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Here’s what Brad had to say about:
How he was introduced to drugs…
I first used nicotine when I was 11 or 12 and then marijuana, and that was a month before my 13th birthday. I got into alcohol later on that same year. I was actually in a locker room after gym class at school in 7th grade and somebody was offering to sell a joint for three dollars. I had never tried it but I kept hearing about [it], and I was just really curious so I just wanted to do it. So I asked a good friend of mine if he wanted to try it out with me.
How his problems escalated…
When I first started using it was really sporadic. My grandfather’s death later that same year when I was 13 kind of triggered up more emotions that I kind of wanted to run from. I tried to use on a regular basis as much as possible. If I had to steal alcohol from my parents I would do that. I would try to cop as much marijuana as I could from friends. It was just more difficult in middle school than it was in high school to get drugs, but I mean it was on a regular basis, as much as possible.
The role drugs played in his social life…
I moved from different people to different people. I was kind of a social chameleon trying to please everybody and make sure I was cool to everybody, every group, so sometimes I’d be with the more stereotypical [kids], like prep kids, but they were using too or sometimes I would be with the more kids that were called freaks and they’d be using different kinds of drugs. But I never purposely gave up a group of friends because of what they were doing or what they weren’t doing.
Why he avoided “clean” friends…
Those who I did move away from the most would be my clean friends, the kids that weren’t using because they didn’t have the same interest obviously as I did, so I would move away from my clean friends in order to have more time to get high because when I did hang out with my clean friends, I found that I was bored because I didn’t have what I wanted and I still had to deal with emotions and my problems.
Experimenting with different drugs…
My drug use really did progress rapidly. I started out with more marijuana and alcohol in middle school but when I got to high school I was introduced to a world of all kinds of different drugs, and the progression of it was just that anytime I saw something new at a party or that somebody had, I would say, “Well I want to try that out,” and I’d buy it or I’d use it with somebody else who was using it, and it was basically just whatever I could get my hands on – anything that took me away from reality. It was like searching for some kind of magic combination that would be the ultimate solution to my ultimate problem, which at that point was myself. I didn’t have the proper coping skills, so my best friend was my addiction.
Denial and addiction…
I think automatically it starts out as an experiment thing but for some of us it makes more sense to keep doing it than it does for others and those of us who become addicted or are already are addicts, we find that it is so powerful – why would we want to quit? The big part of addiction is denial and, I mean, I remember myself thinking, “Well I have so many problems” and feeling really hopeless, but I figured it couldn’t be the drugs – they don’t have anything to do with this.
Why using only made things worse…
When I got to my last six months or so, maybe six or nine months of using, I would get high and I would still feel the effects of the high except that the feelings beneath it, all the anger and sadness and hopelessness and all that stuff wouldn’t disappear anymore. It would still be there while I was high so then I would be, you know, messed up, you know, high, stoned – except I still would be feeling sad about something, anger and it would only enhance that emotion rather than take it away.
How rebellion fueled his problem…
I actually said to myself that I wasn’t going to use a lot of drugs and I said that to my parents and stuff, but I mean that kind of just slipped away as I started getting more independent from my family which usually happens around the time of middle school, late elementary, early middle school, and I just started overall anti-authority so I figured any messages that came from authority was either lies or just trying to manipulate my behavior; coerce me to do something that I don’t want to do. So drugs seemed to be, you know, something that made sense actually because it was like, well they didn’t want me to do it so I’m going to see what’s so bad about it.
Why getting help was so hard…
During my using, people did talk to me about it occasionally. My mom, she said that she figured it out when I was about 14, that something was going on with drugs but she didn’t know what do to about it, and she didn’t know how severe the problem was. Later on when they would start finding things – cause the longer I used, the more careless I would get – they would start finding more and more things in my room, around the house, in my car, that kind of thing. They would confront me with it and by that point, once I knew that they knew, I was like, “well fine OK, you know now.” Do whatever you want to me, but I am going to keep using basically. As any drug addict would tell you, it’s hard to hear somebody say that, “Well we think that you have a problem.” It’s really hard to hear that. I just basically fought with it or ignored it and closed up any feeling I had about it with more drugs.
When he realized something was wrong…
I can’t pinpoint the exact age I realized I had a problem with drugs, but I know that ever since, I’d say 14 or 15, I felt something was wrong – I just didn’t tie it to the drugs. My denial was so thick that drugs didn’t seem to have anything to do with it. When drugs stopped covering up my emotions, that’s when I started to think something was wrong here.
What he thinks about the power of friendship…
I believe that my peers did have much more of an influence in my life. I listened to my peers more than I listened to my parents – definitely – or my brother, and they had [a] much stronger impact on anything that I would do. I mean, I think that is normal not just for drugs addicts, but just for adolescents in general.
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