First blog! I guess I am doing this more for me than anything else. If it helps someone else, great!

I first smoked marijuana and drank alcohol when I was 11/12, respectively. I dabbled with anything and everything in a very literal sense for the next five years. At seventeen I found what I had always been looking for. Heroin. I was always into music and musicians that used heroin, even before I knew what it was. Sublime, Alice in chains, nirvana, blind melon, Janis Joplin, the list goes on. When I went through the D.A.R.E program in sixth grade (twelve years old, already experimented with booze, weed and cigarettes like I said earlier) I made the connection. All of my favorite musicians did heroin. I promised myself that I would too, some day. When I did other drugs like extacy or cocaine or psychedelic drugs, they were fun, but they never really piqued my interest enough for me to become addicted. Marijuana, booze and cigarettes were constants in my life, other drugs came and went. I could never get stoned enough. Booze was boring because I would just pass out and not remember what happened. I wasn't comfortable in my own skin, whether that was due to teenage hormones or underlying issues is debatable. I abused therapists to maintain my Adderall and ambien prescriptions. Nothing was ever enough. I had behavioral issues, abuse at home, was sent to a children's home for a month, placed on probation for minors at 15. Mental health issues run in the family, none exactly specified because on both sides my family is deeply rooted in baptist Christianity and you are expected to suck it up and act right, not get help. Or in my parent's case, push the problem into the hands of the government. So I learned early on how to manipulate the system to get what I wanted. My parents didn't realize that my improved mood and attitude was due to illegal drugs. Sometimes I took my medication, but mostly I sold it for other drugs. In my area there was an alternative school for kids like me who weren't exactly model children. At sixteen I was transferred at my own request. A lot of my friends had gone there and it seemed great. No homework, no forms of suspension or discipline, there were only about 45 total students, and you called the teachers by their first name. I loved it. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I never went to that school, but it did happen, and I did heroin for the first time at the age of seventeen. Heroin ruled my world for the next decade. My boyfriend just got here. bye!!!