Why Do People Become Addicts? A Story of My Childhood

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Have you ever wondered if an addict is built or born? Is it something in their childhood that makes them snap and turn to hard drugs, or is it just purely genetics? I, for one, think it's both.

[00:00:11]And I think if you take a minute to listen to my story, you'll figure out why a little bit for yourself. So, my story, like most addicts, starts with tragedy. Now, I wish I could say it wasn't always bad and scary, but you know, I remember being a little kid and things were fine. you know, riding bikes, playing outside. But around the time I turned five, my first tragedy hit. My baby cousin was 2 years old. I was 5 years old. And she was in a tragic accident where she drowned in a pool at her grandparents house. And this shaped me. This had a major effect on my life.

[00:00:52]And I know you think, you know, how could that affect a 5-year-old? it. At 5, the world is supposed to be full of hope and happiness and dreams and anything you can imagine. When I was five, I was in a clip on tie at a baby's funeral. And seeing how it affected my family, everyone crying all the time, how it ruined my uncle's life, how it ruined my aunt's life, and just so many different factors that went into it, my grandparents, my mom, everyone in the family was deeply affected by this. and looking in on that, you know, as a 5-year-old, it's really it's scary and it's life-changing. You know, I'm starting to think maybe life isn't all happy and all dreams and all everything you can imagine. You know, at this point, I started to realize life is real and it's scary and it can take things from you at a moment's notice. And, you know, I wasn't prepared for that because what 5-year-old would be? And this turned into a constant fear of death for me. You know, by the time I was six or seven, I was scared of dying.

[00:01:56]You know, I all I could think about was my family dying or me dying or someone dying and me not being able to stop it.

[00:02:02]And I still have those thoughts today.

[00:02:05]You know, I still have extreme death anxiety. If you can relate to that, let me know. Um, it's kind of hard to it's kind of hard to explain, but it's also not because we don't know when we're going to die. You know, this could be my last day on Earth. I could not wake up tomorrow. I could drop dead later today.

[00:02:22]But learning to cope with that and just have hope that you will survive and that you make you will make it another day is enough for me. But this set an early foundation for my life that I will not be able to get away from. maybe one day with the right therapy and counseling or whatever it is that would help me. But, you know, to this day, I still have issues from this. Now, the next few years were kind of normal. You know, I had a lot of anxiety, which is not normal for a little kid. And I don't know if I'd call it depression, but there was days where, you know, I was so sad or upset that I didn't want to do anything. You know, I remember by fourth or fifth grade, I was um you know, I was I don't know if I'd say an outcast, but I was definitely outnumbered. There was more kids who didn't like me than those who did. You know, my childhood was lonely. I had a few friends, you know, a few really close friends. I was close with my cousins, but when I went to school, I felt like no one was on my side. You know, not the teachers, not the kids, not any adults, nobody. my peers, nobody. And I was good in school at this point. I was really smart. You know, my reading and math level were way out of my way out of everyone else's league for elementary school. You know, there was like a handful of us that did really well. And, you know, we tend to hang out with those kids that we have stuff in common with. And you know, elementary school was, you know, again, it's really sad that it was this early in my life that I was feeling these things. But elementary school is when I first felt depressed, when I first felt anxious. You know, by the time I was 9 or 10, I was having serious problems with my brain. And I didn't tell anybody cuz I didn't know what to say. You know, I didn't know this wasn't normal. I didn't know that you weren't supposed to have these thoughts of dread and wanting to not exist anymore and all these things. And you know, I don't know if speaking out would have helped me. Maybe I should have told an adult. Maybe I should have told one of my friends. But it's really hard to live like that as a kid and not know how to handle it. And when I was around that age, um, something happened to me.

[00:04:42]And I'm not going to say it here, but you can probably assume what it was by the way I'm talking about it. And um that also changed my life forever. You know, I have flashbacks to that still to this day. You know, I still don't know how to cope with it. Um it just it ruins you for life. So dealing with the all the trauma I had by the time I was 10 years old, you know, death, depression, other things, I I was on a path that I didn't know how to handle. You know, when I was in sixth grade, I was still um I was still pretty smart. I was still in the uh the GI gifted kids program. They called it high cap, highly capable. And again, sixth grade, I started feeling this dread. And I didn't know how or what, but I knew I wanted to get away from it. I knew I needed a way out of my head. And I didn't know what that was yet. But I longed for it every day. Every day. I just wish something could be different.

