It's been a long journey that much is for sure. I'm writing this all from memory for the years tend to blend together but I'll be doing the best I can. I'm fast forwarding to graduating high school.
At 18 I'd been making my own money programming and doing web design online. That was about 10 years ago. For a few years all I did was work for a company online managing a couple PHP games for the owner. I drank a lot, and made my own fake ID before I was 19. At this point I was still staying with my parents but was making my own money and had a car, I was fairly self sufficient.
I moved out..
My parents had always told me if I wasn't going to college then I would need to move out, and that's just what I did. I moved in with a recently divorced family friend and we got along good. We had a lot of parties, he was 42 and I was 20-21. I like to think I helped me relive some of his younger years. Around this time the guy I was working for was preparing to sell his websites for 4.5 million dollars. I wasn't doing bad, I was earning about $1,000 to $1,500 a month working for him. He referred me to the new owner and we talked a few times. He hired me on to run the network of sites including the premier site Bored.com. As compensation he allowed me to put my AdSense ads on one of the websites earning $2,000~ per month.
An LSD laced summer
Photo from mentalfloss
So I'm living with this family friend and it's a beautiful summer. Riding around with the ladies, partying it up, I was young! I had started to dabble with other drugs at this point, most notably LSD, Mushrooms, And Opiates. The opiates would later play a bigger role than they are at this point.
To the psych ward you go..
I distinctively remember the trip, It was probably my 3rd - 4th trip of the summer but this one was prominent. For weeks on end after this one particular trip I felt out of reality. I had odd thoughts, that in any other given situation would be disregarded, but to my they seemed like truth. This spiraled out of control until one night in a tripped out frenzie I drove to my grandmothers house. I was having full on visuals after I arrived there, Reality was no more, I was fully immersed in my visual imagination. At this point I'd been out of touch with reality for a week or more.
The ambulance comes, scoops me up, and off to the hospital I go. At this point I was in and out because the doctors shot me up with Haldol upon arrival. It put me out for a full 24 hours but I did have moments of being awake and trying to stay awake.
We show up at the Psych ward and they put me in the literal Psychiatric unit. It was very strange. I remember talking with the doctor and telling him that I had taken a lot of Acid and thought I had done some bad tabs but he tried to convince me that I had other things going on and I should be on medication. In total I was there for a week and a half before they let me go. Once you're there, you literally cannot leave until the doctor says it is ok! The doc wanted to put me on Lithium and Klonopin but I declined. I'm very glad I did because who knows who I would be today if I was taking those meds daily since my young adulthood.
I'm free!
Finally they released me and my mom came and picked me up. We got subway on the way home and it was awesome. Mind wise I wasn't fully back to my normal self, something was off, I wasn't grounded in reality just yet but I was getting there. At this point I moved back in with my parents and had a sweet little spot in the basement while I got my life together.
While all this was going on I forgot all about the job I landed weeks before, I messaged the guy and he wrote back and said he figured something was up, and that I could still have the job if I wanted it! To top it all off in my AdSense account I had accumulated a couple grand and could afford to buy a new car, and shortly after rented a trailer to live and work from.
Things are good!
Everything was on the up and up! It felt like things were finally falling into place for me. The guy I was working for was a raging alcoholic and drug addict and before I knew it I was running the whole network. I also had started a site with a database I had that contained peoples birthdays. I was targeting the "Birth Record" niche. My site ended up ranking #1 on Google and my affiliate was paying me $18 per sign up..
The money really started rolling in..
I remember the first morning I woke up with $20,000 in my bank account that was direct deposited by Intelius. Holy moly was I stoked. I picked up my friend and we went out and I bought myself an Audi A6 2.7 Twin Turbo. The world was my oyster and I was living it up. I was 22-23 at this point.
For awhile I was really focused on my websites and working, but I really started to lose focus as..
My addiction to opiates took hold..
I dabbled with percocets and the like but I had recently found the joy of the OC80 and I loved it. I already had an addictive personality and between $20k or so a month being deposited in my bank account and my freedom to do as I pleased, I quickly became addicted and my addiction spiraled out of control.
You have probably heard the story a thousand times. In 3-4 years I had blown through about 250k, lost my birth records website to a server crash, and was floating on rock bottom. I had become a full blown addict and there was nothing I could do. I was surviving getting random gigs and earning $600~ a month, At this point I'm about 25.
The girl that changed it all..
Then Jen came a long, I was still a fucked up drug abuser, and she was beautiful. We ended up moving in together and living together for years. We both got jobs working with the mentally handicapped, and things were generally good but I was going no where. My addiction to drugs left me broke every week and eventually she got tired of it, and she left me.
When she left I realized something had to be done, I had to win her back. There was and is no doubt in my mind she was the one. So I slowly started to get myself together, I moved into my parents house even though I had my own house, I got clean, I started working out, I started writing songs, I started running daily. I felt good, I feel good. But she never came back to me. We hangout every week, but we aren't an item. I'm sober, and healthy while she's beautiful, and smart. She basically saved my life by not sitting around and watching me kill myself, and for that I'll always be grateful.
Its been two years, a good two years. I feel better than I ever have, but man, I miss waking up to that face.
