1st Attachment

Original Attempts – I didn’t even re-read these at all so I’m sure they don’t make much sense, but including in case

skimming them is helpful!

I have been spinning in my head for weeks thinking about how to continue writing for the book/blog I told you about,
and then just realized I was starting to do the same thing today by procrastinating writing this… so I'm just going to write
it all as the thoughts come, then hopefully I'll be able to make sense of it with editing after :)

In hindsight, it took a lot longer than it should have for me to realize I was addicted thanks to how well I lied to myself.
I've been thinking of all the times I was hit with what felt like a sucker-punch of reality letting me know it wasn't all fun
and games anymore, and each memory is crystal clear (unlike the majority of my memories). I'll start at the beginning of
how it all started, because I've puzzled how/why I let myself try something so obviously dangerous and addictive more
times than I can count. The answer is that I was blissfully naïve about what I was even doing and I truly thought (and
said, many times) that I didn't have an addictive personality. Somehow I thought that because I had gotten drunk and
smoked weed in high school without ever having any addiction issues that I was invincible - which meant that I was
ready to try anything and everything in the name of getting the full college experience. I had only been drunk and
smoked weed in high school, although by senior year I know I was open to trying more. I remember being asked to reach
out to a former friend of mine who had gotten mixed up with "a bad crowd" by our school guidance counselor, and I'll
never forget being shocked at myself for realizing that if she was trying cocaine I wanted to try it with her rather than
help her. Somewhere between DARE classes in middle school and then being in high school, my attitude towards
drugs/alcohol flipped from "I'll never drink or take drugs!" to "I want to try almost everything at least once" … and
Bentley certainly provided me the opportunity to do just that.

Typing this pains me, because obviously hindsight is 20/20 - how could I have been so stupid? That's a thought I have a
lot, but I've been learning to accept it. As soon as I stepped on campus I embraced all the freedom I had craved for years
while living with my lovingly strict parents. My love for adderall that quickly developed freshman year didn't even
concern me at all, because in my (clearly not fully developed) brain at the time, I thought that anything done while in
college wouldn't bleed into "the real world" - as if the bubble I lived in at Bentley would keep all the bad behaviors inside
of it even after I left. I used to laugh at the idea of peer pressure, because it seemed so outlandish that anyone would
ever be able to convince me to do something I didn't want to… safe to say I learned that peer pressure is less about
what's said and more about what you're able to justify based on the actions of your peers. As long as anyone else I knew
was doing something then I felt it was perfectly acceptable, which leads me to the first time I tried any type of painkiller:
sophomore year with Jill, she was prescribed Tramadol for period cramps (a fact we both laughed at, not believing that a
doctor would give out something so strong for that). Jill and I both loved taking adderall together and doing a week's
worth of homework or cleaning every spot of our small apartment, but until then I hadn't been introduced to any other
prescribed addictive drugs (even the benzos didn't start until after the painkillers). She offered me some saying they just
felt good, and she was absolutely right. We called the feeling it gave us "the tingles" as we sat at a baseball game not
paying attention to anything except how great we felt. I only took that with her a few times before leaving to study
abroad the fall semester of my junior year, and I really thought nothing of it - just another way I was "experiencing all life
had to offer" as I remember thinking back then.

I turned 21 in Barcelona, Spain - having a blast but also desperately missing my friends and the guy I had been dating
back at Bentley. The month before I got home both the guy and Jill mentioned in separate messages to me that they had
met a new friend with "super fun drugs you'll like." I figured that since they knew I had been doing cocaine in Spain they
knew I'd be down to try snorting anything, but never thought they had been referring to the same type of drug. The first
time I tried an opiate it was (supposedly) 1/2 of a 30mg percocet that the guy I had been dating brought to my dorm
room my first night back on campus - I hadn't even been able to see Jill or many of my other friends yet before reuniting
with him. He crushed it up, handed me a cut up straw and said "snort this, you're going to love it." He wasn't wrong: I
loved it. I remember thinking that it was truly the best feeling in the world, "like being stoned but without getting tired
or hungry" as I described it back then. I was suddenly the best, most confident version of myself. The crazy part is at that
early stage I somehow didn't even comprehend that it was a bad idea or something to be wary of. I even remember
telling my roommates junior year (a group of girls far more conservative than Jill and our other roommates from the
previous year - a side effect of studying abroad) that I was "high from snorting some prescription pain killer type drug,
and it felt so great!" I guess in my happy state I didn't realize that it was probably noteworthy that they weren't

