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PSA Commercial: This is your brain. And this is heroin. This is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin….

If you grew up during the ‘80s and ‘90s, you probably remember these commercials. They were short. Simple. And to the point. At the height of the crack and AIDS epidemics, they wanted to warn kids about the consequences of drug use. After all, the clock was against you. On one hand, yeah, they’re dated, but they worked for some kids.

Greg: This may be what you don’t want to hear, but something that people always ask me is ‘What’s it like?’ The only thing that I can say is when you do heroin, you can sit there and watch TV for eight hours straight and be completely content. And the TV doesn’t even have to be on.

On the other hand, that’s my cousin Greg. His family ran a small diary farm and spent a lot of time at their church, a local Jehovah’s Witness hall. He was older and busy with his family. So, we didn’t have a lot of time to hang out.

His parents embody the Midwest: blue-collar farmers who work hard to support their children and aging family members. To be frank, they are painfully good people. Always polite. Always fair. Always there to help you. To this day, his parents are nicest people I’ve ever met. His mom even gave me her old record collection just because, she thought, I may like it. To Greg, they are what they appear:

Greg: My parents are amazing. They really are. Yeah, my dad, he is what he appears. That, what you see on the outside, that’s what you get. That is him all the way through. My mom is, as she has gotten older, not that she was a bad mother, she has always a fabulous mother, but she’s actually gotten better with age. Believe it or not. She just told me last week that she’s happier than she’s ever been in her whole life and that has made her a better mother.

To be clear, Greg’s parents declined to be interviewed. As we will see, addiction is complex and painful. Pieces like this or reality programs like Intervention, only scratch  the surface of addiction and recovery. In all honesty, it’s long a process, and as we will see, it does not always end well.

When my family heard about Greg’s heroin addiction, it was difficult for some of us to comprehend. This is central Wisconsin, where addiction isn’t supposed to happen, especially to people like Greg. Even today, when I sit down with Greg, he tells me that people find it odd how he, of all people, is a recovering addict:

Seth: Transitioning into that situation [heroin addiction], for someone who had been peripherally kind of an outsider, you weren’t a bad kid for the sake of being a bad kind. You were Greg. I mean, you were nice to everybody. You got along with everybody. Was that kind of odd or was it such a causal transition that it became part of everyday life?

Greg: No, it was odd. You know, what you said, it was something that I heard every day: ‘Like what? Are you a cop?’ And even to this day, like when I tell people this: ‘I am a Jehovah’s Witness and I am a recovering heroin addict’. People are like ‘I can see the Jehovah’s Witness.’ When I was in active addiction, it was something I heard constantly.

While at the same time, this wasn’t the first we had seen opioid addiction. Several people we knew struggled with it, like my childhood friend Chris Wesenberg. As his mom Becky Short explains, heroin addiction shouldn’t happen here:

Becky: I think a lot of people when they hear ‘heroin addict’, they think of someone on the streets of New York [City]. You know, homeless, destitute and a junkie. And that’s not it anymore. It’s the average Suzy Homemaker down the road or, you know, it could be anybody. You just don’t know.

Addiction is treated like a cultural commodity. From award winning dramas to reality programs, there’s a lot of attention on addiction—allowing the general public to see how it starts, how it operates, and how it maintains itself. While at the same time, addiction is an arm’s distance away, to be experienced by other people, in other places.

With the War on Drugs and its “Just Say No” campaign, we were immersed with education. Our elementary school did the DARE program with cartoons and lessons about peer pressure, self-esteem, and drug use. These initiatives were simple: Real friends don’t do drugs. Because, drugs are bad. And, bad people do drugs.

Addiction isn’t a catchphrase. It goes beyond a story of bad people doing bad things. It’s complex. There’s a network of people and choices that often conflict with one another. And, sometimes, bad things happen to good people.

It’s important to consider this: What happens when your friends didn’t say no. As we talk about Greg and Chris today, it’s not as simple as resetting a clock and starting over. It’s seeing people who went too far, before they couldn’t get back to where they started.

