| HEROIN ADDICTION STORIES |
| True stories from heroin addicts who have been there and experienced the hell of heroin addiction first hand! |
| ANGELA-Johnny & Me |
| There's life after heroin addiction! |
Johnny and I got together in March of 2001. We really hit it off and became pretty serious pretty quickly. We told
each other our “I love you” within months and basically became a “perfect couple” at a rapid pace. I met his mother,
he met my parents and we were staying over each other’s houses nightly, if not every other night. We were both 19
years old.
I was a straight-edged sophomore in college working towards my elementary education degree working part time at
Wal Mart. Johnny also worked at Wal Mart, but he worked full time, and that is where we met. On one of our first
dates, I bought Xanax from my neighbor for him because he said he needed something to help him sleep. I had no
idea what I was enabling.
The weeks turned into months, and months into years and in 2003 we were still together and I saw him as the man I
was going to marry. Towards the middle of the year I noticed that the people he was hanging around were not the
upstanding citizens of our area. They were drug dealers and users. When I would ask about them he would talk
shit on them and say that he was nothing like them.
Around Christmas of 2003, I noticed a huge change in Johnny’s behavior. He was sleeping all the time and had no
interest in my life or what I was doing with it. He then began to become careless with his own life. He quit his job at
Wal Mart and began working at many other places just to get by. He was in a bad car accident and I was told that
he lost control of the car; I later found out that he was too high on heroin to drive and passed out at the wheel. He
was on crutches for weeks with his leg in a brace. Johnny moved in with me and my family around that time. His
mother tried to warn me that something wasn’t right with him but we took him in anyway.
He was doing a great job of pulling the wool over my eyes, along with my family’s eyes. Once his addiction began to
go out of control, I became more and more suspicious. Money was missing from my bank account, my debit card
was missing, and there were unauthorized charges on my credit card. Johnny had small marks on his inner arm that
he would say were scratches. He began to work for a man (a fellow heroin user) and once that happened, I could
almost never find him. I would drive for miles (usually with no real destination in mind) to try and find him. I always
thought I could rescue him. In the dark one night, on a dark country road, I found the man’s house for whom he was
working for. I was really putting myself in danger but did not care because inside I just knew something was wrong.
Once the man got a hold of Johnny for me, he came rushing to the house. I brought him home with me and on the
way I asked him if he had something to tell me, but he just couldn’t admit it. I saw in his eyes and heard in his voice
that he really wanted to open up to me.
A small time after that, Johnny started selling heroin and was using my car to traffic it. I would often go with him to
the town where he would get it from and would sit in the car while he went to God knows where to get the drugs.
Again, I was putting my life on the line as well as my career as a future teacher. Once he got more comfortable with
me knowing that he was buying and selling the drug, he would take me into these people’s houses and while I sat
down stairs on a couch, he would be in their bathroom shooting up. Still at this point, I was in such denial, I figured
all was well. The money he was making from selling heroin was really nice, I must say.
I remember one night, Johnny was whispering on the phone and I kept asking him who he was talking to. He just
kept pushing me away. I was begging him not to leave me that night and he said he wouldn’t. I then heard him
begging the person on the phone to pick him up and they did. I chased him outside in the snow, with no shoes on,
pleading with him to come back inside. He left, and returned about an hour later, as if nothing had happened.
He began to lock himself in my parents’ bathroom for long periods of time. I would bang on the door and he would
tell me that he was just relieving himself, not to worry. Once, I found the top of a syringe on the bathroom sink and
he told me it was something for his tooth and I was still stupid enough to believe him. He told stories about someone
stealing his paycheck and being bit by spiders (to explain a misfire of heroin in his hand). It is amazing how love
truly is completely blind at times.
In April of 2004, we were remodeling our bedroom at my house with our tax return money. I had $40 in my purse
that I later found to be missing after he had taken my car for a “ride”. This really was the straw that made me lose
my composure and my suspicions really rose. Around that time, he lost his job because he was not showing up to
work at all. I went to the places where my debit and credit cards were being used to get copies of the signature
used so that I could file police reports. Without a doubt it was Johnny’s signature on each of those pieces of paper.
I confronted him that day by saying, “I know you have a problem.” He blew me off as usual and that night we went
on a heroin run so that he could “sell” some more to make more money.
