I came from a great family in Central New Jersey, from a little town called Wall about 10 minutes from where the Jersey Shore was filmed. I know Jersey Shore right? It’s not like that there, it’s quiet in the wintertime and in the summer all we do is complain about how absurd everyone is that comes to our beaches. My parents were and currently are awesome. My Dad worked his ass off doing all types of different jobs to provide for us. My Mom worked part time and she is the sweetest lady in the history of time. My sister was textbook perfect, straight A’s, scholarship to an awesome college the whole nine yards. Then there was me.

I wasn’t a bad kid, just more of an adventurous smart ass. I loved to make jokes in school and do things that we’re allowed, I never meant to hurt anyone I just liked to have fun. When I was probably around 11-12 years old, my friends and I would go break into this repo lot by my house and grab CD’s and stuff. We knew it was wrong but it was a hell of a rush, plus man we got CD’s. We used to do a lot of stupid kid stuff, from lighting small fires to jumping off mini cliffs to throwing bottles against trees in the woods. We we’re young, we we’re bored and we thought we were indestructible.

By the time high school rolled around my friends and I were drinking at small parties we had in the woods and we just started smoking weed. We would smoke pretty much all day every day. We would still wander around the woods and do stupid shit most of the time, but now we did it stoned. My parents never thought anything of it, I was usually out until the sun came down and if I wasn’t home as it was setting, all it took was a phone call to calm their nerves.

I was 14 and it was time for me to get a job. My first real job was pumping gas at a family owned Sunoco Station about ten minutes from my house. It was the dream job for a stoner, all you had to do was ask how much and what kind. Then you would press a few buttons and wait for it to stop. Easy peezy lemon squeezy. I smoked weed there every day with the other attendants and eventually started smoking cigarettes there too, it made me feel more stoned.

I’m 90% sure it was my sophomore year when I first tried Percocet with my friends. We loved smoking weed and this was supposed to make you even higher, I had no idea what I was getting into. My friend bought 4 of them, one for each of us. We crushed them up and I remember being terrified to snort it, the line seemed endless and I knew it would burn like hell the second it hit my nose. My friend went first; let’s call him K for the sake of anonymity. K got about ¼ of the way through the line before he pulled his head up and exclaimed how much it burned. His eyes were read and dripping tears, but he said it felt good at the same time.

My nose was the next to meet the pile of blue powder, I got a little further than K but I was far from doing the whole thing. It hurt like hell but I thought it felt good too. Thinking back I don’t even know if it affected me the way I thought it did, could’ve been the placebo effect, could’ve been the real thing. Whatever it was it opened up a whole new world. From then on out I wasn’t scared to try any pill someone handed me.

I started blowing coke whenever I could afford it, I snorted Xanax and Percocet at least 2-3 times a week. I never stole to get it, but I was making that gas station money so I was able to get stuff pretty often. Things progressed through the rest of that year and it eventually became an almost daily thing. Then I met a girl, let’s call her A.

A was everything I wanted at the time, she was a little rebel who loved to get high and she was far better looking than me. We started to hook up the summer of my sophomore year and by the Christmas time of my Jr year we were blowing Roxy’s everyday. Before school, in school and after school; it didn’t matter I just wanted to get high all the time and be with her. Our addiction got pretty serious after we met A’s sister’s friend’s mom, we called her “Mom”. She was diagnosed with cancer and prescribed methadone and fentanyl pops, and instead of taking them she would sell them to us teenagers. I eventually started selling them for her and was doing all of my profits with A. We would both drink a wafer of methadone before school and then do pills throughout the day. This went on until the middle of my Senior year.

I remember being sick for the first time, I was lying at my couch at home and “Mom” had just gotten arrested. I didn’t have anything that day to get high with; it was the first time ever. I had no idea what was wrong with me. My legs, my bones, my skin; everything was crawling around and aching, it was like nothing I ever felt before. I called up A and she said she felt the same way and that we were getting sick. She said her sister knew someone who could help us out, so I hopped up off my couch and rushed to her house.

This was the first time I tried heroin.

Fast forward a year and things aren’t any better, me and A are getting high all the time, we’re stealing from everyone and no one expects a thing. That was until we gave our dealer A’s dad’s gun for 2 buns. He noticed that it was missing within 12 hours and immediately drug tested A, she was in rehab by the end of the day. I was sitting in my first community college class when I got the news. I had met a few people through the years that I liked to get high with so that’s what I did.

I continued to do my thing and was snorting heroin like a mad man every day. After getting arrested 3 times in a week for shoplifting I told my parents what was going on. They knew something was wrong but they didn’t know the extent of it. They had never been faced with something like this before so they did the only thing they knew of, they got me into my local methadone clinic. I would drive my ass there at the crack of dawn every morning, get my dose of blue liquid and head back home. It worked well for a month or so, I was strictly doing the methadone, but that got boring.

I started sniffing heroin again and smoking crack, the methadone was there to keep me even but I still wanted to get high. I ran for about 3 more months before life caught up with me, I cashed too many bad checks and my parents legally had me by the balls. They said go to rehab or we’re calling the cops. Rehab didn’t sound that bad when it was put this way.

I went to the methadone clinic, sniffed a few bags of dope and popped 3 Xanax bars. When I woke up I was in Michigan. I was at this bat shit crazy place in called NARCONON. I usually don’t like to bad talk facilities but fuck this place; it’s awful it’s corrupt and made me go a little crazy. I was there for 96 days, left against the advice of the staff and tried to take a bus back to New Jersey so I could be with A.

