Making the "Right" Choices

I have been working on my life story for a while now and I figured it was about time to release part of it. I have had a troubled life some would say. I like to say that it was filled with experiences.

You can have everything in the world but if you have not lived then you have nothing.

This is not for the faint-hearted so please read with an open mind. I have made a lot of bad decisions in my life and I am not proud of most of them but if I would not have experienced all of that, I would not be the person I am today.

My life of drugs and rebellion didn’t start until after I got hit by a car. (Unless you count all of the pharmaceutical medicine they tried to put me on for my "ADD".) I think when that happened I had an experience that I can not remember but it would change my life forever. Not for the best but also not for the worst. Without these experiences, I would not be the man I am today.

It was a warm summer night and my friend and I told our parents we were going to a church get-together ( I was 16 at the time). Which we actually were going to go but once we got closer and closer to the church (we were skateboarding) we were second-guessing our decision. We decided instead of going to the church group we would sneak into the pastor's garage and play on his drum set and eat all the candy he had in there. Bad idea I know. Well once our childhood negligence was through we decided it was time to leave. We left the garage. Once we walked out and started walking toward the street we saw the church van pulling up. (The house and church were right next to each other) We ducked into the woods and hid there until we could safely sneak out without being seen. I remember like it was yesterday, I got myself stuck on a thorn bush trying to get out, and then everything went black.

I wake up in a hospital! Dazed and confused, sore all over. I remember Power Puff girls playing on the tv in my room. I try to stand and every small movement I make makes my entire body hurt. I try to step off my bed and realize my legs have no strength and both my knees hurt to high hell. So I look down and on my left leg, there is a big ass hole. I am terrified at this point. I finally get the energy and willpower to walk myself over to a mirror. I look in the mirror and see my face. I have stitches on my forehead and scratches and cuts all over my face. I open my mouth because it feels like a tooth is missing. To my amazement, my front right tooth is missing. I can't even remember what happened.

For a while, I stayed home and recovered. My dad still has pictures and videos of me in the hospital and me recovering at home. After I recovered for the most part I started going back to school. I was missing a tooth for a little while which made me feel kind of awkward, but after my accident, the way people looked at me changed. I was no longer the kid that no one could see and the outsider. I was known by everyone now. I no longer got made fun of by the better skateboarders or the bully kids in school. I was a beast because I lived through a horrible car accident and was right back at it. A couple of months later I believe I got my fake tooth put in. It is crazy how things work. I had this big horrible gap in-between my teeth before the accident but then after I got my fake tooth the gap was gone and I was a half good-looking kid lol. I started getting a lot of attention from everyone. Some good but mostly bad. I started getting invited to party’s and hanging out with the “cool” kids. This is where my road to the underworld of drugs started.

I remember the first time I tried smoking weed. I do not know why this story sticks out so much in my brain but I can remember it like it was yesterday.

My friend Mike and I went to the movies to go see some movie that was out but I can not remember what it was. I do remember we didn’t see it we just went and chilled in front of the movie theatre. There were all sorts of people out that night. We somehow decided we wanted to smoke weed. We were both like “you know what man, life is just too short to not try new things and live life a little”. So we decided to try to find someone that we thought looked like they smoked weed. Well of course we think we found someone. It went something like this.

Me: “Hey man you got a dime?”

Guy: “Yeah bro I got you.”

Pulls out 10 cents

Me: “Naw man a dime of weed.”

Guy: “Aw shit man I thought you were talking about a dime of money”

Me: “HAHA my bad man”

Guy: “Yeah man come with me” We walk with him to his car and he gives us a 1 gram bag of “weed”

After we get the weed I call my parents and let them know that the movie is over and we are ready to come home. Once we get home we realize we have never smoked weed before and we do not have a bowl or rolling papers. So we decide to get the foil and wrap it around some hard plastic thing I found in my room. Well, we smoke it, and guess what happens......absolutely nothing cause the dude gave us some fucking grass or something haha. This is before I knew the world of drugs is not what it seems like in the hippie movies. Lesson learned. So let's get to the real first time I actually smoked good weed.

One summer when I was 16, a little after the fake weed incident, my friend Paul and I went out looking for some weed asking kids in school. We finally found some Asian dude that had some super good weed. So we actually smoked it and felt something this time, and man let me tell you...that was a day I would never forget.

After I took that first drag it was just like being pulled into a foggy slow world where everything was better. Food tastes better, smells smell better, things feel better, Music sounds better, it just all out made everything better. Also, everything was so funny. I just laughed even if I got looked at.

