“Baby, baby!” screamed the mother
“You again with the same thing”. -replied the son
The mother sadly says, “Son at night I don’t sleep waiting for you to get home from the streets. It hurts me to see you in those conditions. Son, look at yourself in the mirror, you’ve lost a lot of weight. “
Another night that came and still in the early hours my mother was waiting for me on the balcony of the house. “Mom, I’m hungry.” She immediately prepares something for me to eat. The next morning, I wake up and I realized that I still have some drugs in my pocket. I look for some water and I go to the empty lot next to my house and put the heroin in a spoon with a little cocaine I pour water that I warmed up with the lighter and I inject it. I felt the chemicals in the drug going up my veins and something bitter like acetone-flavored was in my throat. That was the first thing I felt accompanied by a warmness all over my body and a loud squeal in my ears like a car horn. I felt the amount of drugs I injected were so strong that I was going to fall down. I let out a loud cry. I do not remember anything else but waking up in my bed. I asked, my mom, how did I get here? She responded, “Your brother and I found you overdosed and carried you here.” I was 20 years old and I knew how hard it was for my mother to find me almost dead.
A few months later I was high walking in the streets at about 3 a.m. and a friend saw me and took me home. When I was lying in bed, I could hear my mother’s voice as if she were there. I never will forget that night. She advised me with her soft voice all night. I was not afraid because my mother’s voice was so sweet, and she was just advising me to change my life. Many times, when I was clean and staying clean, I got to see her face. She was so happy solely because of the fact that I was clean.
I always thought that the day my Mom died that I would have already changed, but it was not that way at all. I was actually in prison and had lost everything only to find out about her death 2 weeks later when I called from prison and my sister answered and blamed me for our mother’s death. My sister blamed me because my mom had died of the heart. My mind and my whole being was shattered. There was no longer any reason to change or to live. The drug healed my pain, now there was a needle in my vein’s day and night. I felt like I dreamt about her every day for five years.
In the room of an old abandoned house in the middle of winter I asked God to get me out of this. It was extremely hard having to break an addiction in a jail. I almost died with the amount of all the drugs I used, it was remarkably high. The nights in that jail were eternal. I vomited so much that only a green liquid was coming out. My body was shaking, and I would not stop shaking. I could not eat for weeks. I didn’t sleep for months I was going crazy because I couldn’t sleep, the ghosts in my mind were taking advantage and all that I was fleeing from my entire life with the drugs now was it was inevitable not to think about every detail of my past life. I thought of all I lost, in the damages that I caused, every detail went through my mind. I faced the ghosts that I ran from for such a long time with the drugs. It was six months without sleep, my body was weak, and my mind was exhausted.
But because of the pain of losing my mother, I decided to change, and I know I just could not do it alone. I got into an internal rehabilitation program for three years. I also helped people like myself. Today I am clean, and my heart is at peace because I know an angel is guiding me from heaven.
I have fought a lot for all this that I have now and if there is one thing I am sure of “is that everything you set out for in life you can achieve with faith and a lot of effort. “Just do not give up, I didn’t. If the drugs did not kill me with an overdose, then God does not want me with him for now then I am going to stay clean as long as I live. I am going to keep helping people who are like me for as long as I can. God bless you. By the way, I have talked to my brother a few days ago, which I had not spoken to him in over 10 years.
This is the story of an addict who refused to die. I tell my story so that no one else goes through what I did.
Gabriel Pérez
