Content warning: This piece contains descriptions of loss, a suicide attempt, and explicit substance use. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at 988.
My name is Shawn. I’m from New Jersey. I’ve been with Workit Health for over a year now. And it’s worked great.
Can you tell us about where your opioid use started?
My sister had problems with her knee and her ankle, and they were prescribing her 90 pills of Percocets and 120 pills of Roxicets every month. That’s how much pain she was in. I got hurt playing basketball one day. I came home and took a Tylenol, and it didn’t do anything for the pain. My mom gave me ibuprofen, which didn’t do anything for the pain. So I was just complaining, “I’m in pain, I’m in pain.”
My sister said, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how bad does it hurt?”
I said, “12.”
She said, “I have something that’ll take the pain away.”
I didn’t know anything about Percocets. I didn’t know anything about oxycodone. I didn’t know anything about opioid drugs. So, I took a Percocet, and she was right. Within like 20 minutes, I didn’t feel anything. A couple days later, I was complaining about my back and said, “Could you give me one of those Percocets? My back is kind of acting funny.” She gave me a Percocet, and I felt fine.
A couple of days later, I came back home, and I hadn’t gotten hurt. But I told my sister I hit my knee with the other guy’s knee and I twisted my ankle a little bit. I even messed up my finger. “It hurts. Ow. Ow.” I was making up quite the story.
She said, “If you want Percocet, just ask for it. You don’t have to tell me that you’re hurt. I’ll give it to you.” She gave me one.
I felt like I was on cloud nine. I felt very relaxed. I hadn’t felt like that before, when I was actually in pain. It felt more like I was just somewhere else. And I liked the feeling. I waited for her to go to sleep, and I went in and started taking pills. I started hiding them.
How did your drug use progress?
My sister was involved with bad people, and she had a crazy boyfriend. One night, he stole a truck. She went and met up with him, and the police were chasing him until he finally hit a construction truck. He got out with just cuts and bruises, but my sister was paralyzed from the neck down. After the accident, she lived for about a year. But she had a wound on her back that kept opening, and she finally got sepsis. It wasn’t long after that, the doctors told us, “It’s time to say your goodbyes.”
My sister left behind all her medication. For 5-6 months, I was taking like one a day, maybe two … doing just enough that I could actually be present for my mother.
One night I went out. I took a few Percocets. I took one or two Roxicets. I even took a Xanax. I drank a lot. I partied more till like about 4:30, 5:00 in the morning. On my way home, all the feelings were really hitting me. So I drove my car into a tree. I realize how selfish that was, because my mother was hurting, and that probably would have sent her over. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking. I was hurting bad.
After that, the drug use just got worse. I was taking them every day, just to not feel. I was buying Percocets—20, 30 a week, and I was running out of money. And I was like, “This is way too expensive for me. Rich people must get high, because there’s no way in hell I’m going to get high on my salary.”
But the guy that I was picking up from said, “You don’t have to take pills. You could just switch to dope.”
I played it cool like I knew what it was. I was like, “Well, let me get some dope then.”
The dope gave me almost the same feeling that the Percocet or the Roxicet did, but really quick. It happened instantly, but it only lasted for like 15 minutes for me. That was a danger, because I was used to having this feeling throughout the day. That $50 now became a lot more expensive for me. I started doing about two, three bricks a week. Now we’re talking about $100 to $150 bags in just 7 days.
The pills started back in 2014. My sister passed away in 2015. The dope probably started around 2016. It wasn’t till 2019 that I started getting sloppy. I wasn’t the functioning addict I thought I was.
What made you realize something had to change?
Three things happened.
The first: One day, I didn’t have any bags in the morning. I had to be at work by 8:00. I went to Patterson, picked up, and went to work. I ended up getting a bad batch that knocked me out cold. My shift was from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. I didn’t wake up till 3:30.
I went inside to clock out, and my boss said, “I want to see you in my office.” I sat in the office, and he looked at me. He said, “Is there anything going on with you that I should know about?”
“No.”
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Is there anything going on that I should know about? And before you answer that, I just want you to know that I care about you. If you need help, I want to help you. And I want you to be honest with me so I can be honest with you.”
And I lied right to his face, and I said, “There’s nothing going on.”
He looked back at me and said, “I’m going to have to let you go.”
I said, “What did I do wrong?”
He said, “Again, Shawn, you tell me. Until then, I’m going to have to let you go.” So I lost my job. That was the first sign of things going wrong.
The second thing happened when I had been driving around for like 2 or 3 hours. I was driving, sniffing, texting, all at the same time, with tinted windows. Who does that?
I didn’t even realize that I was running out of gas. I broke down right in front of my house. I was so high, and I was pissed off. I opened the trunk because I thought I had a gas tank in there. There were clothes in the trunk, and I grabbed them to see if it was under them. I had a gun in the trunk, and I didn’t realize the gun went flying behind me. Some lady saw the gun fall on the ground. After what seemed like 1 or 2 seconds, I turned around, and there were four cop cars behind me. Three policemen were pointing guns, telling me to get on the ground.