A was still in rehab, so I did what any good boyfriend would do I drove to pick her up. She snuck out in the middle of the night and we crashed at some garbage motel in Asbury Park that weekend. We relapsed together within 2 days. We started snorting it again at first but within a week we started shooting up. And I thought I loved heroin before.

The needle was a whole different world, a whole different addiction. I loved the ritual of everything, the prepping, the mixing the release. It was like I found a whole new drug. Things got really out of control really fast. Within 2 months I was kicked out of my house and staying with A, who was also kicked out of her place. We continued to go back and forth to rehabs throughout NJ, but it was always the same when we left. We would meet up, go steal from houses or stores and then get high.

I was in a detox in North Jersey when I was told I couldn’t stay there anymore, I ended up in a nice rehab down in Florida. I had no intentions of staying clean when got in, but I figured I would go through the motions again, why not it’s better than being homeless. After 30 days in that program I decided I wanted to stay sober, my parents sold my car and said I couldn’t come home, so I got into a halfway house.

I was there for 6 months and did awesome, my life was beautiful. I had some money in my pockets and I wasn’t dopesick the entire time I was there, which was really just amazing. I got a job as a telemarketer for ADT, I would call people and sell them home security systems, and I know it’s very ironic. I started to make good money and was able to move out of the halfway house into my own apartment. I was so proud of myself but I was missing something, I was missing A. So I did what I thought was best and what I wanted to do. I did what everyone said I shouldn’t do and I moved A in with me.

We started to get shoot up Roxy’s within a week and I was getting full prescriptions for Roxy’s and Xanax due to some bullshit MRI I had. All the doctors down by me were crooked as hell, they didn’t care that I was 20 they just wanted the $200 it cost for the visit. I lost the apartment and was back at my parent’s house after telling them an astounding amount of lies.

I was kicked out within a month, they we’re smarter than they used to be. A and I started to crash at our mutual friend’s house, lets call her G. G’s dad was a trucker and there for he was gone for large amounts of time. When he was gone I would stay on her couch with A and G would stay on the love seat. When he was back in town I would go to some shitty motel or sleep under the boardwalk, I thought life was perfect.

G and A were both stripping at the time and I was a waiter, all we would do is shoot heroin and chain smoke Newports all day. This lasted for around a year or so before any of us ended up back in rehab. I got sent back to the facility in Florida, I loved the place it didn’t bother me to go back to. I wasn’t ready to stop, I still felt invincible.

I finished the program and relapsed the day I got out, it was all planned out. I even brought my MRI down to rehab so I could get my scripts filled again when I left. I ended up in Gainsville, FL which was about 4 hours from the rehab I went to. I had a kid, lets call him D, pick me up and he let me live with him for a handful of Roxy’s a month. We we’re shooting up pills and coke everyday.

Let’s jump ahead 2 months, life is absolutely unmanageable. We got kicked out of the apartment and are sleeping in D’s car with his dog. We ended up back down south and he was staying with his Mom but I wasn’t allowed there. So I slept outside and hung out in the mall on most days. After 3ish weeks of this I decided I had enough. I called up the rehab I had gone to two times before and begged for them to take me back. I’ll never forget the relief I felt when my head it the pillow in that detox. I knew this was the last time I would ever have to be in a place like this, I knew I was ready.

The next 40 days flew by, I listened to what everyone said, I took suggestions and I tried my best not to be a smart ass. I went to a halfway house when I left, I worked on myself, I went to meetings and I got a job. I met so many amazing people and built an extremely strong support group over the next 8 months. I was so happy to have this new lease on life, every day I tried to make the best of. I volunteered my time to help others; I would go to the beach, play cards and just enjoy myself. For the first time in forever I was finally enjoying life, like legitimately enjoying it.

I worked my ass off, staying clean wasn’t a walk in the park on all days. I personally chose to go to AA even though I was a drug addict through and through, I went to Alcoholic’s Anonymous. I got myself a sponsor, I worked the steps and I tried to go to a meeting a day for my first 90 days. I wasn’t perfect at it and at times it felt tedious but it was worth it.

I still kept contact with A at this time, but it wasn’t like it was before. My feelings of “true love” had dissipated and I began to wonder who I really loved, the drugs or her. We were technically a couple for about a year or so into my sobriety but I would only see her every 3 months or so. We eventually broke it off knowing that we were poison to each other.

It’s been almost 5 years since I checked myself back into rehab and I can honestly say I have a really awesome life. I’m currently engaged, I talk to my parents every week and we have an amazing relationship, I have great friends and two awesome dogs. The coolest thing though is that I have full control over my life, I choose my path now; heroin doesn’t choose it for me.

There is no reason that I shouldn’t be dead. I should be a statistic you use to warn people about the dangers of drug use, but I’m not. I’ve lost a lot of good friends to drug addiction, including G. Drug addiction rates are at all time highs and New Jersey is seeing the worst heroin epidemic its ever been faced with. When I started getting high I was the black sheep, no one really did pills and NO ONE did heroin. Now it’s everywhere. It’s in the schools and it’s killing people everyday. I am grateful for everything I have, I hope my story will help someone, help give someone hope and help save a life.

Call Recovery Society for help today. 1-866-323-6590.