My new blog about heroin abuse.

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm an EX heroin addict. I was addicted for a year and got clean about seven months ago now. I need to vent about it, and I hope whoever decides to reads this can gain something from it. Here we go.

When it started - I was freshly fourteen, hanging around a friend whom was seven years older than me and grooming me, he had been for years, he's not too important for this story. Him and I had decided for it to become our goal to try every drug together at least once, and it had to be together. So far we'd tried weed, magic mushrooms, (snorting) bath-salts, and inhaling air cans or glass cleaner. We were insanely needy to try something new and one night when I came over to his house, he pulled out a small tin with heroin contents inside.

I wasn't certain I wanted to try it but seeing as though I wanted this man to think highly of me, I didn't say no. He told me multiple times I could back out and he can throw it away, we'd never speak of it again. I pushed, as I always did, to try it. I told him he had to do it to me, I wasn't afraid of needles, I just couldn't manage to jab one into myself, yet.

He did it wrong, in the wrong part of his arm and in the wrong part of mine, neither of us knew it was wrong at the time and the effect still eventually came to us. I'd never felt so sick and jittery in my entire life. I wanted more, I already knew that I needed more. He didn't let me shoot up again, he told me he didn't want me to "die or something". That night, I slept over at his place, waking up covered in my own vomit, I felt strangely proud of it. Like I was grown up. Like I finally found meaning to what seemed to be a never-ending loop of school, fighting with my parents, sleeping, and homework. I asked him for the number of who he'd been getting the drugs from, he had a couple different guys, I managed to get the number for the man who'd dealt him heroin.

My second time using - I waited, a few weeks. The day I'd woken up covered in my own vomit, I'd called the dealer and met up with him behind a Mc Donalds, giving him forty for what he'd given my older friend. I stole the money from my moms purse. I regretted it, stealing and buying more drugs that I'd been told not to use my entire life, then again, I rarely listened to rules, I wish I had. I kept the drugs in the battery compartment of a 1998 Furby.

For a while I would feel sick even thinking about doing it, and then I'd have my moments of fighting myself not to use it, it was a strange sort of conflict. I'd never felt something so strong going on inside my head, which I didn't think was possible. After a few weeks of arguing with myself, an argument with my mother sent me spiraling and I felt as if I had no choice but to use what I'd previously bought. I googled how to use heroin correctly, finding a crappy explanation on reddit and a video of a nurse injecting some sort of medicine into a mans arm, I studied it for twenty minutes before deciding I was just going to go for it.

Eventually, I prepared everything somewhat properly and before I knew it, I was sliding a sharp needle into the vein in the crook of my elbow, my hands were so shaky, luckily I didn't do anything too terribly wrong. Again, I woke up laying where I had shot up, on my side, laying in a small puddle of vomit and shaking like a tweeker. That's what I always described the shakiness as, "The Tweeker Shakes".

Filler - As I began to dig myself deeper into addiction, my appearance was affected rather briskly. My skin got pale, I lost weight, my acne got worse due to all the picking I'd been doing at my skin, I was constantly shaking and trying to eat sugary foods and sacks, only to vomit it up later in the day. I spent my life as a walking corpse, nothing felt real. My parents somehow ignored this and brushed it off as me being a teenager, my friends had already figured it out, I wasn't exactly quiet about my addiction, I was strangely proud of it, being so addicted, being so ashamed, it made me feel strangely grown-up and alive for the first time in years. I never wanted to stop, I never thought straight and I liked it that way.

I would spend days, weeks, months even, laying on my floor, only moving to shoot up or text my friends, update them that I'm still alive, despite the fact I was hanging on by a thread, I always tried to respond if I wasn't passed out or too shaky to reply. I had a girlfriend at the time, still don't know how I managed that, and I kept myself alive strictly for her, she was my light through everything, I worried her enough and our relationship wasn't exactly healthy and she left, I spiraled again, I felt as though I was being abandoned all over, I wasn't, she was still there for me, just not in the way I wanted. I'm still extremely thankful for her being there through my bullshit.

I was spiraling, I was using more and more everyday, cutting myself to taste the blood or try and feel something, the heroin had made my body so numb I had barely noticed, I overdosed regularly, just on the edge of death multiple times. I was so filled with anger and rage, yet I did my best not to express it, I didn't want people to see me as some.. addicted, angry, monster. I got too tired of it at some point and shot up as much as I had, I stood doing it, falling down and knocking a ton of stuff over in the process, my mother heard and came into my room, seeing me on the floor with a needle in my arm, belt around my upper arm, and skin pale, I was seizing.

The End - My mother got me to the hospital. The first thing I remember waking up was how angry my mom was, at me. She was angry at me for "being so stupid" and causing my family so much money loss with my medical bills. She rambled endlessly about how expensive rehab can be. I felt so dead. My ears seemed to ring endlessly and I would hallucinate the oddest things, my temperature was out of wack and I couldn't stop babbling incoherently, it was withdrawal at it's finest. I'd been abusing heroin for a year, it wasn't something you just come down off of peacefully. Once I was fit to be transferred to a rehab, I was. I spent months there, I hated it at first.

I thought it was stupid, and no one there seemed to understand me and my issues, I hated everyone, I hated that no one would listen and understand, even though it wasn't their fault. I thought multiple times of attempting or doing anything I could to escape and relapse, to live again. Eventually, I got over the withdrawals and hatred I felt towards everyone and everything, except my mother, I couldn't believe she could be angry at an addicted child who'd attempted suicide, over medical bills of all things. I haven't forgave her, I want to, but I feel it will take time, or at least a simple "I'm sorry".

END end - I'm clean now, and have been for a good minute. I have more friends now and I'm doing much better, I will never forget that part of my life, that was me for an entire year, that was who I was for a long time and I honestly don't want to forget it. I learned from it and now have more experience in life than most people my age. If you read all this, thank you for staying and reading my small story. Now you get to see bonus pictures of me during my year of abuse!

disclaimer: I do NOT condone drug abuse, it's terrible and best to stay away from it all together. I share my story strictly to try and educate people who maybe be in similar situations or people who may know someone struggling with addiction. I am not proud of what I was, but I'm proud of what I've become.

The Photos: