Chapter 2: A Wretch Like Me

I started to get in a lot of trouble in school. At first it was just detention. No big deal. I always had a great excuse as to why it was somebody else’s fault than mine. My parents bought most of my lies. I would get in trouble, but they weren’t home very much so it didn’t really matter. Because I was only 14 years old money was hard to come by. It wasn’t like I could get a job, but I needed money for drugs. I couldn’t really ask my parents, so I discovered the fine art of stealing. Man, I got good at it. I could pick pocket. I would steal stuff out of cars. I would break into houses and steal stuff. I would shoplift. I would steal anything that I could. It became a full time job for me.

There was this jock in my art class that showed me how to huff rubber cement. So, I spent some time trying cheap highs like that. I huffed glue, liquid paper, freon, paint, gas, and anything else I thought would get me high. Huffing stuff like that left you with a big fat headache though, so I lost interest quickly.

There was this church girl in my art class who started rebelling against her parents. We met at some parties. She turned out to be a freak! I lost my virginity to her when I was 14 years old. Yuck! She was nasty, but she was easy and everyone was trying to pretend like they were having sex all the time. So, I got that out of the way. We went out for a while. It wasn’t good. After that I pretty much had sex with any girl that would let me. I didn’t really have a girlfriend, just a bunch of intoxicated stoner sex. Nobody really cared about each other and it always ended badly. No big surprise.

As time went on school became less and less interesting for me, so I tried to make it more fun. I would wake up and get ready for school. At the bus stop I would get high. I would try to get out of classes so I could go get high. At lunch I would sneak off campus and go get high. In the afternoon I would be pretty baked so I would usually sleep in my afternoon classes. As soon as school got out I would go get high. And then for the rest of the day I would do everything in my power to go get high. It was ridiculous.

I was in trouble every day at school. They would ask me if I wanted swats (spanking with a paddle) or On Campus Suspension (OCS). For a few months I would take the swats everyday. It was over right away and I was tough, but after a while it started to hurt. I never got a chance to heal from the last swats I got and the coach that gave them to me started getting pissed off at me so he would hit me harder every time. Eventually, I chose OCS. I got 3 days. They sent a letter to my parents in the mail and my parents had to sign it and I could return it to the school. I intercepted the letter, stuffed it down my pants, forged their signatures, and brought it back to school. My parents never knew. I got out of OCS and got in a fight the same day. I don’t even remember what it was about. So I got 5 more days in OCS. I got out and then got caught smoking on campus the same day. And so it went every day until they gave me OCS for the rest of the year!

I had forged signatures on all the letters so my unsuspecting parents didn’t know anything. I did all my schoolwork for the rest of the year in just a few weeks. School is a joke anyway. Then I became bored at a whole new level. I thought, “What else are you going to do to me? I already have straight A’s for the rest of the year. I already have OCS for the rest of the year. You can’t hold me back and if you suspend me then I can just stay home, which isn’t that bad. I’ll just pretend to go to school and then come back home. You don’t scare me.” So, I just did as I pleased. I was out of control. We weren’t allowed to talk or sleep or draw or move around. I didn’t have any work to do, so I talked and drew pictures of Iron Maiden’s mascot Eddie and slept every time my teacher wasn’t looking. I was finally deemed a threat to regular OCS students, so they gave me my own room. Yes, I had an entire room dedicated to me. It was some kind of storage room before, but now it was my own private playground.

It was some kind of mess when I got through with it. I took all the desks and built a maze to the back of the room. I stacked them on top of each other almost to the ceiling. It took almost a full minute to get back to where I was. It was like having a cowbell on the teacher. They had given up on me anyway so they didn’t really care. There was some Crisco oil in the room for some reason. I greased the entire chalkboard and, of course, ruined it. I carved all kinds of band names into the chalkboard like Ozzy, Metallica, Iron Maiden, and so on. It was covered. I used to spit lougies onto the ceiling and try to make them hang until they froze into snot stalagtites. It was disgusting! The room was covered. I had taken several of the chairs and turned them into a bed. Most of the time I would go get high and then go sleep on my “bed”. I knew when my teacher was going to come and check on me so I would wake up and pretend to be doing something important when she showed up. I got to go to the bathroom a few times a day. I got to eat in the cafeteria, but I had to be by myself. Then she would tell me when it was time to go home.

