“Its 3am and I have been driving around for hours. The grueling expedition has led me to the MLK and Arsenal, a disheveled intersection in a part of town that locks people in to their houses the moment the sun goes down. 
As my associate comes back from the rotten house with boarded windows, two men came running from a nearby bush with pistols in hand. As we faced their guns we were forced to give up everything, from the drugs, any cash we had, our cell phones, and packs of cigarettes. As a drug dealer, I found myself in similar situations on countless occasions, and my life was headed nowhere good. Drugs and money came before everything in my life. They overtook my family, life, education, caused me to quit my job, and were worth having to carry a gun and face the possibility of getting killed nearly everyday.”
“It started with just trying a drug, and it didn’t take long to develop into an addiction. Addictions cost money, more than I was making at a legitimate job so it didn’t take long to find that selling drugs was the easiest way to compensate for my lack of money and drugs. This lead me down a path of self-destruction, and in turn made me contribute to destroying the lives of others. I saw people that I knew who were once normal upstanding citizens and students turn into fiends in very little time. People would come to me in tears, wiling to steal from their own parents or anyone for a single high that would last only a matter of hours. I saw a girl I knew from high school, a beautiful and innocent straight A student, offer her body in exchange for the drugs that would take the edge from her dope sickness for not even a day. Seeing the unimaginable pain that I brought to al these people, made me realize that I had to change my life.”
“I am now in a rehabilitation center taking care of my own problem. I ask that anyone who is following the same path I went down, please stop and think about what you are doing. Think about the others and what the drugs you allow them to have are doing to them. I used to think that it wasn’t my fault because if they didn’t get the drugs from me, it would just be from someone else. But, I found that it was destroying me as well because I was allowing them to kill themselves. If you care about your fellow man, and if you care about yourself and you future, please take the time to stop and think about what you’re doing.”
© 2009 Narconon Trois-Rivières. All Rights Reserved.
NARCONON is a trademark and service mark owned by Association for Better Living and Education and is used with its permission.
Nick Hayes is a graduate of the Narconon drug rehab program in 2005. Nick takes much enjoyment in writing, and feels there needs to be more information about drugs and alcohol provided to the people of the world. He believes nobody should have to go through an addiction.