Part Three

Tony was no longer making a six figure income, and he no longer had insurance that would pay for his addiction. His wife also gave birth to a little baby girl that year, and the internal pressure that Tony felt at the desire to be able to provide some sort of income for his family after his severance pay was gone, was immense.

While Tony was looking for a job, the care of his daughter was turned over to him. He was still addicted to the opiates but was no longer able to afford to go to the pain clinic. He became inventive with his addiction. He started buying a part of the poppy plant that was legal to buy on the internet. He would crush this part of the plant up and brew it into a tea. The tea contained enough opiates in it for Tony to be able to ward off his withdrawal and even get a little high. This satisfied him for a while.

But after Tony had taken the tea for a while, he began to become immune to its effects. He did not want to have to face life without using some sort of pain medicine so he started looking for alternatives to the poppy tea.

Tony was a father and did not want to have to turn to the streets to feed his addiction. He went online and looked for ways to obtain oxycontin off the net. After searching Tony eventually got in touch with the Mexican cartel. They offered him a way to buy drugs illegally without going to the streets to do so. He would send them money via Western Union and they would in turn send him oxycontin. When he realized that he was able to do this so easily, he began to take more and more of these opiates to the point where his addiction got to be really out of control. He justified his illegal activity by telling himself that at least he was not putting himself at risk by going out on the street to look for it. It felt safe because he did not actually have to meet face to face with any real person to obtain his drugs.

For a while his wife had no idea what was going on, but after a while she caught on. It was kind of hard for her not to figure out the truth when her husband kept overdosing. He overdosed to the point where he was legally dead twice. He was resuscitated by EMS. This was enough to scare his wife out of her mind, but apparently the risk of death was not enough to scare Tony out of using drugs.

His wife got very frustrated and tried to find Tony a rehabilitation center that would help him to get over his addiction. She took him to rehab after rehab. He would do all right once he got out, but then after a while his cravings would get the best of him. He was unable to control himself. His wife loved him very much and really wanted him to get better. She was very frustrated with the situation, but she did not want to get a divorce from her husband. He knew she loved him, but it was not enough for him to be able to stay clean for very long.

He went to many different rehabs. He would go to one, graduate and do well for a while. Eventually he would mess up and relapse. He would be able to keep it from his wife for a while but eventually she would find out. She would then proceed to kick him out or take him to another rehab where the whole cycle would start all over again. He went to one treatment center that led to a halfway house after wards. He said he was able to clean up his act for a bit, while there, but he felt it really was a waste of his time. He said that most of the other people there where using drugs the whole time that they were there. He said he really felt he learned nothing, except how to get better at hiding his addiction.

Another time his wife got so frustrated with him that she dropped him off at a homeless shelter. They did not really have any treatment center at this homeless shelter. His wife apparently had just gotten completely fed up with him and probably did not know what to do at that point. She just knew that she did not want to be around a drug addict anymore.

After trying many rehabs in the Atlanta area she started looking for rehabs out of state. She looked at drug rehabs in North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama. She finally decided that there was one in Florida that she felt was promising. She sent him to a rehab in West Palm Beach.

Once at the rehab, he put on a very good act. He told all the officials there everything that they wanted to hear. He put on such a good show that by the time that he graduated he was voted the most likely to succeed. He was not sincere in his recovery and he did not really care at the time if he was able to get clean. He just wanted to graduate so he could go back to his wife and daughter and get high again.

He did graduate and went back home. The day he got home he contacted the Mexican cartel again and the day after that he loaded his baby up in the car and went to pick up the drugs that he received in the mail. After he got the drugs he did them and proceeded to get very high. While he was driving back from his score he was so high that he got into a car accident with his child in the car. He had relapsed beyond control.

One of the last times that his wife found him high, she took a picture of the event. He was so out of it that he had passed out in his plate full of waffles. He keeps the picture around with him to this day to remind him of what it is he does not want to go back to.

It was around this time that his wife decided to look for another kind of treatment. This time in her search on the internet, she found Narconon long term drug rehabs. She knew that twelve steps had not worked for her husband and he needed a different kind of treatment. She told him that he had to go to Narconon or she was going to divorce him and would take their daughter away from him. This really scared the crap out of Tony because he did not want to lose his family. He agreed to go and once arrangements where made for someone to watch his daughter in his absence, he headed to Narconon.

He did very well at Narconon and says that it had a technology that really worked for him. He says that he relearned abilities that he needed to be able to deal with life in a sober fashion. He now helps people find help at Narconon himself. He says that when he meets with a family trying to get their loved one into the program, many time the parents will look at him and say “You don’t look like someone who was a drug addict.” He says he always asks them what a drug addict looks like. He explains that anyone can be a drug addict, from your doctor, to your lawyer, to even your child’s teacher. Addiction comes in many forms and can hit people in all walks of life.

Tony says that for those people who have gone to AA and it has not really worked for them, he recommends Narconon. He says it really helped him to get in control of his life.