I remember right after we smoked it we were in the back of my brother's girlfriend's car (I think lol). For some reason, part of the car fell off and we couldn’t fix it, it was the funniest thing in the world. We could not stop laughing. For some reason, I also remember the car backseat falling down or coming off somehow. Now, remember I was pretty high so I am going to have to double-check with my friend Paul about this one.

I do not remember anything after that actually. I was so high I think I went home and ate a bunch of snacks and passed the fuck out. It is a foggy day but I remember the hit and right afterward at least lol, but after that first hit of that beautiful, stinky, fluffy, wonderful plant I was hooked for life. I always thought, man no wonder the government is keeping this awesome plant from us. Can’t have too much fun. Just drink alcohol that is safer than this crazy plant. The world...what a funny place we live.

So after that glorious day of finding out the benefits of marijuana, I started to wonder what other “drugs” felt like.

Remember that I am in no way saying that doing drugs at a young age is ok. Do your research and at least be at the age of 18 before experimenting.

My next experiment in the world of drugs was with the love drug known as Ecstasy. Now this drug was unlike any other drug I have ever tried. Nothing compared to this drug in the ways of loving and feeling empathy and energy. This drug made me realize that there was a whole new world I was about to get myself into which I thought was love and caring for each other and getting high but no this world was much more sinister and unforgiving than I ever could have imagined.

It all started at school one day with once again, my friend Paul. We were walking for lunch I think, and we were like “man I wonder what ecstasy is like”. We have heard a couple of stories saying it was amazing and it made you feel great but we wanted to know firsthand how amazing this could actually be.

Well, we went and asked our friend. He said his brother had them all the time and he would have them when we got off school. They were $20 apiece at the time so we only had enough money to get one and split it. That is one thing I am grateful for lol. If we would have taken one whole one each thing would have been a lot crazier. The night already goes a little sideways once it gets later in the day. I come to figure out when you take stuff like this you can't expect anything after you take it, you just go with the flow because it is intense as all hell.

Ok back to the story at hand, we end up meeting our friend by the busses after school. He hands us this pill that looked like a tan pill with a Ying Yang symbol on one side.

Now don’t judge me for what is about to happen. We were young and did not think of our consequences. We both got the bright idea of telling our parents we were going to a late-night church get-together. Which in all fairness we were not lying. We were going to this church gathering for youth but we were also going to be eating half of an ecstasy pill. So we met up after a while. It had to have been around 5 pm or 6 pm because I remember the church services lasting into the night. Please do not judge me for this. I was a young man and not thinking correctly. I had no idea what the world was about.

So we meet up at my house, We break the pill in half, take it, and start heading toward the church. I only live about a 15 min walk to the church so by the time we get there we are just starting to feel the effects of this overpowering drug.

We get to the church, we look at each other and are like “Here we go...”, then we head in. Once we walk in everything is so loud and overwhelming. The lights are a lot brighter than usual and I have this funny feeling coming into my body I have never felt before. We walk through the church and say our hellos and head to where we have our normal youth group before we all head out and hang out and have snacks and talk about god and all that religious stuff people do.

We walk into the big room with the stage and find a seat next to each other. Well, now it has been about 35 min since we have taken the pill, and man, I am feeling crazy. Everything that touches my skin feels amazing, Once they start playing there music they play I was really feeling every note that came out of the instruments and every voice that was singing at the time. I have never felt anything like this in my entire life and I was loving it.

Once the pastor got on I could not help but just close my eyes and rub my head. I tried to control it until he told us to hold our heads down and pray. Once I did that it was over. I kept my head down until my friend finally put his hand on my shoulder and was like, “Hey man it is time to go, service is over and we need to get outside man, I am freaking out in here”. So I get it together and we head outside.

I do not remember much of hanging out with everyone outside but I do remember when everyone was leaving, we stayed behind and skated and just enjoyed the feeling we were feeling. I was feeling so good skating and just rolling in the wind on my skateboard. After a little while, out of nowhere here comes the Pastor to talk to us and hang out.

Here he comes talking about the bible while we are rolling balls. At first, he comes up just joking around because he was a pretty cool dude. Just a young preacher that wanted to get closer to god and the youth. So he talked to us for a minute. Thank god we kept our composure. Well after a minute he wants to try to ride one of our skateboards and of course, we start laughing and freaking out because he is a pastor and never tried to skateboard before. So he gets on and try’s this skating thing out and skates for about 2 seconds and then flies up in the air and falls on his ass.

Now, this was the funniest thing we have seen in our lives because we were rolling balls on ecstasy. We laugh forever over that. Of course, it was not funny but I was young and dumb.

