4-28-19

Dear Reader,

Hey! I hope you are doing well!

It's a dry and sunny day outside my window and I ate the beans off my lunch tray...

Sometime after I was jumped and beat in the head with bricks I took up a job opportunity in another town... I'll have to wait till my appeal is over to tell you the 2nd half of that story. ;)

The job opportunity - selling drugs. I had no job, kicked out of my mom's home, before I could fully heal, by my sister. And my girlfriend at the time was almost twice my age and familiar with the world of cocaine. So I dove in.

The money came fast. So fast I'd become addicted to selling it. Then I learned if I cooked it into crack I could make even more money. So I sought help learning to cook it.

My days and nights blended together. Answering my phone on the first ring, hopping in my car to make a delivery, swapping cars so the police couldn't pinpoint one particular car to me. Whipping dope in the motel kitchen, having sex, counting money, eating + bathing and, when I was able to, catching some sleep. I've stayed up multiple days many times. I couldn't say no to money. I was an addict but didn't know it.

Eventually I started using cocaine to help fuel me through the long days. And then that became an addiction as well. Before I'd realized it, I was a full-blown addict. You couldn't look at me and tell so I was OK with it. Caring more about what others thought about me than what I thought about myself. :/

It was one night, after I'd been up for about 30 hours, that I'd called it quits. I'd been snorting cocaine and drinking and driving on deliveries. (Lucky I've never wrecked and killed someone or myself!)

I'm sitting in a hotel room, getting ready to watch "Once Upon a Time In Mexico" with my new girlfriend (I'll explain how we met at a later date) and my nose began bleeding. Bad. My nose never bled. Not unless I got hit in it hard. I went through a lot of tissue over the next couple hours, realizing the physical toll it was taking on my body. The damage it was causing. And how I'd become what I told myself I could never become. A drug addict! I popped a couple bars (Xanax) and went to sleep... :/ Drugs to come off drugs.

That's when my addiction to cocaine began. It lasted a couple years before I got off. It took my girlfriend getting pregnant for me to stop and reflect.

I quit. Even smoking weed. Of course she quit too. Even got a real job. Yup! I was straightening my act up. Moved out into the country to get away from that life and focus on becoming a better person for my child. It was hard to find work but this kind of life had its peace.

Eventually, of course, things went downhill. And that's the beginning of a whole new era in my life. I'll explain that in my next blog.

Until next time.

Yours truly,
Doug