Chapter 22: Drugs are Bad

I started seeing a psychiatrist after my ordeal with the law. I felt a lot of guilt for what happened. I felt like I had already ruined my life so early. I was paranoid about getting arrested again and isolated from a lot of my friends due to rumors from school.

I imagined the detectives were still watching me even though I had nothing to be watched for. I felt like every time I went into a store, lost prevention followed me around. Every cop car on the street was destined to pull me over. If you had experienced what I had experienced, you might be crazy too.

After seeing a psychiatrist once I was immediately told I needed to be on medication. Klonopin for anxiety and Cymbalta for depression. I did not think I was depressed, possibly anxious. The doctor told me depression could be a side effect from taking anti-anxiety medications and it was common to take anti depression medications with anti-anxiety medications.

Klonopins are not much different from Xanax and initially I was reluctant to take the pills because I had promised God, I would not take drugs. When I was in jail, the night I got arrested, I made a promise to God that I would only smoke weed and drink alcohol. I would never take serious drugs again if he managed to work a miracle and get me out of trouble.

I had witnessed a miracle in Diversion with my drug testing. I was convinced God kept his end of the bargain, so I kept mine for many years.

Eventually I convinced myself that a doctor prescribed these medications for me, so it was ok. It was more legal than weed.

The medications quickly made me into a different person. I was either a walking zombie or the most talkative social person ever. I was walking up to random people on the street having conversations telling them my life story. I wanted to party every night and get drunk. The next morning, I was a walking zombie and could never stop yawning. I was never hungry or horny. Just a party zombie.

I started hanging out with the wrong people. With Jason moved away, our group no longer had a set place to meet up. John Ripley, Peter and I were the only ones left from the original garage gang. Dyno Mutt's sisters were taking a more active role in his life and he wasn't around much anymore.

For the most part John became my best friend. We hung out almost every day. I would share my pills with him, and we would get drunk together. By now John had a serious drinking problem and I was right there drinking alongside him.

We went back and forth between our houses. John and I used to play a lot of Halo 3 Online multiplayer on Xbox. We would have a few drinks and talk shit to other players over the microphone.

I briefly experimented with having a hang out spot in my garage. It did not go well with how intoxicated I was getting, combining the pills with alcohol. I ended up inviting the wrong people into my house.

Dash Minor got kicked out of his house by his mother. She had gotten remarried and had children with her new husband. They were now moving out of state for her husband's work, and she was abandoning Dash a week after he graduated high school. I had always joked around saying Dash could sleep in my garage if he was homeless. Now that he was homeless, he begged me to stay true to my word.

We ended up moving an old mattress into my garage and Dash slept there for a few weeks. My parents are good people and let him stay. My dad even gave Dash a job working with us painting.

There was this girl I had been seeing. She was not my girlfriend, but we had hooked up a few times. She was two years younger than me and had grown up in the house next door. One night she came over and we hung out with Dash in my garage drinking Jager. I had taken too many pills and at one point I fell asleep. I woke up to find Dash fucking her right next to me on the bed.

I was half drunk and influenced by my medications, so I attacked Dash and started choking him right as they were fucking. My parents heard us and came in and they separated us. The next day Dash moved out and found somewhere else to live and a new job.

I was a complete mess and the black sheep of my family once again. The pills just made my problems worse. I started having huge gaps in my memory from taking the meds and drinking alcohol. People around me were telling me how I had embarrassed myself the night prior or got into a fist fight with one of my friends. I did not remember any of it.

I don't even remember fighting Dash.

One night when I was really upset and not happy with the way things were going, I attempted to kill myself. I felt a lot of guilt about getting arrested. I was embarrassed over how I had acted on the pills. I really was not thinking clearly at the time.

I took a large number of pills from my prescription at once and downed them with a shot of Jägermeister. Then lying in bed with all my clothes on. All I can really remember after that is my parents coming into my room and trying to wake me up. They kept shaking me and I would wake up for a few seconds and then I would fall back unconscious.

In the end I guess I did not take enough pills to actually die because I woke up the next morning alive. Just enough to make my parents concerned.

I assured them my deep slumber was an accident due to the wrong combination of meds.

I came to the conclusion that Anti-depressants did not make depression go away, it just made me a zombie that did not think enough to complain anymore. Maybe some of the people who are depressed in this world are the people who feel things deeper or are too smart to ignore the horrible things around us in life. Maybe it is not about a chemical in balance in my brain but having the intelligence and heart too strong to ignore.

The real cure to those feelings is fixing the problems causing them not taking pills to become zombies and ignore them. Once you stop taking the pills, the problems are always still there waiting for you.

I also wondered if the bad things happening in my life was God’s way of telling me I had broken my promise not to take drugs. I decided to quit the medications cold turkey, and it really fucked me up in the head for years.

I also greatly cut back on drinking. I did not go completely sober but there were no more daily handles of Jager. I kept it to a few shots once or twice a month in moderation. The truth was after taking all the medications and drinking heavily with my friends for so many years, my body felt like I could not handle drinking anymore after I quit taking the pills. I got sick really easily even without drinking.

The following week after I quit, Peter and some of the new friends I had made during my medicated days decided to burglarize my home.

Peter knew from hanging out in my garage that my garage door did not always close properly and if it failed to close anyone could easily open it and get inside my house. They came in when everyone had left for work and took all my video games, DVDs, and the rest of my pills and weed.

I had a large collection of video games and DVDs that sat in a cabinet in the living room. We were cleaning the cabinet, and I had pulled all the game and DVD cases out and put them in a box.

After cleaning the cabinet, I was too lazy to immediately put everything back. I wanted to order it alphabetically. I accidentally made it easy for them to steal everything.

Game stop buys video games for pennies on the dollar but if they are stolen you aren’t picky and will take whatever you can get. DVDs could be sold to the Warehouse and another used DVD store in the local mall.

These also did not generate a huge return. Peter took his share of the money and disappeared. Someone told me his parents moved to Puerto Rico. I assume he went there.

The main guy who took credit for the crime was a man who called himself Donkey.

You may remember him from the time the school security busted us at Dougie’s garage. The guy who stole the weed and Jason and I stole it back. Over the years he became a wannabe thug.

Donkey got a little full of himself after pulling off the crime and went around the neighborhood telling everyone he robbed me, and I was too much of a pussy to do anything about it.

A few months later Donkey got into an argument with the mother of his future child. He thought she was cheating on him and stabbed her gay friend with a kitchen knife. He then ran off and hid at a friend’s house. You could see the helicopters looking for him from my house a few miles away.

Donkey managed to get away and then went on the run from the police for several months. This made me finding him and confronting him over his theft and claims of me being a pussy nearly impossible.

Chapter 23: Mortal Kombat