The life of an addict can be a very exhilarating way to live, profitable, exciting and very dangerous. Also, at the same time it can be a very good way to spiral down and crash and burn, bringing every loved one down with you. Of course watching something like that happen takes a toll on a person. It changes them forever, stripping them of all happiness and replacing them with fear, guilt, and sadness. .
I grew up in a normal family household, or so I thought I did. My father owned a fairly profitable company, my mom stayed home and cooked and cleaned the house. I was the youngest of three, my sister and I were 13 years apart and my brother and I were 11 years apart. We lived in a fancy neighborhood, the kind where everyone knew each other's business; we had to attend neighborhood picnics, Halloween parties, you know, that kind of thing. I was in 7th grade when my dad decided to move the family to the country. It was probably because my father didn't want the neighbors knowing the life he had. An upscale individual having a drug addict for a son is quite the topic. By this point in my life my sister had already moved out, so it was just my brother and I. Those are the things I remember the most of my childhood, the important things. Every thing else is like the bathroom mirror when you get out of the shower, a foggy memory. I remember him though, I remember my brother, unconscious on the bathroom floor.
I wasn't suppose to know what drugs were, I was way to young. And I especially wasn't suppose to know classifications of drugs, what they did to you, or even how much they cost. I wasn't suppose to know what heroin was or that if you cut it with fentanyl it will kill you instantly. Living with an addict and having a brain of a sponge you begin to pick up on these things. I believe I was 8 the first time I witnessed it with my own eyes, he was clipping away at his skin with toenail clippers trying to get the bugs out of his body.