Drug Addiction Stories

I started drinking when I was about 12. Both of my parents drank so there was always plenty of beer in the house. Mom and Dad worked but when they got home, the drinking started and so did the arguing. God, I hated to listen to that day after day. By the end of the night, I would be drawn into the arguing. They would either argue about me or something I was supposed to do or should do. So, one day before they got home from work, I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator just to see what all of the fuss was about. I didn’t even finish that beer and I was feeling the effects. I understood why they called it a buzz. That night, when my parents argued, I thought it was kind of funny.

One beer soon became two and before I knew it I could down a six pack without thinking twice about it. By the time I was 16 I was drinking 10 cans of beer a night. I wasn’t doing real well in school and I had missed so many days that the school was threatening truancy action. I did get my driver’s license though which meant my friends and I could go cruising and drinking. So, that’s just what we did. I thought it was so cool…I thought I was so cool.

One of my teachers took me aside one day and asked if I was using drugs or alcohol. Of course, I never answered her. I just said “It’s no big deal” and walked away. That same night, my friends and I went out driving (and, of course, drinking). We had the music up and were laughing. We were having what I thought then was a good time. I was going around a curve and I reached back to grab a beer when I saw the truck’s headlights coming right at us. The next thing I knew it was 4 days later and I was in a hospital. My entire body hurt so badly I started to cry. They said I had a concussion, 3 broken ribs and a fractured pelvis. I also found out my best friend who was next to me in the front seat had died. I felt like dying too. How could I have been so stupid? I almost killed myself and I did kill my best friend. I have to live with that every day of my life, but I live with it sober now. I may have thought drinking was no big deal, but losing my friend sure was.

Word got around pretty quickly and for a while, I was making pretty good money. Then someone taught me how to shoot the Oxycontin. Wow! I thought chewing them was the ultimate high but shooting them was even better. It took more of a supply of the drug that way but as far as I was concerned, it was well worth it. Soon, all of the extra money I was making was going for drugs. I started taking even more because some of my loser customers would slap me around a little bit but the Oxycontin made everything feel better.

I needed even more customers but for some reason, I didn’t attract them like I once did. The ones I did get were, let’s just say, below average people. It became a struggle again to pay for my room and get my Oxycontin. The landlady suspected something was going on too since more of my customers were getting violent. She came up more than once and warned me I would be thrown out. Sure enough, a few nights later a customer got rough and it got loud so she came upstairs and told me I had to leave the next day. As I shot up the Oxycontin that night, I wondered what I was going to do.

The next day I threw what I could into bags and headed down to one of those women’s shelters. They started talking about religion and taking classes and getting up every morning at 6AM. “Look, all I need is a place to sleep” I told them. They informed me it wasn’t a flophouse. The only good thing was that when I had to be gone during the day I could do my drugs and make a little money. I had to be really careful about having the drug around the shelter. Too many eyes there. I got caught though and was thrown out. I was in a real mess then. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I found myself alone with no where to sleep, or eat, and I was out in the cold. I thought to myself “Oh my God! I’m homeless!” It was like someone had hit me upside the head. I’d lost all of my friends, I’d lost the life I once had, all I had was my drugs. They got me through for a while, but then even I realized I needed help. I was sleeping on the ground and sleeping with strange men that I didn’t even know so I could shoot up and forget for a while. That’s what made me go to drug addiction rehab.

How did you find out about the Narconon program?
I found out about Narconon because of an overdose:  While I was in Toronto I would come home sometimes for a few weeks and then run away again and hitchhike back.   One time while I was in Toronto, I overdosed on heroin and my parents were there, which was very embarrassing.  They arrived at around 2:00am after they got a call.  They decided that they would find a solution for me – and this was Narconon.

At the time (1998) Narconon was just getting set up in Quebec Province so I was one of the first people on the program here.  At first I was scared and by the third day I wanted to go back to drugs, of course.  For the first two weeks I was staying at home while on the program, as it was not fully set up, and all I talked about during this time with friends on the phone was heroin.  That’s all I thought about and all I talked about.  My life was heroin and I still sneaking it, even though I was on the program.  I convinced people I knew from high school that it was a good thing to do, so they would do it with me.  My motivation was to have people doing it with me; people would not give me a guilt trip or try to get me off it because they were doing it too.

Did you stick with the program?
I eventually ran away back to Toronto and started panhandling and doing drugs every day.  It got so bad it even got up to twice a day.  I remember getting sick when I stopped using and thought it was just a cold or something, but of course as soon as I took drugs again all the symptoms disappeared – so then I knew what was actually happening.

I recall someone afterwards offering me cocaine, but I said “no thanks,” as I was not interested anymore. I knew then that the Narconon program is really effective.

After a couple of weeks I woke up one morning all depressed and everything hit me: what I was doing to myself, what I did to my parents by running away and so on.  Then I was overwhelmed with a lot of grief.  I called my mother but I couldn’t even talk because I had this knot in my throat.  There was my pride and at the same I felt broken from my own doing.

She told me to call the director of Narconon in Canada, who fortunately was in Toronto, and I went to see him looking and smelling like a dirty street kid.  He was really cool and very understanding of where I was coming from.  After that I was on the bus that night and in the morning when I arrived in Montreal, someone from Narconon picked me up and that was it.

So now you wanted to get off drugs?
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to get off drugs; I just didn’t know what I wanted at all.  I didn’t even think I had a problem because I was doing drugs which is what I thought I wanted (back then) and that was it.  But I was depressed and I did the program because I felt bad for my mom and dad.

Then at some point, while I was at Narconon, it turned around for me: I no longer cared about drugs – my only interest was doing the program.  The Narconon staff had a lot to do with that because of their knowledge, experience and their understanding.

I recall someone afterwards offering me cocaine, but I said “no thanks,” as I was not interested anymore.  I knew then that the Narconon drug addiction rehab really effective.

What benefits did you get from doing the Narconon program?
One big win for me occurred one day during the Detoxification program: I actually remembered my past!

Before that I had not realized that I did not really have a past or a future.  I was not in present time and I was just kind of “there.”  In the sauna, all these memories of me being a kid with my parents – all these happy memories came back.  And that was a huge win.  It was like “Oh my God, I was a kid at one point!”

Another win was being rehabilitated in other ways: I was a vegetarian before I started drugs and when I was living on the street, the more drugs I used the less I cared about my health or what I was eating.  Free food was free food and I would eat whatever.  While I was on the program I started caring again about what I was eating.

I also remembered that I was an environmentalist (as well as a vegetarian) and that I cared about all these things.  I would then go through Narconon to make sure that the recycling was properly separated from the garbage; I would ensure that I was eating healthy again and so much more.  I actually cared once more!  And this included wanting to help people – and this was because of the Narconon drug rehab program.

TO BE CONTINUED…