My first 45 days of schooling at the 12-month Alcohol and Drug Counseling Certificate Program was gnarly. I was smoking heroin every day before class, after class, and throughout the rest of the day.
I was acing all the tests and projects and got perfect scores on a few quizzes and exams.
And though I was really good at school, my heroin addiction was totally out of control.
I was stealing money from my parents and selling off my music equipment to pay for my half a gram to gram a day heroin habit.
This was no way to live, and I was barely hanging on.
One day while I was passed out on the couch living with my parents, my dad looked through my phone as he was suspicious that I was on drugs.
He immediately saw the texts between my heroin dealer and me, and when I woke up he confronted me about it.
I got mad at him for going through my phone, and then I told him I would call my doctor to make an appointment to get help.
My Doctor Visit
Fortunately, my doctor had an opening the very next day. I went to the appointment hoping to get placed on Suboxone, as I had used the medication in the past without a prescription, and it helped me stay off opiates.
But I didn’t get prescribed Suboxone.
And what happened at the doctor appointment blew me away.
My doctor listened to me talk about my heroin addiction, and he pulled out his pen and prescription pad and wrote me a prescription for two medications.
The two medicines were:
He told me to “take as much as I needed to feel better.” He said to “take them both a few times a day, and that once I was getting close to finishing the bottles of meds to make another appointment to see him.”
So I left the appointment and went straight to the Rite Aid pharmacy two blocks away.
After my prescription was filled, I had two GIGANTIC bottles of drugs. I don’t remember the exact number, but I had over 200 10 mg methadone tablets and over 200 10 mg Valium pills.
I was so happy.
Happier than I had been in very… long… time.
My Near-Death Overdose Experience
I immediately took 12 methadone tablets for a total of 120 mg. Then I took 2 Valiums for a total of 20 mg. That evening I felt so euphoric, energized, and happy.
It was much better than heroin.
Heroin only lasts 30-60 minutes or so when you’re smoking it.
But the methadone and Valium combination was truly wonderful and long-lasting.
I went for a walk just after sunset to go downtown and get some dinner. I got a slice of pizza and a soda and just remember feeling more relaxed and happy than possibly ever before.
But that is the last thing I remember.
I don’t remember going home from dinner…
I don’t remember waking up and going to school the next morning…
And I don’t remember going to the park with my daughter and my classmate and his son after school (luckily he drove and not me).
Blacked out for about 24 hours or so, I must have been continually popping methadone and Valium pills.
After getting home from the park around 6 pm, I laid down in my bed and went to sleep.
My mom was upstairs and she got a very bad feeling and intuitively felt that she needed to go check on me.
When she came downstairs into my room, I was passed out lying on my back, my face was grey, my lips were blue, and there was vomit on my lips and chin.
She immediately called 911 and the EMT crew got to me in a flash.
Though I was unconscious, I remember vividly feeling like I was in an alien spaceship tied down to a gurney. The aliens (Greys) were rushing me down a long hall in their spaceship and I was exhilarated because being abducted by aliens was always a fantasy of mine.
Soon I stopped moving, and the aliens were about to operate on me.
Then I remember barely coming to consciousness and I saw a face.
It was the face of a very scared EMT with a look of desperation.
I could barely understand him, but he was screaming something at me.
It was a question.
“WHAT DID YOU TAKE???!!!”
Then I drifted back into unconsciousness…
The next thing I remember is coming back to consciousness a few days later in the hospital.
Back at my parents’ house a few days prior, the EMT had given me a naloxone shot which filled my opioid receptors and “kicked out” all the methadone that was in those mu opioid receptors.
This put me into instant opioid withdrawal and it saved me from dying.
Both methadone and Valium are powerful CNS depressants, and since I took too much, I stopped breathing and was going to die if I didn’t get that naloxone shot.
My doctor at the hospital had told my parents that had the EMTs come a minute or two later… I would’ve been DEAD.
My mother’s psychic intuition and immediate action combined with the fast arrival of the EMTs literally saved my life.
And that was my wakeup call.
I nearly left my 18-month old daughter Willow without a father for the rest of her life.
That hit me like a ton of bricks.
And at that point, I vowed to become a new person.
I set off on a path of personal growth so I could become strong and responsible.
When I left the hospital after a week, I had a new sense of purpose.
I ended up doing very well in school and getting an internship at an Opiate Treatment Program (OTP) ten minutes away from where I lived.
At the internship, my performance was excellent and just four weeks into it the Clinical Director (CD) offered me a full-time counseling position once I completed my 4-month internship.
I excelled and thrived as a counselor at the OTP, but after two years I left the counseling profession.
It was time for me to take a shot at entrepreneurship and see if I could help people with opiate addiction in a way that was holistic.
Thus… this website OpiateAddictionSupport.com was born.
And the rest is history…
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