[0:04]I didn't care. I didn't think about it. I just did it. Once we started getting high, it was done.
[0:14]She was 17 years old and the only way I knew about it is because she was arrested.
[0:24]started smoking pot around 18. And I was always offered prescription drugs, and I never would take them. Then I was in a car accident. I was running down in the middle of the night to get some water, fell down the stairs, landed on my back on the wooden floor. It started for me with pot and uh just progress into um hell basically. We didn't do it for me, but definitely weed started it all for me. It was definitely something I didn't see until it was too late. I had no clue what I was getting myself into, so.
[1:19]I became addicted that day. When you're getting high, it's not just a drug. You're hooked. $500 going in. And she was a convicted felon at the age of 18. I had maggots in my leg. Turned to prostitution. Stealing from my family. Married Mr. 3 and I'm tripping. It'll take you to hell and back. It's not just the little pill. Takes control of you. I started using heroin. Same heroin that just killed me. You can't go back and say I'm sorry. It will win. It will get you. Her sister found her. Died in her sleep. My daughter, she's dead.
[1:48]Being addicted to opiates is like chasing the dragon, you're constantly seeking that first high. But what's going to happen if you actually catch it? Approximately one in five high school seniors reports misusing prescription drugs at least once in their lifetime.
[2:14]Coming from a great family, you know, always had what I wanted. Um, never had a curfew. I could sleep over at my friend's house whenever. I could have done anything. They would have paid for me to go to any kind of school, stuff like that. Any kind of they paid for guitar lessons.
[2:33]I grew up uh with my dad. My mom wasn't in my life though. Um, he pretty much was mom and dad throughout the whole life.
[2:46]He would tutor me for at least an hour. On the weekends, we'd go out. We'd go camping. We'd go out on the boats. We always had something planned. She started in gymnastics when she was like a toddler, and she was a cheerleader through um middle schools, high schools, and she was also a competitive cheerleader. She started competing probably in seventh grade. She was a very good student. She um was in AP classes, A B honor roll. Work myself up through the years, um, with minimal college to uh a position I work as a corporate account executive. Was making about an average of 122,000 a year. Things were pretty, pretty good, financially. We were secure. Kids were happy. We were had no real issues. Dad was military, mom was Korean. Everyone I grew up with was same way. Everyone's parents was military and Korean parents, Korean mom.
[3:52]No, I did martial arts, ballet, gymnastics, did all kinds of stuff. I did piano lessons. I was a honor roll student. Always went to school. I was like 3.43 grade point average. I had a great childhood, um, great family. We did a lot of camping, um, a lot of fun stuff, going to the beach, camping at the beach.
[4:16]Very active in scouting, Boy Scouts, and something my father and I and him did together, you know, a couple days uh before my 18th birthday. I actually got my Eagle Scout, which was a big accomplishment for me. I met my first husband when I was very young. I was 13, and then we got married at 17, so I got to grow up pretty quick.
[4:41]I was 22 years old and that's when everything started. I got pregnant with my youngest daughter. Once I had her, they gave me Oxycotton. That was the pain medicine.
[4:55]A 2014 national survey found an estimated 1.4 million people in the U.S. abused a prescription painkiller for the first time that year.
[5:09]a friend offers you something at a party or at home, or you're having a bad day and and uh you need something to pick you up. So somebody hands you a a pill and says, here, this will this will help you feel better. That's how this problem always starts. I was at a concert when I was 15 at the time and I was drinking a beer, so I got a possession alcohol charge and I got put on probation, so and I couldn't smoke pot anymore.
[5:53]So I was hobbling into work and a young lady that worked there used to be uh pharmaceutical sales rep. And she had some samples of things. And she said, Katrina, have you gone to the doctor for this yet? And I said, no. So she said, well, I have these things. Take one, not more than that. Go home and take one, you know. And I had a habit every night, I would go home and have a glass of wine. So I went home that night and I took what she gave me, but instead of taking one, I took two because I didn't even know what they were. And took the two, had my glass of wine and all of a sudden, it just triggered something in my brain and I I would say I became addicted that day. I think the new friends had a really, really big impact on, you know, when she got to that fork in the road, you go left or you go right. And I think at that point, the friends helped pick the road that she chose. This sounds really appealing. I'm going to try that. But I guess what most people, and most kids don't understand is, you know, when you try something, you're not trying it. It's your new path. I just like the I just like the feeling of certain things, being high. It was nothing it wasn't like, um, I'm depressed. I'm going to take this to make me feel better. It was kind of like, I'm feeling good. I'm going to try this and see if I can feel even more better. started taking three at a time, and then I was taking four at a time, and then I started taking like six at a time. And then I went from taking them orally to shooting them. And that was the end. I went back to the doctor a couple times and got him to refill the medicine to the amount that he couldn't refill it anymore. So then I started buying oxycotton off the street. Um, from there, um, oxycotton started to be more expensive and harder to find. A girlfriend of mine introduced me to heroin. I could get a whole lot more for a whole lot less. And then once I shot up the heroin, that was it from there. My addiction took off and my daughter was seven months old when I became physically addicted to heroin intravenously. Most first-time abusers of painkillers obtain them from a friend or relative.
