REAL STORIES

Age: 19
Gender: Female
Location: Hawaii

I started smoking dope over a year ago. I had no reason really to start; I had just finally gotten clean off of a bad crack and morphine addiction after about 5 months and didn't need to get high at all anymore.

Until one morning, the boyfriend I was with for 2 years beat me extremely badly for the first time. I'd never been hit before and I didn't know how to deal with it. We had gone through a lot, being homeless, being addicts, everything. Then an old friend came around who used Meth to get over crack. I fell into old habits by using substances to get high and run from my problems. We ended up together and I became heavily addicted to ice.

I stopped working, lost my place, my car, and my life pretty much. We moved in with his family and didn't have much to worry about. He sold dope so we always had it on hand. Within the year I became used to being hit, sent to the emergency room from his abuse, having all my personal possessions taken from me, arguing, fighting, and indulging myself in heavy criminal activity. Most of the people on the news who were arrested, were people we knew or were friends. I've gone through pretty much everything that could ever possibly happen - like the movies. (Except it's not as cool or exciting when it's real and it's your life.) I've been pistol whipped, had loaded guns pointed at my face or against my head, cops, feds, raids, abuse-everything. I lost my family, my friends, my best-friend and boyfriend, my life, and myself.

I'm still damaged because of all this and I'm still struggling with my addiction. I can't remember the last year of my life because I smoked it away. I look back on everything that's happened to me and the people I used to know, and I wish I never started using in the first place. If I didn't (use in the first place), things would have never gotten this way and I'd still be happy. For what it's cost me, it wasn't worth it.

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