I woke up one morning. There was nothing special about this morning, nothing to make it unique. I woke up and simply got ready for a doctors appointment I made the day before after I felt like I had a cold. That was nothing out of the usual for me, I was always getting sinus infections as a kid. I chalked it up as that and got ready, semi-struggling to do my hair and makeup between wiping snot off my nose.

The only thing I did different? I snorted a bag of dope. I no longer felt sick.

Now, it didn't hit me then that I was addicted to heroin, no. Instead I thought that there was no way I could even be close to 'addicted' as I was only getting high for about two months at that point. Almost every day, yes. But for only two months. I remember hearing the horror stories my mother and father drilled in my brain, and thinking back to them I told myself this certainty wasn't it.

Besides...I wasn't addicted. I hadn't even been doing it for that long to get sick. What was I, a loser? There was no way that I was going to get hooked on heroin. The myth of addiction being a disease and being passed down generation to generation was a lie. Besides, I didn't wake up and decide to be addicted to drugs. That's what happens, right?

No. That's not what happens.

I remember coming back from the doctors being slightly confused. They couldn't find out what's wrong with me, and I definitely wasn't sick anymore. Maybe the dope helped my sinus infection get away. Maybe this, maybe that. I sat on the couch and began reading this huge book on opiate addiction my mother got. It was helping pass the time it took for my drug dealer to get to my house until I hit a paragraph that simply stated something like "I noticed little pains like my back hurting. I noticed I would feel like I had the flu, then it would go away when I did heroin."

I threw up, and it wasn't from the withdrawal. It hit me like a prized boxer was paid to punch me in the stomach. I successfully did it. I ruined my life, and I was in too deep to quit. I didn't want to quit. I still wanted to get high. I was only 17 and was allowed to ruin my life, right? Withdrawal wasn't so bad, right? My mom and dad were just scaring me, right?

No.

Cut forward, it's now the cold-as-ice month known as February. I woke up crying.

People will tell you being dope sick is like the flu. While they're right, it's a flu you can get a cure for but you're too sick to rob someone or even get up to pee. It's a flu you know you can literally fix the minute you can get your drugs, but you lied to your family so much you can't even get a lousy five dollars.

You sweat, but it's cold. You cannot find the perfect temperature as your cigarette-burned blanket is half on you, half off. You try to smoke a cigarette but you throw up, while at the same time your stomach threatens you to get to the toilet. You try to move, but you literally just cannot find the god damned strength. You can't fall asleep because you'll have restless leg syndrome even though for some reason you can't even get up to kiss your mother goodbye while she heads for work. You tell her it's just a sinus infection, but she knows. You don't care, either.

You plead to the God that probably looks down at you in disgust. You pray, begging to find just a hint of residue to get you off E. If you find a bag, you promise to never do dope again. If you find a way to get money, you'll never rob someone again. If this, if that. You know it's not true. You just need to get yourself moving so you can conjure up a plan. Some people sell their bodies. Some people become strippers. While I never had the balls to do any of that, I did rob people. People I claimed were my best friends. It always killed me inside..after I felt better, of course.

Me, feeling like I was starting to get dope sick (I wasn't, I just wanted more) at my great grandmothers Christmas party. I documented this to show myself how disgusting and gray my skin looked. I tried to get clean two days later.

No drug dealers ever gave you a front, either, no matter how much money you spent on them. To them, you're just another fiend. A lot of drug addicts (and I am no different), call their dealers their best friend after sharing a few jokes here and there. "Nah, he's my boy, he'll front me" was always a big one I heard. It's not true. They were never my friend, and they are not yours.

Your emotions are out of whack, too. I remember one time my mother wouldn't stay at home and call out of work, and I cried. I cried my eyes out and then got angry. How dare she not be miserable with me? How dare she not give me money to get high, then have the audacity to go to work? Is she trying to be rude? I punched a hole in my closet wall, then threw my phone somewhere. I cried when my hand hurt and when I couldn't find my phone.

Going through drug withdrawal is one of the most difficult things in the world, and to anyone who says different: you are dead wrong. You will never know what it's like to throw up and it be literal bile because you ate nothing prior to that day. You will never know what it's like to not even want to shower because your body literally has given up on you. You will never know what it is like to pray to God to kill you in your sleep.

Nobody wakes up and decides to become a drug addict. No one in the whole entire planet has ever done that, please let that stigma die. My parents were addicts, and there parents before them were, too. Hell, even my great grandparents were. Addiction is a disease. It can be passed down. How dare anyone judge someone who never wanted this life.

But no one has to go through this. It's the image stuck in my head of me calling out my first day of a job because I did all my drugs beforehand and was too sick to go in that keeps me sober. It's remembering how I used to wish to just die so I wouldn't have to go through this anymore that keeps me sober. There is help, and I promise that no one in the world will ever turn you down.