Bright Lights, Small Town

Greg and Chris didn’t know each other for the most part. And in all reality, they were two really different people. Their only real connection was me and their parents’ hometown Granton, WI, a small village outside Neillsville. And life in Granton was just that: Small. As my mom Dixie Langreck, who grew up with Becky and Greg’s aunt, explains, it remains a tightknit community:

Dixie: You know everybody. If you walked into the grocery store and didn’t know someone, you’re like ‘Who’s that?’ When I tended bar [in Granton], I pretty much knew everyone who walked through the door. I would know who their family was. I would know who their children were. Who their parents were. Who their grandparents were. If a stranger came in, it was really noticeable.

My grandparents would come over for dinner on occasion. And we would sit there after dinner and I don’t know if this was just my family. You would go over the local gossip. Because you felt like it  [wasn’t like] you needed to know, but it was your right to know what was going on with everybody [laughter]. So, I think, when it comes down to it, just because it’s so small, it was a really tightknit community.

Chris and Becky lived in same apartment complex as my mom. From the start, I liked Chris and a lot of kids did too. My first memories as a child were playing with him, my sisters, and our friend Elicia at the local park. He was a blonde, blue-eyed, handsome kid who liked the Ninja Turtles and the San Francisco 49ers. For the most part, that’s how most kids remember the past: Just the good parts.

But, there was a lot about Chris that we didn’t know, especially about his dad. Before Becky and I spoke, he was just an absent character, a person that came and went from Chris’s life periodically. As she explains, their relationship was complicated:

Becky: Chris had very little interaction with his dad. What happened was, when I was pregnant with Chris, his dad went to jail. He was in the county jail for some pretty minor charges like forgery and worthless checks. And then because I was pregnant, he made a bad decision and decided that he wanted to escape from the county jail. Which brings you a whole different level of felony, because he did escape for like a month, and from the sheriff on less, which really didn’t make anyone happy. So, he then went to prison. So, he was in prison when Chris was born. I did take [Chris] to see him periodically when he was a baby. But he really didn’t have anything to do with [Chris] until he was three when he got out of prison.

When Chris’s dad got out of jail, he did get visitation rights. It turned out to be a nightmare. Chris really didn’t know him. And getting dropped off at his house was like spending time with a complete stranger. This went on for a while, but he went back to jail and left Becky and Chris with pretty much nothing.

Becky and Chris had some support. Her parents took to Chris—almost as their own child. It was strange power he had. They showered with many of things that Becky couldn’t afford. Being a single mother at 17, she didn’t have many options. In retrospect, Becky said she may have moved too quickly or let her parents’ influence linger too long. She wanted a better life for Chris, and she wanted to be able to support him on her own. So, she enrolled at a local college and moved to Eau Claire, WI. But, it wasn’t as simple as she thought.

Becky: I think the biggest problem was when I moved to Eau Claire was like I had no family here.

Seth: Okay

Becky: So the support system was really lacking. Plus I was going to college, but yet I wasn’t a typical college kid so I really didn’t have any friends. So, I was really kind of alone. And that made it very, very hard. But, the constant struggle of money was always something for years, and years. Just being a single mom, I didn’t get child support and so trying to buy the things you need without relying on other people is very difficult. And just being so young, I did not know what the hell I was doing. I can looked back know [and say] ‘oh my God that was just stupid to do.’ But, you have no idea how many things you are doing wrong as a parent and that happens at any age.

Although Becky and Chris didn’t have much, they had each other. College was difficult, and being a single parent didn’t make it easier for Becky. Still, this was one of the happiest times in their lives.

Becky: I think some of the best times that I had with [Chris] was when we did live in Eau Claire by ourselves. And he was little like from the age of three to six. We did a lot of things together and it was just kind of the two of us. And we were very poverty stricken, but found things to do [laughter]. Got excited when my mother would send me money for toilet paper. That was a good day.

It was during this time, Chris really started to become his own person:

Becky: You know he always had a really good sense of humor. And that’s one thing I really miss was his sarcasm, his sense of humor. So, he could be a lot of fun.