He made a huge mistake. He left his kit under our mattress and my mother, who was becoming increasingly
suspicious as well, found it. She called my cell phone right away and wanted me home. While we were out getting
heroin, his life was unfolding right under him. That’s when I was finally certain that he was doing the very drug that I
was allowing in my house and car to make money for us. We got to my house and my mom and older brother were
just sitting waiting for an explanation. They thought I was doing the drug also. I made up a story about it belonging
to someone else to protect him from being kicked out of our home. The last thing I needed was for him to disappear
from my life for good and not be able to know if he lived or died. I knew what I had to do.
He still lied to me and told me it belonged to one of his “friends” and part of me wanted to believe him so badly.
Everything was coming together so quickly and I think he knew he had no other choice than to finally come clean
about what he was doing to himself. I had known it in my heart for months, but for some reason I just wanted to hear
it from his mouth.
The next day, I confronted him and told him I knew something was going on and he could either tell me and get help
or leave me alone for good. I did not need that in my life and could not watch him kill himself slowly. He confessed
and was scared of what would happen to him next. That day, I made a vow to him that I would stand by him as long
as he was trying to get himself better. I wanted the best for him and unless he wanted the same, there was no way it
would work.
We looked into methadone clinics, outpatient clinics, and hospital detoxification programs. Johnny did NOT, in any
way, want to be placed in an in-patient rehab. Over the next 12-14 hours, I would not let him shoot up. We took him
to a local emergency room to help him with the withdrawal and they did nothing for him. A nurse told me that if we
were planning on getting him real treatment, a few more bags of heroin would at least help him stay alive. I
researched help on the internet and found a place that has recovering heroin addicts call you to give you advice.
The man that called told me the same thing: “If he’s been doing it for this long, a few more days wouldn’t hurt.” So
that’s what I did. We went down to the area that he got the heroin and got him ten bags to last the weekend until we
could find him treatment.
I sat and watched him shoot up in our bedroom and felt totally torn. If he didn’t have the drug, he would be
miserably sick and could die; if he took the drug he could overdose and still die. Either way, he was going to be in
serious pain. During that weekend, he put a lot of heroin in the spoon and I took it from him and put some back into
the bag. After he shot up, he couldn’t stand or see straight and kept thanking me for saving his life.
After researching out patient programs, and in-patient programs, I strongly suggested that he went into an in-patient
facility that specialized in heroin cases. I found a place that the county covered all bills for this type of problem and
he was in an in-patient rehab Monday morning that was very far from our home. He was scared there and had
things stolen from him in one night so I was there to take him home the next day. He tried to convince me to let him
do the methadone or out-patient program instead but I was stern in my decision/ultimatum. The same program that
paid for the first rehab offered him one last chance. The next day, he was at another in-patient rehab center that
was a little closer to home and had a much better reputation.
He was there for thirteen days total and voluntarily left, against the workers’, my family’s, and my advice because
one of the counselors there was totally rude and insensitive to him. I did not know what would happen next. They
did not give him any medication to bring home with him so I had some heroin left from the bundle that we’d bought to
get him through that weekend that he came clean and let him take a little each day until it was gone.
Somehow, it worked. He has been clean since that November of 2005. He just celebrated his 2nd year anniversary
and is still going strong. I look back at that time of my life as one of the worst times and wonder how the hell I got
through it. I think when you are putting your all into someone else, it is hard to concentrate on your own grief and
pain. I was lucky to have a very supportive family system that willingly helped me through this ordeal. I did deal with
feelings of resentment towards him for a long time and still, to this day, when I think about it long and hard, I want to
cry and scream. I never could quite understand how he could care for a substance more than he loved me.
I am proud to say that Johnny is now holding down a good full-time job and is paying bills, helping around the house,
and has become an outstanding man in the past two years. We moved far away from that place and now have our
own home with two puppies and a cat. I am in my first successful year of teaching and we are planning on being
together for years to come.
If you would have asked me then how I thought things would work out, I would not have said anything positive. I
thought for sure he would die. With the statistics that I’ve seen in regards to heroin use, Johnny was one of the
ones who beat the odds. I know that although he has a lot of clean time into his recovery, it is no guarantee that I
will never see that drug again. I am hopeful, though, that as long as I am a strong support system to him, he will
never again need to depend on a drug to bring him happiness in life.
I love him more than words could ever say. We were two of the lucky ones. When you are dealing with a loved one
with an addiction, you are also going through the same emotions and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. I
hope our story could be help towards a person or family and would like to give my sympathy to families who have
lost someone to this drug or are dealing with an addict right now at this very moment. Know that there are many
who have been in your shoes before you and there is help and support out there.
