. The next period of my addiction was the absolute worst and most embarrassing, but I will write about it in a few short days.

Until then, this is Legz signing out.

So I will begin there. Pickle and I started off using together. The first set of bags we got were stamped “Dead End” and I find that to be kind of ironic, because that’s exactly what heroin is–a dead end. Once you start using heroin you know there is no where to go but down. Well, you might not realize that immediately but your eyes will soon be opened to that.

I started out how everyone else starts, by snorting it. At first it was lovely. A bundle (10 bags) would last me about a week or at least 5 days. I could snort one bag and be nodding and be right nearly all day. I was probably about to turn 19 or already 19 when I started snorting it, and like any other drug I tried, it was fun and social at first. My friends and I would all throw money together and get a bunch of skag and just blow lines until we were too stoned to do so anymore, but unlike most other drugs, this honeymoon period did not last long. I’d say it was fun for about 6 months or so, while I was still in denial about having a habit. I met KB at this time too. I made it clear to her that I have always been a drug user, and let it be known that I was dabbling with heroin but again, I denied I had any kind of addiction to the stuff. Our relationship took off and was great at first, but it didn’t last long, yet she still stayed with me. I don’t know why, but I am guessing that she thought that I would eventually stop. As bad as I wanted to, my love for her was not strong enough to stop me from doing the drug. As sad as that sounds, it is the honest truth. I remember a countless number of times where she would ask me if I would choose her or my other girlfriend, heroin, and I would try to be honest when I would tell her that I would never choose a drug over her, but I think she even knew that I was lying. She knew I needed my fix to do anything, like get out of bed to take a shower, brush my teeth, go to work, or anything for that matter. If she wanted me to take her out, she knew I needed to be high to do so. It was a horrible one sided relationship and I wish I would have been more dedicated to getting clean back then, but still, I can’t say I regret where my addiction left me. My life right now is awesome, and I have more knowledge about the horrors of drug addiction than I would have if I never would have done the things I did.

Okay I got a little sidetracked there, but back to the story. I stuck to snorting for the first year or so of my addiction. I watched my habit go from snorting 1 bag to get right to breaking open 5 bags at a time just to get where 1 bag used to take me. Does that make sense? To any junkie it will, I am sure of that. During this year, all the friends that I was using with grew distant, as did all my friends who watched from the sidelines as I became a nasty heroin addict. I can’t say I blame them either because it’s a disgusting road to go down. So anyway, snorting began to get expensive, so one day a friend of mine, we’ll refer to him as Dom. He told me he was had a doctor’s appointment and he was going to try to get a needle or two because his habit was also leading in that direction. I told him to get me one, but of course I told him I probably wouldn’t use it. Ha! As soon as he got back I had him tie me off and inject me with 1 bag and the instant warm sensation that came over me blew me away. I instantly knew I was in trouble, that I had not even seen a thing yet, and I was right. From that day on snorting was not an option, and shooting heroin directly into my bloodstream was the only way to go. I told myself I would never do this when I started doing heroin, but then when I was doing painkillers I also told myself I would never do heroin either. It’s crazy what addiction will do to our morals and standards.

Now I was still 19 when I started shooting, and it seems like my habit just began the first day I picked up that needle. The withdrawals were 10x worse compared to when I was snorting, and now I knew I had a problem. KB was still with me and I remember how terrified and ashamed she was when she first noticed a trackmark on my arm. I, of course, assured her there was nothing to worry about and that by administering the drug this way I would be saving money and therefore would be able to take her out more. Ha! Yeah, like that happened. Any penny that I owned went towards dope, and nearly every penny that she made also went there.

I was an absolute junkie by the time I was 20, and I was living with my grandmother at this point. I started robbing from her around this time too, that is, after I ran up all my credit cards and sold everything that I owned. I guess she was used to this because like I said, her son, Scum, was a junkie too, so throughout his childhood I am sure that she lost tons of money to his habit. After about a year of pawning, losing jobs, using people I love, and stealing from my grandmother, she had enough and gave me the boot. I had no choice but to move in with my father again. I am lucky he even allowed me to move in, because he was well aware of my habit but I lied to him and told him that I was clean before I moved in, however the same night I moved back in I remember shooting at least a bundle beforehand so my habit was still very much in full swing.