After I learned her routine I would just leave campus and come back when she would check in on me. River was in the 7th grade at this point and he got OCS. They made the junior high kids come to the high school for OCS. Another friend of mine named Bruce was in OCS at the same time. I snuck out of my room and down to the regular OCS room one day. My teacher wasn’t there. I did some stupid stuff like disconnect the PA speaker in their room and trip a breaker. I had locked the door in case she got there. Well, she got there. I hid in the closet for an hour until finally she went to the closet to get something. She jumped about two feet in the air when she saw me in there! Poor woman. I almost gave her a heart attack. It was so funny that I almost didn’t care what my punishment was.

She made me stay in the main OCS room that day to keep an eye on me. Well, to pass the time we started passing notes. One of us would get up and pretend to sharpen our pencil and then drop a note on the other one’s desk. This went on for a while. The note got really graphic. Since River’s name was Bill at the time all my friends called him “Billdo”. He hated it and we, of course, all thought it was hilarious. So Bruce drew this picture of “Billdo” with his finger in his butt saying some foul things. The note also made fun of the teacher. Bruce dropped it on my desk. I opened it up and started laughing out loud. The teacher had not been paying much attention, but she knew something wasn’t right so she sent me out in the hall. I stuffed the note down my pants to hide it. She came out after a few minutes and said we had been passing drugs in class and for me to hand them over. I laughed at her, but I wouldn’t tell her about the note. So, then I had to go to the office and explain myself to the principal. I told him that I didn’t know what she was talking about. He insisted that everyone knew I did drugs and just to hand them over.

This went on all day. Finally, they called the cops. We went through the whole thing again and I wouldn’t break. So, they had to let me go. I thought it was so funny that the entire thing was just about a dumb note. If they had known what a big deal they had made out of it they would probably have felt pretty stupid. I didn’t have anything better to do anyway, so it was almost fun for me. They couldn’t have done anything anyway, even if they had found the note (and nobody is going to stick their hand down some 14-year-old boy’s pants unless they want to spend some time in jail.) I always loved making cops look stupid. By this time in my life it was safe to say that I hated all authority and wasn’t going to be told what to do by anyone.

Bruce and this other friend of ours, Jason, used to hang out all the time. Jason’s dad cooked speed. Jason stole a log of it from his dad who apparently didn’t know the difference. It was worth about $5,000. I never saw the whole thing, but we always had lots of speed. We sold it and supported our habit. I gave some of it away to girls I wanted to have sex with. And we did most of it ourselves. I stayed up for weeks at a time. I didn’t sleep or eat hardly at all. I would pretend to go to sleep, but since I couldn’t sleep I would clean my room in the dark. I chewed the inside of my cheeks and lips up. Speed is nasty. For those of you who have never done it, don’t! It tastes horrible! It is nasty in your nose or your mouth or however you ingest it. You can taste it the entire time you are tweaking. Coming down is painful and it just sucks all the way around. Plus it is very addictive.

Bruce, Jason, River, and I would go out all night, every night. We would steal whatever we could find, get as high as possible, and cause whatever problems we could. When we would get bored or tired we would break into an empty house and mess it up pretty bad. We would crank the heat up all the way. We would clog the toilets. We would start fires. We would vandalize. We were mean. Whoever fell asleep first in our group was in for it. We would light their shoes on fire, pour pancake syrup in their ears, put jalapeño juice on their lips, pour beer on them, throw things at them, stick hair in their nose, or any other mean thing we could think of.

