Prologue
The Ceiling
The first thing I saw when I came back was a ceiling tile stained the color of weak tea. For several seconds, that square of water damage was the whole universe. Then sound returned: a plastic wrapper tearing, rubber soles against linoleum, someone saying my name as if they were throwing a rope down a well.
My chest hurt. My mouth tasted metallic. A stranger in a navy uniform leaned over me and asked whether I knew where I was. I did not. I knew only that I had been somewhere warm and soundless, and that I had been dragged out of it against my will.
“You stopped breathing,” the stranger said.
There are sentences that divide a life into before and after. That was mine.
I wish I could tell you that terror cured me. It did not. By nightfall I was ashamed, furious, sick, and thinking about using again. Addiction can hear a death sentence and translate it into a scheduling problem.
This is not a story about being tougher than heroin. Nobody is. It is not a map of how to use, a dare, or a redemption tale polished until the suffering shines. It is the account of how my world narrowed to one chemical promise, how I nearly disappeared inside it, and how survival began long before I knew how to call it recovery.