He wakes with a start. Heart pounding, sweat beading down his face, muscles tense. The whole world lays on his chest. He pins himself under his covers as a small beam of light pierces his eyes, partially blinding him. “Is it day or night?” thinks the man. The question is meaningless because he knows he’ll be tired no matter where the sun lays. These past months had been horrible. He has felt so weak, so helpless. Unable to sleep, speak to friends, or concentrate on one thing for more than a couple seconds. His head constantly pounding, his endless flu, and his desire for a return to normalcy. Just one sip, just one hit, anything to relieve him from this infinite and exhausting pain. Anything would be better than this.

It started out well, meaning his life of course. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing noticeably wrong. He wasn’t beaten or molested. He was very shielded from the world of pain and misery that would eventually become his own. He didn’t need to understand the meaning of withdrawal then, or even the meaning of dependency . He was given everything at the beginning, therefore he thought that was the way the world worked.

Then his “friends” came into the picture. They helped him feel welcome, they involved him in their games and let them join in all that they did. But it all changes when you’re forced to make that trying decision. And of course, they said, “Oh come on man, it’s just weed” As they shoved it into his hands.

“Ok, fine” said the boy. Then began the trouble.

It wasn’t all the boys fault. They say that parents are the key to raising drug free kids. So in this boy’s case, the lack of exactly that had to have been it.

Then the parties started, the loud music, the adrenaline, and the girls. Definitely the girls. They were almost as bad as the parents. “Try this.” or “Just do it once and if you don’t like it then that’s fine.” As if that was something he could control.
Another thing you have to understand is that he wasn’t the coolest of kids at first. He was nervous, shaky, and he stuttered. So this helped him with the girl part and also the friends. Sadly, he went with the simple solution, confidence held in a bag, or a bottle, and later, in a pill.
This went on for a while, he drifted through school. Teachers passing him on from class to class, leaving him for the next teacher. They didn’t care how he did or how he turned out, as long as he didn’t disturb the class, all was well. No one stopped and spoke to him, no one came up to him and asked if all was good at home, or how have you been feeling? But, in all honestly, who would? Who would suspect that the boy who was so alive at parties struggled to even be in the same room as those who raised him, or that by doing all those crazy things he was really just hiding from the fact that maybe having the “cool” parents isn’t really that cool. It’s not that “cool” if you could leave the house for days without them noticing, or that you could, stay at home for a week and skip school why they took a nice long vacation to Florida, or Vegas, or wherever they decided they wanted to go. No one ever stopped and thought, “He’s still just a boy.” And no one ever realized that all that he did was done for some attention. He got in trouble to see if they would even care. He left the house for that week just to see if they would notice (by the way, they didn’t). “But, hey, he’s old enough to make his own decisions now. He doesn’t need someone to hold his hand through things anymore.”
People judged him as if he was ever able to make a clear decision after he decided to go out with his “friends” for that first time. And as he slowly slipped into the same path that those friends had followed, his life changed for the worse.
In a blink of the eye, he was a fully grown man that lay drunk and beaten up after trying to steal some pills from his dealer. His best friend might as well have been those very same people that beat him up and left him to die. Because as he was there on the ground, he never once realized that he lay on private property and that the police would receive a late night call about a drunken man that wouldn’t leave someone’s backyard.
As he was awoken by the policeman asking him what he was doing he instinctively lashed out, thinking the dealers had come back to finish the job. This landed him a year of jail time where he was forced to stop killing himself, something that had become second nature to him. He served some time, went through some counseling and was readmitted to a rehab center. One far off and that had surprisingly been paid for by his parents. The same ones that had helped him to get where he was today.
They took everything sharp away. They took his razor, his advil and even his shoelaces. “Why the shoelaces?” Thought the man. “This will be good for you.” He reminded himself like his therapist often would.
He had only been clean for a very short time and still experienced his pain. Only now, they decided Advil was too much to give to him.
He sat in his room, that might as well have been a jail cell and bit away his nails. It was all that he could do to occupy himself. He restlessly paced across the length of his room unable to sleep, unable to concentrate, and unable to get rid of that goddamn headache.
“Please. Just two advil.” pleaded the man, as his head throbbed in pain.
No reply came and he went back to his staring contest with the wall of his cell.
Weeks went by and he carried on like this. Performing the same tedious activities of staring at the wall, biting his nails, and constantly dreaming of advil, only to be awoken by searing headaches and asthma attacks.
Then came the day his parents visited. They came into his room and the man’s therapist joined them. She saw the look he had in his eyes and decided that it was time to leave it to the parents.
Suddenly the mother broke into tears. The man was disgusted. How could they act as if they were sad when they didn’t know who he was or how he had suffered. Why couldn’t they have come when he really need them? When it all started?
But she continued to cry and finally, she embraced him, she and the father both sat crying as they gripped the man, never hinting at letting him go. Then, he began to cry. It was all that he had needed. He needed to know that he had more friends than the ones that needed him high. He wanted someone to want him and not what the drugs made him.
The next night, He woke with a start. Heart pounding, sweat beading down his face, muscles tense. The whole world laying on his chest. He pinned himself under his covers as a small beam of light pierced his eyes, partially blinding him. “Is it day or night?” thought the man. The question is meaningless because he knew he’d be tired no matter what time it was. The past months had been horrible. He had felt so weak, so helpless. Unable to sleep, speak to friends, or concentrate on one thing for more than a couple seconds. His head constantly pounding, his endless flu, and his desire for a return to normalcy. Just one sip, just one hit, anything to relieve him from this infinite and exhausting pain. But still, he knew, anything else would be worse than this.
Suddenly, he was able to throw his arms back onto the other side of the cliff. The cliff that he had so nearly propelled himself off of. He was finally free to walk away from the edge, and to start creating his own footsteps...