[8:24]I never hesitate to ask them all which drugs they've tried. And they'll typically say, I've tried. Started off with marijuana. Uh, tried cocaine. I've tried oxycodone and and I ask them of all the drugs they've ever tried, what's the most addictive drug? And without a doubt, 100% of the time they'll say the most addictive drug is oxycodone. You know, the drugs, you know, took I feel like it took my mind over, it made me do things that I, you know, normally brought up not to do, you know. And uh, it just turned me into a monster. You know, I just went in my medicine cabinet. My buddy's like, oh hey, this will get you high. Let's let's do something. So I was like, okay, you know, he talked me into it right here. I don't have to pay anything. Sure. It doesn't even have to be a drug dealer. It could be right in your house and next thing you know, you're you're hooked. My friends in the beginning were the friends that didn't do anything, and then I met the crowd that did do stuff. You are who you hang out with. That is for sure. These kids go into it as, I'm just going to go to a party and hey, they're doing this over here. Let me, you know, I want to fit in. Let me do it a little bit. And it's it's the devil. It it gets you. It's, you know, it's it's that temptation. Hey, this is a fun party over here. It'll suck the life out of you. All I wanted to do, if it had been in front of my face is do it. It's not just the little pill. You know, respect the power of that, you know, of that pill. It's it's uh just because it's a prescription, it is every bit is deadly and every bit is addictive. I worked at a daycare taking care of other people's kids. Um, I drove the daycare bus. I had to take their children to school. But before I could drive their kids to school, I was in the bathroom of the daycare crushing up pills, snorting them so I could go about my day. The whole time you're sitting there saying, you're not a fucking addict, you're not addicted. Guess what? You are. Because why are you taking that hit saying, nah, dude, I can quit when I want.
[10:32]You know, you're you're addicted. People are like, oh, I only smoke weed. I'm not addicted. It's natural. Fucking whatever. Tell yourself whatever. Oh, it's legal now. Oh, fuck off. The first time somebody uses an opiate drug, the the euphoria that they get is is is something that they continue to search for and seek for. So while you could do that in the beginning by just chewing on the drug, over time, you can't get that high anymore. So now you have to take it up to the next level. And nobody sets out uh thinking that they're going to end up being a needle user. But every one of those needle users will tell you that uh they couldn't get the high anymore doing it the way they were doing. Heroin became my best friend. Um, heroin became the love of my life. I put heroin before my family. I put heroin before my children. And I thought that I couldn't do nothing in life anymore without heroin. There's absolutely no difference between, in my mind, a heroin addict and a pill addict. We both will do anything to get it. Break the law, do whatever. You're both addicted. You both go through the withdrawals. You both go through it's exact, exact same thing. It's everywhere. It's in your fucking cabinet somewhere. It could be in your grandparents' cabinet. It could be your friend's mom's cabinet. It could be anywhere, that's pills. Well, heroin could be in a drawer somewhere. Who knows? It's it's all the same shit. One's just prescribed to you and one you go cop on the street. There's no way to say no with the opiates. It's hard. Real hard. I can tell myself no, no, no, but my body as soon as you think about it, you get anxiety, your palms start to sweat. You know, you're your mental, your mental ignores your physical part of it. I am very angry. And one of the things I'm most angry about and I tell her all the time, is that that drug was so much more important to you than me. And I'm the one that can help you. I'm the one that helps you. I'm the one that supports you. I'm the one that will always be there for you. You need something, I'm going to be the one to take care of it for you. But something that literally destroyed everything good within you, was so much more appealing. Wanted that so much more than anything I could offer her, and I'm angry. I am angry about that. Nearly all people who use heroin also use at least one other drug.