Thank you Defeat Addictions for taking the time to read and share our story.
each other our “I love you” within months and basically became a “perfect couple” at a rapid pace. I met his mother,
he met my parents and we were staying over each other’s houses nightly, if not every other night. We were both 19
years old.
I was a straight-edged sophomore in college working towards my elementary education degree working part time at
Wal Mart. Johnny also worked at Wal Mart, but he worked full time, and that is where we met. On one of our first
dates, I bought Xanax from my neighbor for him because he said he needed something to help him sleep. I had no
idea what I was enabling.
The weeks turned into months, and months into years and in 2003 we were still together and I saw him as the man I
was going to marry. Towards the middle of the year I noticed that the people he was hanging around were not the
upstanding citizens of our area. They were drug dealers and users. When I would ask about them he would talk
shit on them and say that he was nothing like them.
Around Christmas of 2003, I noticed a huge change in Johnny’s behavior. He was sleeping all the time and had no
interest in my life or what I was doing with it. He then began to become careless with his own life. He quit his job at
Wal Mart and began working at many other places just to get by. He was in a bad car accident and I was told that
he lost control of the car; I later found out that he was too high on heroin to drive and passed out at the wheel. He
was on crutches for weeks with his leg in a brace. Johnny moved in with me and my family around that time. His
mother tried to warn me that something wasn’t right with him but we took him in anyway.
He was doing a great job of pulling the wool over my eyes, along with my family’s eyes. Once his addiction began to
go out of control, I became more and more suspicious. Money was missing from my bank account, my debit card
was missing, and there were unauthorized charges on my credit card. Johnny had small marks on his inner arm that
he would say were scratches. He began to work for a man (a fellow heroin user) and once that happened, I could
almost never find him. I would drive for miles (usually with no real destination in mind) to try and find him. I always
thought I could rescue him. In the dark one night, on a dark country road, I found the man’s house for whom he was
working for. I was really putting myself in danger but did not care because inside I just knew something was wrong.
Once the man got a hold of Johnny for me, he came rushing to the house. I brought him home with me and on the
way I asked him if he had something to tell me, but he just couldn’t admit it. I saw in his eyes and heard in his voice
that he really wanted to open up to me.
A small time after that, Johnny started selling heroin and was using my car to traffic it. I would often go with him to
the town where he would get it from and would sit in the car while he went to God knows where to get the drugs.
Again, I was putting my life on the line as well as my career as a future teacher. Once he got more comfortable with
me knowing that he was buying and selling the drug, he would take me into these people’s houses and while I sat
down stairs on a couch, he would be in their bathroom shooting up. Still at this point, I was in such denial, I figured
all was well. The money he was making from selling heroin was really nice, I must say.
I remember one night, Johnny was whispering on the phone and I kept asking him who he was talking to. He just
kept pushing me away. I was begging him not to leave me that night and he said he wouldn’t. I then heard him
begging the person on the phone to pick him up and they did. I chased him outside in the snow, with no shoes on,
pleading with him to come back inside. He left, and returned about an hour later, as if nothing had happened.
He began to lock himself in my parents’ bathroom for long periods of time. I would bang on the door and he would
tell me that he was just relieving himself, not to worry. Once, I found the top of a syringe on the bathroom sink and
he told me it was something for his tooth and I was still stupid enough to believe him. He told stories about someone
stealing his paycheck and being bit by spiders (to explain a misfire of heroin in his hand). It is amazing how love
truly is completely blind at times.
In April of 2004, we were remodeling our bedroom at my house with our tax return money. I had $40 in my purse
that I later found to be missing after he had taken my car for a “ride”. This really was the straw that made me lose
my composure and my suspicions really rose. Around that time, he lost his job because he was not showing up to
work at all. I went to the places where my debit and credit cards were being used to get copies of the signature
used so that I could file police reports. Without a doubt it was Johnny’s signature on each of those pieces of paper.
I confronted him that day by saying, “I know you have a problem.” He blew me off as usual and that night we went
on a heroin run so that he could “sell” some more to make more money.
He made a huge mistake. He left his kit under our mattress and my mother, who was becoming increasingly
suspicious as well, found it. She called my cell phone right away and wanted me home. While we were out getting
heroin, his life was unfolding right under him. That’s when I was finally certain that he was doing the very drug that I
was allowing in my house and car to make money for us. We got to my house and my mom and older brother were
just sitting waiting for an explanation. They thought I was doing the drug also. I made up a story about it belonging
to someone else to protect him from being kicked out of our home. The last thing I needed was for him to disappear
from my life for good and not be able to know if he lived or died. I knew what I had to do.