[00:05:46]I wish I wasn't living like this anymore. You know, why don't people at school like me? Why, you know, why am I having trouble connecting with other kids? And you could say it's a buildup of everything that happened to me, but you know, I also was developing bipolar disorder, you know, and it usually doesn't show up until your late teens, but I remember having, you know, symptoms and realizations that I now see as symptoms of my bipolar disorder. Um, the depression got really, really bad. You know, I I would stay in my room for days, just go to school, not talk to anybody, keep my head down until I could come home and go back to my room. And this is not healthy for an 11-year-old. It's not healthy for anybody, but especially at that age when you're supposed to be forming social skills and learning how to interact with the world, you know, when you're supposed to be making meaningful connections with people around you. I was just I don't know how to explain it. I was just broken. I didn't know how to do any of those things. You know, I had a few close friends and my cousins, but you know, they weren't really My best friend was my neighbor and my cousin. You know, it wasn't like I was going out making friends. You know, I had a few friends from school, but for the most part, I was very lonely. And my friends and my cousin went to a different school. So, I felt super super alone. You know, being in middle school and dealing with, you know, kids are mean in middle school.

[00:07:18]And I was fat. I was pretty fat in middle school and kids are mean. And dealing with the constant harassment, you know, the constant avoidance of my peers, I just it started to build up into something that, you know, would explode later. And I just I didn't know that. There's no knowing that. How could you possibly know that when you're 11 years old? And, you know, it just set a major a major foundation for what would later happen. And so sixth grade, you know, I'm depressed.

[00:07:51]I'm reaching out to people. Well, I'm not reaching out to people. I'm hanging out with the few people I hang out with.

[00:07:57]And I'm wondering, you know, my one of my best friends was popular. He was good-looking. He everyone loved him. You know, he had so many friends. I went over to his house. He'd have 20 people over from school. And I'm like, I can't even get I can't even get a kid to school to come to my house. You know, I was always jealous of that that that ease of fitting in that I could never attain. You know, he fit in so easily and he made so many friends so easily and I just wanted to know, you know, why can't I do that? What's wrong with me to where I can't do that? And now looking back, I see, you know, the trauma I went through, the things I dealt with kind of damaged me in a way. You know, they damaged my um my perception of reality.

[00:08:43]They damaged my perception of humanity.

[00:08:46]They damaged my perception of relationships.

[00:08:49]You know, there was things that people were able to do that I didn't understand how they were able to do them. You know, I was never the kid that got a bunch of friends and a bunch of girls and things just came easily. The only thing that came easily to me was my schoolwork. And at that point, that's all I had. You know, six sixth grade was really bad for me. You know, I I remember that's the first time where I truly didn't want to exist anymore. And having those thoughts as an 11-year-old and not knowing what to say or how to say it or how to handle that, it's extremely terrifying. You know, there's I've done things that could have led me to not be here as a sixth grader. And if you know, if my kid was doing that, I'd be terrified. But I didn't want to hurt anyone else. So, I didn't share my feelings with my family.

[00:09:38]I didn't share them with my friends. I didn't share them with my parents or my siblings. You know, I was really scared that it was just going to hurt them. And I didn't want them to know what I was going through. I didn't want to seem weak. I didn't want to seem like I needed their help. You know, I I know that sounds ridiculous as a sixth grader, but, you know, I wanted to seem I wanted to handle it. I wanted to handle it myself and I didn't know how.

[00:10:00]So, I just lived with it.

[00:10:03]Seventh grade, you know, things got a little better. my new classes. I made a couple new friends, you know, I do class projects with them and hang out with them sometimes, but still nothing nothing above surface level, you know, just very surface level friends. We didn't talk about our lives or our families or anything like that. We just, you know, rode bikes, walked around, went to Taco Bell. Um, there's a Taco Bell by our middle school, so that was like the hangout spot after school. it.

