Here I am in 6th period again. Tense, sweating, shaking. All I want is that little white pill. One little white pill to save the day, keep the shakes away. I’m a pain pill addict. I’m a freshman 14 years old and addicted to Oxycontin. I have been taking these pills on and off since the 7th grade. I fear not having my pills for more than a couple hours because withdrawals set in. How did I arrive here? Maybe a little background information would help.
When I was 10 years old I was diagnosed with Austeosarcoma, a bone cancer. I found the tumor one day when I was enjoying what I did best at that age, skating. Skateboarding was my life, it was all I ever did and thought about. I had fallen skating at the high school I now attend and hit the spot right where the tumor was. It was on my right tibia. My leg right below my knee swelled up to the size of a small ball so I figured I should get it checked out. I got sent to Seattle and bam, it turned out to be a malignant tumor. The kind you die from. I was sent home and immediately started chemo therapy. Along with the chemo I had to have the cancerous bone removed from my leg, so a new bone a metal plate and 10 screws could take its place. The surgery was successful; the bone was adhering to the bone I already had and everything seemed great. We weren’t out of the woods yet though. The skin wasn’t healing properly leaving the wound open for infection. I underwent surgery after surgery trying to get my leg healed, and it still wouldn’t close. I have had over 30 surgeries on my leg, I’m not sure the exact number because I quit counting.
Through all these surgeries I would be prescribed Oxycodone. Ah what a relief, this little white pill to make the sun shine even brighter. I didn’t really understand how much I liked them and was dependant on them until the 7th grade. It only took me one time to take the pills when I wasn’t in pain to get hooked. I woke up before school in the 7th grade and decided today I was going to get high before school. It made the day so much easier and stress free.

I slowly started taking the pills more and more, and before I knew it I wasn’t in pain anymore I was just feeding my addiction. It was in 9th grade that my mom saw that my little pill popping routine was becoming a problem. I stared making 100 pills disappear fast, very fast. I would take pills all day and keep a nice steady buzz throughout the entire day. My mom decided to hide the pills and give them to me when she thought it was appropriate. Of course I didn’t like it, she wasn’t giving me half of what I was taking when the pills weren’t being monitored. She would hide them, I would find them. I would eat all of them way before my next script and there would be a lot of fights between my mom and me. I didn’t care though, I was getting high, what’s to worry about when you can barely keep your eye’s open in pure euphoria?
So her next obvious move would be to lock them up. She left the lock box in plain sight because the box was locked anyway for no way for me to get in. So I now knew were the pills were. My happy pills were so close yet so far away. When she left the house I would stand in front of the lock box and daydream about ways I could get in to get my next high. My mom had left the house one day after school and I couldn’t take it. I had to get high. I took both my hands and literally pried open this strong lock box and barley stuck my hands through. I was able to get high as a pleased again and boy did I love that idea. This time I was smarter. I would save up doses that she gave me then get into the box and only take an amount unnoticeable to the eye. I would only take 3 or 4 at a time. I got away with this for months. I was also getting pills on the side at school and through friends when I had spare cash. Boy did I love to splurge.
Come December of my freshman year my grandma and family had been planning a trip to Hawaii. I knew this would interfere with my pills. But I got on the plane anyway to enjoy some fun in the sun sober or not. When we got their I stayed pretty comfortably high but I knew the liquid oxy was somewhere in the condo. (they switched my prescription to liquid oxy instead of pills at this point.) I had seen the little lock box my mom had bought for the trip for my drugs and I knew there was a way in. My family decided they were going to run to the store or something I’m not sure I was to excited at the chance of getting as high as I wanted. They left the condo and I immediately started the search. By this time I was pretty good at finding her hiding spots and it only took me a few tries to find the keys. I picked up her pillow case and shook it and hear a little clangy noise. I had found the keys. I went into the bathroom sat on the toiled opened the box and took a fat swig from the bottle. I half hour later I was sitting on the balcony in Hawaii nodding off to the sound of the ocean. I loved everything about these drugs and never wanted to quit. Throughout the week I kept getting into the box and getting really high. My mom poured me my regular dose and obviously noticed because I had drank the better part of a months worth in a few days. She was furious and had let me know it was the last straw and I was going to rehab when I got home. Sure enough when I got home I was signed up and off to Olympia to get clean in the end of January. Nervous and not the least bit excited we left for Olympia where I was going to get off the oxy.

I woke up early the morning I was supposed to leave so we could get to Olympia at a decent hour. Before I got in the car that morning I got high for one of the last times, and fell asleep. I slept most of the way the way their and woke up to a fog covered eerie town. We pulled up to St. Peters Chemical Dependency Unit and I got high for my last time in the parking lot. I strolled in with blood shot eye’s and a little smirk on my face trying to enjoy the last buzz. I got signed in told my parents goodbye and walked behind the two swinging doors. Being in Rehab was a wake up call instantly. They immediately told me to take my shirt off because it was inappropriate, took my face wash, tank tops, tooth picks, and anything else I could use as a weapon or to try to get high with. Since I came in the center high I was not allowed to interact with the other kids until I was sober. So I was sent to my room for 12 hours and I couldn’t leave. All I had was a room with a bed and a mattress with sheets. I took a seat on the mattress and laid down trying to forget about the fact that the drugs were gone, my friends were gone, my family was gone, and all I had was a mattress now.

I got my sheets, clothes, and everything else they didn’t take from me that I had brought about 4 hours later. I made my bed and attempted to fall asleep. At this time the withdrawals weren’t that bad I just had restless legs. I stayed up for the better part of the night tossing and turning, but I did finally fall asleep. The next morning I woke up sweating and nauseas. A few hours into the day my withdrawals really set in. I felt horrible, the kind of horrible you feel when you have the flu and then some. They gave me the drug suboxone for the opiate withdrawal, it helped a little but for the most part I was still shaking and throwing up. This process repeated for a few days and I slowly started to feel better. By the 9th or 10th day I was ready to come home. The physical withdrawals were gone. Definitely not the mental, but at least I wasn’t shaking. I returned home feeling pretty good, a little confused and scared but good none the less. I was off the drugs doing better and feeling better. It was nice to be able to stay at a friends house without taking my pills with me and to go on trips drug free not having to worry about getting high the entire time. I’m now in 11th grade 16 years old with a new appreciation for life and what I have. I’m thankful to this day that everything happened the way it did. If I could go back and change one thing I would change nothing.