Speak Up

'I feel something so right doing the wrong thing, I feel something so wrong doing the right thing. I couldn't lie. Everything that kills me makes me feel alive.' I am 18 years old, the first time I tried meth I was 16 my mother handed it to me, I used it recreationally with a few friends. It was never something that I felt I needed. It ruined my life before I even knew what drugs were. My mom was a heavy user for 20 years and even after getting clean she became one of the biggest dealers around our area. About two months ago is when things really started to spin out of control. One day, months after I had even used, I woke up with a craving for the shit. I was uncomfortable with my weight so I got a sack and headed to my friends house. Everyone was drinking and nobody suspected a thing about me being high. I would go into the bathroom and smoke and then drink on my comedown so I could sleep. This lasted about four days. But then... things got so much worse. He is family, he is like my little brother. He has my back and I have his... true friendship. He is 17 and he just got off of probation after SEVEN years. One night I had to confess to him what I had been doing and his response was, 'why do you think I have been so nice all day?' That's when everything changed. We started using every day, drinking every night. We tried to monitor everything, we tried to make sure we ate every day, slept every night. I had just gotten a part time job. I thought we were doing pretty good. Soon, everything started to crumble. Just a little. I lost that job. We started to get really antisocial, always at his house doing.. well.. whatever. We slowly started to not care about our sleeping pattern and his mom wakes up at four for work. She walked out into the garage one morning and he was just sucked into drawing at 5 a.m. Another morning, she walked out to us playing Monopoly at 5. We played for 13 hours straight. We got to a point of not eating at all, whereas a 20 sack everyday became a 40. He left home because his family asked him about it, now he won't go home. I weighed 131 pounds on June 28th 2013 and now, on August 18th 2013, I weigh 110 pounds. My hair literally falls out and it takes all of my strength just to shower. I smoked meth in front of my FIFTEEN year old niece yesterday... He hasn't spoke to his mom in weeks, wears a lot of the same clothes every day. He barely every sleeps and weighs almost as much as I do now, he weighed almost 150 when this all started. He doesn't think we have a problem... the other night he told me he saw a group of people in my backyard... it was just us and our friend at my house... I'm scared. I am terrified. Today is the first day in weeks that the first thing I did when I woke up was eat... not smoke. I don't see anybody anymore. Don't play beer pong with my friends or just kick it. My life started to revolve around this and somehow, I missed the memo. I am scared for us. I know a month and a half is nothing. But I wake up and it's the first thing that I think about... I pray that I have the strength to stay clean... so that I can help him get clean too. He is like my little brother. I protect him, I used to hold his cigarettes or anything else illegal he had on him for his sake. Now.. I am giving him 40 sacks for free. He looks dead... what have I done to myself? What have I let this beautiful person do to themselves? What has happened to our relationship? Now it's just a continuous high. I have become the person I resent most in this world, the person who has shown me real darkness, the person that I endured being slammed on the ground with guns pointed in my face and cuffs on my wrists before I even knew what 'slanging drugs' meant. I have become my mother.