From Oxy to Black Tar Heroin

[My quick descent from innocent pain pain pills into the dark world of heroin]

Summer of 2010 was the beginning of the end for me. Upon failing out of college twice at that point, I was living with my parents in my childhood home, and was becoming immersed in the drug underworld at an alarming rate. What's interesting about my story is that I never touched a drug until after I graduated high school, literally the day after I lost my scholarship to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Up until then my life had purpose, meaning, and I was on a clear path to success. However, to the trained eye, it was very clear that my life had begun falling apart much earlier than I could possibly realize.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, I was able to "get by" up to that point in my life on my talents, looks, and success. I never had to develop my core beliefs, true self, nor anything other than the external persona which people became so drawn to. I was the star quarterback, class clown, good student, multi-talented kid, who people adored and wanted to be around. I didn't have to try to make friends, or get girlfriends, they naturally gravitated to me. However, what I've learned later on in life, is these things were superficially acting as my foundation for a life that had no true meaning. I had no idea of my identity, was completely out of touch with who I was, And subconsciously was searching for anything to fill the internal void in my soul. I managed to evade this realization until that point due to hiding behind my status, reputation, and accolades. Little did I know, but definitely sensed in my spirit, this was all about to come crashing down.

[Oxycodone] pills that I started taking in 2010.

Once my "success" in life disappeared, I had nothing left to hide behind and the ever so festering internal void of my soul took center stage in my life. It was a warm summer day in June, Texas was playing in the college baseball World Series, when suddenly an acquaintance from high school whom I had been buying pain pills from texted me saying, "hey I've got something new." So, Being the curious junkie-in-waiting that I was, I hopped on my bike and peddled 4 miles to his house, something that had become a daily occurrence. My license was suspended due to a DWI so this was my proffered method of transportation when I was doing my best to subtly hide my true whereabouts around town, but lets be honest, I was really bad at hiding.

As we go into his backyard to sit in his camper, our daily ritual, he pulls out a bundle of tiny little green pills, the size of matchstick heads. Naturally I Inquired why they were so small, at which point he responded, "because they're that strong." In reality, I already knew why they were so small, but hearing my dealer confirm this made my anticipating junkie heart burst into joy, as sick as that sounds. He casually tells me they are these new pills called oxycodone. Our normal ritual was to take a few pills, talk for 30 or 40 minutes, at which point I would make up an excuse why I had to leave, and then I would just pedal on home. The true joy from taking the pills was riding my bike jamming music feeling like 1,000,000 bucks. But this day was different. Upon taking the first oxycodone I became more sick than I'd ever been in my life. I began vomiting, couldn't stand on two feet, and seriously considered calling an ambulance because I thought I was dying, which later I found out because oxycodone is just that strong. The crazy part of addiction is that most people upon having reactions such as this would never touch the pills, or said drug, ever again. But being an addict, which I am well aware of today, when I woke up the next day and the sickness had worn off, the only thing on my mind was getting another one of those pills.

Within a week I was taking three times the amount I started originally taking. Within a month I was taking six times the original amount, and within two months I couldn't take enough pills to feel anything. My tolerance had built that quickly. A short time after that I started looking for something stronger, which eventually turned into black tar heroin. Call it fate, the forces of evil, or simply the natural progression of addiction, every step of the way as I tried to fill that internal void, somewhere along the line something greater and stronger was introduced to me seemingly out of nowhere. It felt like there was an invisible force slowly stringing me along waiting for the precise time to hook me on something deeper.

[Black Tar Heroin] is derived from poppy plants then processed into opium, at which point it is refined into heroin.

For the sake of sparing you from deluded medical jargon, all you need to know is that oxycodone is essentially lab made heroin. I was a seasoned heroin addict who at his peak injected 2G per day, and I can tell you there is no difference between injecting oxycodone and heroin, in my experience. If you've ever been in a hospital, heroin in its purest form is called diacetylmorphine, which is a close cousin to morphine in its acetylated form, roughly 3X stronger than morphine. Oxycodone is a synthetic opioid which is derived from morphine but is 2.5X stronger, and last much longer in one's system. Both drugs are meant to be used in controlled settings, for severe debilitating pain. However, again, as the story goes, are often abused recreationally.

I never thought I would become a heroin addict. I thought heroin addicts were dirty, inner city homeless people who came from incredibly tumultuous childhoods and had nothing going for them in their life. You can imagine how I felt being two years removed from being an All Star athlete headed to the US Military Academy, having his whole life in front of him, to sitting in my parents bathroom, shooting heroin wondering what in the world went wrong. The stark harsh reality is that addiction does not discriminate. It does not care your age gender race or creed. It is chronic progressive and fatal. What started as a simple way to escape massive amounts of emotional pain, in the form of an innocent pain pill, turned in to a daily emotional, mental, physical and spiritual necessity in order to maintain any semblance of existence. The devastating thing about opiates which make them so hard to kick is not only do you become psychologically addicted, there is a physical dependence which also accompanies them. At some point your brain stops producing endorphins due to the opiate presenting itself as a synthetic endorphin in your brain, which tells your brain to stop producing real endorphins naturally. So as you can guess, when you remove the opiate from your system, your brain goes into panic mode, working overdrive to make up for the chemicals that are now absent.

[Heroin Withdrawal]

Heroin withdrawal to this day is still one of the most incredibly excruciating physical events I've ever experienced. However, the truly devastating realization I've come to Is that if you would have asked me after the first oxycodone I ingested -transporting me 12 years in the future, showing me exactly what that would turn into, exactly what it would feel like, laying out the wake of destruction which wreaked havoc on my life- would you do it again? I would have said yes. Even if you would have take me to that moment before I took the first pill, then asked me at that point, would you do it again, without a doubt I absolutely would. Not because I am a horrible person, not because I wanted to destroy everything around me, but simply because addiction tells you that you can control it, it won't happen to you, and now that I know the outcome, I'll do it differently. Sadly, this is a losing proposition, one I played many times to failure. This is what perpetuates the harsh cycle of addiction, unfortunately claiming far too many lives along the way, like it should have claimed mine far too many times than I like to remember.

[Spencer Brooks Otto]