All the people I hung out with were into heavy metal music. There was a lot of Satanism and cultish stuff going on in my circle of friends. I was curious, so I dabbled a little bit. I remember I had heard about this demon that you could pray to and he would give you whatever you wanted, but then he would take it back from you in pain. We were going around stealing stuff one night in Kennedale out of someone’s garage. There were about 6 of us. We stole a scooter with a flat tire, a stereo, and some other stupid stuff. It was the middle of the night and we were on a main road, on foot, with all this stuff. It looked very suspicious. Plus, we had made a lot of noise and I’m pretty sure the homeowner’s had called the police on us.

All of the sudden there was a cop car right behind us. We were still a few miles away from the Arlington/ Kennedale border. So, I prayed to this demon that we would get away from this cop, because I knew we were busted. We all started running. We stayed on the road instead of running off the beaten path and the cop was right behind us in his car the whole time. We ran for a long time. We finally got to Arlington and then we ran into a field full of cows. The cop never caught us! It didn’t make any sense. There was no reason why he shouldn’t have caught us. Either way, we were safe and I was happy until the next day when I got sick for no reason at all. I had a terrible stomach ache like never before. That demon took it back from me in pain.

There was another time that my family was going out of town to Washington State. I didn’t know if I could go a whole week without getting high, but it looked like there was no way around going on this retarded trip. So, once again I prayed to this demon that I wouldn’t have to go. At the last minute, in the airport, my mom said if I could get a ride home then I wouldn’t have to go. I called a friend and miraculously got a ride. I had a non-stop party for the whole week they were gone. I met some girl. We had a lot of sex. I was in drug heaven for a solid week. A week later my mom came home. I got some weird rash all over me and I had a super high fever. I was in my bed for exactly one week. It was miserable! These are just a few examples of satanic stuff I did. I did lots of stupid stuff like that though.

I did a lot of destructive things as well. I burned down half of some house I broke into. River burned two different fields, someone’s yard, and part of their house. If there was anything we were good at though it was running, oh yeah, and lying. We ran from the cops so many times I can’t even count it any more. To be honest most of the stuff we messed up was totally random. It just happened to be there when we felt like destruction.

One day we were walking to the movies. Jason saw a line of cars coming at us and he said you know if you wait until there is another huge line of cars and then throw a rock at the window of the first car they won’t be able to stop in time and we can get away. So, without a thought I grabbed a rock and waited for the next string of cars. When they came, I threw the rock out into traffic. It smacked some guy’s windshield really hard. CRACK! It was loud! We ran to the nearest street and turned every corner until we had lost them for sure. We kept walking towards the movies on the back roads. We were pulling signs up out of people’s yards and throwing them everywhere. We were tearing off people’s mailboxes and putting them down the road in someone else’s yard. After a while we had to get back on the main road. I had completely forgotten about the rock. This car screeched to a halt right in front of us. I thought, “Do I know someone in a white car like that?” Then he jumped out and said “Freeze, get up against the wall.”

I didn’t know what was up, but I looked at River and Jason and turned around and ran. I didn’t “freeze” for anyone! I assumed they would be right behind me. I ran fast and hard. When you run you can’t really look back or else you will get caught so I just looked straight ahead and ran like there was no tomorrow. After a while it sounded quiet behind me, I ducked into a Taco Bueno, went right to the back in a corner that wasn’t visible from the road, and hid until it was safe. River and Jason were nowhere to be found, but I figured they just ran a different way and I would meet up with them in a little while at the movies.

They never showed up, so finally I called my mom to give me a ride home. She asked why I had thrown a rock through some guy’s windshield. I played dumb. Then I said, “How do they know it was us, anyway? He is just blaming us because we have long hair and heavy metal T-shirts on. How unfair!” Well, I thought it was a pretty weak excuse, but it worked. River and Jason had both been arrested. The car I hit was an off duty cop. What are the odds of that? But, we got away with it. Years later I casually mentioned the whole thing to my mother and she still believed that we hadn’t done it. Poor Mom. I was such a good liar.