[13:31]The progression of addiction and the behavior that that comes with it is is pretty um standard. Regardless of where you're born, how much money you have, um, how old you are, what your race is, what your nationality is. You can be the smartest person in the world. The minute that chemical hits your bloodstream, you lose control of what it does in your body. You can't control it. Nobody can control it. I don't care who you are. You you it's not controllable. I lived in um crack houses. Uh, it's almost like something you see on TV, an abandoned building with um drug paraphernalia everywhere. It might be a a piss stained mattress and God knows what else is on it. Um, there was actually a place in the city that we were at and um a lady had overdosed in the bathtub. She had died. She was still in the bathtub. We'll just find another room in the house. And that's what my day consisted of. It became my full-time job. The needle was my boss. A very demanding boss. Your whole day revolves around it. You go to sleep doing it, you wake up doing it. You know what I mean? It's like some people smoke after every meal they have. No, you're doing a fucking shot. It's a never ending vicious cycle. It's the same thing over and over and over. You wake up, all you want to do is find out how you're going to get something. How you going to get it? You know, it's kind of stupid if you think about it because I'm wasting all this money stealing from my family, my friends just to do a drug and fall asleep, you know? And then I wake up sick. So I'm like, crap, now I got to do it all over again, you know? You're still chasing that first high. So, you know, in order to be high, you got to at least be normal. And to get there, you got to at least do enough to where you're not sick anymore. So. Well, usually, like if I had stuff the day before, I'd always save a bag for the morning time, so when I wake up, I could get well, and I call it that because in the end, I wasn't using to get high anymore. I was using to stay well, so I wasn't sick, you know.
[15:33]I'm not even getting high. I'm just trying to, you know, be able to get up out of bed. You know, my head was always in my lap, you know, I feel like I missed a couple years of my life because it's a lot that, you know, it's just a fog, a black fog because, you know, I really wasn't there, you know. My addiction level was so bad that I couldn't even function without 40 pills a day. I was ill. Like literally every four hours, the chills started setting in. And I would wake up and I would be I woke up sick. And that's way it went all day long. People who take prescription painkillers can become addicted with just one prescription.
[16:29]How do you know you're an addict? It's when you're when you're doing something that you know is not good for you, that's harming you, but you can't help yourself. When you're when you're relationships are starting to fall apart around you, and you don't care, and the only thing that's on your mind is about how to get the substance and how to get to the next high, you're an addict. You can't maintain an opiate addiction and a normal life for very long. I felt like after the first year of using it, I I actually got physically addicted to where I actually needed it to even to wake up and get out of bed, start moving around, take a shower. And that's when I started um, you know, stealing from my family, friends. You know, whatever money I had in my pocket was all going into it. If I got a $500 paycheck, $500 going into dope. Because you always tell yourself, whenever you're using drugs and especially it's like a super addictive one, oh, I I'm not I'm not addicted. Motherfucker, you're addicted. You know what I mean? Like here addicted, you're in denial. You know, you might not be addicted at that point in time, but you're going to keep fucking using and and a month later or two months later, you're fucking addicted. At one point, my husband said he would stop giving me putting gas in the van so I could drive the distance to the city to get my drugs. And I said, well, I'll show you. I'm going to move to the city. So I don't need my van and I don't need gas money because the dope dealers are going to be living right here with me. And that's what I did. I ran away from home. You will be high and put yourself in situations that you will get hurt. Someone will take advantage of you. You know. You be knocked out, it's going to happen. You're going to get hurt. Some people who have money and they don't have to steal for it, and then you meet other people who, you know, just pawn their family's TV and it's coming to get high, and then deal with the consequences later. She stole checks from her grandmother and signed them. She stole my debit card. If it wasn't nailed down, it was in the pawn shop. She spent $800 a week. My daughter, who had, you know, everything handed to her, you know, could have gone anywhere in the world, very book smart, you know, very motivated, worked at a strip club. My little girl degraded herself just to get that. Women turned to prostitution, which I've done myself. Um, guys will steal. They'll rob you right in front of you. I've seen guys take guns out on dealers and steal them, rob everything from them. Not even worrying about if they get shot or end up in jail. People get fucking raped. People people get killed over stupid shit.
[19:19]You know, it's people now I can say it's just a drug. But like, when you're getting high, it's not just a drug. You know.
[19:33]A large percentage of individuals who are arrested for major crimes, including homicide, theft, and assault, are under the influence of illicit drugs.