I was 21 by the time I moved there, and was lying to everyone telling them I was clean, but was still stealing from everyone in my family and my girlfriend and somehow getting away with it. I don’t know if I was really getting away with it or if everyone was just turning the blind eye to everything that went missing. Maybe they wanted to believe so bad that I was actually clean that they did not want to accuse me of stealing from them. It wasn’t until I was arrested for a second time that they knew that I was in fact lying to them and still a full pledged junkie. After I was released after spending a night in a holding cell with my two junkie buddies, I was faced with an ultimatum. That being I either go to rehab, or that’s it. My girlfriend would leave me, my dad would not allow me back in the house, & my mother would basically disown me. In order to please them, of course, I went to detox, and I left the same day by calling my girlfriend after discharging myself and told her that they kicked me out. Luckily my father let me back in the house, and I somehow convinced everyone that under lock & key I would get clean myself. Do you think that happened? Come on, now. I never wanted to get clean in the first place, I was just trying to make everyone happy.

So, anything come as a surprise to you yet? If you know anything about drug addiction I doubt any of this surprised you, but the best is yet to come. In my next entry, I will tell you how my habit lead to my homelessness and much much more.

Until next time, Legz is out!

Now I believe I last left off where things were starting to get out of control, and addiction was starting to set in. Let me just recap a little bit for anyone who is too lazy to read my previous entries. I smoked weed at the age of 14, got into alcohol and psychedelics at age 16, tried cocaine and painkillers at age 17, and was fully addicted by age 18 or 19.

It started out with the painkillers of course. The first time I got high off them I took two 5mg percocets, melted into my couch, and absolutely fell in love with the feeling of absolute bliss it provided. After that time, I started mixing them with alcohol and weed, and since I was drinking or smoking everyday, they quickly became an everyday thing. A friend of mine who I am going to call Pickle was into pills with me, and he had a solid connection for them and always had them on him so I had lots of access to them. I caught my first “habit,” or addiction, during this time even though I was completely unaware of it. I must have been taking Percocets for a month straight when I lost the funds to do so, and I thought it was strange that I couldn’t fall asleep and felt extremely anxious for a week or two. I combatted those feelings of anxiety by smoking a lot of herb though and got through this first withdrawal process without a hitch.

I stopped doing the pills for a few months after this and had fun with psychedelics, but the psychedelics soon dried up and I was, again, looking for something else to occupy my mind, so what do you think I did? I was hanging out with Pickle nearly everyday so I started hitting him up for pills again. He had never stopped using them, so by now he was doing Oxycontin, Fentanyl, and any heavy painkillers he could get his hands on. Then I moved in with my grandmother, and her son, I’ll call him Scum because that is what he was, pure scum, was living with her. Mind you, Scum is in his 40s and yes, still living with his mother. See, kids, this is what drugs will do to you if you aren’t careful. Well anyway, he has been a heroin junkie since he was in high school, and he was on Methadone. Now, Pickle & I are both developing habits by messing with the pain pills, but our connect for them soon dried up so we started buying Methadone from Scum. This had the words “Bad Decision” written all over it, but did we care? Fuck no, we needed our fix!

I figure I should mention this as well. During this time, I met a girl that I absolutely loved. I’ll call her KB, and she was with me from the beginning of my addiction to the ass end of it. She was the first girl I actually loved, and why she stayed with me for so long is beyond me. I treated her like shit, used her for anything I could get out of her, and I regret everything I did to this poor girl. She meant the world to me, but because of my addiction, I couldn’t show her that. All I could show her was that I was a filthy fucking junkie. So, if you happen to be reading this, I am still sorry for what happened between us. She doesn’t even talk to me anymore, and I can’t say that I don’t deserve it. I just hope that one day she will accept my apology and realize that if I wasn’t plagued by addiction I could have gave her the world. And she damn well deserves it. She’s a great girl and anyone would be lucky to have her. I felt that this was worth mentioning since she was there with me through the (few) good times and the (many) bad. I am truly sorry for everything.

Okay, so where were we? Right! Methadone. So we started buying Methadone from Scum so he could support his dope habit. It wasn’t long before we were full on addicted to that, and it also wasn’t long before he got kicked out of the clinic and guess what we resorted to? I’ll save the rest of this story for my next entry. I have a lot to write about this part of my life in general so it surely deserves an entry to itself.

This is Legz, signing out.

Like I said, my parents got divorced sometime while I was in the 8th grade. Now, you may think that I blame my drug use on this, but that is absolutely and completely false. I happened to get into drugs at this time because my parents were too preoccupied with their own bullshit to see just how fucked up I was getting. That is the honest truth.