interested in trying any. Once I was reunited with Jill and she introduced me to "the new friend with the great drugs," I
quickly realized that she and my boyfriend had met the same guy and that Jill had taken me to the exact person who my
boyfriend got the pill from. Ironically, I called it "fate" at the time, because I couldn't believe that both my best friend
and boyfriend separately met this guy, fell in love with what he was selling, and even both emailed me in Spain about it.
I ended up in a dorm room on "North Campus" where I found a whole new world existed. We lived for those endless yet
never long enough hours spent watching the movie 'Limitless' on repeat, never once taking in a single word because we
were too busy snorting pills or enjoying the high. Over time, Jill and I both started spending more and more time in "the
crack den" along with the dealer, the other kids who got high off percs (my boyfriend included), and their random
friends who would come to buy pills. One guy drove all the way from UNH multiple times a week to pick up 100 packs of
pills, and we ended up taking a trip to visit him at UNH the summer between junior and senior year.

The first time I realized that maybe there was a problem was when I was with my boyfriend and we promised ourselves
we would take a week off ($30 a pill is not cheap when you only have income from babysitting and a meager savings
from summer jobs) - 2 days in we guiltily decided that had been long enough, and that was the first of the many times I
was hit with the realization that I could be in trouble. Luckily, that troublesome worry was easy enough to make go away
by just getting high again. It's still crazy to me how snorting 30mg of powdered chemicals just made literally everything
seem better - when I was high, I thought for sure that I'd never have to deal with any consequences, because of course
I'd be able to stop whenever I wanted… I just didn't want to yet. That type of thinking kept on for a long time, even as
the evidence of addiction was piling up in front of me. I went to florida for spring break with my friends from home, and
at the time I didn't even associate the awful way I felt with the lack of pills - that's how strong my ability to lie to myself
was. It wasn't until I experienced my first true withdrawal/detox the next year that I realized what had been wrong with
me on that trip.

By senior year, my boyfriend was gone but Jill and I were having a blast. We had taken to mixing in her klonopin to
extend the high and more often than not it was one of us driving the dealer to haverhill or lowell to get the drugs. I'll
never forget walking into a building with a bunch of guys that didn't speak english and seeing an empty apartment with
nothing but bags and bags of pills inside. I learned that they had the same apartment number in multiple buildings, and
remember thinking that Jill and I absolutely didn't belong there… yet I also thrived on that feeling. Years later in therapy
I learned that I was embracing the idea of being a "good girl" on the outside while "getting away with" bad behaviors - at
the time, I just felt like a rebel without a cause in the best of ways. Jill and I had drifted further and further from our old
friends, and slowly our perfect world started to crumble. It started with the first guy who dropped out due to
progressing from snorting percs to smoking heroin off tinfoil - he was the first, but far from the last. By the time we got
to graduation, I remember thinking that there were so few of us left it was a miracle Jill and I had both made it even that
far. Another time I had a sucker-punch of reality in terms of being an addict was when I finally convinced myself to talk
to someone about what I should do. Bentley had a school counselor, so I told Jill I was going to ask for advice and let her
know how it went. I'm pretty sure I completely baffled the counselor with my casual explanation of being high pretty
much all the time, and she did the only thing anyone would have done: recommended rehab programs.




That was getting too lengthy… I'm going to try and bullet the key points:
 While I studied abroad junior year, both my 'boyfriend' and Jill emailed me saying that they had met someone on
campus with fun drugs they thought I'd like - it ended up that they met the same person, a guy from a rich town in
CT that dealt percocets on campus.
 It was all fun and games at first, because I was a naïve idiot who thought that "I didn't have an addictive
personality" just because I drank and smoked weed in high school then took adderall/experimented a bit more in
my first 2 years + in Barcelona and to that point hadn't ended up addicted… I had just turned 21, yet I thought for
sure I had it all figured out - classic.
 The first painkiller I took was with Jill before I studied abroad - tramadol that she had gotten for period cramps but
said that I would love the feeling of, so we each took a couple before going to watch a baseball game. We were
laughing the whole time trying to describe the feeling and decided it was "the best tingles" (it was much funnier in
the moment…)

