- Drugs
My name is Ray. I’m a junkie, or at least that is what society labels me. My journey began July 1991 making me the young age of 23. When I was a young child, my family was everything to me. Unfortunately I wasn’t everything to them. I come from an extremely dysfunctional family. My older brother was the golden child; he could do nothing wrong. I could do nothing right. Most people believed I held resentment towards my brother because of that, but I never did. I knew my brother loved me. He treated me differently than all my other family members did, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t protect me from all the abuse my parents gave me.
It all started at the ripe age of five. My mother said I was the reason my father, “fell out of love with her.” She blamed me for being the reason my father just couldn’t be faithful, and when blaming me wasn’t enough, she would turn to drugs to ease her pain. As a boy people would tell me I was my mother’s twin or, “like mother like son,” and boy would I come to learn how much alike we really were.
As my childhood scars grew bigger and bigger, I did more to try to hide them. My brother’s friend introduced me to my first escape: pills. I would pop anything from Lortab to Xanax. If it was a pill, I’d pop it! I loved the high it gave me. I loved the feeling of happiness it gave me. As with all drugs, you build a tolerance and need more and more to get the high you need, or you graduate to a drug that’s even worse.
My father and brother tried to help me, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought, “My life. I’ll do what I want.” My father even tried putting me in rehab, but I’d stay for a month and then leave. I thought I had everything under control. I thought I’d never become a full-blown addict, that I’d never graduate to anything worse than pill popping. Boy was I wrong.
Some more time passed, and my girlfriend at the time became pregnant with my daughter. I was happy! Even though she and I had a horrible relationship, I wanted to do everything in my power to make us be the family I never had. We would argue a lot, and the main reason why was because I was always high. I told her I would quit for my daughter, that I could make everything better, but she was done with me. She didn’t want our baby, and she certainly didn’t want me. I begged her to keep the baby. Things just kept getting worse. I ended up losing my brother to suicide. Deep depression and loneliness took over my whole body! My daughter was just a small baby when she lost her uncle, and my promise of quitting drugs became me promising I wouldn’t get high around my daughter. I kept that promise at the time.
Pills started getting weak so I started experimenting with cocaine. It became my all-time favorite drug. It took away my loneliness. It made me forget I was who I was. I became so dependent on cocaine that I thought I couldn’t live without it! I needed it like I needed air, and no matter how many overdoses I had, I wasn’t going to stop! Finally one morning I woke up and decided to at least try and give recovery another chance, to at least try and keep my promise to stop for my daughter.
I quit for about a year. During that time I met a women who changed my life. No other women had accepted me the way she did or made me believe I was worth it the way she did. I fell head over heels for this woman, but my childhood demons just wouldn’t go away. I just couldn’t be the man she wanted me to be. I had to keep holding on to that scared little boy who would cry in his closet after his father would get done beating him. I left her no choice but to leave me, and when that happened I thought I lost my whole life. Nothing mattered. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. I even ended up losing custody of my daughter, and all I could do was go back to my old friend cocaine. I couldn’t handle heartbreak like a normal man. I had to self-destruct. When cocaine stopped doing the job I wanted it to do, I graduated to heroin.
I knew I had officially hit rock bottom, and the quote, “like mother like son” finally hit me. I was my mother. The last straw was when I woke up in a hospital after another overdose, and my cousin told me my daughter had found me like that. The person I loved the most saw her dad half dead, high out of his mind. I had broken every promise I ever made to my daughter. She finally knew her dad was a druggie, but it didn’t have to stay that way.
It took a lot of tears, blood and sweat, but I’m happy to say August 10th was my three-year anniversary of being clean! I am currently enrolled in college and will be graduating in 2015 with my associate’s degree. My dream is to be an addiction counselor. My daughter will be six in September, and her mother and I are rebuilding a good friendship.
On my journey I lost my dad, mom and brother. On my journey I lost so many good friends and fake ones. On my journey I had countless failed relationships and lost jobs, but I’m so happy to be the man I am today instead of the kid I used to be! If you feel you can’t stop using whatever you’re addicted to, you can! If you feel you have nobody, you have me! I will be anyone’s biggest cheerleader. Life is too short to live it high! Just remember worthless can always become worth it, and you’re definitely worth it! This is the first time I’ve released my story, and I didn’t tell all, but I told the most important parts. I hope this helps somebody out there that’s struggling. My name is Ray, and I am NOT a junkie. I am a survivor!