If someone would ever tell me that I will have a family and live in a clean apartment someday, I would definitely feel offended and think that this person is making fun of me.
I was born in 1982 in Kiev, to a very decent family. My parents loved me very much, because I was their only child, their beloved son. My father worked as a driver of truck, and my mother was a seller in the shop of textile. They provided me with everything I needed, but they couldn’t’t provide me enough attention. When I was 7 years old and I went to school to the first grade, my mother gave birth to my younger sister. We seemed to be a very happy family, and my father started earning good money, so everything was going just great. Outwardly I behaved well, and everyday in the morning I took my sister to the kindergarten and was an exemplary student at school. But when I was in the third grade I tried a cigarette for the first time.
Most of my free time I spent outside with my friends. All of them were older than me and I was trying to repeat their habits and everything they did. In the fifth grade I was smoking marihuana and kept doing that every single day till I was in the seventh grade because all of my friends did that and I couldn’t leg behind. When I was in the seventh grade it was the first time when I took Tramadol (it is a strong anesthetic drug) and I really enjoyed the affect of intoxication. At first I took 3 pills and soon my dose rose and I started taking 5 pills.
After all, the bigger dose made me sick and if I took less it didn’t give any affect. So we decided to steal a first-aid kit at school with my friend, because this kit contained Teren-4. This drug is a dreadful thing. And when we took it for the first time we had terrible hallucinations. These hallucinations were so strong that we got very scared for our minds and health. We were dismissed from our classes for our behavior, and when I came home and sat down to watch the TV, people were walking out of it towards me trying to kill me. My friend got into the nut house, because his mother couldn’t take him out of the restroom, because he was drowning demons in the toilet. I have never took Teren anymore, and I have never seen that friend anymore.
When I was 14 (it was the 9th grade) and one day it was my friend’s birthday, he turned 16 and we decided to celebrate his party in one of the night clubs. But before we went to the club we stopped by at the front door of some apartments. I thought we would smoke some weed, but he took out a shot and some white stuff (later I found out that it was amphetamine). I couldn’t refuse to shoot up. I felt myself so bright and happy, and full of strength and energy, so for this reason I was looking to experience these feelings again and again.
There was one girl in my class who lived with an old drug addict. I knew about it, so once I asked her to bring me some opium shots. I remember that I liked the first opium shot more that anything else because it was better than all the other drugs I’ve tried before, even though I threw up many times.
My parents didn’t have a clue what was going on with me for the whole year. But eventually they noticed all the changes in me and found out that I had bruises and signs after shots all over my hands. Very soon I couldn’t live without this drug. I was obsessed with it and couldn’t think of anything else. I had cramps and withdrawal pains and spent sleepless nights, even weeks. I needed money for injections and as most of the addicts I started stealing. The easiest way to make some money was to rob the cars, and if I couldn’t get anything out of them I just broke everything that got into my hands. Sometimes I even got caught by the owners of the cars and they bit me up till I was half dead. It hurt too bad, but I wasn’t ashamed of anything because the drug was above all the hurt and pain, and even my whole life.
Once I woke up chained up to the heating battery. My father thought that he could help me get rid of the addiction this way. It was very difficult for me to suffer the withdrawal pain, but in the evening of that day, they let me go and the first thing I did was that I ran to my neighbor who was also an addict to have a dose. I hid the fretsaw under my bed , and on the second day when they chained me again, I set myself free just in an hour and right away I ran to look for the drug.
I could barely finish the school and my grades were the worst in the class. My parents paid the bribe so I could study in college, but I got acquainted with people who were also on drugs, and obviously the situation hasn’t changed at all. I found out that I was infected with hepatitis B and C when I was 17. The doctors have seen such a yellow child for the first time in their lives, and they didn’t even know how to deal with me after they saw my analysis. They had put me to the intensive care unit, but it didn't keep me away from doing opium shots, although they wouldn’t make me high anymore. After I was discharged from the hospital my parents wanted to remove the break-up and took me to the necrology. My veins all were hidden and the medical stuff couldn’t put a dropper.
