I know I didn't want to get caught up in the cycle of drugs and violence that was around me. Deep down inside, I felt there was something better outside the situation I was in.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Let me say that the path I did take for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others, but it was a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world, lost in the midst of finding my identity.
Drugs made me feel more normal.
I felt that to do this drug, I had to become someone totally different than I was. I had to compromise my integrity, my value system. I knew it was so wrong.
I come from a violent background. So I became hard. I realised that I had made myself that way to deal with a feeling of abandonment and shame.
People stopped hanging out with me at the point when I stopped doing drugs. All of a sudden they didn't wanna hang out with me anymore. And I would have hung out with them. I mean they were killing themselves, but I still would have hung out with them.
I never got to the point of needing drugs or thinking about giving up myself.
I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me.
I didn't do drugs, I never did do drugs. Never. I don't have any story of drugs, you know, to speak of. Never did drugs, never was interested in drugs and then I wasn't interested in the people around the drugs.
I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.
I had such a wonderful life before drugs and alcohol abuse. I've got that life back now and plan to keep it. Maybe I had to go through what I did to get to this point, to appreciate this life more.