Becky and Chris moved back to the area after three years in Eau Claire. Becky was in a serious relationship with future husband Bill Short, and he had a good job near Neillsville. And things were looking better for a while. Then, Chris’s father came back into his life:

Becky: When he was ten, his dad was out of jail, got into a car wreck, broke probation, and was going to have to go back to jail. He was so seriously hurt from having car chase with the police that they let him recuperate at his mom’s house with an ankle bracelet. When he knew that he was going to have to go back to prison, he took off with one of his two girlfriends at the time and her kids to Texas. I believe that they were going to go Mexico. Just a lot of bad luck, but anyways, somebody called the cops to check on them because of a storm or whatever. He got into a standoff in the police in Texas and they said that he committed suicide. But anyway, Chris was ten when his dad died that way.

I took him to a counselor, oh lord, probably around then or maybe a little bit before to try to help him deal with not having a dad and all that stuff.

Chris continued with counseling throughout school. And, it wasn’t something that he talked about—at least not me or some of his other friends. He was 10. He was confident and kids at our school liked him. Becky points out, it wasn’t that simple:

Becky: I don’t think he was as confident as he was perceived to be. He did kind of excel at sports. Although I do think that he was kind of pushed into it a little bit and I don’t know if he loved it as much as we thought he did. I think that he wanted to make a lot of people happy, do what they wanted him to do, and I think that’s were that came in.

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Greg had a different family dynamic than Chris. Being the oldest child, Greg had several responsibilities, like being a good role model or showing his siblings around the farm. Although his family was close, Greg felt like the odd one out at times. It’s something that he and his parents talk about today. He explains:

Greg: Me personally, I’ve always been, black sheep isn’t the right term, but my brothers and my dad are into motorcycles and 4-wheeling. For me, that’s great and that’s fine, and it’s something to do. But, it’s ever been my passion. I’ve always been much more of a I want to go out and play softball or play football. I am much of an active, more involved in athletics, sports type stuff. And that’s ever been my parents or any of my siblings. So, it’s been something in hindsight I’ve talked to my parents about: It’s been hard for me to find something because nobody else wanted to do it.

For all intents and purposes, Greg had a good childhood. He even admits, he couldn’t have asked for better a one. Honestly, our conversation didn’t focus too much on his life before his addiction. Because, there wasn’t much for him to say. He was a straight laced kid, who didn’t cut class, stayed out of trouble, and exceled in high school ceramics.

As Dixie comments, a lot of this comes down to Greg’s parents:

Dixie: It’s hard to even describe them. There are two sets of couples in all my life that come to mind when I think of people who describe themselves as ‘Christians’ even if they don’t describe themselves that way. In my mind, it’s people who are good people. Who treat others well. Who, you know, are kind to others. Who are helpful. And they are one of those couples. They are just nice. You know, just nice, hardworking, genuine people.

If you only looked at Greg and Chris on paper, they are not too dissimilar. They belonged to the same peer group, lived within miles of each other, belonged to the same socio-economic class, attended the same schools, and knew some of the same people. Although they share certain commonalties, they lead two different lives. And as we look further, we need to remember this: addiction doesn’t discriminate.

The Tale of Two Addictions

There isn’t a perfect timeline for addiction. Many factors are at play. As National Institutes of Health suggests, addiction is complex, compounded by various biological, developmental, and social factors.  In simple terms, the “biggest influence in any one person cannot be” applied to everyone (Johns Hopkins).

Each person’s experience is different. After graduating high school in 1999, Greg didn’t go to college or take over the family farm. What could have felt like the first time, he was able to do what he wanted to do.

Greg: That’s when I kind of got into my wild stage. I went to a lot of concerts. I hung out in Madison a lot. That’s when I met my first wife.

In the terms of wild stages, it was pretty relaxed. Greg wasn’t breaking any laws or committing any crimes. He was traveling outside his hometown and visiting different cities like Minneapolis or Madison. He even came back with things, like souvenirs. In fact, he gave me a free ticket to the Misfits on their Famous Monsters tour.

How his life changed, it started with an accident:

Greg: What happened was, I broke my wrist. And I had to have surgery. And they were prescribing me Tylenol #3.

Tylenol #3 isn’t the over the counter variety. It’s mixed with codeine, an opiate, for moderate to severe pain relief, similar to Vicodin. It’s a controlled substance that’s only available through prescription. Many of our friends or family members worked manual labor. So, it was getting prescribed. And naturally, it traveled outside the home.

