Recollections, addiction and hope. These are true stories from my perspective. The names have been changed for anonymity.

No one ever says they want to grow up to be a junkie

My older brother Bill gave me every drug I ever tried the first time. I vividly remember my first 2 experiences, a cigarette, and a joint. I remember how quickly the addiction progressed. I didn’t know anything about addiction. I didn’t know that I was a prime candidate because of all the recent turmoil my family had faced. I did not know my brother and I were genetically pre-dispositioned for addiction. I didn’t know my brother already was an addict. I didn’t know I was under a lot of stress or fully understand the anxious feelings I was starting to have. I just knew drugs felt good and I liked them, especially pot. It slowed things down, it calmed me down, it created a temporary quiet space inside my overactive ego-trained brain. It made life surreal.

I smoked my first cigarette with Bill at 9 years old. Our parents smoked in their bedroom and were careless about leaving their cigarettes lying around. We were usually alone for a few hours after school till they arrived home from work. We used to go into their bedroom and steal change from a huge jar to squander on the ice cream truck. Sugar was my original addiction. One day I went into their bedroom for some small change but I started to play with the pack of Newports I found on my mom’s bedside nightstand. I put an unlit cigarette to my mouth and felt the menthol tingle my lips. I liked it. I sat there fake puffing on the cigarette when Bill walked in. Oh no, I thought, I’m in trouble. We did not have a safe trusting relationship. We did not protect each other. Since early childhood Bill would throw me under the bus and blame me anytime for anything if it meant he might avoid punishment, be praised, or receive extra privileges. He would actually set me up to achieve this. Once when I was 4 years old he convinced me that a blue mail collection box was a trash can and I should throw my gum in it because we were going into a theater and I had to spit it out. I ignorantly complied. Then he immediately told my grandma what I had just done and I got in big trouble, and he was praised for telling on me.

Anyhow so here I am caught with a forbidden cigarette between my lips and certain he was going to tell on me. Instead, he said, “have you ever smoked one?” ”no”, I replied. “let’s smoke one then,” he said. I figured I was damned either way and I submitted out of curiosity. He lit the cigarette took a deep drag which told me this was not his first cigarette. After a few puffs, he handed it to me. “Draw it into your mouth and then take a really deep breath ” he instructed to insure I would inhale properly. I remember that first hit of nicotine being the worst feeling I’d ever felt at that young age. It felt like someone poured hot sauces into my chest which then expanded into a green spider web of mucus tightening its grip on my virgin lungs. I coughed, I hacked, I almost threw up, I thought I might die. He brought me water and encouraged me to keep going. I don’t remember if I took another drag that day but it wasn’t long before I was stealing cigarettes from my parent’s packs before they went out on Friday night so my friend and I could share one and run around the house with a nicotine buzz. I managed to quit smoking cigarettes about 5 years ago, but I still occasionally have one- if and only if- I’ve been drinking.

At 12 years old the only exposure I had to drugs was through the Dare program in 5th grade and the required reading Go Ask Alice in middle school. Both the program and the book were meant to prevent drug use but just like an advertisement, the repetition just increased my curiosity about these forbidden fruits. There were also those 2 commercials. “This is your brain” a deep narrator’s voice proclaims over a visual of an egg. “This is your brain on drugs,” he said as we watched the eggshell crack and the insides skydive to a sizzling demise in the frying pan. “Any questions”? And the other commercial stated, “no one ever says they want to grow up to be a junkie.” These things never resonated with me. Junkies were homeless people on the streets in my mind. These commercials did not apply to my life.

Bill was 3 years older than me and my only sibling. He already had extensive experience with many different drugs. The only way he’d even give me the time of day was if I asked him about drugs. He would stand and talk to me forever about the difference between each drug how it all affected the mind and body. He made it sound so great and I’d never seen him as passionate about anything else. I remember him once telling me that he would never stop doing drugs for the rest of his life. He was right.

A few years later my curiosity about marijuana had grown too strong to contain so I finally asked my brother one day if he could get me some weed. Bill told his best friend who had a brother named Steven in my class. Steven wanted me to meet him before school to smoke a joint. Bill gave me my first joint for free. It was rolled in purple and green striped paper and he told me where to meet Steven before the bus to school the next morning. I was worried…. “Bill, I can’t smoke pot for the first time right before school. Will you teach me how now, so I won’t feel stupid with Steven and so I know how it will affect me?” Bill took me out to our screened-in pool area in the back of the house. We had 3 different sliding glass doors that looked into the pool area, one from our parent’s room. Despite our parents being home, Bill sparked that joint right there and we smoked it poolside. He told me some people don’t get high the first time, I figured they probably didn’t know how to inhale. After a few drags, I asked how I would know when I was high. He said it would feel like the static objects were starting to move. Sure enough, the sink in my peripheral view suddenly appeared to be bouncing around in a little circle. “Whoa… I think I’m high,” I said. He put the joint out and guided me back into the house. He told me to go to my room and instructed me not to talk to our parents under any circumstances for the rest of the night.

I turn 40 in 3 months. I haven’t taken a break from smoking pot for more than a few months since that fateful day. I managed to stay sober for 30 days last month, just to turn around and start smoking multiple times per day again. I guess it’s good to just clear it out once and a while. Nobody ever says they want to grow up to be a junkie. It just happens.