A Traumatic Start to My Using Journey
My mom died in a terrible car crash in 1974. Ninety days later, my dad re-married, far too soon for me. I showed this by continuing to “act out” and within sixty days I was kicked out of the house. I was heavily using drugs and alcohol. I deserved this! At the same time I was in a lot of pain, and numbing it with escape.
Thirty days later I was on the street, living in garages, and ‘couch’ surfing,
and then finally homeless under a camper shell in Wildwood Canyon, Newhall. I was
there alone for about thirty days, before moving in, with a generous friend, to a little 1 bedroom
shack in Castaic, California.
120 Days Later
Within about 30 days, I was dealing drugs and working as a janitor. I met up with an old acquaintance, ‘Brock’, he ran the late night FM station at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. He introduced me to 2 things, higher quality cannabis and cocaine. It didn’t take long before my drug business expanded to include cocaine too.
Then I met Aaron, I knew of him from College of the Canyons, where I had attended in 1971-1973, he was an entrepreneur, too. Aaron was traveling to Columbia as part of his import business; he was smuggling cocaine from there into the U.S. to Alaska!
Aaron had it all worked out, he made a journey about 3 or 4 times a year, and then worked on other pursuits the rest of the time. After one of his trips he
brought me some Mastodon Tusk ivory, from Alaska, it was beautiful!
Aaron explained to me that it can only be collected by Native Americans; I began carving things from it, coke spoons, ear rings, etc. Over a period of time, we partied together many times, sometimes at Cal Arts, sometimes at my house, sometimes at Brocks. There was lots of high quality cannabis and even big slabs of hashish, mostly from Afghanistan, with large golden starburst KBL symbols on it
Nothing could go wrong...or could it?
We all thought that we had it made! Always spoke in code on the phone, nothing ever obvious. Turns out that Brock’s connection had diplomatic immunity and flew in and out of the U.S. without interference. The airport was very close to Brock’s, his connection would show up with a briefcase full of drugs. Cocaine in large coffee creamer containers, several pounds of cannabis, and several pound slabs of hash.
We all really thought we had it all together, in control, no vulnerabilities
Not the case!! A horrific consequence was just about to happen...
On the next trip to Columbia for Aaron, he picked up more than a pound of cocaine, and was flying to Alaska… He died on that flight, went into convulsions, and never woke up. You see, Aaron was smuggling the cocaine in his stomach. He would put an ounce in a prophylactic, and then put it into another one, and swallow it; this trip he had swallowed about 20. One burst in his stomach on the flight from Columbia to Alaska. When we finally heard what had happened, we were all in a state of shock! We mourned the loss of our friend.
Aaron was the first of my friends that died due to drugs. It really hit me hard…
I just couldn’t believe it, he had been so alive, vibrant, caring and warm…
Then we went back to business as usual...
This is the mindset of an addict:
We just don't imagine bad things can happen to us. We don't imagine or even think about our addictive behaviours leading to something so catastrophic. Even after our friend dying it was 'business as usual'.
John Childress
Co-Founder of Free! Recovery
Author The Addict's Choices: From Depths of Isolation to Heights of True Deliverance