For some people, codeine was a recreational thing, a means to relax. But for Greg, it was something else. It made him more comfortable with himself. And it allowed him to be kind of be the person he thought could be. At this time, he started a long distance relationship with Rochelle his future wife. And things were looking good:

Greg: So I would take the Tylenol #3s and I would call who is now my ex-wife and I would talk to her. And I felt, you know growing up in high school, I was an average person. I wasn’t exceptional in any way. I never did anything. But, I was always kind of comfortable. Especially as an older person, you realize that now. I think most people are kind of uncomfortable with themselves.

You know at that time in my life, I was about 19 years old and I was uncomfortable. You are at that age when you are looking for people to date. So, when I started to take the Tylenol #3s, they made me relaxed. They made me calm. They made me feel more in control. They made me feel comfortable. So, I felt like I could go out and talk to people. And that’s when I started dating my first wife.

Greg packed up his things and moved to Michigan to be with Rochelle. And for a while, things were good. He was dating his future wife. His family was well. And, there wasn’t much else a person could ask for. Still, codeine left an impression.

Greg: The feeling that I had when I was on it never went away. I always remembered that. It was something that my brain never forgot. It was like, if somebody would say ‘Hey, I had my tooth pulled and they gave me some Vicodin. They’ great,’ [I would ask] ‘Can I have some?’ It was always there. And that stuff was around a lot at that time.

Even if Greg couldn’t forget about how Tylenol #3 made him feel, he wasn’t actively seeking it. If someone had extras and didn’t need them, he thought, why not buy them?

Greg and his wife came back to Wisconsin periodically. It was a chance to touch base with this family. Also, they could visit his friends, drive around the back roads—while listening to music and talking about the future.

Greg: when we came back to visit my friends, we were hanging out and kind of went for a cruise. And we were driving around and got into an accident. Almost killed ourselves. We got airlifted to the hospital in Marshfield.

As Greg speaks about the accident today, it’s more a matter of fact than anything: They were lucky to be alive. Between a lengthy hospital stay and longer outpatient therapy, they couldn’t go back to Michigan. So, after getting out of the hospital, Greg took a job as a server at restaurant in Marshfield.

The accident may have closed one door for them, but it open another. There was a massive insurance settlement in their favor. So large in fact, it covered their medical bills and a down payment on a house. Also, Greg had a steady cash flow from his job. After a near death experience, it was a good start for them.

For Greg, his addiction happened over time:

Seth: This wasn’t like you got pushed into [drug use] and [addiction] was the next day?

Greg: Not at all.

Seth: This was a slow process?

Greg: There was a big turning point.

Seth: What was the turning point?

Greg: As you had mentioned, we had bought a house. And basically everything I made at work was profit. We had money. And it was one of those situations where somebody was like ‘Yeah, I got to get a root cannel. And I got these Vicodin.’ And I was like ‘Hey, do you want to sell them?’ And somebody else overheard it and was like ‘If you like Vicodin, my boyfriend is going down to Milwaukee. He can get you some and they’ll probably be way cheaper than whatever this is.’ And I was like ‘That sounds great! I’ve got like $10,000.’

Seth: Were you getting it in mass quantities?

Greg: That was the first time.

Seth: Okay.

Greg: Yes, that was the first time. And it wasn’t $10,000. I think I gave her $5,000. And that was it.

Greg’s dealer was well connected. And when Greg wanted another big score, he brought something new to the table:

Greg: Um, he had gotten Oxys. And I was like, I had never heard of them. I had never heard of anything like that. I didn’t know what they were. So, I was like ‘I don’t want this crap. It’s probably garbage.’ I remember the first time I took it. They were 15 mg pills, and I think I took two of them. I slept for like three days.

During the mid-2000s, $5000 wasn’t a handful of pills. It was a box full. And Greg didn’t have to parse them out over weeks and months. He could take them daily. And he did. With this amount and picking up pills on the side, his supply was steady if not endless. And for a time, he kept on going to work and keeping up appearances. Life was manageable.

