MethodGNA - can you explain how does an addiction like that start? I mean, what was it that made you even want to put a needle into your arm and shoot up herion the first time? I don't really get what it is that makes people do that in the first place. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
well.....addiction is a very funny thing and a very gradual thing, its a process of self-compromise. back in the year 2000 i graduated high school....now in high school i was not very much into drugs.
i didnt really like alcohol...still dont, weed made me paranoid. so coming out of high school i felt pretty unscathed, i felt like i was pretty set cause i didnt really like drugs, little did i know i just hadnt found the right drug. also around this time a company named purdue pharma was in the process of marketing their new wonderdrug....oxycontin.
....to doctors all around the country. the company made bold claims; they claimed that it was a far superior analgesic to drugs currently on the market, but conversly, the addiction potential was little to none......of course they were lying,they were basically just marketing lab-produced heroin. i was originally from a blue collor part of pennsylvainia with a large elderly population....suddenly all of these people were on oxy's for their malignments....their bad backs, their cancer.
the first time i snorted an oxy, i was not aware of what an opiate is....and i certainly could not tell you that oxycontin was just heroin in a pill.....and i mean this OXYCONTIN IS HEROIN....so anyone out there who uses oxycontin and then makes fun of heroin users is really out of touch with reality. but anyway.....so in that fall of 2000 oxycontin was readily available, i had a friend whose older brother was in with a crooked pharmacist, and at that time alot could be divirted because the market was being flooded with them.
with oxycontin i found my love, the high that i was looking for. because it was not really a high to me, you didnt get sloppy or tired,.....to me its more like life in high definition. i could function better on them, be more confident on them, be smarter on them, be more charming on them, fuck better on them...there was no task in life that opiates did not make me better at, i liked myself more when i was on them. all day i would walk around brimming with confidence.
as this went on through fall and winter and into spring, i started to notice that when i was not on oxy's i felt lithargic, but then they would be readily available for the next two weeks, and i had money....so i could buy them by the dozens. the lethargy i felt when i was not on them turned to pain and discomfort when i was not on them....alot of pain....and for some reason they weren't around as much and they were getting more expensive...because then they started really blowing up, everybody wanted them. by this time me and my inner circle of friends were starting to become attuned to what an opiate is and how structurally and chemically a vicoden, or percocet, or fentanyl patch, or bag of heroin were really the same thing.
so snorting oxys just turned into snorting heroin.....becuse both were entirely the same high....heroin just became a better value for the money. i grew up in a house of steroid users and dealers, so needles were not that big of a deal to me, friends of my brother and father used to line up in my bathroom on sunday night so my mom, a nurse, could give them site injections......so the needle, while it was a tabooo at first, just became the next logical step....and of course that feeling, the feeling from injecting heroin, takes you to a whole new level of euphoria, and you begin to chase that even harder.
and you knwo the rest of the story.....the money ran out....stealing...losing friends.....relationship
s.....rehab.....relapse.
......same story as everyone. the only really unique thing in my case is that i kind of became addicted to opiates without really knowing what they were, and by the time i was clued in.....i was already wrapped to tight.....mine is a cautionary tale.....but i managed to put things back together, graduated from a good university and will soon be going to law school, the suboxone certainly helps, but the heroin will forever be a part of me, like a monster inside of me waiting to be fed.
right now, the monster is kind of in hibernation, but he can very easily be awoke, sometime it frightens me just how easily he can be awoke.
