The Drug That Finally Broke Me
A symbolic image of Shawn during the lowest point of his OxyContin addiction, looking at himself in a bathroom mirror while his present-day sober self stands behind him in quiet support. The image represents shame, addiction, recovery, and the person he could not yet imagine becoming.
In The Wreck Wasn't My Wake-Up Call, I wrote about hitting a utility pole hard enough to break it into three pieces.
I walked away without a scratch.
You would think nearly dying would have been enough to make me change my life.
It wasn't.
After my third wreck, which resulted in my second drunk driving offense at about two o'clock in the afternoon, I was bailed out of jail later that evening.
And I went right back to the bar.
That's where my head was.
Arrested for drunk driving in the afternoon.
Back drinking that night.
Apparently I still hadn't dug the hole deep enough.
So I kept digging.
Weed entered the picture.
Then cocaine.
And eventually I was introduced to the thing that finally broke me.
OxyContin.
I probably should have taken the hint
The first time I used OxyContin, I got sick.
Really sick.
That probably should have been enough for me to think:
Maybe this isn't for you, Shawn.
Instead, eventually I tried it again.
The second time was completely different.
I didn't get sick.
I felt incredible.
It wasn't the type of high that made me feel mentally out of control.
I felt good.
Really good.
My body felt great.
Everything seemed easier.
And somewhere in my head was the thought:
This is the feeling I've been looking for.
That second experience was far more dangerous than the first.
Because now I had found something I really liked.
But I wasn't stupid.
I knew drugs could become a problem.
I wasn't going to become some junky.
So I came up with a system.
I had it under control
I'd buy enough pills and ration them.
A couple times a week.
That's it.
Maybe a couple days while I was at work.
Maybe on a night when I went out.
I already had two OWIs anyway. I didn't need alcohol interfering with this new high, so I wasn't drinking nearly as much.
Look at me.
Making responsible decisions.
I had rules.
Rules meant I was in control.
Then the rules started changing.
Well, I have enough pills.
Maybe I'll use them on all the days I work.
That's still controlled.
Okay, workdays and maybe one fun day on the weekend.
Still fine.
Then after a few months, something changed.
They weren't making me feel as good as they used to.
So I needed a little more.
Then a little more.
And on the days I didn't use them, I started feeling sick.
Eventually I wasn't taking OxyContin to get high anymore.
I was taking it so I wouldn't be sick.
I was taking drugs just to try to feel the way my old normal self used to feel.
Except normal was gone.
The trap closed slowly
That's the strange thing about it.
I didn't wake up one morning and decide:
Today seems like a good day to become completely dependent on opioids.
It happened a little at a time.
A couple days a week.
Then workdays.
Then workdays plus weekends.
Then more pills because the old amount wasn't enough.
Then pills because without them I was sick.
Eventually everything revolved around making sure I had them.
Money.
Plans.
Work.
Excuses.
Where I needed to be.
Who I needed to talk to.
What lie I had already told somebody so the next lie would still make sense.
The drug that once made me feel amazing wasn't making me feel amazing anymore.
I was using it to avoid feeling horrible.
The withdrawals were unbearable.
And I remember thinking:
What have I done to myself?
“At least I'm not one of those people”
I was ashamed.
Deeply ashamed.
I hid the addiction from everyone I could.
In my mind, being a drunk was one thing.
But being a junky?
That was below me.
Which is an interesting position to take while you're crushing pills and snorting them off dirty public toilet seats.
Nothing says you've made it like using dirty public toilet seats to snort your drugs off from.
But even then, I found a way to make myself feel slightly better.
At least I'm not injecting it like the real junkies.
That's how far the line had moved.
I could be completely controlled by a drug.
Broke.
Lying.
Sick without it.
Organizing my entire life around getting it.
Using in public bathrooms.
Looking at myself in the mirror and breaking down crying over what I'd become.
And still find somebody else to point at and say:
Well, I'm not that bad.
Denial is incredibly creative when it needs to be.
Everything became about the pills
The money disappeared.
At the time, I was paying around $80 a pill on the street.
Eventually my regular dealer lost his prescription, but he knew someone else.
He wasn't giving up his source.
So he'd make the transaction for me.
For a fee.
Two pills.
That meant I could already be $160 into the deal before I even had one for myself.
I had a regular job.
It didn't matter.
The pills could consume whatever money I had.
I needed enough just to keep functioning.