We would also shoplift all the time, mostly tapes, magazines, and food. We were small time in the worst way. One day I was stealing “Diary of a Madman” from Ozzy from a K-mart. Some old lady saw me stealing and told the manager of the store. They got security and brought me to the front of the store. I had put the tape down my pants. It was a great place to hide things. Nobody wants to look there and if they say something about a bulge then you just smile and say “Aren’t you jealous?” Anyway, they called the cops and the cops were on their way when I just wriggled out of their arms and ran out of the store. Some of the guys chased me for a little while, but you aren’t going to catch a drug addict kid on speed that is basically running for his life. Tough luck. I am faster and I had the element of surprise. Besides, they had rules to follow and people to answer to. I, on the other hand, just had to get away. Needless to say, I got away...again.

One night about twenty of us stoner metal heads were walking around in a back alley. Several trucks pulled up and started yelling stuff at us like they wanted to fight. Without hesitation every one of us pulled out our knives and started walking towards them. They were rich and had nice cars so they felt superior. We, on the other hand, were poor and mean and had nothing to lose. I thought “Well, I guess I’m going to have to kill someone tonight.” Fortunately for everyone we must have psyched them out pretty bad with our absence of fear so they yelled some cowardly things and then drove off. I was pretty relieved. I didn’t want to have to kill anyone, but the sad thing is that I would have. You would think this would be a lowest point of my life experience where I would ask, “What have I become” and change for the better. Nope. It didn’t affect me at all. I just kept on going like it was nothing.

Well, eventually my parents figured out that I was getting into a lot of trouble. So, they took away what they thought the root of the trouble was, my long hair. The root of my trouble was that I was bored and pissed off and I could never measure up to my retarded step-dad’s ridiculous demands. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. I got straight A’s. I was smart. I was clean. I was responsible. I did everything I was told. But still, I was always just short of pleasing him. I was good, just not good enough. So, I gave up trying. I hated that man. When they cut my hair I walked out of the barbershop and saw my reflection in the mirror. I was so pissed off that I decided to leave and never come back. So, right at that very moment I turned and ran. I ran and ran and ran. My mom saw me and tried to catch me. She couldn’t keep up. She yelled after me to come back, but I didn’t. I ran through fields and woods. I didn’t stop running for almost an hour.

I got my ear pierced, which Chris had forbidden me to do. I slept in some girl’s closet that night right down the street from my house. I spent the next few days out in fields. I got pretty hungry. Being a runaway sucks! After four days I made up a list of things that I needed from home to survive: food, toothbrush, toilet paper, music, toothpaste, money, etc. I went up to the junior high during recess to give the list to River. The principal saw me and started chasing me. I have to give that guy credit he chased me for quite a while. I was good at running and I jumped over fences and ran through people’s backyards. He stayed right behind me too. Of course I got away. I hung out for the rest of the day out in some woods close to the school.

I waited for the buses to come and then ran up to give the list to River through the school bus window. Well, as I was doing that I heard my favorite phrase, “Freeze! Police!” Of course “freeze” translated to “run” for me, so I started running. Then another cop car pulled in front of me. So I turned and started running another direction. Everywhere I turned there were cops. I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I just kept running until one of them said, “Freeze, or I will shoot you!” Now I know as well as you that he probably wouldn’t have actually shot me over a stupid runaway report, but we were in Podunk Texas and this guy sounded serious so I stopped. That was the first time I got arrested. They got a statement from me that consisted of some ridiculous string of lies and inconsistencies. I’m sure I told them to go screw themselves... in not such nice words.

My parents came and picked me up from the police station. They were quiet for most of the ride home. Then Chris said, “So, John, how long have you been doing drugs?” I of course denied doing any drugs and said I was just tired of him and I was mad because they had cut my hair. Which was partly true. The reason I didn’t have any drugs on me when they arrested me was because I was out of drugs at the time. After all, I had been on the run for 4 days with no money, duh? My parents thought that if they gave me a little more freedom I would be Ok. Nope, it was way too late for that. They gave an inch; I took a mile.

