CRAZY THINGS I THOUGHT WERE NORMAL… DURING MY H ADDICTI0N

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Throughout my 17-year dope addiction, I did some incredibly stupid things.

[00:00:04]Things that I convinced myself were normal. Things that I convinced myself other people were doing. So, I figure let's talk about these things because the other day I did a video about the awful, terrible, worst things I did throughout my addiction. If you haven't seen that, go check it out. So, I figured why not talk about the stupid things, the things I thought were normal and the things I thought were okay. Are we going? Are we going?

[00:00:31]>> Hi. We're back outside.

[00:00:36]>> Man, listen. It took me a while to be able to admit to some of these things.

[00:00:41]Well, all of these things are incredibly embarrassing. Incredibly embarrassing.

[00:00:45]It took me a while to admit to them, to share about them, to speak about them, even on the internet. So, like, why not?

[00:00:54]Let's just make a whole video dedicated to my stupid thinking.

[00:00:59]and put it on YouTube and put it on the internet because why not? Because why not? Something I started doing or stopped doing very early on in my addiction was showering and just simply taking care of myself. And now when I look back on it, the real like the reason I told myself for stopping showering was because I stopped cleaning up after myself, right? And I began living in absolute filth. My shower got so incredibly like clogged up like the drain. And I didn't want to have anybody come into my junky house, come into my filthy, garbage ridden, paraphernali ridden, disgusting, gross living environment. And I certainly didn't want the landlord coming over or anybody coming over to fix the drain or the shower. So, I kept it like that. And whenever I would run the water, the water would just stay there. So, my tub was constantly like filled with dirty water.

[00:02:06]The drain was clogged. It was disgusting. So that's around the time that I just stopped showering. And when I say like I mean I would go months unless I really had to shower, I showered. Like usually I would get admitted to the hospital for some sort of life-threatening infection or an abscess and I'd shower in the hospital or if I'd go to detox and I would shower and detox. But I was so delusional that I never really even held shame around this because not showering and neglecting myself continued on throughout my entire 17-year dope addiction. And every few months, I'd say, you know, sometimes more than 6 months, I wouldn't shower. But I also would justify it and thought it was normal because I kept still tried to keep my appearances up. Like even though I wasn't showering, you couldn't really tell, right?

[00:02:57]I mean, you probably could. Now, looking back, I look at the clothes that I was wearing and they were always filthy because I stopped doing laundry. I wore dirty clothes. Like, literally, I don't ever remember doing laundry. Only if I could borrow someone's actual washer and dryer machine, which never really happened. And I thought it was okay because I was still washing my hair every few days and I was still washing my face and I would put body lotion on like every day.

[00:03:27]So, I justified neglecting myself and not showering because I was pretending that everything was fine. I got really good at pretending and wearing masks. I got incredibly [ __ ] good at fooling other people. But mostly mostly now looking back I know that I was just genuinely trying to fool myself and convince myself that everything was fine. While we're on the subject, funny story, I had this pair of jeans, my all-time favorite pair of jeans. I remember I stole them from Marshalls. They were a pair of DKNY jeans. I loved these jeans. I wore them literally every day. This was back in like this was around the time of my trafficking case. I think it was 2009ish.

[00:04:17]And I I wore them every day. I got high in them obviously. And I was super lazy.

[00:04:21]Like I got super lazy where like there would be blood everywhere, right? Blood stains all over the jeans on the front of each thigh. Just like looked like I looked like I looked like I severely violently like unalived something.

[00:04:39]But I would just wipe wipe wipe wipe my arms and like my apartments too just constantly like blood splatter like all over the ceilings. the walls, the floors, everywhere, blood everywhere, all the time. And I remember I had gotten a new job. I had gotten a new job at a at a restaurant down the street from me in Dorchester. And I was first day of this new job, I thought it was a great freaking idea. My delusional junky brain, I can't believe I thought it was a good idea to wear these jeans to my job. And I was on my way to work this particular day. It was my first day on the job. And I remember I pulled over on the side of the street, believe it or not, to just talk to my dad. This was around the time when like being on the phone while you were driving was like a hu it was becoming like this big huge thing, like a big no no. I think they had just passed the law like you can't do it. I didn't want to draw any extra attention to myself. So I pulled over to talk to my dad and I didn't realize that I was pulled over in a really dangerous, really ghetto hood area. But I mean like I I never noticed those things because like again that I feel comfortable in those environments.