Finally, the pastor leaves and we head home. I do not exactly remember the walk home which I am sure was a very intense experience. I do remember however when I got home and talked to my parents. I knew deep down that they had some kind of feeling something was different. I just told them I wasn’t feeling good and the service was fun. I laid down and had one of the most vivid and crazy nights of my life. When I say one of the most I mean there are many more that went beyond even being able to explain. Farther along in my journey of drugs I will try to explain those nights.

Magic

My next journey....now this took me a second to remember exactly when and where this happened because this was a journey that took me beyond the limits of time and space. Magic Mushrooms. I am pretty sure My first time eating really good mushrooms was when I left my parent's house and I had a good amount of money, some gold jewelry, and some savings bonds.

I ended up buying an ounce of mushrooms, an ounce of weed, and of course, some blow but that came later after the mushrooms and weed. That bright idea was not something I was proud of because it ruins friendships and makes people go crazy, as we will learn here real soon.

So after I get the boomers (magic mushrooms) and the weed we went to my friend Matt's house. There were 7 of us. It was me, Paul, Mike, Dan, Marshal, Matt Klass, and Matt’s friend Ian(?). I handed out about an 8th of the boomers out to everyone there may be a little less. I know it was a good amount. I feel so bad for this but I made my friend Matt pay for his. He was the only one who had money so someone had to contribute to the cause of getting fucked up right?!

So we all take them and head out on a mushroom adventure. One that will change the way I looked at the world and understood why the way things were the way they were for a reason.

We head to my friend Marshal’s neighborhood. Marshal had a moped and his Dad did not give a fuck about anything because come to find out his Dad was a heroin addict and would get high every night. This is The kid who showed me my actual first look into Heroin but it wasn’t until way later I actually got to chasing the dragon.

When we get to his neighborhood the mushrooms are really starting to kick in. I forgot to say that I ate a lot more than normal this night. The sun is setting and it is starting to get dark out. My friend Dan has this trippy shirt on that has trippy stuff all around a big huge son and it is bright yellow and really sticks out even when you are not tripping balls. Once it is dark out his shirt starts glowing so bright it seems to be illuminating the street and houses around me. This is when I am about to peek at my mushroom high, but mushrooms are a very strange drug. I like to think of them as a sort of Roller Coaster ride. The high can get extremely high but eventually, it will slow the way down and be a calm trip then back up you go. This happens multiple times throughout a mushroom trip.

I am literally laughing so hard about Dan’s shirt and everything going on around me, It is so overwhelming and funny for some reason. My friend Marshal has the great idea to take me on a moped ride. Well, I did not know this at the time but he was planning on taking me over a huge jump which I was literally terrified when it happened but it was amazing and I would have done it again.

so Marshal is like “Hey dude you should let me give you a ride!”. Of course, I was down because back then I didn’t think of the future and just wanted to experience the world before I died because I believed that I could die any day and it was out of my hands. I still believe this, but I am older so think of my kid's future instead of just my own.

I hop on the moped and we take off. We are riding so fast and the wind is blowing in my hair. It feels like lightning speed because of how hard I am tripping. I see him heading toward a big jump and my heart goes into my belly. Once we hit the jump time slows down and I feel like I am stuck in the sky forever. We finally hit the ground and don’t fall or skid off. We are good to go and everything is safe. I remember this like it was yesterday. Mushrooms imprint on your brain and it can either be the greatest experience ever or one of the most traumatic things in your life. Mushrooms are not a joke and should be taken in a positive and peaceful place with positive like-minded people.

After the crazy moped ride, we went to Marshal’s house and he turned on some trippy traffic light that kinda did a disco kind of lighting. He then turned the light off and played his guitar with just the trippy light going off red, yellow, green, red, green, yellow, yellow, green, red, etc.

This was one of the most intense tripping experiences I have ever felt. With the lights going and his guitar playing. I felt one with the world and at peace with myself and my surroundings. This was the moment that changed the way I looked at the world and changed me for the better I believe.

This trip was one of the most amazing times in my life, but don’t let that full you. I have seen people have horrible trips and it is the worst night of their life. I have had a fair share of uncomfortable parts to some tripping but thank the universe I have never had a full-blown bad trip.

Elephant Lotus

Now this story involves a drug that is by far one of man's greatest accomplishments. LSD! Acid is one of the best trips in the world. If you are a strong-minded person you can control your trip and either totally loses yourself in the universe or once again like mushrooms have one of the worst times of your life. The good thing about acid, at least from my experience is the ability to control the trip more. Acid is more of a mental trip as mushrooms are more of a body trip.