One night my friend Bruce tried to kill himself. He drank a fifth of Southern Comfort and took several grams of speed. He had tried to call me to see if I wanted to “go” with him. I’m so glad I didn’t get that call. Bruce survived. I can’t say for sure, but I might have actually done it too.

I had another friend named Danny who moved away. A few weeks later we got news that he had killed himself by drinking a bunch of anti-freeze. As you can imagine news like this became more and more frequent as time went on. How did I not get it? There are a few ways out of this lifestyle: you die, you go to jail, or you quit. If those were my options, I chose death.

Then the summer after 9th grade came. I was out of control. Chris Tunnell did something to River and Ann one day when I was gone. My mom asked us if she should divorce Chris. We all told her yes. We all hated him. He was one of the main reasons why I had become such a mess in the first place. So, we moved out of the house into another two-bedroom apartment in Arlington. I was such a jerk I insisted on River and I sharing the master bedroom and I made my mom, Ann, and little Chris stay in the small bedroom. My mom got a job as a reservationist at American Airlines. So, my now single mom supported 4 kids by herself while making $7.50 an hour. Wow! That must have sucked for her! The three old ones were hellions to the say the least, and then she had an infant to take care of as well. I don’t know how she did it.

She worked at night. Conveniently, so did I, well if you want to call it work? She woke up around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. I made sure to wake up a little before her so that it looked like I had been up all day. Then she went to work and I went out to steal and get high. One night these skaters wanted us to steal a quarter pipe skateboard ramp for them. They said they would give us $50 for it. So at three o’ clock in the morning River, Russell, Dave, and I all walked across several highways to another neighborhood. We each grabbed a corner of this huge ramp. We walked it through the neighborhood, across a two-lane access road, across a five-lane highway, through a huge ditch, across another five-lane highway, across another two-lane access road, and into a hiding spot in some bushes. I would like to interject and say that you can make a lot more money being honest than you can stealing. When you figure all the planning, the risk, the time, and the low return on stealing the average thief makes way below minimum wage.

So, after my regular routine of causing trouble all night I would come in just before the sun came up and jump in bed and pretend to be asleep when my mom got home from work. One night I wasn’t thinking and I was about to be late. I actually saw my mom driving down the highway towards the apartment. I ran, barely missed her, and climbed up the balcony while she was going up the stairs, jumped in bed fully clothed right before she opened my bedroom door to see me sleeping quietly just as I should have been. Man, that was close! Welcome to my life, an inch away from disaster at any given moment.

Life became more and more boring for me, so I started seeking more and more thrills. We used to walk down to this bridge and jump off of it into the water below. That was fun! I did that as much as I could. One day I had a girl all the way naked down in the water with me when the cops came. We hid in a storm drain for a while, but they figured out we were down there. Her bathing suit had gone down stream somewhere and we couldn’t find it. So I let her wear my shirt. It was white and we were both all wet. We had to have the cops drive us home with her wearing nothing but a white T-shirt. That was weird.

I got pretty good at art and music. This music store had a "Create an Eddie" contest. Eddie is the mascot for Iron Maiden. I made two clay sculptures and painted them. I made “Can I Play With Madness” and “Piece Of Mind”. I won the grand prize! River and I got front row tickets, back stage passes, all their albums, autographs, picks, drumsticks, and our pictures taken with the band. It was amazing! It was like a dream come true for me. They were my heroes. When we went to the show we got so high I must have looked retarded when I met them. It was still great!

At some point Ann figured out that River and I were doing drugs and lots of them. I really didn’t think it was a big mystery, but I guess it shocked her. She told my mom and my mom threatened to call the cops on me if I ever got high again. It was right before school started and I thought long and hard about it for a few minutes. I knew that if I ran away again that I would become a dropout and that I would never go back to school. Well, I left anyway. I chose drugs over any real life. Why? Because when you are addicted to something you can’t imagine living without it and you will pay any price for it and defend it at any price.