[00:05:51]But I was on the phone and little did I know a couple of cops passed me and ran my plate.

[00:05:58]And apparently I had five warrants. I didn't know I had five warrants. I was on probation at the time for five felony charges and I had missed my previous appointment, my previous check-in, and my PO, shout out to Pam, she was such a [ __ ] Uh, she declared me MIA from probation and reopened each case. So, I had a warrant for each of those five felony charges.

[00:06:27]And so the cops pull up behind me as I was pulled over on the phone with my dad. And I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] dad. The cops just pulled up." And one of them walks over to my driver's side, the other one to my passenger side. And here I am sitting in the driver's seat with these bloodcovered stained crime scene looking jeans on.

[00:06:48]And the first thing the cop says to me is, "Oh my god, are you okay? Like are you hurt? Where's this blood coming from?"

[00:06:55]And my response to this was, "What do you mean it's paint? I paint."

[00:07:04]I really did think that I could lie and say it was paint, red paint, because it was obviously blood, right? So, they take me out of the car, and I'm like, the audacity, the audacity of these cops not to believe me that it's paint.

[00:07:22]So, they had me out of the car. They told me I had five warrants, which I was like, "Bro, what do you I was like, you know, trying to talk my way out of it, which, you know, I did all the time."

[00:07:30]And now looking back, it's like, "Shut up. Just shut up. There's nothing you're going to say that's going to make them take the cuffs off." Like, period. I end up getting arrested in these jeans. In these jeans. And it's funny because I still talk to the girl today. This led me to be locked up for several weeks because I had to get transported by the time I saw a judge and blah blah blah. I was on suboxin clinic at the time. It was just it was a whole other different story. My case my cases were out of Quinsey court and when I got to the courthouse and went to the basement for lockup, they let me in a cell with this other girl who I who I still occasionally am in touch with.

[00:08:13]And she we laugh about this. We laugh about this to this day. And she looked at me and she's doing amazing. She's sober. And so she looked at me and she's like, we started chatting. She's like, "What's with the jeans?" And I'm like, "Uh." I looked at her like it was normal. Like this is a normal response.

[00:08:32]And I was like, "Girl, I've been getting high for at that time it was what, 2009, 2010? um 8 years at that point I think I don't know 7 8 years and she goes in those jeans like have you ever taken those jeans off? I mean we laugh about it today because it was hilarious but that's a prime example. delusional junky me thinking that I was fooling people, walking around with filthy clothes, blood stained, like thinking I was keeping it together somehow when in reality the only person that I was really trying to fool was myself.

[00:09:16]Another thing I convinced myself was normal and okay during my addiction was stealing, especially food. I would go into stop and shops and or any store really big grocery store and just walk around the aisles opening food and eating it while I was in the store. And then I mean even if I had like $10 on me because every single penny that I had down to the penny would go towards dope.

[00:09:43]So I didn't spend any money cash that I could buy dope with. I didn't spend a dime, a penny, a nickel on anything else but dope. So even if I was starving and had a few bucks in my pocket, I would still steal the food. And I justified it. The fear of getting sick kept me sicker. And I did anything to hold on to that money so that I could get more dope when I needed it. But I would justify stealing from stores, stealing food specifically because I was hungry, because I was starving. And I even had food stamps. I even had food stamps. But I every single month would sell my [ __ ] food stamps for half price or a third of the price just to get extra cash to spend on dope. And again, I convinced myself that was normal because it was just part of being a junkie. I also really I mean when it comes to eating like I literally only survived on candy like gummy bears, Haribo gummy bears, Twizzlers, Sour Patch watermelons, Swedish Fish. Oh, Mike and I. Mike and I, bro, I'm still a huge candy person. I still like I always have to have some sort of candy in my fridge. And let me tell you, I've tried to stop sugar entirely.

[00:11:09]Whole other video for a whole other day.

