“I started smoking marijuana on a regular basis, and I started hanging out with a lot of people who were smoking pot and strayed away from friends who weren’t. Slowly, over time, I became heavily involved in drugs…

I started taking Perc-30s, a stronger opiate, and stealing from my family. I took my dad’s pain medication…

When I was 16, the same person who introduced me to Percs introduced me to heroin. I was in love with it,…

Once I started shooting it, I never went back. All my money from work went to heroin, and I started using it wherever and whenever I could—in the bathroom at school, during my driver’s ed class…

Finally it was just too much. It was like something just clicked in my brain and I knew—I can’t keep doing this or I’m going to die…

I went to Phoenix House Academy in Dublin, New Hampshire. It was much more uncomfortable for me. The first few days I was kind of miserable. I told myself, It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Just stick it out to the end. I’m glad I did.

Phoenix House showed me the Narcotics Anonymous program. They taught me how to deal with certain triggers that make me want to use, how to deal with anger and other emotions. It made me unhappy—but it showed me how to deal with being unhappy. I got a Narcotics Anonymous sponsor…”