A Letter from a Teenage Addict

I'm a fifteen year old alcoholic/addict, though I've been clean and sober for seven months now. Right now I want to persuade you not to shoot heroin or anything else. Drugs force us to cross the invisible line of fact and reality. Sometimes so often that you forget where that was, and will have trouble finding where that line used to be. When you first shoot up, you will most likely puke and feel repelled, but soon you'll try it again. It will cling to you like an obsessed lover. The rush of the hit and the way you'll want more, as if you were being deprived of air. That's how it will trap you.

Soon your money will run short and your ‘suppliers’ will start asking ‘favors, Instead of giving you the occasional freebie, all because they know they've got you hooked and they can see the way your body aches for it. All this is part of crossing the line. Finally, when you have humiliated yourself in every way you could possibly think of, the darker side hits; ongoing despair and deep depression.

With me, it was the thrill and the rush that made the need tolerable I felt like there was nothing without it and freedom within it. I would walk with my arms folded up so that people would not see how swollen they were from missing my vein and the with puss bubbles with a black dot on top from me poking through my vein with a needle. I still struggle with thoughts of ‘were the hard times really that bad or were they part of what made them so good?’ Then I realize that I was just pretending that I enjoyed the mania so that it would not hurt so bad.

Someone once described withdrawals as tiny, evil animals; chewing their way out of your skin, and as if all your pores were opening like a dehydrated plant for just one more drink of toxic water.

I paid dearly for an expensive assassin to still my life, mind and body. I am now glad it did not succeed. So please, for the love of all that is dear to you, just think before you welcome a killer into your body.