Around 19 I was living at my girlfriend at the times house named Faith. This was a wild house. Her mom had Hepatitis C and it was coming on strong. She worked a 9 to 5 job and smoked a ton of weed. Faith's older brother was in prison until the end of my staying there for about a year I think. I had a pretty crazy time at this girl's house because for most of the day it was just me and her. We had people over all the time and I tried selling drugs and all that good stuff. I wasn’t the best but I made good enough to live ok and have free drugs all the time.

Faith's friend Dena was with me one day talking to this guy I always bought my mushrooms from and weed and stuff at the time. Well, he tells me that his friend just sent him a strip of good acid (ten hits). He would sell it to me for $20 which was a good ass deal cause normally it would have been $50. He tells me he has no idea how it is and to tell him how my trip was, cause the dude has a bunch of it. Well I was bored hanging with Dena later that day and I take them out and I am looking at them. They are so weird-looking. It is a long strip of paper with lines making it have ten parts. It has this weird foreign text on it. I am just thinking to myself, “How crazy could this really be...”, so I look at Dena and say, “Hey you want to try this acid out with me?”. Of course, she says yes lol. So I take 1 and she takes one. We wait a little while and we are like, “Man I don’t feel shit, lets take some more!”. So I take 3 more like an idiot lol and she takes 2 more I think. We wait for about 30 more min and then a wave of energy and complete understanding comes crashing into my brain and causing my mind to open and see the universe the way it was supposed to be seen. I sound like I am talking crazy but if you have ever experienced clean LSD you would know exactly what I am talking about.

Once our trip is peaking we are just walking. We know that if we go back to Faith's house it will be all bad. She did not like acid for some reason. I have a hard time remembering what happened until I decided to call Faith. I think Dena was starting to trip really hard so I knew it was time to go back home. I end up calling Faith and she sends her Mom to come to pick me up. It was the craziest thing when she came to pick me. She drove an old station wagon like in the old National Lampoons movie. I see her pulling up to us but I do not see it as a normal person would. I see it in cartoon segments. It was the strangest thing but felt normal all at the same time.

Once we get back to Faith's house we all sit down at her kitchen table to have a talk...you can imagine how this went.

We are sitting at the kitchen table and Faith and her Mom are looking at us crazy. Or at least I thought it was crazy.

This is how the conversation went:

Faith's Mom - “Did you guys take something?”

Me - “Yeah we took some acid...”

Dena - (flicks an ice cube from her drink at me) “Looks like it’s just me and you Tony”

Faith - “Haha what are you talking about Dena!”

Dena - “.......”

Me - “We took acid haha”

Faith's Mom - “Why is she (Dena) so much more fucked up than you?!”

Me - “I have no idea but I feel amazing lol.”

We sit for a little bit at the table just kicking the shit and then I move to the living room to watch TV. As I am sitting on her couch Faith comes over and is acting weird as fuck trying to make me trip out. Or maybe I was tripping out and she was acting normal. I still do not know to this day.

After a little while of chilling and dealing with that, some big ass gangster comes over to talk to Faith's Mom. Well normally this dude would be scary but I was tripping my ass off so he was exceptionally scary lol. He had gold teeth and he was about 4 of me.

After a little while, I decide to go upstairs and lay in the bed. I end up looking outside for the rest of the night and watch the trees breathing in and out. It was amazing.

Behind Bars

Ok so everyone knows or should know that dealing in the drug world comes consequences. One of the main things that happen to you is jail. My first visit was over some bullshit. I dropped out of school When I moved out of my parent's house when I was 18. I was dating a girl that still went to my old high school. I went there one day and brought my girlfriend a note and walked her to class. Well as I am walking toward the exit of the school a teacher named Mr. Purnell stopped me in the hallway. Now you have to know that this teacher and I have had a lot of problems already through my years at school there. He was a prick and treated kids like shit. This is how the situation unfolded in the halls of my High School and what introduced me to my first trip to Jail.

Mr. Purnell - "Hey do you have a hall pass to be here?"

Me - "I am headed out right now."

Mr. Purnell - "I asked if you had a hall pass!!"

(Mr. Purnell gets in my face and starts getting pushy and threatening. At this point I am mad and not in the mood for his bullshit.)

Me - "I will show you my hall pass if you lose some weight you fat fucker!"

(I was a rebel without a cause lol.)