[00:10:33]And during seventh grade, I started to think, you know, I I want to get out of my head and I don't know how. So, I started doing research. You know, I I knew about weed and other drugs and I started doing research on them. I started going on ear and looking up trip reports. I started, you know, asking people I knew who used drugs how it was.

[00:10:54]And it just seemed so enticing to me, you know, and it felt like everything in my childhood had led up to it. all the death, you know, the other stuff that happened. Um, my family dynamic wasn't exactly perfect. You know, my parents are together, but things were hard for us at a lot of points. Um, you know, I didn't grow up particularly well off. Um, and the people in my family didn't have the best coping skills. So all of this kind of compounds, you know, through all the trauma I went through and the learned behavior of um how to deal with those things. It was not healthy, you know, no one no one around me was acting in a healthy way.

[00:11:37]So I didn't know how to process these emotions. I didn't know how to turn it into something good like I'm doing now.

[00:11:43]You know, I just knew that it really sucked and I wanted out. So in seventh grade, you know, I decided I want to do weed and I want to do mushrooms. So I started researching you know, and I spent a while preparing myself. Um, seventh grade, I didn't do anything.

[00:12:01]And uh, in eighth grade, I've told you guys about this before, I had not even an ear infection. There was something in my eard drum. And I know a lot of you say that the Percoet was a valid form of treatment for that. It wasn't. I've had hundreds of ear infections. Probably like a hundred, actually. No.

[00:12:19]um got like two a year for like 15 years. Probably like 30 or 40 30 or 40 ear infections and none of them it hurt but none of them have ever amounted to the point where I feel like I need to take an opioid until I tasted my first opioid. So, I went to the hospital for that and they gave me um they gave me Perkset for my ear and you know I took 10 milligrams to the doctors and on the way home it hit me. I got that rush you know I puked out the car and it was just the feeling I've been looking for my whole life. You know the feeling that I was always searching for to alter my mind state to get out of my brain for a little bit. you know, nothing felt better. I'd never felt something as good as this. And I don't know how to explain the euphoria to you guys. You know, being 12 or 13 and taking a perk set for the first time, you know, it's life-changing.

[00:13:21]And maybe not for everybody, but for me, you know, pre being predisposed to addiction. I have a lot of addiction on both sides of my family. I come from a long line of heroin addicts, alcoholics, meth addicts, crack addicts, and I was kind of always set up to fail and going through what I went through and not knowing how to cope with it. You know, that was kind of the final straw. So, I hit that I took that perk set and it changed my life. You know, I I um I knew what it was like now. I knew what it's like to get high, to get out of your brain, you know, to experience a different form of being. And I think this is the point where I really lost my innocence. You know, you could say it was when I was five. You could say it was when I was 10, but I think the point I truly lost my innocence was when I took that first pill and experienced what life could really be like. And it was it wasn't scary. It was bliss. I felt great. And when I ran out of them, I didn't know how to get more, but I knew one day I would. And this is also the year where I started to research more into psychedelics, you know, acid, shrooms, um, Iawasa, things like that. I did a lot of research on. And, you know, if anyone looked through my search history when I was 13, I probably would have been sent to rehab or the mental facility. But, you know, just researching all these things and becoming infatuated with the drugs, it was kind of, you know, I felt like I found my calling. As messed up as that is, when I found out about drugs, I felt like I found my calling. And so, I finally got my friend to smoke with me in 8th grade.

[00:15:05]I smoked for the first time. And again, that feeling of being out of your head, of reality being altered, there was nothing like it. And it reminded me kind of the perks set, you know, I felt great and for what, $20, I could get I could get a bag of this to last me the weekend and I could feel like this all weekend, you know, and it's just it's so enticing to someone like me who's been through what I've been through and who's predisposed to what I'm predisposed to.

[00:15:33]And I know I'm not alone. I know a lot of you feel that way. You know, I know there's a lot of other addicts who had terrible childhoods. You know, like I said, most most addicts start out with tragedy. We're not really given a chance. You know, it's a choice to get involved, but it's not a choice to to become that type of person, you know.

