Hi my name is Noah and I am an 18 year old oxycontin addict and alcoholic. I am six months sober and it has been a real struggle to get clean. I come from divorced parents and I have one sister. The disease of alcoholism and addiction runs in my family. My grandfather, uncle, cousin are alcoholics. While I was growing up my parents tried very hard to tell me I need to be very careful because of our family history of addiction. I never listened and thought that would not happen to me. I was different.

Before I even started to use I had very addictive behaviors and thought that God had abandon me. I felt that God always made it so I would fail and always put someone better than me in my life to surpass me. When I was 14 years old I had my first drink. I got drunk and blacked out all in the same night. And that pretty much describes the beginning of my addiction. I just wanted more, more and more. I fell in love with how alcohol made me feel. From there I tried weed and pills. And when I was 15 going into my sophomore year of high school I started to hang out with a lot of older kids because I was on the varsity soccer team and was trying to fit in. I will never forget how I started to use oxycontin. One of the older kids on my team one day gave me this list of pills and told me when I go to my grandfathers house to look for them in the medicine cabinet. Low and behold the next time I went to my grandfathers house I searched and I found some small yellow 40 mg pills. They turned out to be oxycontin.

I took ten of them out of the bottle having no Idea what I was getting myself into. So I brought them back to my buddy and he got real excited. We went back to my house and he showed me how to take the coating off and crush them up and the whole works. And I immediately fell in love with everything about it the feeling, the taste and the process. From that point on it progressed. I said I would only do it once a week. I ended up doing a lot more then that. I started doing all the things I said I would never do. As time went on, I did them all. Including using a needle to get high which I swore I would never do. After that I started selling oxy’s. That only lasted for about four months because I quickly became my best customer. All throughout my junior year I used heavily and then the summer of my junior year my son Kaden was born and I some how stopped using. But I would still drink a couple times a week. I really just stopped because of my son and some of my friends got so bad they had to go to rehab. My last run started November 20, 2006 I was drinking with a couple of my buddies and I just was not satisfied with how I felt I wanted to feel better so my buddy and I went and got some oxycontin. I did not stop until July 9th, 2007. This is when my addiction got really bad. I could never get enough oxycontin. I always wanted more. I would do it all throughout the day so I would not have to deal with what was going on in my life. During this time is when I started stealing alot and using needles. I would leave my house for days and not talk to my family. I was not aloud to see my son anymore. I got a DWI. I lost many of my good friends. I got caught stealing and writing fake checks and I started to think about suicide a lot and even tried to overdose and kill myself. My life was out of control.

On July 10th 2007 I decided I wanted to stop. So I pretty much locked myself at home. It was hell. I had bad withdraws. I had diarrhea, vomiting, cold sweats. I could not sleep and the worst headache ever. I wanted to die. I had my mom kind of help me but I thought I could stop on my own. Like I had before. Which obviously didn’t work so well. So on July 11th 2007 was a day that would change the rest of my life forever. I woke up and came down stairs and there was my whole family, a few of my friends and Rick Marvin. It was an intervention for me and probably one of the most emotional hours I have ever had in my life. So I decided to go to treatment. Rick was an Interventionist from a program I attended briefly called Intervention INK. I hated Rick at that time. He flew with me to treatment facility called Treatment Solutions of South Florida in Ft. Lauderdale. On the plain ride down we started talking and I started to like him a little bit.

I did a medical detox for 5 days then 89 days in treatment and it was the best experience I have ever had. The first 20 to 30 days I still did not believe I was an addict and really planned on getting high when I got out of treatment. When I came to terms with the fact I was truly a drug addict, my life completely turned around. While I was there I got a lot of knowledge about myself and the drugs I was taking. I learned more about me and life in that short time than I had learned in my previous 17 years on this earth. There is no doubt treatment saved my life. I completed treatment and went to a halfway house and lived there from October 5th until November 29th. While I lived in the sober house I got a job and it really showed me how to incorporate my clean and sober program in my everyday life. I was ready to come home to Toledo. I came home for a few different reasons. I had court to deal with, my son lives here, and I missed it a lot. I moved home at the end of December and went to a meeting the first hour I was home. I found myself a sponsor the next day and ever since we have been working through the steps. My life today is better than I ever thought it could be. I was not planning on living this long and if I did not get the help when I did I know I would be dead. I owe a lot to Rick Marvin and Intervention INK. They have done so much for me in helping me to find this new way of life. I am now very involved with Intervention INK today and am trying to help the young people that are in the addiction I was in seven months ago. Giving back to them what was so freely given to me helps me to stay clean and sober one day at a time. I love my family, my son and my new life. God’s will, not mine.