I Got Another Chance to Live!

I remember my careless childhood, I was an only child, and my parents gave me all of their attention and I really liked it. I was doing well at school and was also playing sports (football, freestyle wrestling). Around the fifth grade I got my first taste of beer. Strangely enough, I liked it immediately, not the fact that it gets you drunk, but just the flavor itself. So this is how it all started.

In addition to the beer I started smoking cigarettes, going to school discos and drinking with my friends. Around the ninth grade I tried hash. I didn’t even know what it was all about from first use. But I did understand at the time that smoking it was a cool thing to do since all of my friends were doing it, so I tried to “keep up with the flock,” so to say. After completing school, I went to College, but even there I found people like me.

A guy I was studying with gave me an idea that we could easily earn a decent amount of money from selling hash! So I started pushing it, and looking back on the whole thing now, I can say with confidence that this endeavor was not a profitable one! In my second year I started talking to some third year guys. Together we acquired a small batch of hash and were arrested the very same day by the police. This was the first time I got arrested. Naturally, my parents were shocked, especially since it happened on my dad’s birthday. At that age parents could do very little to influence my behavior. I immediately started an angry argument and avoided the topic. Strangely enough, I got lucky in court. The case was closed because I’d shown remorse for my misdeed. But this whole thing failed to stop me.

Then I got a baby sister, who instantly got my parents’ undivided attention. Of course, I was saddened by this and, as the saying goes, I broke bad. Around my third year at college I tried heroin with a couple of friends. I couldn’t understand what it was from the first use, so I tried some more, and some more. Eventually I became addicted, but then salvation came. You could call it a sign from above. I went on an apprenticeship to the North for half a year. I had no time for drugs then. After the apprenticeship I got back home and earned some money, and guess who was there waiting for me—my so-called friends (my “heroin brothers”). I didn’t write an apprenticeship report and generally didn’t bother going to college. Instead I was wasting my earnings on drugs.

As a result I was kicked out of the college. I then signed up for a correspondence degree, which only made my life worse. I now had twice as much free time. At that moment I couldn’t find a better pastime than heroin consumption. I immediately got into financial struggles, and drawing on my past experience of getting “easy money,” I started selling heroin.

Three months down the line I was thrown in prison. I was given two and a half years of prison time. After doing half the time, I was granted an early conditional release, and on the very first day of freedom I took heroin… It all started again. Just a month later I was arrested again and sentenced to two years, but this time in a high security prison. Once again, having done a year and a half, I was granted an early conditional release. And there I had to start thinking!!!

For the first month I took no drugs at all. And then the police arrested my neighbor for drug trafficking. I was good friends with him and his wife. She instantly turned to me for help. And then I hit the jackpot—she gave me a pack of heroin, which was left from her husband’s arrest. And there I did not know what to do with it. I called a friend, he came over and we used that heroin. The song of death and destruction resounded once more.

Two months later I was put in prison once more, this time for a year and two months in a high security prison. Having done 10 months I was released and things went as usual.

Then suddenly a girl appeared in my life. She was a Narconon graduate. I fell very deeply in love with her, even despite me constantly being high. She managed to get through to me and send me to Narconon for rehabilitation. I’m now extremely grateful to her for it and I’m ready to worship the ground she walks on for giving me a happy and healthy life filled with joy.

Now I look at life in a completely different way. I no longer have the problems that were eating me in the past, the ones I tried to block with heroin, alcohol and so on. I’d like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Narconon Rehabilitation Center.

And with huge pride I would like to point out that the real solution for the addiction problem is in Narconon Europe. Don’t waste your time in addiction, come to Narconon Europe and get a chance to live a new drug-free life.