Left: heroin, fentanyl and cocaine addict, shooting every day, living on the streets.
Right: 769 days sober, learning to live a life I finally love.
My dad got me off the streets on July 21, 2024. I walked into detox at 49kg (108 lbs). Skin and bones, nothing else left. For more than half my life, I hated myself. I watched other people love being alive and couldn’t understand it. I was only ever surviving. Heroin and crack took everything, and I ended up on the streets as the exact person I swore I’d never become. Then fentanyl arrived and dying became normal. Friends took their last breath right in front of me. I od’d more times than I can count, woke up to Narcan again and again, always asking the same question: why am I still here? I tried quitting so many times. Detox, rehab, repeat. I always went back, because real change terrified me more than dying did.
Until one day I called my dad, crying. He came. Detox, then 18 months of long-term treatment. New state, new life, every old tie cut. Zero. Today I’m at peace. I love myself, the healthy way. I used to numb everything just to get through a day. Now I feel it all, the highs and the lows, and that’s exactly where the growth is. Of course I still have dark days. But it gets better, and I learned to deal with them instead of running. In the past, the smallest craving or wave of depression sent me straight back to using. Today I sit with it. I let it pass through me. And every time it does, I come out stronger than ever.
To my doctor, my therapists, and my parents: I owe you everything.
If I came back from that place, so can you. Keep going. There’s light on the other side. We do recover.