I was introduced to marijuana while I was in the 8th grade. I traded someone I am going to call D-Zero a copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 for the PC for a nickel bag of weed. Since this was my first bag of weed, it basically sat inside my computer (Yes, I took one of the CD panels off and hid my lone bag of weed inside my shitty packard bell computer) until D-Zero and Dippy had asked me if I wanted to smoke. Now, I was very nervous. This was, after all, my first attempt at consuming drugs. I was in my “gangsta” phase at the time as well, so my choice of footwear for the day happened to be a pair of Timberland boots that were WAY too big for my feet. I chose to wear these not knowing that we would be walking to east bumble fuck and back trying to score weed for these two fools as well. So we finally procured their bag of herb, and made the hike back to Dippy’s pad where I watched D0 roll up a blunt for me, and a blunt for them to share. Now since this was my first time, D0 and I shared a blunt and we probably finished about half of it when I began to feel the effects. My mouth dried, my pupils dilated, and I began to feel a sudden feeling of euphoria and one with everything and everyone. I was extremely giggly, and of course, I was hungry. Those people that are naive to drugs and reading this entry, yes, marijuana does cause the munchies. So we walked up the road towards a Quick Chek and just before we got there I remembered that my mom was working in the deli at that very store. I got extremely paranoid and told these guys that I could not enter the store because my mom would know I was acting differently, so I had them go in and get me a roast beef sub. After going back to Dippy’s house and finishing the sub and listening to some music, I made it clear that I had to go home, so I took what I had left of the blunt and walked home by myself.

That was my first experience with marijuana. I have many other stories to tell about that drug in-particular but I will save them for another time because I want to get to more fun experiences with drugs. So yeah, me, being a freshman in high school, I instantly gravitated towards the stoner crowd and became friends with most of them. There was ND, NP, TC, SM, SD, and probably many more that I smoked with but simply cannot remember their clever little initials right now. Marijuana opened my mind towards a lot of things, one of those things being more drugs of course. You see, when it comes to me, marijuana was certainly a gateway drug. It intrigued me in such a way that if this one chemical can change my perception on life and alter my moods and feelings, that the other drugs out there must also do the same thing but each in it’s own unique way. So I soon made a pact. This being to consume every chemical out there at least one time in my lifetime, hell, perhaps even before I graduated high school.

For my first two years of high school, I found it extremely funny to see all the kids who were calling me crazy for using drugs in junior high were now also using drugs, some even using more and harder drugs than I was. For my freshman and sophomore years though, I was basically strictly a pot smoker. I smoked all different types, but my favorite bags were the ones my buddy ND could get from one of his older brother’s connections. We had no idea of what strands they were, but we simply referred to them as “da dank nuggets” since they were sooo much better than anything else we smoked. The bags were extremely tiny (.6grams for 20 bucks, or 2.0grams for 50) but the bud was so amazing that it was worth it. With pot that good, there was really no use for any other drugs, but my mind soon grew tired of the drug. I actually remember the exact day it happened as well. I was sitting and smoking in ND’s room and we were both sitting there in absolute silence. When ND asked me why I wasn’t talking, I said because there was nothing to talk about, and ever since that day I began to notice something called social anxiety. Certain kinds of pot would make me so paranoid and so anxious and nervous that I would feel that everyone was hearing my thoughts, calling me stupid, or laughing at me, and that right there made me want to experiment with other things.

First came alcohol of course. The first time I got drunk I drank nearly a whole 750ml bottle of Jim Beam and could not see. I literally thought I was blind, and the hangover it gave me made me want to fucking die. Drink a bottle of water, throw it up, and repeat for nearly the entire next day. But yea, since my friend Juice had a mother who would let us smoke and party our asses off in her basement, alcohol became a very good friend to all the pot we would smoke. It wasn’t long before someone stole some painkillers from their mom and introduced them to us as well. The first few times I took them, I took too little a dose and did not feel shit, but I remember my first time getting two 5mg percocets and sinking into my couch like never before. I fell in love with them, and I did have a lot of fun on them before things got out of control, but I am going to save that for the next entry I decide to write. There’s still more fun stuff to tell you alllllllllllll about!

Now around the same time alcohol was thrown into the equation, I became fascinated with mushrooms and LSD. Psychedelics! Yes, I had much fun with these (and still do actually) whenever I could find them. The first time my friends tripped on boomers, I was kinda scared because I hadn’t read up about them enough yet, so I didn’t join in on their little adventure, but a few weeks later, I found out a friend of mine by the name of Vink had a 10-strip of acid and was looking to get rid of a few hits. I told him that I definitely wanted three hits, and that I would be over his house after school to get them. So yeah, I called him after school, and he told me that he was about to go out for the night, and that if I couldn’t get there in like 20 minutes then I would have to see him tomorrow. This will just go to show you how much I wanted to trip. I hopped on my fucking mongoose (The bike, you fools. I didn’t ride around on a wild mongoose) and rode to his house in 11 minutes flat! I listened to the first 3.5 songs on 311’s Self-Titled album on the way to his house and found his dad outside washing his harley. I ran inside to find Vink in his room ripping apart my 3 tabs from the 10-strip. So yeah, I made it there on time, took my time going home, and invited my friend’s ND and SM to join me on a crazy acid trip in my small ass room that night. I will save the story of this trip for another time, but yeah that is what started my fascination with hallucinogenic drugs. Since that first acid trip, every summer I made sure to procure enough liquid LSD or mushrooms to make it through the summer. I also had a ball with Salvia Divinorum, which is a plant that is smoked and produces intense out of body visions in almost a dreamlike fashion. I experimented with MDMA during this time too, but did not find it too fun unless I had some pure MDMA on my hand or some really pure pressed pills. A lot of the pressed pills I got were cut with garbage and thus lead to shitty experiences.