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Dixie: She was a good mom. He certainly wasn’t neglected. Becky loved him very much and took good care of him. I can’t speak for Becky, but from what I could see, Chris since his father wasn’t involved, Becky felt, I don’t know, more responsible than for her other children—probably isn’t the way to say it. But, I think that made her feel a little more protective. That Chris didn’t really have a whole lot of other people in his corner.

Becky was a good mom. Even as child, it was easy for me and others to see. But, Chris didn’t react well opposition, especially at school. And, Becky knew this and tried to give Chris opportunities to succeed: counseling, parent/teacher conferences, team sports, personal time, family activities, and trips with his grandparents. This type of super-parenting, well, it’s time consuming. That took a toll on Becky. So, as Chris was entering middle school, Becky decided a change was needed:

Becky: We switched Chris. We did school choice and switched him to Granton [from Neillsville]. Which I think was a mistake. But we did it because he was getting into a lot of trouble in middle school with like the teachers and stuff. And instead of…now as a teacher I can see this, but as a parent at the time, instead of blaming the student, aka Chris, for bad behavior and not being very studious, we were quick to judge and blame the teachers, the school, and the system. We thought all of our problems would be solved if we put him into a different school.

And Chris’s problems didn’t go away; they continued into high school. During this time, Chris stopped playing team sports and started skateboarding with me and other friends from surrounding towns. And, from what we could see, he was getting into drugs, mainly pot and whatever liquor was around the house. To some of us, it was typical—what some 16-year-olds did when there’s nothing to do in small-town Wisconsin. To Becky, it was something else:

Becky: You know, I think that he just stop caring about everything. Like, he quit doing the sports and he was constantly in trouble in high school. And I think what happened was I found in his room marijuana and questioned him about it. Well then, you are suspicious, so you are constantly looking for these things. Because, he did a pretty good job of hiding most of it I think. I was pretty oblivious to a lot of stuff that was going on.

Then, it started to be constant phone calls, like weekly almost daily from the school, from the principal. Like, ‘He’s doing this and he can’t be doing that. He is disrespectful and blah blah blah.’ So, that was just like an extreme amount of stress.

Tension between Becky and Chris grew from there. As Becky remembers, it was difficult for her and him to find a safe space, even at home:

Becky: Day to day, it was so unpredictable. And that was very hard because you never knew what mood was going to strike him. And ultimately I think it was depression that he was trying to self-treat. That I think was the crux of his problem. But, he could get very volatile, very angry. And sometimes I would be scared of him. And I had two little kids—his younger brothers—and so I would worry about them a lot. So, a lot of time when things would boil to a certain point, than I would say ‘You have to go to your grandparent’s because you can’t be here.’ Which I look back and think that was the wrong thing to do because he went there and got to do whatever he waited. So, it was more of a reward more than a punishment for him.

But the hardest part was half that time I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. I would have friends of his who would tell ‘He’s not at our house. Yet, he was there.’ So to find him who he’s with, what he’s doing was kind of an impossible task some days.

Becky tried to monitor Chris as well as she could. Teenagers can be allusive when forced into a corner. And Chris, he was good at getting away. As he was about to finish high school, Becky knew Chris needed to get more help than she could offer. So, she sent him to drug abuse counseling around 2002:

Becky: He was 17 and I did send him up to rehab in Chippewa [Falls, WI]. Unfortunately, because he was 17, he could pretty much sign himself out. Like, he didn’t want to be there, they said ‘There’s really no point for him to be here if he doesn’t want help, if he doesn’t want to get better.’ So, he had a girlfriend at the time and she really wanted him to get out. And I was like ‘He needs to be there.’ But, he didn’t stay there very long or through the program at all.

Becky felt defeated. For all the obstacles her and Chris faced, they at least had each other. Now, in a few months, Chris would realized he could leave Granton. And, there wasn’t much Becky could do about it. For the first time in her life, Becky would have to come to terms with not being able to help him:

Becky: When your kid has problems, it is heart wrenching and it is always hard because you just don’t know what to do anymore. And you get to that point where you feel like you screwed up and you don’t know how to make things better. There’s really no answer. I mean, I wish I could say ‘Do X, Y, and X and then this will happen.’ But a lot of time people think that kids turn out to be addicts or have drinking problems or this or that because their parents were so screwed up. And I am not a firm believer in that. I think sometimes parents can screw up. I think all parents screw up at some point. But, sometimes, it’s not the environment kids are in. You know, Bill and I were never big drinkers or partiers, maybe when we were younger. But Chris was never abused or neglected in any way, shape, or form. And yet, he had these problems. And I don’t know why.

