When I hurt myself and broke my collarbone in college, there went my football career. My father had bragged to all his buddies how I was making it out and setting the family up. He had always been a hard man to please and his feelings usually came out when he hit the bottle. He blamed his old high school coach for not putting him in the championship game back in his day and pinned his hopes on me. When I came home over Christmas break he could not even look at me. I had a lot of pain in my back as well as my collarbone. He mumbled something about how I could not even do that right, get hurt. I was in an accident instead of on the field.
I started taking oxycontin after the doctor prescribed it. I ran out and needed more, so the doctor back home gave me some. My father kept making cracks about how I was lazy and not helping around the business while home, but I was in a lot of pain. He started calling me a sissy and treating me even worse than he does my sisters who he has never treated well to start with.
Finally one night the following spring, I yelled at him to go screw himself. I had left school and all I wanted was to stay on oxycontin and forget about life for awhile. He lunged at me and let me have it. I knew better than to mess with him when he was drinking but I really didn’t give a shit. He started yelling that I probably wasn’t even his because by the time I came along he said my mom was having an affair. I don’t know. She died when I was in first grade. She had an accident but some of the townsfolk whispered that she may have done it intentionally.
Whatever the reason, I was now sitting here taking abuse for the last time from the man I call my father. I was on oxycontin and seriously thinking about ending it all when he said he wished me and my sisters had been with our mom that night. I looked at him. I told him “No, you should have been in that car instead of Mom” and then I walked out the door. I stumbled to my car, drove to my sister’s house and told her what happened. The next morning our other sister came over and they told me I needed to get off the oxycontin.
They got me in a program. My older sister called our dad. She told him that he could get help, too, for his drinking and we would help, but he started going off about how I was a loser. She told him I had more guts than him ’cause I was getting clean. We had been abused our entire lives by an alcoholic father. We were not going to take anymore.
I’m clean now and have returned to school. I will graduate a year behind schedule but that’s okay. When I do, my sisters and their families will be there. I chose oxycontin and it nearly destroyed my life. But in the end it changed everything else when my sisters helped me get over it.
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. 