I met my best friend in the third grade.

Her house was down the street from mine. We were in the same grade at school. "How perfect," I thought. We ended up hanging out all the time. I remember her being so smart. She was in the advanced classes at school and I wanted to be too, but I couldn’t. I was just in regular ones.

She was so sweet, kind and always there when I needed her. She was there through everything. From sneaking out together to the break-ups and make-ups, the birthday parties, the Christmas parties and all through my parents' divorce. We would pull all-nighters and laugh until we cried.

We were inseparable.

If I had plans, it was assumed that she would come. We were so inseparable that her family would ask where I was if I didn’t show up to an annual holiday dinner at her grandparent’s house.

We even worked together. No one really understood me like she did. She was my only real friend.

Then, it all changed.

After high school, we continued working together. I took time off before I went to college, and she did as well. She started dating this guy. I never liked him; he was older and he treated her so poorly.

Overall, he was a terrible person and I voiced this to her. “You can do better,” I’d say when I saw his name light up on her phone. Slowly, she started distancing herself from me.

I would call her to hang out, and she would be with her boyfriend, making up excuses as to why she couldn’t. "It must be because I hate him," I thought. So eventually, I stopped trying.

A year passed and I still had not talked to her much.

I quit our mutual job, so I didn’t see her anymore either. I would see pictures on social media of her and she looked different. She was way thinner. I didn’t think much of it, I just thought she lost weight and was doing well.

Then, a mutual friend reached out to me, in concern for her. “Have you seen her?”

He said to me. “She’s doing drugs….. the bad kind.”

I did not believe him.

My best friend--the girl who was so smart, the girl who hated drugs, didn’t drink alcohol at parties and distanced herself from people who did, she would never. “No, she isn’t. It’s just a rumor.” I defended her, knowing deep down that this was the reason I had lost my best friend.

Another year passed, still with no contact. Finally, she randomly started texting me again. Her sentences would not really make sense and there would be so many typos. I could tell she was high. I mustered up the courage to ask her, “Is what I’m hearing true?”

Then, 20 seconds later, my phone rang with her nickname and a picture of her on top of my jeep from years ago displayed.

“Hello?”

“I'm sorry.”

“What?”

“I have been. That’s why I distanced myself from you. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to be involved in it.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. She was admitting it to me. Everything started to make sense. Eventually, I asked her who made her do it and why she would do that when she used to be so against it.

The guy she was dating pressured her into it. “It’s not a big deal,” he assured her.

She, who never had a drug problem, thought that she could recreationally do it and not have any issues. Then, she started getting sick when she didn’t take it. She had to continue doing it to feel better. Eventually, it was not enough. She started injecting. She told me that she just wanted to see what heroin felt like at first.

“You know I’m scared of needles. I didn’t think I would ever be able to do it again.”

Then she couldn’t stop.

That’s the only way she wanted to get high. She would do it before work. She would do it alone. She would do it before driving.

She started doing too much. She would wake up on the floor five minutes after shooting up, not knowing what happened and scared out of her mind. She knew she had to get help.

Her doctor prescribed her Vivitrol, an opiate blocker, that she would get in a shot form once a month. Vivitrol is an antagonist that creates a barrier that blocks opioid molecules from attaching to opioid receptors.

So basically, she could not get high no matter how hard she tried.

Which she did try.

Not being able to do heroin led her to use other drugs to get high. My best friend, who let me sleep over and watch TV series until 2 a.m. on a school night, who made me laugh and drove around with me for hours talking about pointless things and blaring music, was doing hard drugs.

How could this have happened?

How did I not know for so long? She is so smart, she comes from such a good family.

How?

Now, five years after high school, she is clean. But we still rarely talk. She is not the same girl that I used to know.

A person may choose to do a drug at first, but they certainly do not choose addiction. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Let’s become a heroin addict today. That sounds nice.”

It just happens and it affects everyone surrounding the addict. It is horrible. Struggling with addiction is something that affects a person every day.

My friend chose to do a drug. She did not know that it would take over her entire life.

Addiction does not care about your race, your gender, your class, or how stupid or smart you are. It just happens.