Mr. Purnell - "What did you just say to me?!" (pushes me up against a wall)

Me - "You heard me you fat fuck!!" (I push him back)

After all of that nonsense, I finally get to leave. I am walking through the parking lot and headed to go smoke weed or something. As I am walking the officer at our school stops me and asks me what happened. I tell him what happened and he says everything is ok and all I need to do is make a report and nothing will happen and I will be able to go home so I write a report and everything seems fine. Later on, I find out that I am charged with Trespassing and disorderly conduct. My first experience with the lies and bullshit from the people that are supposed to be helping us. Now don't get me wrong, all cops are not this way but some are.

I go to court and they put me on probation. Of course, I do not go to my probation so they put out a warrant for my arrest. Come to find out Virginia is a commonwealth state and they do not play when it comes to a probation violation. They end up giving me 9 months! That was a blow to my life right there. Thank god VA does a good time. so for every day, you are good it is like doing 2 days. I still had to do 4 1/2 months which sucked. I do not remember too much about this visit but I do remember enough. I will try to recollect as much as I can in this short jail story.

I get picked up eventually, not really sure how or when but It happened and it was a crazy experience for a kid that has never been to jail. The officer took me to VPRJ (Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail) which I thought looked like the scariest place in the world. Later in life, I found out that this was the best Jail I would stay in.

Ok so my recollection of this experience is not all there but I am going to give you the best I can.

I walk into the intake at the huge building. They process me in and get me into my prison uniform. I sit in intake for what feels like an eternity. All of the officers are dick heads which I understand because they deal with the scum of the world every day.

Once my intake is done they bring me to C pod which is a misdemeanor pod. It is the pic you see above. The Jail is laid out in different pods from A to F. A is the woman's pod, B is medical, C is a misdemeanor, D is Runner and F is really bad Felony's from what I remember.

The Hallway is massive and I feel small and out of place. I just turned 18 not too long ago. We get to C pod and there are 2 big sliding metal doors. I walk into the first one and it closes behind me with the loudest closing of a door I have heard in my life so far. We walk through the second door and once that door closes I have a cold feeling come over me knowing that this could be my home for the next 9 months if I do not behave myself. I am scared and have no idea what is in store for me.

As I walk into this massive Jail Cell I am yelled at by all of the other prisoners. They yell profanity at me and say a bunch of gay shit to me. I am feeling broken already and I just stepped into this place. I look to my right and there is an outside area but all it is is 4 cement walls with a metal wire over the top. Right before that is the microwave/ tv room. Which is not bad I guess. In front of that room is the guard tower. In this jail, there is always 1 guard male/female in the pod with you at all times. There is a bottom tier and a top tier. I would say there had to have been around 60 to 80 inmates in the pod at all times which makes confrontation very easy.

I get assigned a cell with the biggest fucker I have ever seen. He has Newport News tattooed on his chest and has gold teeth. He has to be at least 6.5 ft tall. We got along for the most part.

I can not remember most of this trip but I know that I thought it was the worst experience of my life but come to find out there are jails out there that are 1000 times worse than this one.

We had movie nights and a good commissary. Seemed like a kind of daycare for criminals. Before I left this Pod my cellmate and I got into a yelling match and I slept on the top bunch and this big fucker just snatched me off of my bunk and slammed me on the ground. After that, I knew it was time to go because things would just get worse. My side got bruised up so bad and I had trouble walking for a little bit.

I ended up becoming a runner which is an inmate that works for the jail so they can get out of their pod and see something other than the same faces and walls they also move you to D pod which has fewer people and the inmates are a lot more laid back. I ended up working for the kitchen at first which was ok but then they moved me to outside work. I ended up power washing wooden playgrounds for the last month or two of my sentence. Now this job was slick. I actually loved doing that job. I got a couple of visits from my ex-girlfriend and future wife which helped me get through my time but they found out I was talking to both of them and Liz had a choice to make because she was moving to OH with her family. She had to choose from me or her on and off boyfriend Ryan which was a big piece of shit and hit her all the time. Thank goodness she chose me. Once I got out of Jail we headed to OH and this is when the real problems began with one of the world's worst drugs.

Now don't get me wrong I am so glad Liz moved me to Ohio because she is the love of my life and we have had beautiful children but man did we go through it here. There heroin problem here in Ohio is really bad.

When we first moved to Ohio everything was going great. Liz's Grandma got us a great apartment and Liz got a Job at Kinder care and I started working at Goodwill. Everything was going great but we were young and still had that party mentality.

While I was working at Goodwill some high schoolers came into the store and saw them all laughing and having a good time. They end up coming to my register and I casually ask them if they like to party and of course, they say yes. I let them know that I just moved into an apartment in The Arbors right down the street from the store. I invite them to come to a small party this coming weekend. Which they say they will be there.

