The following story was compiled from interviews with two heroin addicts in the Middlebury area. They have asked that their real names be withheld, and they are identified here by false names. A third addict, “Kate,” is referred to, but did not sit down for an on-the-record interview. The story is meant to illustrate the path taken by some people from high school to drug addiction.

People take many different paths after high school. Some enter college, some begin full-time work, and some lose themselves in drug addiction, ending in jail, rehab, or death.
James came to Vermont after graduating from a high school to start his own dairy farm. Nine years later, after dealing with organized crime, the FBI, pills, and homelessness, he lives with an addiction that daily threatens his life.

“[Heroin] never leaves you, you always think about it. It’ll rob you of every happy thing in your life. It is a burden you will carry till the day you die. It’s a yoke nobody would want to bear,” James says.

James turned to heroin after his grandmother’s stroke forced him to sell his Vermont farm and move to another state to care for her. He had been kicked by a cow while farming, and when his prescription of painkillers ran out, a friend said heroin could ease the pain.

Injury and misfortune are part of many addicts’ stories. A striking example is Kate, who grew up with an alcoholic and depressed mother, and a father who died at a young age. Against these early setbacks, Kate was, by most definitions, a success.

A varsity level athlete and honor roll student, she graduated from an Addison County high school and received a generous university scholarship.

Kate says her mistake was going to college before she was ready. Having partied through high school, Kate was familiar with heavy drugs such as cocaine, and willing to try almost any drug. After one use, she fell in love with heroin and the high it gave her. Now, after overdosing on several occasions and returning multiple times to rehab, Kate is scared she will never be able to stop. “I will always love getting high -- that’s what scares me,” she says.

For James, his first heroin use began a downward spiral. He began spending vast sums on the drug and on hotel rooms where he could get high. “[The addiction was] destroying my life and blowing all my money,” he says.

As funding became a problem, James turned to crime. He stole anything he could, including copper wiring, baby formula, televisions, and cars. Living in projects close to the New York City metropolitan area, he eventually joined organized crime and became a lieutenant, commanding a crew to rob houses. He also directed card games and sports betting as well as dealt drugs to increase his income. “Everything was for heroin, [there was] no enjoyment anymore,” he says.

By his estimate, 250 friends and fellow mob members have been arrested because of drugs, including his girlfriend, another heroin addict. He stole gold jewelry to bail her out.

James says the mob knew about his drug use and disapproved of it. Because of organized crime’s history of killing addict members, James decided to flee the projects. He was offered witness protection status by the FBI if he agreed to testify against fellow mob members.

According to James, the FBI interrogators dangled his “dope sickness”, a common term for withdrawals associated with heroin, over his head. They thought the withdrawals would be so bad that he’d do anything to be released. Police officials “look at you like a piece of s--t and [assume] you’ll just rat your friends out because you’re so desperate to do heroin,” he says. “[This moment] stuck out in my life, people look at you like you’re nothing.”

James took off for Florida, stopped using heroin, and was clean until the pain in his back returned. Then he turned to the prescription drug Roxicodone, “a little pill ten times worse than heroin. [It gave] the same rush when shot up, gave the same euphoric feeling,” he says.

Finally, after thoughts of suicide, and three attempts at admission into a detox center, James made a desperate plea to get help. His desperation took him to the side of a highway where he knelt and prayed to be freed from his addiction. Shortly after this he was admitted into a detox program for a week. After that he received a visit from a friend who moved in with him for two months in Florida to make sure he stayed clean. James turned himself in, served a year in prison, and all outstanding warrants were cleared.

James now finds himself back in Vermont, where he says he fights to stay clean. “I struggle to this very day with it and we’ll see where life takes me, but I’m sure it’s not going to be easy or fun because I tried these drugs in my life and they’re ingrained in my brain,” he says.

Living with a heroin addict is not easy either. James’ roommate and best friend explains the constant disappointment that goes with encouraging James to stop using, and then seeing him relapse every time. He says, “Every day I find empty bags or catch him asking someone about it . . . he will text someone from my phone and he will forget to delete it. It just disappoints me and I’m so angry with the s--t.” He adds, “[James] said he quit like a week ago. But we will see how long it lasts.”

After pills stopped getting her high, Jenna turned to heroin, as did a number of her friends and family. She left her high school after two years and is battling a severe addiction while she tries to earn a diploma through adult education classes.

“About a year ago was the first time I did it,” Jenna says. “Heroin was readily available and a really cheap high.”

Before heroin, she’d been “doing pills,” an illegal habit that she says began when she was 15. She switched to heroin when the pills became less effective at getting her high, she says.

“I didn’t know it at the time but I was hooked and my body was dependent on it,” she says. “It consumed my life.”

Her days and nights revolve around the drug. She wants to get clean -- she says most heroin addicts would like to get get off the drug -- but it’s hard getting access to effective treatment, she says. Withdrawing on your own, without medical assistance, is “unbearable.” So she continues to use.

All users describe withdrawals as the worst part of heroin use. They describe them as both psychological and physical. Feelings include nausea, the entire body aching, hot and cold sweats, shaking uncontrollably and the sensation of snakes crawling underneath the skin. The mental state is also miserable and includes irritability and severe depression. James says that withdrawals are “like the flu times one million.” The sickness draws users back to the drug. Jenna says, “It’s hard to stay away from when you’re sick and can barely move but you know you can spend thirty dollars and get better again.”

“Before my body would tell me when I was thirsty, hungry or tired -- now it tells me when I need to get high,” she says.

It’s not the life she wants, nothing she takes pride in. James, too, speaks of shame when he talks of the years he was homeless, broke, and emaciated because of his heroin use. “When I got high I wanted no one to see me because I was so embarrassed of my use . . .I was embarrassed of how I looked and had become,” he says, adding, “It’s an everyday struggle. Very few survive from it and die of old age.”