When you ask people about the drugs they experimented with in their youth, you often get a response like, “Oh, I tried everything…except heroin.”
Well, that drug, the one everyone swears not to touch, consumed my life for 20 years.
When I tell people I was a junkie, they imagine someone lying in a gutter or shooting themselves in an alley. While the stereotype may be true for some addicts, my experience was different. I held down a full-time job for decades during my addiction. I also made good money.
I was always able to function and even learn new skills while using heroin in my late teens. When I got married at 25 and had two children, nothing changed. If anything, it intensified.
I was good at my job and was a top-notch welder, so I never had any problems on the job. Later, I ran my own business and, incredibly, managed to keep the money coming in.
My problem was when I left work at 5 in the afternoon. When you are addicted, the more money you have, the deeper your spiral goes.
While we seemed like a normal family, I scammed, stole, manipulated, and did horrible things to feed my habit. And I was completely oblivious to the damage I was doing to my loved ones.
Heroin makes you sleepy. It takes away all your feelings until you live in a misty cloud of nothingness. You are not quite in reality; you are always numb. It is a place without pain or happiness.
There were periods when I could barely get out of bed, but I still had to work and managed to drag myself there. Looking back, it’s a miracle he kept things together for so long, but eventually it all fell apart..
When I tell people I was a junkie, they imagine someone lying in a gutter or shooting themselves in an alley. While the stereotype may be true for some addicts, my experience was different. I held down a full-time job for decades during my addiction. I also made a lot of money (file image)
how it started
Heroin started taking over my life when I was 19 years old. My addiction landed me in jail, I overdosed three times, and I was in and out of the hospital for years.
But let me take you to the beginning.
While most of the other kids were focused on school, I was trying different drugs. I started smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol when I was 12 years old. Since I was 14 I was using every day. I started taking acid and selling it when I was 15 years old.
I left high school that year and began a four-year apprenticeship to become a boilermaker in Brisbane, which I achieved even while high. I progressed to intravenous drug use at age 17 and at 19 I encountered heroin.
I used it as often as I could. Whenever I was going through a hard time or felt lost, drugs were the solution. Before I knew it, my life revolved around heroin.
Meanwhile, I treated those around me terribly, as if I were a man possessed.
Human beings became objects to me and I never considered the consequences of my actions or the harm I was doing to others.
Our author, who chose not to reveal his name, spoke bravely of his life of addiction.
I started stealing money (the most I took was about $7,000) and when I was 19 I was caught robbing a post office and was charged and convicted.
Theft helped support my habit, and when you’re that deep in addiction you do whatever it takes. I would steal from anyone, even my own mother, who I stole from regularly.
I didn’t realize that I was hurting people mentally, emotionally and physically with my crimes. Today I agonize over what I did and the trauma I caused, but at the time I was blind to it.
I went to rehab at 24 and spent 10 months there. It got to a point where I was seriously ill from mixing drugs (I combined pills, heroin, marijuana, and alcohol daily), but I was eventually kicked out for breaking the facility’s rules.
At 25 I met the woman I would marry. She already had two children and we would have two of our own. Those four children were my everything, but my heroin use did not stop. He was always a beast lurking in the shadows.
We had dinner together, we got the children ready for bed and I read them a story before they went to sleep. But once the lights went out, I would take drugs to relax.
At age 29, I was sentenced to four years in prison for armed robbery, but I only served two. I was released on bail and began to reconnect with my wife and children again. I also rekindled my toxic relationship with heroin.
The fight to be clean
As my drug use worsened after prison, my biological children, then ages two and four, were taken to their grandmother’s house for their own safety, and I returned to rehab for another year.
I really tried to change my life and quit drugs. Support groups and programs seemed to work. When I was able to kick the habit, life was good and I felt like I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But with just 24 days left in two years of cleansing, I relapsed. I bought heroin, cooked it and injected myself. Overnight the cycle of drugs, lies and crimes resumed..
That relapse continued for almost six years. I lost everything again: my wife, my children, everything.
Here’s the part that will surprise you. During all that time I was running my own business. I was working, balancing the bills, paying my taxes, and generating a steady income.
My professional life may have advanced – miraculously – but my personal life was a disaster. I hit rock bottom at 40. I was homeless, bouncing between men’s shelters.
One night I went to the train station and I was standing on the edge of the platform getting ready to end my life by jumping in front of an express train.
I looked up at the night sky and I screamed at a God I didn’t believe in when a vision of my children appeared in front of me. It was so vivid and powerful that it pulled me out of the abyss, as if they were telling me, ‘Don’t do this, we need you here.’
It was a moment of clarity when I needed it most. I took a step back and walked away.
The next day I went to the methadone clinic and I was an emotional wreck. I was a 40-year-old man who cried my eyes out and said: ‘I’m going to die.’ I need help’. That was the beginning of my recovery, although it still took me some time to finally stop.
My first day of cleaning was April 7, 2011.
I try to live along spiritual rather than religious lines. I encourage belief in a higher power, but whatever that power is, it is entirely up to you.
I am now 54 years old and I know that my past does not define the person I am today.
When I sought help, they analyzed my entire life piece by piece, leaving no stone unturned. We went through the entire inventory of my life, talking about relationships, emotions, sex, everything.
Part of that was recognizing that I had to make peace and that my soul was sick and needed cleansing.
One of the greatest gifts of being clean is having a relationship with my children again.
We love each other, we have a great bond and I am motivated to be the best father I can be. Despite my past, I will not let it define me or my future. Today I am a decent man, a good father and grandfather of three beautiful grandchildren who know nothing of my past..
One of the benefits of being in recovery for so long is that you feel distant enough from the person you used to be to do a forensic examination of what made you an addict in the first place.
Now I know I was suffering, I felt abandoned and unloved, and I never believed I was enough. These feelings are normal, but when you don’t learn to deal with them, you repress them and self-medicate..
Today I have a toolkit of coping strategies to help me process whatever I’m feeling. I read, meditate, pray and know that sometimes life just happens.
I hope whoever is reading this knows that they are not alone and that maybe my story can inspire them to seek help and get out of the darkness.
- As told to Carina Stathis