[00:11:10]How how I feel like quitting sugar is harder than quitting dope. I mean, let's be real. It is so difficult. But anyways, I digress.

[00:11:18]I thought that I was genuinely nourishing myself by just living on candy. That's it. Every now and then if I had extra cash and I was like starving for real food, then maybe I would get like a sub or an appetizer or a burger from like a local pizza joint, but that's it. Like I literally only survived I would go to Walgreens and get like six bags of Haribo gummy bears every single day and eat those. And I thought I genuinely thought that that I was nourishing my body.

[00:11:59]But how did I survive coffee and candy really? Like that's it. I don't ever remember like drinking water.

[00:12:10]I mean a Gatorade. I would get Gatorade sometimes, but I mean the things that we become okay with. I don't know if you can hear the construction, but I'm going to keep going. Something else I convinced myself was normal was because I was neglecting myself and never doing laundry. Anytime something would get like really dirty, I never I didn't I didn't choose to wash it. I would just throw it out. Like sheets, I would use my sheets until literally they were covered in like ashes or cigarette burns or just dirt and then it would be like so disgustingly dirty I would just throw them out. I wouldn't even wash them.

[00:12:50]Anytime something got incredibly dirty, instead of washing it, I would just throw it out. It even got to the point where I stopped wearing underwear.

[00:12:58]I mean, I could have washed under I could have washed [ __ ] myself, my by hand in the sink. I didn't I wasn't See, this is the thing. You lose any and all ability to think logically. Like, thinking logically was just impossible.

[00:13:13]It felt like I mean the thoughts, logical thinking didn't even enter my brain. I would just throw out dirty things because I was too lazy to do laundry. I don't know. I don't know. The thought of washing it in the sink never crossed my brain. It was so much easier because again, my life as a junkie, I was always looking for the easy way out, like a quick fix. And throwing [ __ ] away was a quick fix, I guess. Okay, this one's really stupid.

[00:13:46]One time when I was trying to detox from dope, I thought that it was a great idea and I thought it would help speed up my metabolism and get the dope out of my system faster if I injected Coke, like if I withdrew from dope by injecting Coke the whole time because I thought it would speed up my system and get it out faster.

[00:14:12]That obviously didn't work because then I was just like tweaked out and dopesick at the same time, which was actually miserable. But in my brain, I thought that that made sense.

[00:14:25]And again, it took me a while to be okay with admitting these things. Like the not showering particularly was incredibly [ __ ] embarrassing. And I'll it was I mean just I was so ashamed and embarrassed of the fact that I wasn't taking care of myself. But now it's like I no longer live like that. So I'm okay with admitting to that because I know that I'm not living like that anymore. Which brings me to the next thing I'm going to talk about which is the lying.

[00:14:55]I literally lied about everything. Every single freaking thing. Even if I didn't have to. My entire life was a lie. My entire [ __ ] life was a lie. which is why I thought everyone else was lying around me because I mean it's so true about projection, right? We project our own insecurities onto other people. So when I was lying all the time, I thought everybody else was lying all the time.

[00:15:24]Which is why today, even today, if someone accuses me of lying, I know in that moment that they must be hiding something themselves. because you don't accuse something of lying if you're not hiding something within yourself. And that's why too, like I get a lot of comments of people who just don't believe the [ __ ] that I say about my story. And I'm like, okay, that's cool.

[00:15:45]Like, you don't have to believe me. I don't care if you believe me, actually, because I know that I'm not hiding anything. I know that I have integrity today. I know that I'm speaking the truth. So, it's like I don't care if you believe me. Okay, that's cool. Don't believe me? Okay, good for you. Move on.

[00:16:04]It really is true though when you think about it. Like when you're not and this is one of the gifts of recovery, man, because I was constantly trying to hide something. I mean, I was living a lie.

[00:16:16]Whether it be through probations, my parents, my friends, my jobs, constantly trying to hide what I was really doing, my landlord, constantly feeling like I was going to get caught doing something. So, I was constantly lying about literally everything, which only led me to think that everybody else was lying about everything as well. I also thought it was normal to like nod out in certain ways. Like, you know, as a dope fiend, you really try to like catch the best nod, right? And for a while there, I would nod out so hard. And I thought this was a good thing, right? back then, like in my junky brain, I thought this was great. Oh, this must be good stuff.