After the psychedelics wore thin, during my senior year in high school actually, I was living with my mom at the time, and like I mentioned in my previous post, she was also in a very bad place at the time with her crackhead boyfriend, so I was allowed to smoke, drink, or basically do anything I wanted to in the apartment. I took advantage of this and hosted a plethora of parties my senior year, where drugs, booze, and girls were a-plenty! This is when things began to take a bit of a darker turn. I tried cocaine for my first time that year, and I loved it if I had alcohol or painkillers to bring me down afterwards. I also caught my first addiction to oxycodone (oxycontin, percocet, ya know, painkillers) at this time too, but I was too young to really take notice to it so I got through it rather easy, but as this year and the next went on, the parties got smaller and the drugs got harder, things started to take a darker turn. I’ll get to this in my next update.

Until then, this is Legz signing out!

Now during this time, I noticed my parents fighting more and not sleeping in the same bed anymore but I was young so I didn’t really think much of it. I was in 8th grade when they had decided to get a divorce. It didn’t bother me much, but what did bother me was how my father invited his new wife to live in the house less than a month my mother left. Yes, my dickhead of a father stayed in the house because “he built it” and left my mom to find another place for herself. Now, when my step-mom came to the house, she didn’t come alone. She brought her two daughters with her as well and they were a fucking thorn in my side. They annoyed me constantly, and since I wasn’t related to them I just kept building up the frustration and anger inside me. During this time, I decided to build my first personal web-site. I had built web-sites in the past, and even made some money designing them for friends, but they were mostly all wrestling web-sites and this time I wanted to make a web-site where I could post about whatever I wanted to. I named the web-site ‘Verbal Assault’ and I was involved in the E/N scene when it wasn’t flooded with tons of useless blogs and people bitching and complaining about how shitty their life was. Verbal Assault ran alongside of sites such as Lameking, Snoogins, HamsterStyle, John’s Crawlspace, and many others. The site went on for years, mostly during my Junior High years and due to a server crash, I lost all the content before becoming a Freshman. But sometime in 8th grade, while I was still running Verbal Assault and galavanting with my friends around the area on bikes, I was introduced to something else. Marijuana. I smoked for the first time with two guys by a river in my town. I was instantly intrigued by the feeling it created inside me, and by the time I got to high school smoking was basically an everyday thing. Yes, I even smoked weed before I consumed any alcohol or smoked a cigarette. Alcohol always disgusted me because of how nasty it tasted, and I didn’t understand why anyone smoked cigarettes when they could smoke weed and get high! It baffled me, but it wasn’t long before I became good friends with booze and cigs too.

So, when I graduated my Sophomore year in High School, I turned 16 and decided to leave my Dad’s house specifically because of my two fucking step-sisters that annoyed me to no end. I also wanted a pad to smoke pot in with all my friends, and since I was a very spoiled child (My mother basically caved in to my every will), I figured I could convince my mother to let my friends and I smoke and get trashed there. And just as I guessed, that is exactly what happened. My mother lived there with her boyfriend, who turned out to be a crazy fucking crackhead, and she also was in the worst condition in her life. Her scumbag of a boyfriend had her smoking crack and drinking like a fish, and since my cousin owned the apartment we lived in, I guess she figured that he wouldn’t mind if she didn’t pay rent, but not only did she not pay rent, there were times when the electricity was cut off as well and we would run extension cords from the empty apartment upstairs into our apartment to run the various electric appliances. Talk about embarrassing. I didn’t mind though, and my friends really didn’t either since we had a safe place to chill, smoke, trip, drink, snort, and consume any kind of drugs we wanted to.

This is where I will stop for now. As you can see, I was a normal child during my early years. Just a normal kid who wanted to play video games, run around town with his friends, skateboard, kiss girls, ride bikes, play sports, watch movies, and basically just have good ol’ sober fun. As I progressed into my pre-teens and early teenage years though, my idea of fun changed from those things I just listed to consuming all sorts of chemicals and thinking I had everything in control. In the next entry or two, you will see just how out of control things had become.

Skinny OUT!

Until next time, Skinny is out!