I completely know how to live life

I was a typical high schooler, you know, got decent grades just naturally, didn’t really have to work for it. I played sports. I got along with everybody real well. Grew up in the suburbs. You know, just a stereotypical high school kid.

Started drinking on the weekends, started smoking pot. I smoked before school, I smoked after school. That was like my whole existence. I always thought this is just something, this is a temporary thing. I’ll kind of just, I’ll pull out of it just like any other person does, you know.

By the time I hit eighteen, I moved out on my own and I got into cocaine and used Adderall during the day to get through work. So, Adderall during the day, cocaine and alcohol at night, still weed all the time.

It was right around the time that I was nineteen or twenty that I first did heroin. I couldn’t have enough. I’d screw anyone over, I’d sell anything I had to get it. It was my drive, if you will. At some point down that line I lost everything, the apartment I was in, every material in it. At one point I had just a bed in an empty apartment.

And the only nights I slept was when, you know, I had that needle loaded up next to my bed stand for me to wake up to. That was the only way I could sleep.

I couldn’t get a job because I couldn’t stay up for 8 hours. My life was just miserable, there’s nothing to it. It was sleeping, eating, doing drugs.

And then finally, you know, I said I had enough and luckily my mom found Narconon.

You know, I got to Narconon and I was coming off of heroin, cocaine and methadone. You know, before you know it, I felt normal again. I guess that’s the best way I can put it, like a human being. I could sleep, I could eat. I felt my age again. I felt twenty-five again. You know, before coming to Narconon I felt like I was going on to seventy-two.

You know, I remember talking to one of the staff members and saying, “You know, it’s like I could taste food and I can, you know, I could see colors again.” That was the best way I could describe it. I didn’t know how to really put it into words. It was almost like I was living life in black and white. And it was like, there were so much colors again in life. Like, life was real again around me.

I graduated from the program. I went home and spent time with my family and they were shocked. You know, my mom was like, you know, “Your, your skin looks good again. Your…” you know, she’s like, “You’re, you’re back. You were always here physically but you are back now.” And they were thrilled.

I felt like I could have came back with a PhD, that’s how—that’s how great that I felt, like it was just—I completely knew how to live life.