My Story – The Heroin Years

Part 1 – Early Years

The details aren’t important for this right now. Needless to say, I met a cute girl and we both got addicted to heroin. Eventually I ended up supporting her, got her pregnant, had a kid and had to give him up for an open adoption. I should back up a little bit. We were pretty much on Skid Row at this point. the couple we had selected to adopt our son had helped us out a bit. And they were (and still are) some amazing people! but yeah. We were officially on the streets.

I suffered a lot. I slept in weird places. I woke up with all my belongings stolen. I’ve been totally emaciated. And I was addicted to speedballs the whole time. Injecting myself with cocaine and heroin all day just to feel anything. Hustling all day for another fix. I did this for years. That’s when I learned that my baby’s mama had actually become a prostitute. I had received a call from one of her johns. I was devastated. My friend in Oakland invited me to stay with him a while and I ended up trying to kill myself and living on those streets for a while. I ended up living in West Oakland a bit, with Mama Kat, a big time heroin dealer. I’m not sure how I ended up getting that amount of respect but nobody could touch me. It was actually pretty cool. I went back down to Skid Row eventually tho.

Then my girl’s parents came down and took her away and I was alone… and devastated. This is very hard for me to write. I spent time alone on Skid Row and things got dark. I was injecting larger and larger amounts of stuff. Like, I’ve injected amounts of speedballs that turns my lips blue and made my hands numb. I’ve actually went into the Skid Row police station, asked them where their bathroom is, and used it for injecting drugs… multiple times. I was doing dangerous stuff. I spent lots of time behind bars. County jail, and then state prison. Just stupid stuff.

Okay get this, after 8 months in state prison, they gave me $200 “gate money” and sent me on a train. When I got to Union Station in LA, I immediately ran into friends (because I knew everybody on the streets) and a friend gave me a balloon and a rig (Heroin is stored in balloons so you can swallow them easily). I went into the bathroom and I was high within minutes. That’s how bad I was.

I had been released January 2nd, 2012 and by February I had enough. I just KNEW that I’d either die, or go back to prison. Neither of which was acceptable. My best friend and I worked something out. He lived in Northern CA so he flew down to LAX, rented a car and picked me up, then he drove me out to Kansas City, MO so I could live with my Bio mom and get clean. Then he drove to the airport there, dropped off the car and flied back home. Kind of an amazing friend huh? We did it. I got clean. I haven’t touched heroin since 2/13/2012.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of my homelessness.

Part 3 – KCMO, Dallas, and Denton