The Myths of Hitting Rock Bottom

Hitting rock bottom is an idiom. You may have heard it among clique self-help gurus. It’s the lowest point in existence, a dark space where depravity meets reality. A lot of people use it clarify a point like “I didn’t know what loneliness was like until I hit rock bottom” or “when I was looking for food in a dumpster, I knew I hit rock bottom.” And after you reach this point, things can only get better.

Take for example depictions of drug addiction in the media: Friends and family surround an addict in a controlled environment, minor shouting happens, maybe some tears, then everyone hugs, the person is off to a treatment facility, and some subscript appears on the screen saying “Gene is starting over”.

With addiction, hitting rock bottom isn’t an instance. It may be comprised of many instances, many rock bottoms. This is something some people don’t realize.

As Greg and I speak today, he remembers when his life started to spiral downward:

Greg: It was a Sunday night and I wasn’t sick, but I didn’t feel right. I was anxiety. I was emotional. And I don’t know, the worst day of depression that you could ever imagine, just sit in a corner and cry. And that’s what I felt like. I wasn’t physically sick at that point. But I think I realized…I don’t think, I realized at that point this was probably a problem. And I had a decision to make at that point: I could stop or I could get more.

Seth: Did you feel like guilty because you were getting more?

Greg: I did. At that point I did. Yes, because I didn’t realize the depth of the sickness. I didn’t realize how sick I was.

Seth: Did your parents or anyone at…

Greg: The Kingdom Hall?

Seth: Yeah. Did anyone know what you were going through at this time?

Greg: No. Not even my ex-wife.

During this time, things in American were changing as well. Since large companies promoted the use and distribution of opioids to doctors during the late ‘90s, more people had access to them. And Greg, could find them. In fact, he stumbled across $5000 worth by chance.

But as time passed through the decade, there were more people like Greg, who found themselves fighting over the same supply. And, to make matters worse, he began to have withdrawals:

Greg: Unless you have gone through withdrawals, you have no idea was it is like. It is…I can’t even explain…It’s the most awful thing you can ever imagine. I still have nightmares about going through withdrawals. I’ve always been…I go to the methadone clinic now and I’ve always told them if something were to happen and this placed closed, and I had to go through withdrawals, I would rather kill myself than go through a month of withdrawals. It’s the preferable ending. And I think most addicts feel that way. It’s awful.

So, Greg made some phone calls and met up with some friends in Neillsville. And, as Greg explains, something new came into the situation:

Greg: So we went over to her house and she said ‘I can’t get [Oxys].’ Whatever the case may be, my buddy was like ‘Hey, if we can’t get these, I got another guy whose got some black tar. That’s what we are going to do.’ She was like ‘I can’t help you.’ So, that’s what we did. We got some black tar.

Black tar is heroin. Unlike OxyContin or Vicodin, it’s not a pharmaceutical made in a medical facility under FDA regulation. It’s a dark tarry substance often cooked down in makeshift labs with base acetones, like vinegar or gasoline. And, it’s not a designer drug. It’s cheap.

Greg soon realized, being an addict was a full time job.  And this wasn’t easy. Among work, marriage, bills, and family, there wasn’t much room for a full blown heroin addiction. Over the years from Tylenol #3 to heroin, Greg’s parents began to notice. They were nice people, but that doesn’t mean they were oblivious. And, they tried to help:

Greg: My dad, I think, took it in stride. I know how my mom dealt with it was pouring herself into research. That’s how she dealt with it. Research. Research. Research. ‘What can I do? What did I do wrong?’ How can I fix this? What do I need to do?’ That’s how she dealt with it.