The weekend comes and Liz and I think they won't come and we will have a boring weekend (come to find out boring weekends are really what we needed). They end up coming over and we had a blast. Well, this starts getting out of control. We are doing it every weekend and then every weekend turns into every couple of days. Then eventually our house turns into a kind of a trap party house and we lose both of our jobs. Our apartment gets destroyed, we have beer cases lining the walls and burn holes all over the carpet.

The Robbery

What ended our stay at The Arbors is a hard story to tell. This might of been one of the scariest times of my young life. I was a smart ass, loud mouth when I got drunk. Still am but I do not drink like that anymore. Here is how the robbery went down.

Liz and I are at our apartment and I am trying to get some weed. I met this guy named Vinnie and he told me I could buy an ounce of weed for $120 just recently but there was a pretty bad storm going on and he didn't want to drive unless it was worth it so he raised the price to $150 which I thought was bullshit because I thought he was just trying to play me. So my drunk ass starts freaking out on him and telling him he is trying to rip me off. He tells me he is looking after his grandmother and he didn't want to leave unless it was worth it. Well, me being drunk and not thinking about what I was saying I told him that I would come to burn his house down or something along those lines. I did not mean it but that was enough for him to hang up and I did not hear from him for a couple of weeks. Now I know this was mostly my fault and I should have not talked that way but people say and do things they do not mean when they are drunk. It still does not make it right though.

A couple of weeks pass and I am having a little get-together with a couple of "friends". (someone burned my peephole about a week ago which makes me think this was planned) I get a knock on my door and my friend Zaq goes to answer it. He says who is it before he opens the door and the person knocking says "it's me bro!". Zaq goes to open the door and the second he opens it a little the door gets kick wide the fuck open smashing him in the face. Vinnie and some black guy I have never seen before come rushing in pointing a gun in everyone's face. Me, Liz, and her friend Rachael are in our bedroom which is in the back of the apartment. All I hear is "Where the fuck is Tony! Tony, where the fuck are you!" Right when I hear my name being yelled I run out to see what is happening. I see Vinnie and I know exactly what is going on. I stay in the hallway and Vinnie and his big friend comes straight to me and put a gun right in my face and tell me to empty my pockets. I give him my wallet which has no money in it which I thought was pretty funny but it did have my id and some other shit I am sure.

After Vinnie had taken my wallet he tells me to have the girls get out of the room and go into the bathroom. While Vinnie is yelling Rachael runs out of the bedroom into the bathroom. I am in-between the two rooms in a small hallway and I have my hands up so they cant get to the girls. I have no fucking idea where the other 7 dumbasses I was hanging out with went but I guess I was on my own. Now don’t get me wrong I was terrified but I tried to keep my composer.

So Rachael runs into the bathroom and closes the door and locks it. Now Vinnie is pissed and pushes me out of the way and kicks the door in so now I am in front of my room protecting the only person that really mattered there my now wife Liz. When Vinnie kicks the door in and goes and grabs Rachael he says he wants both of the girls to strip down. As he is screaming this I am just shaking my head. I wouldn’t move. Vinnies friend punches me in the back of the head because I am turned around looking at Liz. My hat flys off and I stumble a little but I get back up and I say. “You can't get into this room, take anything in the house and get the fuck out of here. I am not going to let you in this room!”.

At the time I did not know that Liz was in the bedroom on the phone with the police. All of a sudden I hear her yell “He has a gun! He has a gun!!!”. When she yells all I see is Vinnie's eyes light up and he and his friend ran out of the house squared down like idiots. We lived on the second floor of these apartments but once I ran out there to see where they went they were gone.

I walked upstairs and everyone was freaked out saying what the fuck just happened and why did they do that. I didn’t tell them what happened because I was just being a drunken idiot when I said all that about him and his grandma. I am a good person I swear. After a couple of seconds of freaking out, my “friends” decide it is a good idea to leave. Remember now all these people were rolling on ecstasy or drunk and doing blow. Well, they walk down the stairs and as they are walking to their cars the police pull up and pull their guns out on them and tell them to get on the ground. It was insane! After they realized they were not them the police came up to our apartment and talked to us.

I never heard from Vinnie after that and I found out down the grapevine that he ended up getting caught and getting 4 years in prison. He is out now. I have no idea where he is or if he still holds a grudge against me. Let's hope not. We also found out Liz was pregnant right after this happened. So thank god we had this angel in our lives to help us get out of that situation we put ourselves into.

