“Caleb, come on,” Alex urged, handing him a small packet.
“I…I don't know, man,” he stuttered. “I know what that shit can do to you.”
“C’mon, just do it. It’s not that bad,” Zoey piped in.
Caleb's eyes darted between his friends, Alex and Zoey, who both had their eyes on him. He looked down at the small plastic packet in his hand containing an off-white colored powder. As he looked down at the packet, his mind raced with warning and doubts, but also with curiosity.
He knew he shouldn’t. He knew what heroin could do to a person. But his friends insisted, and Caleb was always one to give in to peer pressure. His friends knew that.
“Just try it, Caleb,” Zoey urged once again, her voice laced with excitement and anticipation. He gave no reply, but she took it as a yes.
He watched as she carefully prepared it: placing some of the powder on a spoon, adding water, heating it with a lighter, and placing a piece of cotton in the mixture.
Caleb's heart raced even more when Zoey pushed him back onto the old, worn-out couch he was sitting on. She took his arm and pierced it with the needle.
The rush was immediate, intense, and utterly consuming. A wave of warmth rushed over him, drowning out the noise of the party in the background and melting away any worries he had. The euphoria was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was as if every worry, every doubt, every ounce of stress melted away, leaving a blissful void. For the first time, it felt as if time had slowed down, and he got lost in a cloud of pleasure, free from the constraints of reality.
So, that's how it started–a little pressure from friends was all he needed to get him started on a path he wouldn’t be able to turn back from.
As days went on, his desire for that initial bliss grew stronger. It wasn’t just about chasing the high anymore, but about avoiding the lows, the crushing weight of withdrawal that would engulf him if he didn’t feed the addiction.
The first signs were subtle–nagging restlessness and a constant itch that no amount of scratching could soothe. He tried to ignore it, to distract himself with anything but the craving grew more intense with each passing hour. Then came the physical symptoms–the nausea, the chills, the sweating–all signs that his body was rebelling against the absence of heroin.
A week after his first hit, he went back to Alex, itching, quite literally, for more.
“Ah…look who came for more,” Alex smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. Alex was having another party that day, so of course there would be drugs. For Alex, it wouldn’t really be a party without it.
He stepped aside, letting Caleb in. The atmosphere was lively, filled with laughter and music. Yet Caleb wasn’t feeling it. He was there for one thing and one thing only.
“Dude, you know you can’t always get this stuff for free, right?” Alex asked as he heated the spoon over a lighter. “This shit ain’t as cheap as you think.”
“I know, I know. I will get your money.” As he took the needle and slowly injected himself, the only thought that surfaced in his mind was ‘I can quit whenever I want’. But he knew he was lying to himself.
Days turned into weeks. Caleb physically turned into a shell of his former self–pale, emaciated, veins spoiled by track marks that told the story of his addiction.
The day his parents found out was the day it all came crashing down. They finally noticed his change in appearance and confronted him one evening. The look on their faces, the anger, the disappointment, was something he would never forget.
“Why, Caleb,” his mother, Mary, asked, her eyes welled up with tears. She looked him up and down as if she didn’t recognize her own son. His father, Noah, paced the living room, his brows narrowed. Caleb didn’t reply to his mother, scratching at his skin, as he suffered withdrawals once again.
“I expected more from you, Son,” Noah began. “You're a smart boy. What makes you want to do this, huh?”
Caleb remained silent, rolling his eyes.
“Boy, if you don’t answer me!”
“Noah, please. Calm down,” Mary begged. “Caleb, can you just…talk to me?”
“What do you want me to say, Mom? Huh?” He stepped towards her, his tone filled with annoyance. “That…that I’m doing this for the fun of it? That I’m doing it to be “cool”? Th-that it makes me feel good? Huh? What do you want me to say?”
“Don’t speak to your mother that way,” Noah demanded.
“Or else what?”
“You little piece of shit.” Noah charged for him, but Mary stopped him, moving in front of Caleb.
“Boys, please! Just stop it!” Noah backed away, his brows still furrowed.
“Where do you even get the money for this?” Noah asked after he calmed himself down. “Because that crap isn’t free.”
They both looked at Caleb, but he avoided their gaze.
“Caleb,” Mary uttered.
“Answer me, boy! Where’d you get the money?”