[00:17:03]Because I would not out so hard and I' I'd get off in my bathroom. I be sitting on my toilet, right? And my radiator, you know, in Boston you have the old school radiator. So, it would be like literally right next to my toilet. And I would knod out so hard. I would be bent over backwards over my toilet like doing a back bend with my head upside down like lodged against the wall in the corner and then my back up against the radiator and I would knod out like that for hours and when I would wake up I wouldn't be able to feel anything. I would have to wiggle it would take me a minute to get out of that position because everything would be sleeping right? My whole body was asleep and I'd wake up with secondderee burns on my back. I still have really bad scarring on my back.

[00:17:52]Like really deep scarring on my back from waking up with with burns like this big on my back. Blisters. I mean they were painful. And I would wake up and think, "Oh, that was a great nod." Like I would aim to end up like that. Like that was the goal.

[00:18:15]That was the goal to like borderline freaking overdose. That was the goal.

[00:18:22]Unbelievable. And similarly, I mean, I don't know if you haven't seen my scar videos, like I I'm thinking of like redoing that video and talking about all the infections that I had and let me know if that's what you want to see. But like a couple people asked me about my scars. This scar um I got from injecting liquid suboxone. I have tons of scars.

[00:18:42]So, on that note, I told myself that it was okay because most of my scarring, a lot of my I have still have like permanent bruising on my arms. They don't really show up on camera. When I ran out of veins, I started using my legs, the veins of my legs. And I told myself it was fine. All the damage I was doing to myself, like I told my Excuse me, sir. I told myself that the damage I was doing to my body and my legs was okay because I always wore jeans and I never wore shorts and nobody was going to see it anyways. So, I literally I mean, if you haven't seen my scarring videos, I just posted a short yesterday about my scars on my legs and my body, but it's really bad on my legs between the track marks and the abscess scars, like straight up holes I had in my legs from the infections.

[00:19:35]skin graft scars, surgery scars from directly from injecting. And I told myself that it was okay because nobody was going to see it. I told myself that ruining my skin and my body and risking my life really was okay because nobody was going to know. Nobody was going to see it. I was the only person that was going to know and who cares who cared because I clearly didn't care about myself. But I would also like go to work. I remember I was waiting tables and I had three huge abscesses on my left leg and I was limping around like an idiot and I would still show up to work because I needed the cash to get off. I needed the cash to cop. So I would still show up to work limping around like an absolute idiot on my feet all day, you know, 8 10 hour shifts waiting tables and I'd tell people that I sprained my ankle or I tell make up some stupid story.

[00:20:33]I wouldn't go to the doctor, but I would still go to work and I told myself it was okay. I told myself, and this is the thing, right, is addiction will have us believing that neglecting ourselves and treating ourselves like garbage is okay. I really didn't see anything wrong with it. And it was only in hindsight that I realized that how I was treating myself was a direct reflection of what I thought of myself. That never even clicked in my brain all those years.

[00:21:08]here. I thought showing up to work, you know, limping around with huge abscesses on my legs meant that I had good work ethic.

[00:21:16]I didn't even think about how it looked that I was just showing up and neglecting and not going to the doctor instead.

[00:21:26]Like, how sad. How sad of an existence really. Another thing I thought that was like completely normal and okay. And I'll preface this by saying like I've mentioned before the beginning of my addiction I was had already been sober from booze and coke. So I the foundation that I have in my brain and that I learned is from AA. So those principles and those things that I learned in those rooms developed my thinking of recovery today even though I'm not in any kind of 12step program today. In the beginning, I always thought that getting your [ __ ] together meant you had to be 100% abstinent, completely 100% sober. And that's what I believed. But as my dope addiction progressed, I started convincing myself that really it was only the dope that was the problem. And if I could just stop doing the dope, then I could get my [ __ ] together, right? Because that was the only problem that I had. That was really the thing that was causing all the other problems in my life. If I could just stop doing the dope, then I'll stop getting arrested and I'll be able to get my life back together. So, as my dope addiction progressed, I started believing that 100% absence was not necessary and that if I could just stop the dope, then okay, the bad stuff will stop happening and I could continue using the other things. that could could continue taking the benzo and the pills and the other substances as long as I stopped doing dope. And I truly did believe that for a long time. And at the end of my addiction when I got down to Mexico, I was still strung out. Like I was still living a junky lifestyle. I was still so miserable even after I stopped using dope.