Moving Into Grandma’s House

When we moved into Liz’s Grandma’s house it seemed like a new beginning. We got all that partying behind us and we were ready for a fresh start. At least we thought.

We starting working together at Panera bread which was a pretty slick job. We worked together and Liz was pregnant so it seemed to be the perfect life for me at the time. I did dishes in the back normally and Liz did cashier in the front. We both got off at close and took home a bunch of the bakery items they had leftover. Our bosses were awesome. I think their names were Ryan and Ashley?.

Everything was going great and Liz had gotten big and pregnant now. We have been working at Panera now for about 8 months and did not have a penny to show for it because we had been paying grandma back for that apartment we destroyed. A new boss has come into the store named Polo and he is a fucking hard ass. Nobody likes him and he doesn’t care about the employee like the other bosses did.

We stay strong and have a beautiful baby girl named Meghan. (We talk all the time nowadays but she has no idea about these times in my life). After Meghan is born I have this stress fall over me. I have no idea how I am going to take care of this precious little girl. I start to stress and my old mentality comes out. I decide I want to get fucked up again to make this stress dissipate. We start drinking again and do a little blow here and there. What we are about to get introduced to is the drug of all drugs. The holy grail of living a shitty life and doing anything to get more.

Opiates

This is a hard story to tell. Don’t get me wrong. It starts out beautiful and made me feel a way I have never felt before, but this drug is for the dying or the weak and I am neither. This drug will literally steal your soul from your body and everything you love and hold dear to you.

It all starts on a windy summer day. I just have this itch in my brain that won't go away so Liz and I go out to chill with Liz’s friend Rachael. She takes us to this couple's house named Angela and Eugine. We didn’t know they were snorting heroin when we first met them but they were not shy about sharing that is for sure. I believe I remember Rachael telling them that we had a crazy past with cocaine and not to bring any shit out around us.

One day we are all hanging out with Angela waiting for her dude to get home and Rachael has to go home early for some reason. So it is just Liz, Me, and Angela. She walks over to the microwave and I see her rubbing something on the tray in the microwave. She puts the tray in and only keeps it on for around 10 to 20 seconds. She takes the tray out and gets a razor from her drawer. She starts scraping this stuff up from the tray. She calls Liz and I over so we walk to her in the kitchen. We were sitting in the living room just hanging out waiting for her dude to bring home alcohol I think. We get to the counter and see she has scraped up a couple of big lines of this brown powder. She tells us it is Heroin and asks us if we want to try any. At this time we had no idea about the negative effects of Heroin we just knew you got a little sick. So we decide to do it. It is the most amazing feeling I have ever felt. Your whole body just goes to complete calm and you do not care about anything in the world. You are covered in a warm blanket of bliss hoping to never poke your head out again. We did this every once in a while for free with Angela but after a while, they stopped giving it to us and we started to feel a little sick and we did not like that feeling.

We ended up getting married around this time and it was a beautiful small wedding. I think there was Grandma, Angela, and Eugine. We were high during our wedding day if I am not mistaken, but it was still a beautiful wedding and I am so in love with my wife.

Liz ends up hitting an old friend/boyfriend up named Mike.

She knows him from childhood and knows he likes to party. We get ahold of him and he tells us yeah he can get it but we will have to pay $20 in gas and give them some out of what we're buying so our trips to go pick up from Mike and his girlfriend Ali ended up costing us $40 every time we did it. We started going about once a week but after about a month or two we starting going every day to every other day.

The way we funded all of this is something I am not proud of and I still think about it to this day. I would have never hurt my family or friends if I was not on Heroin. I have a couple of regrets in life and this is on the top of the list.

At first, we used the little bit of money we had left. We both got paid on Friday every two weeks. Once we received our paycheck we would have to give grandma $500 of it and keep $50. This is a rough estimate but you get the idea. So every 2 weeks we had $100 between the 2 of us. So as you can see this income was not cutting it for our worsening Heroin addiction. Liz and I got the great idea of trying to use Grandma’s credit card at a Kroger or somewhere and buy gift cards and sell those for Heroin.

So we decide to go to Kroger and try it. We walk in and grab a gift card. I think it was one of those Visa gift cards. We take the card up to the register. We buy one and put $200 on it. It is APPROVED and we walk out and everything is fine. This starts a chain reaction of doing this over and over again.

We find out you can buy prepaid gift cards from Giant Eagle and after you buy them you can take money out of an ATM so we can stop selling the gift cards for 50% off.