When I was 18 years old, I went to prison for the first time. I was convicted on three counts of theft and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. In prison, I have experienced break-up and decided that I would never take a syringe in my hand again. But three days after I was released, I began to shoot up again.
The story began all over again. Again I had withdrawal pain, again my mother cried all nights through, again I was selling someone’s property, and again I was stealing. I hooked up on heroin and shoot up with it for more than half a year. The break-up was terrible, I could even get up to go to the restroom. I wanted to help myself somehow and decided to drop of on opium shots again.
I was stealing all the time, and I was all the time chased by police. My body got worn off. I had abscesses on my hands and I had to open to release the pus. There was no place on my body where I could do the injections anymore so I shoot up in the groin. Drug addicts use to say: “If you shoot up in your groin, you will see the coffin soon”. I used to say this myself but I had to go for it.
This was a new circle of hell. I still lived with my parents but I never talked to my Dad, because as soon as we looked at each other there was a conflict right away. My father begged me to commit a suicide, and make it easier for everyone. He had even bought a coffin for me and put it in our village house, just in case. There were no expensive things left at home because I’ve sold everything: gold, jewelry, money. I was taking everything that I could sell, even the dolls of my sister. Sometimes they wouldn’t let me live at home. Once I spent half a year living in an elevator, after that I got into the hospital with a difficult stage of pleurisy. There was about a liter of liquid accumulated in my lungs. The doctors drained off the liquid but they had to discharge me because I constantly ran away for a dose. At that time when I was shooting up in the groin, I got infected and wasn’t able stand up on my foot. My mother couldn’t’t take it anymore, and she took me to the surgeon. That day he told me that one more shot and my leg would have to be amputated. It was my lack that my mother brought me to the doctor.
My father has totally rejected me, but my mother was striving for my life all the time. She was taking me to different hospitals, and healers, monasteries, but nothing helped me because the drug ruled over my body and my mind absolutely.
In 2003 I got into the prison again, for theft. I was convicted to 1 year of imprisonment, but this time I didn’t have any illusions that I would get rid of my addiction. This time I was shooting up in prison, and after I was released. I have put a brand on myself “A drug addict for life”. A drug called “Screw” was very popular in Kiev at that time. So I decided to try it, and as I heard that it didn’t give a withdrawal pain I thought could change shooting up opium on this drug. After I was taking the “screw” for 9 month, my teeth started to hurt me a lot. I went to the dentist and he sent me for the test to the facial-jaw-bone surgery. They told me that I have osteomyelitis of the jaw, and they need to remove the bone in my jaw. It turned out that I was the second person in Ukraine who had to remove the bone because of the osteomyelitis. This is the disease of those who take the “Screw”. So they removed a part of the bone in my mouth and it made a reach-through hole
While I was in the hospital, there was one patient with me who was selling drugs and I was making opium shots again. The doctor discharged me on the second day after the surgery, with bandages in my mouth so I could just die at home. I moved to my friend and we were both addicted. This is how we lived for half a year - I was making my opium shots in the kitchen, and he was taking his “screw” in the living room. This is how we lived for half a year. I was 50 kilograms at that time and my height is 183 centimeters. I was scary, toothless, with the whole bunch of diseases, and had no meaning of life or any kind of perspectives. I didn’t know that I had HIV too.
The drug deprived me of everything I had and everything I could have. It is relentless to everyone who deals with it, and it doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl, whether you are poor or you are rich, whether you have some status in the society or you don’t. It is like a leech that sucks out all your life from you. It is like a delayed action bomb that explodes and destroys you completely. I was drug addicted for 10 years, for 10 horrible years of my life
I would avoid the sufferings of the prison, and all the trouble I have lived through, if I would refuse to shoot up at my friend’s birthday one day, or even earlier to smoke some weed.
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