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Feras's
Story
Feras's
"I started to chase the high because I loved the way it made me feel."
My name is Feras, and this is my story:
As a child, I had a loving family, a love for competition and sports. Of course with that came good grades. What could possibly have gone wrong?
Everyone knows what a drug addict looks like, right? Some dingy looking person under a bridge with a shopping cart full of blankets and garbage bags full of clothes ppl pick out of the garbage and a cigarette butt sticking out of their mouth that they picked up off the street not even lit. I never thought I would be an addict until my parents started trusting me enough to go out with my friends and I started hanging out with the wrong crowd, who I thought was the cool crowd.
I am 19 years old now and am just now figuring out how stupid I was for the choices I made, and now it’s time to clean up the big mess I made of my life. It started out with just marijuana, and I say “Just” because that was nothing compared to what I ended up doing as time went on and marijuana wasn’t cutting it anymore for me.
I started to chase the high because I loved the way it made me feel. As my tolerance for weed grew more and more, a friend of mine introduced me OxyContin. At first I would take it as a regular pill, and drink with it. Then I started crushing it up and inhaling it along with drinking. (Wow) I did not know that this would become my life for the next 2 years and that I could not function without it, and low and behold if I wasn’t able to get my hands on it. I would become a whole demon and a half. Drugs became my best friend, my girlfriend, and my abusive relationship. That finally left me to the conclusion that it was time we broke up.
I had just graduated high school and summer break had started, I didn’t want to go into my first year of college as an addict as my parents were paying for my education. I approached my mom (Because my dad would have killed me) (No arab dad, muslim at that, thinks their child would ever do wrong, especially drugs) My mom broke the news to my dad and I could not look at my dad straight in the eye. I literally walked with my head hanging low. Mom gets me into the MAT office and they prescribe me Suboxone to help me detox.
" In the end, my thought to myself was: It is possible to recover."
Let me tell you, at this point I felt like I was going crazy and sweating and hurting. I wished I was dead. It was the most painful thing I ever had to go through, and all I could think was how do I stop this feeling. The first 2 weeks of detoxing were the most difficult. (the word difficult is an understatement) my mom stood by me in all this, my dad just pretended he didn’t see anything. He was hurt, disappointed and always blamed my mom for what happened and how she raised me. After 2 weeks my dad came around and started helping me through the process… In all honesty, once I seen my dad step in and be there for me, I started feeling better and it made me want to push through. I wanted my dad to look at me the way he did when I was younger, so I had to do this. It gave me the confidence and hope I was looking for. My desperation to stay clean was stronger than it had ever been.
In the end, my thought to myself was: It is possible to recover. Any addict can stop using, lose the desire to use, and find a new way of life. I have been clean for over a year now, and I couldn’t thank anyone more than my mom for staying next to me and sleeping in my room with the door locked and making sure I didn’t try to kill myself in the process. Kudos to my dad who finally came around and gave me that feeling that he loved me even if I messed up. I now live a clean happy life and am attending a nursing program so that I may help someone in the future that may not have the support I had. I know I have a long way to go, there isn’t a day that goes by that I have to push through and walk away from opportunities that may put me back in that ugly place I once was. That pain of detoxing is something I never want to feel again.
I know my story is not over, and I have a long way to go, but I am now strong enough to walk away.