It wasn’t a profound moment when I finally put down the needle. I put it down because I was finished shooting that ears ringing, head rushing, monster of cocaine into my veins. But that was the last time I got high. I never had a self-righteous, God speaking to me, I can’t handle this anymore type of ending to my drug use. I got high that last time, and I never got high again.

Granted, I was given an opportunity- to pull myself up out of the grave I had happily dug and lived in for the past year. An opportunity to get off the streets and start again. But I had been given this chance before, so what was different this time?

Well, some people might say it was because I was sick. I ended up having to be in the hospital for a couple of days, because I was dangerously ill. But I knew I was sick and I had kept using regardless.

Maybe I was truly, and deeply sick and tired of being a user, a loser, an abuser and finally was given the chance to be free.

I don’t know what to tell anyone when they ask, well what did you do? What was the defining moment that made you stop. I do not know. I just did. I went one day, then a week, then a month. I went to therapy, and I looked deeply in to who I am and that’s what keeps me from turning back to it now.

But I don’t have an answer for how to stop the first time and have it be the last. It just happened. And it has been the greatest blessing in my life.