So, River and I ran away again. Several days went by. One night we slept under a bridge overpass on highway 20 until the ants ate us alive. Another night we slept behind a dumpster until early in the morning when the dump truck came to pick up the dumpster. We heard the loud beeping of the truck and the bright lights flashing in our faces. Startled, we jumped over the fence behind the dumpster. Then we slept in some lawn furniture that was in a swimming pool in a nearby apartment complex. We slept on a few friends’ floors, a few closets, some bathrooms. How uncomfortable! We ended up at some party and later that night we stayed at this guy Tony’s house. His parents asked a lot of questions. We lied and just said we were staying the night. They didn’t buy it. So then we said that our step-dad was beating us, which was kind of true. He was pretty rough. They said if he is so bad that we should tell the police. I didn’t think that was a good idea at all. I HATED COPS! Plus, I was a runaway.

They assured us that they would be cool and just let us stay the night as long as we went home the next day. I told them that I would, which was a lie. We went back to Tony’s room and a few minutes later a cop was knocking on his bedroom door. I was pissed! He listened to our bogus stories for a minute and then he handcuffed us, arrested us, and took us to jail. I was going to jump through Tony’s window and try to run, but there was a huge tree and a bunch of bushes right in the way so I figured I would just hurt myself and they would still catch me. We stayed the night in jail. What fun! Then my mom came to get us. The cops handcuffed us again and put us in the back of the cop car. Normally they didn’t do that to take you home? They just let your parents have you.

I started to think something was up. Then the cop started driving the wrong way home. I started kicking the back of the cop’s seat and tried to get out. We pulled up at Millwood hospital, which I soon learned was a rehab. They started booking me. My eyes rolled back in my head. I started hissing and cussing and yelling obscenities at everyone. I fought all the way in. Through every door and every hall that led me there I kicked and fought. It was a little tough since I was greatly outnumbered and I was handcuffed. So they put me in a room, uncuffed me, and told me to take my shoes off. I told them to go F*** themselves. I wanted to see a lawyer. They couldn’t keep me here! I wanted out and I wasn’t taking my shoes off or doing anything else they told me to do! They had better let me go.

Then I heard them calling a code ten or something over the PA speakers. All of the sudden six huge weightlifter guys came into my room and told me to take my shoes off. I was used to bullies so I told them the same thing I told the other guys and the cops. A split second later they each grabbed one of my limbs. I grabbed the doorknob and fought them all off for several minutes. I put up a pretty good fight. One guy grabbed one of my arms. Another guy grabbed the other one. A guy grabbed a leg. Another one grabbed my other leg. One sat on my back. And one sat on my head. I had three long earrings in at the time. While they strapped me down to the bed the guy sitting on my head ripped out all three of my earrings. There was blood all over my pillow. They finally finished strapping me down and left. I think they took my shoes off just to show me that they had won.

As soon as they left, I bit open one of my hand restraints, undid my other hand restraint, reached down and loosened my leg restraints, and slithered through the one holding my waist. I looked for a way out of the room. There wasn’t one. So, I just beat on the door and told them that they couldn’t keep me inside here or anywhere else for that matter. I was getting out, so they might as well cooperate! Well, a few minutes later they opened the door with the same guys who proceeded to strap me to the bed again. Only this time they tied me in tight and used extra restraints. I got out of the hand and feet restraints, but I just left the one around my waist and went to sleep. I was tired anyway. Pissed, but tired.