So I got down on the ground. I was arrested and taken to jail. And the funny thing is, I was in jail wondering, “Why am I even here? Because I broke down? Why am I in trouble?” When I saw the charges of possession of a firearm, that’s when it hit me that I had forgotten I’d put the gun in the trunk. It wasn’t even mine to begin with. So that arrest was the second thing that happened.
The third thing happened when my mother went on vacation and wanted me to house-sit. I had no job. I had no means of money. When you’re high, you kind of will do anything to get that fix.
I went into my mother’s room. She had this steel box of jewelry from my grandparents and great-grandparents. They were things that meant a lot to her. It wasn’t my right to take that, but I took all that jewelry, and I pawned it.
I pawned her TV in the living room. I pawned her TV in the kitchen. I pawned her TV in her bedroom. She had a tablet that she got from my aunt for Christmas. I pawned that. She had more jewelry on her dresser. I pawned anything and everything that I could, all in the span of her being away for 2 weeks.
I know my mother loves to watch TV. That woman will sit in front of a TV for hours, and she’ll be content. In my addict mind, when I sold them, I thought, “I’ll be able to put these TVs back before she gets home. She won’t even notice.” I didn’t have enough to buy half of a TV by the time she got back.
I picked her up from the airport, and on the drive home, I was sweating because of withdrawals and because I was nervous. She was telling me how good of a time she had in Peru. She was so happy to be home. “I missed you,” she said. It was just hurting more and more to see how happy she was. I knew that in a few minutes, she wasn’t going to be happy.
We walked through the door, and she said, “What happened to the TV in the living room?”
I ran right behind her. “Oh, my God. Did we get robbed?” I was just playing stupid with her at this point. I said, “Mom, I’m going to call the police.”
As I was grabbing my phone, she said, “Shawn, look at me. What happened to the TVs?”
So, I told her I sold them. She just put her head down. Disappointed. That’s not a good feeling. I think that’s why I try so hard now to stay sober now. I don’t want to see that face again. She was hurt. She was disappointed about the TVs, but when she found out about the jewelry, she had this face of hurt. It was a face I had never seen before. She was in pain.
That was one of the worst feelings, aside from when my sister passed—seeing that face. It still haunts me to this day.
Days passed. When she finally got the energy to talk to me, she said, “You know, you need help. You have to go get help.”
Tell me about your early attempts at recovery.
The first time I went to detox, I went just to shut everybody up. I really wasn’t committed. I felt like I was breaking up with somebody that I didn’t want to break up with. I was getting separation anxiety, bad.
After I left the detox, I ended up relapsing pretty much right away. My mom didn’t understand too much about active addiction. I told my mother, “Yeah, I’m fine.” She thought, “Okay, he went and got help. He should be fine.” It wasn’t long before she started seeing the signs of me using again. But this time she recognized them.
A friend that I met in detox, Dominic, suggested Discovery Institute. So, I looked it up on my phone and called them. “I just got out of detox a couple weeks ago, but I’m still using. I need help.” The next morning, they came and picked me up.
I was there for 28 days. I felt like that rehab was a success. I felt like everything was good. The day after I was discharged, they brought me home. And the day after that, I was having those thoughts, those cravings again. For a while, I tried to ignore it, but a part of me didn’t want to ignore it. I kept telling myself, “Just one. I’ll just do one. What’s one going to do? One is not going to hurt.” I did a bag.
How did you find Workit Health?
Nobody told me about Workit Health. I just went on my phone and typed in “Suboxone maintenance help” or something like that. And one of the links happened to be Workit Health. My curious mind just clicked on it. I love to read, so I read about the whole program. I wanted to give it a try.
So, I put my information in and told them that I have government insurance. I just wanted to test it out. Surprisingly for me, it’s been well over a year already. It’s so easy to use the Workit Health app.
What do you like about the Workit Health program?
At any given time, I can just sign into the app. If I have a question for administration, medical, or whatever, I type it in, and they usually answer right away if it’s within business hours. The groups that we have—even though they’re virtual—they’re safe rooms. The meetings are once a month. It doesn’t bother me to hop on the phone for 1 hour and talk with the other members, staff, or whoever. It’s good for me, because I get to hear from the others. I’ll just sit and think when I get those cravings, when I get those thoughts. Sometimes I want to know that somebody else is going through the same thing. 1 hour a month is not asking a lot. And it’s such a big help. It reminds me that I’m a part of something. That’s helped me a lot.
What are a few differences you’ve noticed in recovery?
Back then was that I was always making excuses. Now I actually take accountability.
I feel like idle time is the most dangerous time, especially if you don’t have hobbies. I highly recommend you get a hobby. I have plenty of idle time now, but I always substitute it with something. I always put something into that idle time.
I like to read. I’ve been locked up before, and I think in prison I read 10 books. Just within the time I’ve been with Workit Health, which is over a year, I’ve already bought 65 books, and I’ve read them all. That’s the most I’ve read. Because I’m scared of that idle time. Back then, when I had idle time, the first thing that would pop up into my mind was using.
What would you say to others who feel like you used to feel?
I just know that if anybody else is in as much pain as I was, why not give Workit Health a try? It could be good for them. It was good for me.