The Boy Who Lost Himself To Drugs Online

Rehab came and went like seasons. Three times. The first time, he left after two weeks. The second, he was kicked out for smuggling in a bag of Xanax. The third time, he finished the program, stood up in a church basement, and said, “I’m Liam, and I’m an addict.” He looked clean. He sounded hopeful. But hope, for Liam, was just another drug with a short half-life.

At sixteen, it was prescription pills from a neighbor’s medicine cabinet. Oxycodone. The first time he crushed and swallowed one, he understood why sailors sang about sirens. It was a warm, velvet erasure of everything: the pressure to get good grades, the echo of his parents fighting in the kitchen, the gnawing sense that he was somehow not enough. For a few hours, he was perfect. He was weightless. the boy who lost himself to drugs

The tragedy of Liam is not that he became an addict. The tragedy is that he became a stranger to himself. He lost his name, his laughter, his dreams, his future. He lost the sound of his own voice telling a joke. He lost the ability to feel the sun on his face without needing something chemical to make it real. Rehab came and went like seasons