He still lied to me and told me it belonged to one of his “friends” and part of me wanted to believe him so badly.
Everything was coming together so quickly and I think he knew he had no other choice than to finally come clean
about what he was doing to himself. I had known it in my heart for months, but for some reason I just wanted to hear
it from his mouth.
The next day, I confronted him and told him I knew something was going on and he could either tell me and get help
or leave me alone for good. I did not need that in my life and could not watch him kill himself slowly. He confessed
and was scared of what would happen to him next. That day, I made a vow to him that I would stand by him as long
as he was trying to get himself better. I wanted the best for him and unless he wanted the same, there was no way it
would work.
We looked into methadone clinics, outpatient clinics, and hospital detoxification programs. Johnny did NOT, in any
way, want to be placed in an in-patient rehab. Over the next 12-14 hours, I would not let him shoot up. We took him
to a local emergency room to help him with the withdrawal and they did nothing for him. A nurse told me that if we
were planning on getting him real treatment, a few more bags of heroin would at least help him stay alive. I
researched help on the internet and found a place that has recovering heroin addicts call you to give you advice.
The man that called told me the same thing: “If he’s been doing it for this long, a few more days wouldn’t hurt.” So
that’s what I did. We went down to the area that he got the heroin and got him ten bags to last the weekend until we
could find him treatment.
I sat and watched him shoot up in our bedroom and felt totally torn. If he didn’t have the drug, he would be
miserably sick and could die; if he took the drug he could overdose and still die. Either way, he was going to be in
serious pain. During that weekend, he put a lot of heroin in the spoon and I took it from him and put some back into
the bag. After he shot up, he couldn’t stand or see straight and kept thanking me for saving his life.
After researching out patient programs, and in-patient programs, I strongly suggested that he went into an in-patient
facility that specialized in heroin cases. I found a place that the county covered all bills for this type of problem and
he was in an in-patient rehab Monday morning that was very far from our home. He was scared there and had
things stolen from him in one night so I was there to take him home the next day. He tried to convince me to let him
do the methadone or out-patient program instead but I was stern in my decision/ultimatum. The same program that
paid for the first rehab offered him one last chance. The next day, he was at another in-patient rehab center that
was a little closer to home and had a much better reputation.
He was there for thirteen days total and voluntarily left, against the workers’, my family’s, and my advice because
one of the counselors there was totally rude and insensitive to him. I did not know what would happen next. They
did not give him any medication to bring home with him so I had some heroin left from the bundle that we’d bought to
get him through that weekend that he came clean and let him take a little each day until it was gone.
Somehow, it worked. He has been clean since that November of 2005. He just celebrated his 2nd year anniversary
and is still going strong. I look back at that time of my life as one of the worst times and wonder how the hell I got
through it. I think when you are putting your all into someone else, it is hard to concentrate on your own grief and
pain. I was lucky to have a very supportive family system that willingly helped me through this ordeal. I did deal with
feelings of resentment towards him for a long time and still, to this day, when I think about it long and hard, I want to
cry and scream. I never could quite understand how he could care for a substance more than he loved me.
I am proud to say that Johnny is now holding down a good full-time job and is paying bills, helping around the house,
and has become an outstanding man in the past two years. We moved far away from that place and now have our
own home with two puppies and a cat. I am in my first successful year of teaching and we are planning on being
together for years to come.
If you would have asked me then how I thought things would work out, I would not have said anything positive. I
thought for sure he would die. With the statistics that I’ve seen in regards to heroin use, Johnny was one of the
ones who beat the odds. I know that although he has a lot of clean time into his recovery, it is no guarantee that I
will never see that drug again. I am hopeful, though, that as long as I am a strong support system to him, he will
never again need to depend on a drug to bring him happiness in life.
I love him more than words could ever say. We were two of the lucky ones. When you are dealing with a loved one
with an addiction, you are also going through the same emotions and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. I
hope our story could be help towards a person or family and would like to give my sympathy to families who have
lost someone to this drug or are dealing with an addict right now at this very moment. Know that there are many
who have been in your shoes before you and there is help and support out there.
Thank you Defeat Addictions for taking the time to read and share our story.
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