 The first percocet I snorted was half a 30mg pill brought to me by the guy I had been dating before studying
abroad - I wasn't even unpacked in my room before he showed up with it, and I don't remember even asking what
it was. I just was down to try anything, and I certainly didn't regret that one right away - it was love at first sniff.
 Shortly after trying that one with my boyfriend, I saw Jill and she took me to meet the dealer - I remember saying
it was fate that both she and my boyfriend had become friends with the same person and emailed me about how
great the drugs were.
 The 3 of us spent a lot of days just getting high sniffing pills (and sometimes smoking them off tinfoil, although I
didn't like that feeling as much as the others did), watching the movie Limitless on repeat because none of us ever
noticed it was on all the time until weeks had gone by, smoking cigarettes indoors (much to my roommates disgust
when I'd return home smelling like an ash tray), and of course always looking to get more pills if we ever - god
forbid - ran out.
 The first time I even contemplated the possibility of the pills being a problem was a few months after starting to
use them, my boyfriend and I said we would stop doing them for a week because at $30 each doing a couple a day
we were running out of money quickly. After 3 days we both decided it wasn't worth it - despite the beginning of
fear creeping in, I didn't even entertain the full thought that it could be a problem. I just decided that it was worth
blowing through my entire savings, because in my mind I was "buying happiness, and what could be more valuable
than that?" …yeah, not ideal thinking at all.

 I realized months after the fact that the trip I took for spring break that year with my friends from home to Florida
was not just miserable because I had a cold and felt off - I was in withdrawal without the drugs. I was so focused
on getting back to school and getting high again that I didn't even come to the obvious conclusion: the pills were
what made me feel so miserable while I should have been enjoying the time in the sun with my friends.



Wow this is way harder than I thought - all of that is from a couple days ago, so I'm going to start fresh. What was it like
to go from recreational use to addiction: the first thing I just thought of is one of those video games I used to play as a
kid (in the dentist's office for some reason - some sort of game with Mario/Luigi) where you follow this 1 path until you
fall off or get killed and then it brings you right back to start… it's like that. The realization wasn't just a 1 time sucker-
punch, it happened over and over and over throughout the past 8 years until I finally just did the PHP in April-June of this
past year. 8 YEARS OF IT. Sickening. SAMMI GET TO THE POINT.

In college, I personally justified just about every bad habit as normal - it was as if once I left the "Bentley Bubble" (as we
called life on campus) all of my bad habits would magically disappear. That's the main theme I realize keeps coming up
as I attempt to recall sickening realization that I wasn't just having fun anymore and life as I knew it was over. When you
first brought up this topic, one specific instance came to mind: the first time my (at the time) boyfriend and I told
ourselves we would spend a week without any of the pills and lasted 2 days. I think writing this is so hard because in
hindsight I cannot believe how naïve I was, and not even just 8 years ago but even still - I guess that's evidence of how
well our brains can lie. It makes me think of a book I'm reading (psychological thrillers are my anti-drug, I rip through
them like they're TV series) in which the narrator is a therapist who likens the ego to "that bully in your head trying to
make you think that feeling better comes from hurting yourself" … she was talking to a young girl that was self-harming,
but I realized how applicable that is to my reality. From the first time I snorted 15mg of percocet, I was hooked. When I
hear people describe true love or loss, I think of discovering the feeling of getting high on perc's or having to give them
up - that deep of a love. I tried that pill without a care in the world, despite the fact I had no real idea that what I was
inhaling was the same thing I had discussed with various friends about kids in town that had fallen victim to opiate
addictions. How did I not make the connection? That question has plagued me the last few years, and it comes down to
2 things: 1- I naively thought that by age 21 I knew for a fact that I wasn't an addict based on my recreational
drinking/smoking. 2- Ignorance is bliss, and I didn't want to think about anything that would ruin that bliss. That fact was
true even before I found the BEST bliss of all, but I absolutely kept my head further under the sand once I had a taste of
feeling invincible via getting high off opiates. Technically the first painkiller I tried was Tramadol with Jill sophomore year

• she was prescribed them for period cramps and honestly likely just offered them to me because I was standing there
  with her before she wanted to take them. We were going to a baseball game and for whatever reason I was down to try
  anything by my sophomore year of college: I had already fallen in love with adderall (yet still stood by the statement "I

don't have an addictive personality") and that was proof positive for me that prescription medicines presented a whole
new world of possibilities that I certainly never knew while working at the local pharmacy in town through high school.