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| Rick's story: Different this time |
By: By SUZANNE ROOK, Senior Writer
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Posted: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 10:38 pm
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(Editor’s Note — Identifying characteristics of the subject of this story have been changed.)
When Rick’s OxyContin habit got too expensive and his debt started to climb, he had to decide: tell his parents about his habit or risk life and limb.
He chose to come clean.
A day at a time
Rick was drinking and smoking pot at 15. By the time he graduated from Northfield High School, he’d done coke, hallucinogenic mushrooms, Ecstasy and OxyContin.
On the day he sat his parents down and confessed his habit more than a year ago, he owed his dealer $1,700. Back then, he was taking anywhere from 400 to 600 milligrams of OxyContin a day. Rick still believes his parents had no idea the kind of trouble their son was in.
For a while after graduation, he lived at home, then rented an apartment, telling his parents he had a job out of town. And while he worked from time to time, his income was derived mostly from the sale of OxyContin. For more than a year, he was dealing, selling as many as a couple thousand 40 milligram tablets a month.
Access to drugs was easy, he said. So was finding buyers.
Rick, now 22, says he wasn’t above perusing a companion’s cell phone for hook ups, or asking coworkers if they might be interested in his wares.
But the drugs were taking their toll. Not only was he eyeball-deep in debt, he was afraid what might happen if he didn’t pay the money back.
And, he said, “I couldn’t even afford to get messed up. It was too expensive to do the amount I needed to get me high.”
It was then he checked himself into rehab, but left early after being assigned to a facility for youth. “Being with kids, they’re not serious about it,” Rick said. “They’re forced to be there by the courts or their parents.”
Before long he was back into drugs, but this time, he was doing heroin. At first he snorted the powder, but soon moved to needles after hearing how fabulous the high could be.
While the high was great, he said, the withdrawals felt like the flu at its worst: nausea, the sweats, restlessness, watery eyes, runny nose and diarrhea. Using took it all away in seconds.
Heroin, he said, made him detach. He rarely saw friends and hid his habit from his parents, wearing long sleeves all summer long to cover the scarring caused by repeated injections.
A second shot at treatment had better success, but by the end of last year, Rick realized he’d substituted alcohol for drugs. “I had to look at where it’s going to take me if I keep going,” he said, “jail or death.”
A month and a half ago he relapsed again. This time, he swears it’s different. He’s different. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, got himself a sponsor and acknowledged the importance of a creator in battling his addiction.
“I’m taking it a day at a time,” he said.
His relationship with his parents is good , he said. But he and his younger brother are no longer on speaking terms. “It’s because of what I put my parents through.”
— Suzanne Rook can be reached at srook@northfieldnews.com or 645-1113. |
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