[00:23:19]And I was baffled. I was like, "What do you mean my life is still chaos? Like, what do you mean I'm still getting arrested? What do you mean I'm like fighting people in the street? I'm not even even using dope anymore. How is this even happening?" Because what I really convinced myself was that dope was literally the only problem and that I didn't have to do anything once I put the dope down and that everything would kind of magically fall into place. But no, because when I put the dope down November 2019 for good for about a year plus after I continued selling drugs, I continued getting arrested. I continued living in filth and not showering. I continued neglecting myself. I continued living that exact junky life that I had been living as a dope fiend just without the dope itself because it was the lifestyle. It was the lifestyle that I became accustomed to.

[00:24:17]Which leads me to the next lie and the next thing that I convinced myself was normal, which is the chaos. I thought the chaos was okay.

[00:24:29]I had become so accustomed and familiar and comfortable living in the chaos that I was okay with it. I was okay with getting arrested. I was okay with spending a weekend in jail. I was okay with living like that. It really was my normal. It really became my normal and my baseline.

[00:24:52]And then after, you know, over a year of living in still in absolute chaos even after I put the dope down, I finally realized like I was the problem. And I talk all about that in my last video.

[00:25:03]And you know, it's funny on a side note, a little tangent that I'm going to go off on. People will hear that I'm in Mexico and think that I ran here, right?

[00:25:12]And that like I tried like listen, geographical cures don't work. I know this. I've tried them. Even in my addiction, anytime things would get tough or like I said, I didn't clean. I never [ __ ] cleaned. I didn't even own cleaning supplies. So, I would live in a place and then I would literally constantly be moving to one place to the next because when things would start to like get overwhelmingly dirty or filthy or like I couldn't run from it anymore or I couldn't ignore it anymore, then I would move thinking that a different atmosphere would be better and that I'd be able to change in a different atmosphere. But I we all know wherever you go there you are. So, when I came to Mexico, I didn't run here at all. I came here and like I said continued living a junky lifestyle. I started I try I thought that I was trying to get my [ __ ] together but within just a couple months of being here I started selling drugs. I started getting arrested all the time. I was like I just said still living a junky life. I even got this infection while I was here because I started abusing suboxone I was buying at the pharmacy and methadone pills. I was still taking benzo. So, I mean, wherever you go, there you are. I broke completely while being here. And I also healed myself and I'm still healing.

[00:26:30]It's it's an ongoing process. But trust me, I didn't run here. I did not [ __ ] run here. I came here and I actually like ran into myself here. This place saved me really because it broke me.

[00:26:45]Because it broke me. It saved me. And that's why I say too, man, you can get high anywhere. People really think like, "Oh, if I could just go to Mexico, if I could just be where you're at, then I could really, you know, change my life."

[00:26:58]But no, bro, you can get high anywhere.

[00:27:00]If you can get high anywhere, you can recover anywhere. And I've learned that time and time and time and time again because I was strung out here and I got my [ __ ] together here. Don't get me wrong, a change of atmosphere, a change of scenery is incredibly helpful. And that's why going away to like a program can be incredibly helpful because sometimes when you're really deep into it like I was, you need a change. You need that structure. You need an environment that's supportive where you can build healthy routines and you can learn from other people and you don't necessarily have the same memories or the same atmosphere things that are constantly reminding you of your addiction. But listen, even if you don't have that luxury of going away somewhere and getting your [ __ ] together, you can still do it. I know plenty of people, even though I know it's probably much harder, but if you can get high anywhere, you can recover anywhere. So, listen, this sun is getting incredibly hot. These are just this is just a short list of some of the things I convinced myself were normal and okay, I'm sure there's way more, but I'm sweating my ass off and I'm going to shut up now. So, I love you so much. Thank you for being here. And I'll see you in the next video.

[00:28:18]Okay. You're so far away.