[19:47]Best thing that can happen to someone who's addicted to Oxycotton is that they can be arrested. That's the best thing. The best thing that they can be arrested and go to jail. Everything other than that, it it's worse. It's going to end in a bad way. You're going to get caught eventually. So, I just didn't think it was going to be me. I would just think, you know, they must have screwed over the wrong person, you know, they got caught because they weren't careful enough. She was pulled over, they searched the car and she had a quantity of pills. At that point, she was smoking them. So there was some type of a pipe device in. So she was arrested, and she was a convicted felon at the age of 18. Four kids. My youngest son will be one this month. I've been locked up for freaking eight months. First time I came to jail, first time I got locked up this year, he was two weeks old. You know, haven't don't even know my kid. Uh, my other three are in foster care right now. Never I never thought any of this would ever happen to me. Only thing I care about is my kids. Like my kids are suffering. It's not me. I give two shits if I'm suffering. Yeah, it sucks. But it's like, my kids, they they didn't do anything in this. My parents, you know, they got to come visit me through uh I don't even get through a fucking window. I got through a fucking camera, a little camcorder. That sucks. It's not worth it. Losing your freedom sucks. You have somebody tell you when to get up, when to shower, when you eat, what you eat. And you got to worry about the other people that are in here that are in here for, you know, life and they don't care about you. I was supposed to go to court November 2011 and the judge was supposed to let me go. He gave me the maximum, which ended up being 23 months, two years, instead of the 10 months. And at the time, I was so angry, and in retrospect, I'm very thankful because I would have uh I know for 100% certainty, I would have gone right back out and done it again. I got kicked out of my house and I met your neighborhood friendly drug dealers who were like, oh, you can crash on this couch. And then, you know, of course they'd give me stuff here and there, but it was never enough for me to even enjoy it. So that made me run fake prescriptions. You don't think about anything. You don't think about anybody you're hurting. You don't think about before and after. You don't think, oh, seven fucking dudes in all black are fucking run up in your fucking house. You don't think you're going to be on the fucking news. You don't think anything.
[38:50]You don't think any of that. You know. And it's you know, I'm just try going to try my best to stick with it because I know it will kill me and uh You know, I'm just it's something that I never ever want to experience again. It is the worst feeling ever. I wouldn't even, um, I wouldn't wish that feeling upon my worst enemy. That's how bad it is.
[40:11]The spiral down is so fast. You know, it doesn't take much, and I lost everything. I lost my daughter first and foremost, but I lost pictures, every material possession I had. I had never been in trouble in my life. I'm now a felon at 41 years old. So all that work I did, you know, all those dreams I had, you know, it's like I'm starting over again with a huge weight on my shoulders. You know, all for a pill.
[41:00]My dad doesn't even trust me anymore, which is hard because my dad's always trusted me my whole life. I've never had my dad look at me with disappointment before I did this. I'm I'm a criminal. I'm an addict. That's how everybody will always perceive me. Listen to what they say. Say no. Just say no. And you're not uncool for saying no. You're more cool for saying no, I think. I wish I could have said no. If I could go back and do it all over, I would definitely go back and say no.
[43:13]If you want to fail the rest of your life, if you want to be in and out of jail, if you want to possibly lose everything that fuck matters to you, go ahead and go get high. Go ahead and do it. If uh you want to be happy, you want to fucking get married, like every good part of my life, I wasn't getting high. You know, every good part of my life. I was going to any drug addict will tell you that. If you want to be a junkie, go ahead and get high. Go ahead and do it. But uh, I've been there, done that, and I wouldn't recommend it.
[43:53]Cierra did not take life for granted. Until she started using. It is much stronger than you. And it will win. It will win. Because this doesn't just affect you. It affects everybody in your family for the rest of their lives. That we're the ones stuck here missing you. And there's help out there. You got to take it. Don't think you can do it alone because you can't. And your parents aren't the enemy. They just want the best for you.
[44:40]It's somehow I had to deal with for the rest of my life. Um, you know, to be honest, I I actually just relapsed about a month ago and uh use for about a month. And I have a a week. I had a week clean on Wednesday and you know, that's something that just shows how just how powerful this disease is for me to lose somebody a year ago and not even a year ago, but I'm already using again.
[45:30]It'll take you to hell and back and if you're lucky, you'll you'll make it back, you know. It's just not worth it at all, you know. If if I would if I could go back, if I knew what I knew now about this, and if I could go back, I I would do it all different. Starting with that first pill, I wouldn't touch it.