[00:15:53]And it's the fact that, you know, I took that first pill and I felt like that, you know, I didn't feel like I was taking medicine. I felt like I took the answer to all my problems. You know, I instantly fell in love with opioids. And I feel like that's the first thing that truly opened my eyes. And like I said, I became more infatuated with drugs. You know, I smoked that time in 8th grade and then smoked all summer. And then I um I was presented with a new opportunity to get opioids and that was in ninth grade. This girl gave us a bunch of them. You know, I've been through these stories before. I've told you guys what happens in high school.

[00:16:32]But the closer and closer I became with opportunities to get drugs, the further I fell into it, you know. Um, it became way more common in middle school and high school. You know, there was drugs in my middle school, but I didn't know enough about them to want them. You know, I didn't really know that that was a path you could take. But by high school, I was experimenting with so many different things. you know, weed, shrooms, acid, ketamine, percoet, vicodin, traumadol, lean, cocaine, smoking cocaine. Um, what else? A lot of other stuff.

[00:17:12]Whippids, you know, there's so many drugs. Um, there's a lot of drugs I've done and a lot of them were introduced to me at a very young age and it only deepened my infatuation with the drugs.

[00:17:24]And by the time I was 20 in 2017, I was so deeply engrossed in the drugs and so far gone that I turned to heroin.

[00:17:35]And um I just kind of wanted to show you guys like, you know, it starts somewhere. It doesn't happen out of nowhere. You don't wake up and decide you want drugs. You know, it's it comes from trauma. It comes from how you were raised. comes from your personality, from your genetics, you know, and it it's just it's so individual to each person, you know. I can't tell you why he's on drugs or why she's on drugs, but I can tell you why I did drugs. And it was a conglomerate of, like I said, addiction, genetics, learned behavior, family situations, trauma, seeing how other people in my life handled things, you know, and I grew up around a lot of addicts and alcoholics, like I said, and, you know, instead of looking at them and learning not what to do or what not to do, I looked at them and thought, you know, what a way to live. I can escape my life. you know, all it takes is a little bit of money and a plug, you know, and so by the time I was in high school, I was very I was already set on my path. Honestly, I don't think there's anything that could have changed it. You know, I could have went to counseling. I could have moved away. Could have never talked to those people again, but I don't think anything would have changed. I think eventually I always would have found what I was looking for. And maybe this gave you some insight on why people become addicted. You know, I see a lot of stuff where people are very insensitive and it's only worsening the stigma on recovery and drug addiction and you know, people say it's a moral failing to use drugs, but it's not. It's the world that failed us and that's what we turn to. So, don't fail your loved ones. You know, make sure your kids and your family and your friends know that they can speak out if they need help. you know, make it normalized to talk about these things, destigmatize trauma and drug addiction and, you know, all these other things that happened because maybe if when I was younger, I was able to talk to someone about this stuff or able to process it better, you know, maybe I wouldn't be where I am today. But at the same time, if I never did drugs, I wouldn't be where I am today. You know, I wouldn't be on this YouTube channel.

[00:19:51]You know, I wouldn't have my wife. I wouldn't have this life I built. And you know, I'm not saying I'm grateful that I was a drug addict, but I'm very grateful to be where I am today. And maybe that guy got gave you guys some insight on why it happens, you know. So, love love your loved ones, hug your loved ones, show them that you're there for them and that you understand. And, you know, I'll keep making videos to inform you guys on what it's like because I think it's very important that you hear it from someone who's lived through it and know what it's like and that'll help you help other people. And all I want is to help other people. So reach out your hand, you know, offer help to those who need it. And I really think we can make the world a better place by talking about these things more. And that's my mission. And I hope you guys join me on this journey. You know, we are very close to 19,000 subs. Um, it's insane.

[00:20:47]You know, I can't believe this. You guys have truly changed my life and I'll always appreciate you for that. You know, thank you guys for listening to my story. Hopefully, this helps someone. I love you guys.

[00:21:01]Stay clean, stay happy, stay healthy, stay on the right path. Ask for help if you need it. Don't be afraid to reach out. Thank you guys for watching. I will see you next time.

[00:21:14]Peace out.