I could split them and try to stretch them out, but once your tolerance gets high enough, stretching them doesn't mean you're okay.
It just means maybe the withdrawal isn't quite as bad.
And eventually that became the goal.
Not feeling good.
Not feeling as bad.
My life had gotten very small.
Find the pills.
Find the money.
Don't get sick.
Hide what's happening.
Repeat.
I wanted out
If I thought life wasn't worth living during my drinking years, this blew that out of the water.
I had built a tighter prison for myself.
And now I couldn't see a way out.
I desperately wanted to die.
There were nights when I used more than I should, hoping I simply wouldn't wake up.
But even inside that darkness, addiction had its own demands.
Some part of me was still thinking about the next morning.
What if I woke up?
I'd need something then.
Think about how twisted that is.
Part of me wanted life to end.
Another part was still planning how to avoid withdrawal tomorrow.
That's where I was.
I would look at myself in the mirror and cry.
Not because I didn't know things were bad.
I knew.
I just couldn't figure out how to stop.
Then my dealer said something that changed my life
Eventually I reached a point where I couldn't see any way out.
I said something about it to my dealer.
And he said:
“Why don't you go to the methadone clinic?”
I didn't even know there was one in town.
When I couldn't get OxyContin, sometimes I could get methadone pills from the dealer, and those were a godsend because they could keep the sickness away.
But I had no idea there was an actual program for people like me in my town.
A place I could go for help.
I made the call immediately after getting off the phone with him.
That phone call was different.
For years, when I hit a problem, I usually made a decision that pushed me farther down.
This time I made one that pointed in the other direction out of desperation.
I didn't know what sober Shawn looked like.
I didn't know if I could actually stay clean.
I didn't know what kind of life I was going to build.
I only knew I couldn't keep living the one I had.
I didn't need to know how to rebuild my entire life yet. I just needed to take the first step out.
And I had finally taken it.
I don't care what anybody thinks about MAT
People have different opinions about medication-assisted treatment.
I know that.
I also don't particularly care.
Because if it wasn't for that program, I believe I'd be dead.
I had tried to stop before.
I couldn't do it.
I spent years in that methadone program before eventually tapering off.
Years.
Not days.
Not some dramatic 30-day transformation where I walked out a completely different human being.
Years.
And looking back, I understand what those years gave me.
Time.
Time to learn how to live without constantly using.
Time to stop chasing pills every day.
Time to look inside myself and start asking questions I had spent years avoiding.
Time to start building some kind of foundation.
Time to figure out how to stand on my own.
Time to begin discovering who I was when my entire existence wasn't built around escaping myself.
I needed that time.
I owe that guy more credit than I've given him
It used to be easy for me now to look back at that younger version of myself and focus on everything he did wrong.
The wrecks.
The arrests.
The drugs.
The lies.
The money.
The people he hurt.
The person he became.
But sitting with this story, I realize something else.
I need to give that guy some credit.
Because once he finally decided to try to get out, he didn't throw in the towel.
He stuck with it.
He spent years doing something when he had no idea what the end result would look like.
He had no picture of the man he was going to become.
He just knew he didn't want to die as the person he'd become.
And the determination had always been there.
For years, I used every ounce of determination I had to keep the addiction going.
Find the money.
Find the pills.
Hide what was happening.
Make it through another day.
I could be incredibly resourceful when I needed drugs.
I knew how determined that guy could be when he needed to make sure he wasn't sick.
But once he finally pointed that determination in the other direction, he was twice as determined to become clean.
Even though he had no idea what that would eventually look like.
So he stayed.
He did the program.
He put in the years.
And little by little, he built a person almost from scratch.
A person who would eventually be proud of who he became.
Today, I've been clean and sober for 22 years.
And looking back, I see something I couldn't have seen then.
The guy destroying his life and the guy who saved it weren't two different people.
They had the same determination.
I just finally gave it a different job.
And 22 years later, I'm still here.
If some of this feels familiar
If you're reading this while you're still in it, you don't have to know how to rebuild your entire life today.
I didn't.
I didn't know what sober life would look like or who I would become. I only knew I couldn't keep living the way I was living.
Sometimes the first step isn't having the answer.
It's just making one move toward help.
The life you're living right now does not have to be the life you end up with.
If you're struggling with substance use, you don't have to figure it out alone. In the United States, FindTreatment.gov can help you locate treatment options. If you're in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, call or text 988. If there is immediate danger or an overdose, call 911.
