SE Asia School Counselling Network

I was 15 when I almost killed someone. You could make the argument that they almost killed themselves but I was a catalyst in the process and besides, it sounds more dramatic if I say it that way. 

Of course it wasn’t a gun. I am American but it’s not as interesting as all that. It was only drugs. Just silly old drugs. 

The whole thing started when a fellow classmate and I were working at the local Dairy Queen in my hometown. You see, the Dairy Queen was family owned and there were two brothers who took turns running the place while their father acted as the hands-off director. The older brother was a family man, dressed neatly and always made you work cleaning something when there weren’t any customers. 

The younger brother was his polar opposite. He was muscular, single, tattooed and rumor had it that he went through a whole case of whipped cream bottles getting high on the gases. He partnered up with my classmate, we’ll call him Jerry, to order the chemicals needed to make GHB right there at the Dairy Queen. This all went down while I was on my shift and when I went to leave I was offered a water bottle of clear liquid that would, “Get me drunk off just one sip.”

Being the genius I was, I brought the bottle to school with me the next day so my friends and I could take sips before class. This is exactly what we did and we were having about as much fun as you can have when you’re caught up in the addictive cycle and looking for any means of escaping your own reality. 

Around the third period an upper class man approached me. I only knew who he was vaguely because of my sister. We’ll call him Henry. He said, “I hear you got this stuff and I want to try it.” I meekly took him to my locker and let him have a capful and then went to class. 

At the next break Henry told me that it wasn’t working and that he wanted some more. I obliged and watched in horror as he took a huge swig of the stuff. We had been taking mere sips! 

During period four, a friend of mine who was an office assistant came to my class and pulled me aside. “Henry’s dead,” he said. 

In fact, Henry was not dead. Some friend, right? But he had been air evacuated to a hospital after passing out in class and hitting his head on the side of a desk. My locker was searched and I was soon sitting in the principal’s office with the police on their way. 

What happened next could’ve changed my life trajectory in several different ways. One, I could’ve lied my way out, or tried anyway, denied everything and seen how things turned out in court. My friends who had partook with me all did this. I for one have never been a very good liar and, besides, I was the one who brought the stuff into school. I was the one who gave it to Henry. 

And so what did my honesty earn me? I was kicked out of public school, charged with the class 3 felony of possession and distribution of an illegal substance and given one year of probation. 

I won’t bore the reader here with all the details of what happened next in my life. And I definitely don’t want to wax on about some moral high ground that I achieved through this experience of almost killing somebody. But I will say this, what happened to me was a crisis and I had choices in how I was going to respond. It started me on the long road to recovery and if you know anything about recovery, you know that coming to terms with denial is the first, and most important, step. 

When I look at where those friends who were taking GHB with me by the capfull between classes, I can’t say it turned out well for them. And this wasn’t the end of my long road to recovery either. In fact it was the very beginning. Many more trials and tough decisions would have to be made for me to write these words with ten years of sobriety under my belt. I was given plenty of chances and opportunities to make the right choices and finally I did. 

For the loved ones of addicts out there, I hope you can give them a chance. Not too many. And not when they’re not ready, but a chance that they deserve. 

And for those addicts out there, I hope that you can come to terms with your denial. It’s still going to be a long road to recovery, but a first step is a first step. 

And last but not least, for those of you working with addiction, remember that resistance is part of the therapeutic process. It’s true that no one can help an addict if they’re not ready to be helped, but it’s also true that when that small window of opportunity opens up, if they have the rapport of a trusted adult, they are more likely to seek the help they need. This requires a tremendous amount of patience, often pushing counsellors to their breaking point of non-judgmental therapy. But the research is the research and this is what works.

Stick with it, please. I had someone that did and it changed my life. 

Tom Bell, LCSW.