This plan goes on for a while until Grandma realizes she is missing a ton of money. By this time we have also stolen jewelry and Pottery things that are worth a good amount of money. You can only imagine how pissed Grandma was when she found out it was us. She pressed charges and I ended up taking the blame for everything and got 6 months in jail which the jail here is nothing like the jail in VA. This Jail is dirty and you share one living area, one sleeping area, 1 toilet, and one shower between 25 -30 other dudes.

Before I went to Jail Liz and I were kicked out of Grandma's house and had to sleep at a homeless shelter. Which let me tell you was an experience.

We ended up staying here for about six months. I won't go into all of the gruesome details of this disgusting place but it was not a good time. We did a lot of Heroin and broke into a lot of cars to support our habit. I am not proud of it because now I realize all the trouble and heartache I put people through when they came back to their car and realized their window had been shattered and belonging were stolen. I deserved the time I did in jail. I will never deny that.

The whole time we stayed at the shelter we did not stay inside of the shelter. We did not want to be away from each other in this shitty place so we stayed outside on the street or in a tent behind the shelter. I am surprised that we did not get raped or killed while we were staying outside in that shit hole. We had a couple of close calls with people but nothing that needs to be written about.

While we were staying at the shelter Liz and I was hanging out with a couple of people in the parking lot in front of the shelter. We are all standing in a circle talking and all of a sudden all of these undercover trucks come swooping in and like 20 guys jump out of the trucks. They are going crazy and grabbing all of us and asking what our names were. Come to find out that the guy they drove up on us for was not even who they were looking for. I think they were just trying to clean up the streets of downtown Columbus. Also while they are badgering me and asking me for my information I am calm and collected because I know I do not have any charges and I am clean. Well, come to find out when they run my name I have a felony warrant for receiving stolen property, possession of criminal tools, and forgery because I used grandmas card all that time ago.

I got arrested Friday and ended up getting out on Monday. Liz’s badass self went breaking into cars while I was locked up and broke into enough cars to get her well (not sick off Heroin) and to get me out of jail. She ended up finding like $500 in gift cards. Like I said before I know now that what we did hurt a lot of people and I wish I could take it back but that is impossible. Now I do whatever I can to help others.

Thank god at that time I knew everyone to sell stuff to, and I mean everyone. If you had any electronics I could sell them. The bad news was I was locked up. My dude Kunta looked out for Liz while I was locked up and he sold everything for her. He was the guy who taught us how to break into cars without setting alarms off and told us what to look for so we didn’t break into a car for no reason. He was an OG (original gangster) in my eyes. Ok now let's get to what happened while I was in the 3rd worst jail in America. This is not the 4 days. This trip to jail is when I was arrested again for failure to appear. I dealt with these charges for a long time. I think like 6 years or so.

Correction Facility #2

Have you ever watched the show Lock Up Raw? Well, this place is something like that. This had to have been one of the scariest experiences in my life. I was surrounded by gang bangers, big-time drug dealers, people who fight for fun, all-around bad people. Here I am a young skinny dude in a place controlled by big scary dudes.

As I walk into this small world, I smell chemicals and feet. It kind of smells like a hospital but add some farts and feet in there. I walk in one big metal door, That door closes behind me and I am standing in front of bars. Once the cop puts his gun into a lockbox we are let through the bar door. I am walking up to a big counter with a white line of tape in front of it. They tell me to stay on the white line. I look to my left and it is just a metal door and it says Felony over it. I hear a bunch of talking and laughing and yelling in there. To my right is another metal door but this room has a window and says misdemeanor. There are about 5 inmates looking at me through the window. At this point, I am terrified because the misdemeanor tank looks scary I can only imagine what the Felony tank will be like. These are only holding tanks until they transfer you to the tank you will be living in for the duration of your stay unless you get in a fight or released.

I am called up to the counter and they ask me a bunch of questions and have me take off my shoes and socks and put my feet on the white tape and hands on the counter and spread my legs so one of the officers can search me.

Now my old knowledge of jail is thrown out the window when I come to this place. It is a different world. After they search me and get all of my information, they tell me to have a seat in front of a couple of storage rooms and two phones. I sit there and wait about 20 minutes until an officer yells my name and tells me I can have one phone call. I do not remember who I call or how the call went but I am pretty sure it was to my wife Liz and it was me being like well damn here we go again.....

I hope you have enjoyed this part of my life story. If you have enjoyed it please like and follow for more content.

I know this story has a lot to do with drugs, partying, and just being lost in the world. This is my life though and boy there is so much more to write about. If you did like this short story of my life please leave a comment and let me know. I plan on continuing my writing and hopefully, one day finish the story.