I started using opiates about 11 years ago. I saw my next-door neighbors doing pills and always thought "Pills are stupid, my mom likes those, they can't be that great."

Boy oh boy, was I wrong. The first time I took pills I swallowed three darvocet. Can you believe that? Baby toys compared to now. Anyway, I remember feeling so good! I itched and slept and smiled for six hours straight.

Crazy as it may be, I didn't really start doing pills consistently until four years later, but I knew then that opiates were my drug of choice. Although through the years I took GHB, ecstasy, ketamine, benzos, alcohol, crank, crack, coke, nitrous oxide, "d-ming," robitussin, DXM, acid (mostly candy flipping), mushrooms, mescaline, huffing computer cleaner (Endust) on a regular basis – whatever was available at the time. Most of the time I liked The "G" "E" and "K". I thought I was the shit! I was low maintenance, meaning I thought I could handle my drugs better and bigger than anybody and still maintain a good life. AND THEN OPIATES CAME SNEAKING INTO MY LIFE.

Little did I know that I was dealing with straight up FIRE!!!! Like I said in the beginning, it started out with darvocet and ended up shooting bottles of dilaudid and chewing 80's of oxys. Oddly enough I did heroin but it made me feel too out of it. Does that make any sense? It's true though; it just didn't do me right for some unknown reason, but thank Buddha, god, or anything else up there that made it not happen. Anyway, all in all, I lost my whole life in a matter of two years.

All drugs are an escape, but some can eat you alive and take your soul all to quickly. Those drugs are opiates. When you need a drug that bad, something is way, way, way wrong. We've all been through it – withdrawal – twisting the sheets, 20 trips to the bathroom a day, hungry but can't eat and if you did it wouldn't last an hour in your stomach, the horrible nightmares if you can sleep, panic attacks, cold sweats, feelings of worthlessness, aching legs, headache, vomiting, bad TV (when you're up at 5:00 a.m. there are great programs on), wondering when it's going to end even after ten days, calling help lines to cry. Not to mention losing everything you have – job, girlfriend, car, family, happiness in any way. Need I go on? – because I can. I can say this though – I made it! I'm alive and still have a brain that functions, my beautiful girlfriend who I got back and I owe it all to the methadone program.

Jerry M.