“I stole, okay,” he admitted, throwing his hands up. His father shakes his head.
“Caleb…no.” His mother fixed her gaze on him, a look of sadness and disappointment spread across her face. Caleb could look her in the eye yet he didn’t care enough to feel bad.
“From who, huh?” Noah demanded. “From who?”
Caleb gave no answer. And he didn't have to. His father knew. They both knew. He used the little money he had, then started taking small things around the house–a piece of jewelry, unused ornaments, and change wherever he could find it. Basically, things he thought they wouldn’t notice were missing. But they knew, yet they looked past it, believing it to just be misplaced and that it would show up.
“Caleb,” Mary started, her voice soft but firm. “I think you should go up to your room, and we’ll–”
“No,” Noah interrupted, turning back to him. “No, I don’t want him in my house,” he gestured his head toward the door. “Leave, now.” He spoke calmly, yet still burning with anger.
“Wait, wait, wait. Noah, you can’t do this.”
“This is my house! And I will not have it ruined by him and his addiction! Out, now!”
“You know what? Fuck this and fuck you!” Caleb stormed out of the house.
Mary broke into tears. “How could you do that to your own son?”
“That’s not the son I knew and raised.”
Caleb threw himself onto the pavement, not knowing where to go. “Fuck!” Angry tears rolled down his face. That felt like the end for him. Questions of why he did it and what he was going to do now roamed his mind. But those thoughts quickly faded away. All he wanted to do at that moment was forget about it, to push it away. And there was only one way he knew how.
He went to Alex’s and stayed with him. And of course, that was where he got his fix. Again, he felt that rush, the bliss, the euphoria washing away the thought of that evening. But the hit only lasts so long, then everything comes crashing back.
Almost a month had gone by and Caleb was still living with Alex. He hasn’t once tried to talk to his parents, nor have they reached out to him. Caleb had no money, no job, and no way of getting his next fix. He begged Alex to give him just that once, but Alex wasn’t having it. “You're jobless. You can’t give me my money,” he had told Caleb.
Caleb had tried to fight his withdrawal symptoms, tried ignoring them, but he only seemed to feel worse. He was desperate. So much so that he turned to the only person he believed would listen to him: his mother.
That evening, he called his mother, his heart racing. Caleb gouged at his skin as he held the phone to his ear. It rang. This is a bad idea, he thought. Still ringing. She won’t listen. Still ringing. I can’t do this. She picked up.
“Hello.”
Caleb hesitated.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom. It’s me.” His voice was low and gruff.
“Honey,” she gasped. “Is that you?”
“Caleb sniffed. “Yeah, yeah, Mom.”
“Honey, are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said, continually scratching himself. “I’m, uh…I’m staying with a buddy right now. This…this is his phone.”
“Are you okay? Can you just come home, please?” Her voice was brittle and she spoke quickly
“Yeah, I’m trying to…uh…save money to come home.” He started pacing the room.
“That’s good, honey.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. Thank God.”
“That’s, uh…” He cleared his throat. “That’s actually why I'm calling
“Yes?”
“I wanna see if I could borrow some money.”
She went silent, and Caleb’s heart raced again. “Are you using again?” Her tone turned firm.
“No, I’m not.”
“Don’t lie to me, honey. Please, stop lying like this.”
“Mom, you don’t…you don’t understand how hard this is.”
“You don’t understand how hard this is for us, son.”
“Mom, Mom, I just want to borrow some fucking money,” he yelled. Immediately after saying it, he broke down into tears.
“No,” she said firmly, but still with sadness in her voice. Caleb collapsed to the ground. “No, not like this, son. Not like this.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“You're killing us, honey.”
“I’m…sorry,” he sobbed, leaning against the wall, his knees to his chest.
“I need you to just…get yourself together, okay?”
“I just wanna come home.”
“Look…you gonna be okay. You just need to…um…we just need to get you some help, okay, honey?”
He nodded. “I wanna get better, mom.”
“I want you to get better, too.”
“I wanna be okay,” he sniffed, tears streaming down his face.
“You gonna be okay, honey. We love you.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“Now, listen to me, honey. This is—” The phone cut off.
“Mom?” he looked at the phone before putting it back to his ear. “Mom?” Realizing the call ended, he threw the phone across the room. “Fuck!”
He continued to sob into his arms, the effects of his choices overpowering him.
