I began mixing my depression with partying and trying to ignore that I felt deeply confused about who I was. I was repressing myself, numbing myself, and trying to become someone else all at the same time.
If what I was experiencing before was an internal war, this new phase of my life was like two superpowers unleashing their full arsenal of nuclear warheads in my head at all times. It was an uncompromising hell that I started to self-medicate with drugs. There wasn’t anything that I didn’t try.
By about 17, I became completely addicted to cocaine. I would wake up, meet my friends at the nearby coffee shop before school, and do a line in the bathroom. In between first period, we’d meet in the washroom and do a line. In between second period:- another line. Lunch:one more
To add insult to injury, this was only when we were doing coke together. I was snorting lines of cocaine off of my math textbook at the back of the class. On top of all of this, me and all of my friends had fake IDs and would go to a bar after school and drink until we could barely walk.
It became obvious to everyone around me that something was seriously wrong. I was sleeping through classes and my teachers noticed a change in my personality. I had always been a pretty chill and approachable person, but I was irritable and volatile. It didn’t matter to me though. I ignored everyone’s pleas for me to get help. I continued to repress who I was and doubled the fuck down on cocaine – the only thing that would make me feel like who I truly was.
This shitstorm eventually hit a crescendo during my prom. We threw a massive party where I drank, smoked a bunch of weed and snorted what seemed like a metric ton of coke. I woke up the next day feeling like I had been executed, so I made sure to snort a line with my friend to help with the hangover. After doing the coke, I immediately felt my body tremble and a cold sweat come over me.
I’d done enough coke to know how my body would react, but this time my heart felt like it was going to explode.
I knew something was seriously wrong so I made my friend drive me to the hospital where the doctors told me I may have overdosed and that, because I was under 18, they needed to call my parents. That was all I needed to hear. I ripped the wires and tubes off of my body and sprinted out of there like a bat out of hell.
That was the end of the line for me and my friends. We all agreed that we would stop doing drugs and made a pact together to go completely clean. This decision cleared my head and made me face the fact that I couldn’t ignore that something was very personally wrong with me and I had to figure out what it was.