I was strapped to that bed all night and all the next day. Finally a guy came in and said “ John, my name is Doctor Knipstein. How long have you been doing drugs?" I lifted up my head, turned to him, looked him in the eye, and said “F*** you. I don’t do drugs.” Then I turned back over and went back to sleep. I didn’t know who this putz was and I didn’t care. I wouldn’t be here long enough to get to know anyone here. They had no proof. I didn’t have any drugs on me. I would be out in no time. So they left me there for the better part of that day. Someone finally came in and asked if I was hungry. I told him I had to piss like a racehorse, so could I get untied now. He asked if I was done fighting. I thought for a minute about how bad I had to piss and I agreed not to fight him. So they untied me and I pissed a small river. They gave me some food. Which was probably crappy food, but because I was so hungry it tasted great to me. So, after a while they let me take a shower, de-liced me, did a strip search, and let me out into the general population.

I just figured that this is what rehab was like. I was prepared for the worst. I thought River went through the same thing. Nope, I was wrong. River was hitting on girls, shooting pool, watching TV, playing foosball, and eating well. Not only that, but he had given them some sob story about how he had gotten sucked into the drug world and he wanted to get out. He was out of rehab in less than two days. I was in for seven weeks! At first I denied that I even did drugs at all. But everyone had already spilled the beans and I guess it was pretty obvious to everyone.

After it had been established that I did actually get high. Then they realized that I got high ALL the time! So, I stopped denying it and I just said, “Yeah, I get high and I’m not going to quit. I will get high until I die. I love it!”

Everything in rehab is therapy. You have school therapy, group therapy, family therapy, physical therapy, recreational therapy, food therapy, art therapy, one on one therapy, and so on. It wore me out. I just wanted to be left alone by these morons. They were idiots! And the people in there were freaks! There was one guy who had been in hospitals for the better part of his life. He was addicted to sugar, of all things. He got hold of a huge bag of cookies one day and ate the whole thing. Then he started bouncing off the walls until they took him away. I think he was just lonely and starving for attention. What kind of parent can institutionalize their child for being addicted to sugar?

The girls were mostly there for depression, suicide attempts, and eating disorders. There were a lot of messed up people in there. They put me in this room with a huge, black, half-retarded guy named Howard. Every time I walked into my room he was buck naked and masturbating in the middle of the room. It was so disturbing! That guy freaked me out!

In retrospect, I did learn a few important lessons in rehab though.
This one counselor said, “How do you quit doing drugs?” Someone said stop doing them. He said, “How do you know when you have stopped doing something? How long do you have to go before you know that you have actually quit something? He said you have to have an achievable goal or else how will you know when you have gotten there. He also said that you have to have something positive to be going towards so that you can go away from the drugs, or whatever your bad habits were.” That actually made sense to me. There was a minute that I thought maybe one day I would grow up and help kids like this guy. Then I remembered that I was a loser, and I gave that up pretty quickly.

I met a girl in rehab named Michelle. She told me just to tell the rehab what they wanted to hear and I would be out in no time. So, I learned how to B.S. the system. Not a great lesson, I admit, but it got me out of rehab pretty quickly. After a week of telling everyone how much I wanted to change my ways they were convinced and I went up to the next level in a different hall. This got me out of Howard’s room. Yeah! A week after that I was out of rehab all together. I thought, man that was quick. Later, I learned that my mom’s insurance had run out and I had already racked up a $40,000 bill there so they released me because we were out of cash. Once again justice and true help are cast aside for the Almighty Dollar.

Well, at the time I didn’t know that. I was such a good liar that I convinced myself that I really wanted to quit drugs. Plus, I was seeing this girl, Michelle, from rehab that wanted me to stay clean. As long as we stayed together, I stayed off drugs. Then she told me that she was pregnant and that she thought it was her ex-boyfriend’s. We hadn’t used any protection. I did the math and unless she was cheating on me it was mine. Well, she had been cheating on me. Who knows whose baby it was or if there even was a baby at all. After that day I never saw her again.

The Bible says that when a demon leaves a man he wanders around through barren places and then comes back to his house. If God is not in him the demon finds his old house swept clean and so he invites seven demons more evil than himself into his old house. That old house was me. I went back to drugs that same day with a vengeance. I never looked back. Me and my seven demons headed for destruction... full speed ahead!

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