One of the most difficult habits to shake is heroin addiction. In spite of massive enforcement efforts heroin use is a leading cause of accidental death. The statistics come from the Federal website. There one can find information and trends about heroin and other drugs.
Yet as a recovering heroin addict who has been clean for going on 26 years I’m here to tell everyone that it can be done if that’s what we decide to do. We just have to be willing to go the extra mile, to decide to get clean no matter what.
And that’s where the key lies: in the word “decide.” Before I got clean it I had to make a decision. And that was whether I should live a life of stealing and being locked up. Or did I want to try to get clean and live a so-called “normal” life?
I made the decision to live a clean life. I went to a halfway house and spent a year there working on myself, following others who were staying clean. At first it was somewhat difficult.
Once I was riding a bus to work. And when it made a stop in Tempe a dealer I know got on and sat down beside me. After we said our hellos he reached in his pocket and pulled out a few bags of heroin and an outfit.
“Here,” he told me. “I owe you these,” and put them in my hand. Immediately my gut started rolling. And more than anything else I wanted to put that needle in my arm. But I had made a decision that I stuck to. I put them back in his hand.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I told him and said I was now in recovery. I remember the surprised look on his face when I handed him back the heroin.
Since I first made a decision to change my life and quit using I’ve never looked back. The only drugs I’ve used a those a doctor gave me in a hospital or clinic during a medical procedure. But, for some reason it was never the same. And it never triggered me to want to return to heroin.
I guess my point is that if we have a desire to change, we can. But we must want to be clean more than anything else.
