I had a awesome childhood and I was a fortunate child at that, I was adopted by a amazing family and they gave me everything a young child could ever want. By the time I got into my teens around the age of 17-18 I started to hang around people who weren’t the best influence on me, I was looking for a father figure and my father was living and working in Brazil. I sought out the wrong set of friends to have the knowledge of what a man would be at my age, so I started drinking and smoking weed. At the time I was in public school, it was my high school years and it was my first public school at that. I was a private school kid most of my life. My freshman and sophomore years I was smoking a lot of weed and I recently got into doing coke and ecstasy.

My senior year I dropped out and got my high school diploma online, around then I was just getting into opiates and prescription medicine. I was dealing with a lot and had suppressed a childhood trauma I dealt with when I was just a little kid my father’s sister had molested me a couple times and led me to believe that I was the fault for her temptation for children. For years I led to believe that I was at fault for what happened to me, when I got older the nightmares were horrific and I became very socially awkward and was a very shy and self consciousness child. When I got older I was in too deep with opiates and became a huge user of Oxycontin that addiction was horrifying and painful I took from my parents and my family in general just to get myself a pill to feel better again. These addictions lead me down the most terrifying places I have seen and I became homeless for months.

For years I used opiates, and that lead me to sniffing heroin. This addiction lasted close to 7 years of my life, and it took so much from me and my family. My heroin addiction was the hardest thing to recover from personally, I had the hardest time forgiving myself after I got clean. Five years sober of kicking my heroin addiction and learned so much down that road of sobriety; I learned that you need to be the one to stand up and say I have a addiction problem and to take the first step forward towards the rest of your life. Open yourself up to the people who love you and share your days that you feel like a relapse is coming. Relapse is a part of recovery and it does happen from time to time but it is no excuse to purposely relapse. I have relapsed a couple times from normal everyday life, it’s hard in the beginning but you learn to conquer that pressure and stress. Never let your addiction take over your life after you got your life back, learn to go to the gym or meditate to get rid of that voice that lead you into your addiction.

Make you’re as great as it can possibly be, and be a part of your family’s life again, and if you have kids be a great father or mother. Life begins when your addiction ends, go to meetings if you feel like they would help you or if NA or AA is not for you there is smart recovery and Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS). There are so many organizations out there that will assist you in your recovery and lead you down the right path. Let my story help you get away from a life of addiction and pain, be brave and get away from people who will bring your down fall, live life to the fullest and take advantage of the great things in life and just live!