My story really began when I was 15 years old and just starting my sophomore year of high school. I switched from playing soccer to joining the football team and with that, my entire friend group changed. But with this change, I struggled, and I felt like I didn’t truly fit into any of the groups for the first time in my life I felt like an outcast.
A few of my friends started smoking marijuana around this point, and I decided to give it a try. It couldn’t hurt right, everyone’s just laughing and having fun! This is where I was wrong, marijuana fixed all my problems with social anxiety at the time, and I finally had a group of friends that had something in common: getting high. Before school, in the middle of the day, before practice, we were getting high. It quickly became an obsession, and while others began drinking, I always preferred being with the people smoking weed. A strange and ironic side story to this time period is that my mom was the health and drug education teacher at my high school. This intensified my desire to be the "rebel" and do the opposite of what I was told.
Selling drugs became an entirely new obsession for me, it made me feel wanted and needed for the first time in my life with my peers. The money was cool, but as humans we have such a strong desire to be loved, wanted, and needed. This was a drug all in itself for me, I did not care about the trouble it got me into with my family. Being one of the first people to get called about the party on Friday night after the football game because they needed weed was an amazing feeling, I felt like I was the man.
I began partying every weekend during football season, drinking more than I typically had, and selling more weed than before. As Christmas came around during my senior year I realized that I did want to try playing a sport in college, but it was for all the wrong reasons. I remember telling my parents “I want to play football so I don’t get arrested, I need the structure. If I go to big school and don’t play football I will get arrested and kicked out.” My options had become limited due to my GPA, and lack of effort my last two years of high school, so I ended up at a small Division 2 college in North Carolina, Catawba College.
Catawba College was a fresh start for me, I got to recreate myself into whoever I wanted to be. I went in with a positive attitude, knowing that I was not going to be starting on the football team my freshman year (which was a relief). At last I thought! Time to transition, get used to being on my own, and getting used to being a college athlete without any of the pressures of performing well on the field. The football team was like a brotherhood, I initially felt connected with 75 like-minded people, that were all here for the same reason, to play football. Many guys on the team had similar backstories to me, had offers to better schools, but due to legal issues or attitude problems ended up here. For the first time in years I felt truly connected to a group of guys. We all had left our comfort zone and were given an opportunity to recreate ourselves.
As the season finished up, and the offseason 4:00 a.m. workouts began, I decided I wanted no part of this. A couple of my buddies on the football team and I talked about how none of us wanted to come back next year, and a few of them had already quit the team, I was jealous to say the least. I was the only kicker on the team at the moment, I had a hefty scholarship opportunity coming my way, and a starting job waiting on me for the Fall. “I am so close to living my dream of being a college athlete” is what I kept telling myself. But as more and more of my friends walked away, and had all the free time in the world, and were able to sleep in, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore.
I walked into the coach’s office and told him I was quitting the team and transferring colleges. Coach was furious, because they had yet to recruit anyone for the fall, assuming I was their starter. I went into the office, hands sweaty, so nervous, and said “Coach, I’m sorry to let you know but I’m going to be transferring in the Fall, and will no longer be a part of the team.” He looked at me with a little grin that quickly turned into a face of anger and said, “Son, have fun screwing your life up, watch what happens when you don’t have this structure in your life. I know the kid you were in high school, and have watched this story happen before, your life is going to fall apart. Good luck, and get the hell out of my office.”
Within 20 minutes of leaving the coaches office I was smoking weed with my friends and figuring out where I could pick up a large quantity around us. “Maybe coach was right, maybe I am about to screw my life up, but who cares?” Within the hour we were in a car heading to Charlotte to pick up a few ounces. Just two weeks later, I had become the biggest weed dealer on campus, it was a very small campus, so it was pretty easy to corner the market.
I came back to Richmond for the summer and caught up with all my friends I had gone to high school with, it was like an entire summer long reunion. Parties every night, with zero idea on what I was doing come the fall. garland. If I was the biggest drug dealer at a small school, what would happen if I went to a big school? I know myself I don’t half ass things, I’m either all in or all out. My parents saw how I partied every night over the summer and were scared of the direction I was heading in. So as August began, we had yet another intervention, this time it was real, with a real interventionist. There was no getting out of it this time, they had enough of my manipulative words. Next thing I know I’m agreeing to go to a rehab in Utah, and hopping on a plane less than 24 hours after leaving the office.
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