For a long time, I told myself I was still in control. I was 24 when I first started using drugs regularly, and at the beginning, nothing about my life looked like it was falling apart. I had a job, friends, a small apartment, and people around me who cared about me. I even believed I was smarter than the people who warned me about addiction. I thought I could use whenever I wanted and stop whenever I decided to. What I didn’t understand was that addiction doesn’t usually destroy your life all at once. It takes little pieces of it. First, your time. Then your money. Then your relationships. Eventually, it takes your ability to recognize yourself. By the time I realized what was happening to me, I had already become someone my family barely recognized.
PART 1 — THE PERSON I THOUGHT I WAS
Before drugs became the center of my life, I was an ordinary young man with ordinary plans.
I wanted to earn enough money to move somewhere better, help my mother when I could, and eventually build a family of my own. I wasn’t particularly ambitious, but I was happy with the direction my life was going.
