Needless to say, this would not be lasting. This new apartment quickly became just a clubhouse of liquor bottles and crack smoke. That first Friday, we threw a house warming party with some of our friends, and we were off to the races once again. We would keep this apartment for three months, and then find ourselves so in the grip that we would be unable to pay our rent. Every single dollar we made was spent on cocaine and booze, again. One day we came home from a day shift to find a notice on the door stating that if we didn’t pay our rent within 48 hours, all of our belongings would be set out on the curb. And that is exactly what happened.  Once again, it was my mother to the rescue. She would be putting up the money for us to put another deposit down on an apartment across town. We were set out, and moved into another apartment the very same day. This new apartment would also not be lasting, because within just a few days of our move in, we would be finding a very horrible thing. A heroin connection. We switched jobs to better fit our location, since we had to walk to and from work if we couldn’t find rides, and we were once again serving tables, and blowing all of our money on crack and booze. Until a friend of mine came knocking at our door one morning with something he thought I would be interested in. And I was. He walked in and sat down on the couch, reached in his pocket, unfolded a sandwich baggie and plopped about two and half grams of some light grey heroin onto my coffee table. And that would be all she wrote on this matter, you can only imagine how this whole story went. My friend that was sitting on my couch that day is dead by the way, He overdosed a few years back, at the ripe old age of 22. Dead. Gone. This disease takes so many young people.

We sniffed our way to oblivion and back for the next few days, because just starting out, our tolerances to the drug were very low. But within about a week, we would all be shooting about half a gram a day. And then more and more. This thing is so progressive. We went from blowing all of our work earnings on Heroin, to ripping off young kids who thought they were buying Mali. I know, it’s horrible. But when a person, like myself is so in the grip, nothing matters but the next fix. And I would do anything to get that. We were able to keep this stage of life going over the course of the summer, but, like it always does, the bottom fell out, and we were once again being evicted. Two apartments in one year. Who does that? I did. My addiction had me. And now, what was even worse, was that we were losing our base of operation. The dope spot. Now, we would be losing our main resource to keeping our addiction going, a place for people to find their connection and a place to use. This was bad. And we were completely strung out. We had a week to vacate the apartment. What were we going to do? There was no possible way we could stay using and move out, and there was definitely no way we were going to be moving our entire apartment while we were dope sick. This was our plan- of course we had to use one more time, so we drove up into Atlanta with our friend, bought a couple grams, and headed back to Peachtree City. I had about 30 Xanax bars delivered and we were going to get good and high this last time, and then take the Xanax and just kind of sleep it off for the next 6 days. This was going to work!. It actually did. I guess we weren’t very far along into our physical dependency with the drug, because in my later experiences in life there is no way this would have worked. But for some reason, this did. We shot up all night, and downed a hand full of the yellow pills in the morning, it was a Wednesday when we took the pills. I woke up Saturday morning covered in my own piss and goosebumps. I crawled out of my clothes, forced myself to shower, and climbed right back into the piss soaked bed. I took the remaining pills and blacked out again.I was awaken to the sound of someone beating on my window. Frantic pounding on the glass outside my room. Loud thumps on my front door. Not sure what day it was, I was afraid it was the landlord coming to put us out, that we had missed the move out day. I was afraid that the police were outside to aid in the eviction, and we had tons of paraphernalia inside the house and I was afraid of going back to jail. Nothing could be worse than going back to jail with my given circumstances, except for what the person outside was about to tell me. The person pounding on the windows and doors for the last 20 minutes was my older brother. He was frantic and in tears. “Our little brother is not waking up, he was found non responsive this morning in his room, we think it’s an over dose, He’s on his way to the hospital right now in the back of an ambulance.”