Greg can’t recall the exact details of this time—almost like the years from 2007 – 2012 were diluted from his memory. His family intervened and sent him to rehab. But, as he points out, rehabilitation doesn’t erase addiction. In fact, many people relapse after rehab; it’s a reality.  And it’s a harder truth than most people realize:

Greg: I have been through rehab twice. The first time I didn’t realize exactly what I was dealing with. So, it was like, I went in, I got detoxed, they put me on Suboxone, and then I left against doctor’s orders after six days. Because I felt fine because I was on Suboxone. Within a couple of days you are sicker than a dog again.

I don’t know why people think this, not only my parents, but my ex-wife, because I was sick super sick again I must be doing drugs which was just the opposite of the situation. And they all got upset with me. I tried explaining ‘No, if I was doing drugs I wouldn’t be sick.’ I still don’t understand why people think that way. I had actually gotten clean, but I was super sick. Because, you are going through withdrawals months and months later.

And as the months went by, Greg’s life wasn’t getting better; he was barely maintaining it. And oddly, a lot people didn’t realize Greg had an addiction:

Seth: When did people start catching on that this was sort of a thing….Something is going on with Greg, but I can’t put my finger on it. Greg has a problem.

Greg: Sure. You know, that’s a good question. Probably not until I got divorced. That actually was kind of another turning point; that’s a whole other story. But, the first marriage was…I had gotten better and that whole thing happen and that sent me back over the edge.

Their marriage had been on a decline for some time. And, there were a multitude of factors contributing to their divorce. Greg then, just shy of his 30^th birthday, lost his house, moved in with his parents, failed rehabs, and signed divorce papers. And none these were rock bottom. Not even close. A key to understanding rock bottom is knowing that it’s different for each person. For the ones that supported Greg through rehab and experienced the aftermath of his marriage, it was a hard pull to swallow—like seeing their effort fail on repeat.  Dixie, who was seeing this from the sidelines, reminds us addiction’s toll on a family:

Dixie: I wasn’t in the midst of Greg’s addiction. I wasn’t being lied to. I wasn’t having to take him to rehab or spend the money on rehab and see it not work. So, for me it was a lot easier to be sympathetic. I understand his family’s frustration and just wash their hands of it. Because, how many times can you rescue someone and see them go back to the same behaviors that you recused them from? You know, you spent your time. You spent your money. You spent your energy. You’re worried. You know, I’m sure spent sleepless nights and they go back and do the same thing.

You know, I get that: Greg’s doing [drugs]. Because he had an addiction. That’s what addictions do to you. That driving force is going to be that addiction. Not, I’m fucking my family over. Not, I’m throwing everything away. That’s not it. Your mind is just going after those drugs.

For Greg, the turning point wasn’t in a controlled environment surrounded by family, friends, and drug counselors:

Seth: When you hit rock bottom, what was rock bottom for you?

Greg: Rock bottom for me was this: I moved into basically a flophouse. Me and three other guys rented a house next to Brown’s Bar [in Marshfield]. And it was literally a flophouse. One of the guys was brings in bricks, and bricks, and bricks of pot and coke. And [coke] was never my thing. I was the only heroin addiction; all the rest of the guys did pot and coke. If you know anything about coke, it makes people crazy. So, it was a very volatile situation.

The tipping point was, one of the guys who was bringing in all the coke asked me if I could get him some dope. So, I did. And he was strung out on coke at the time. And he flipped out because he didn’t think what he paid for was what he got. And I was like ‘Dude this is what they gave me. This is your money’s worth. Like dope isn’t measured the same as coke. I don’t know what to tell you.’ And he was on a bender and just flipped out and starting smashing stuff. He pulled a gun [on me] and the cops got called. And when the cops came everything calmed down by that point.

Actually, this guy was in trouble with them already. He had sold some pot to some high school kid. Well, the kid didn’t pay him and he ran off. Grabbed the pot and ran off. Well, this guy took a trailer hitch, a ball hitch off the back of his truck and smashed the kid’s face in.

So, the cops came. That’s what the initial call was about. And again, it was such a whirlwind, a tornado, a whirlwind. The cops ended up coming to the house that we were all living in. They came back later in the day, like midnight, because they knew this was a drug house. They were well aware of most of what was going on. I was sleeping in my bedroom. And they pounded on the door. They made all of us get out. They handcuffed us all. When I was put into a situation where I was looking at some serious time and didn’t make some changes, that was a big eye opener for me. That whole thing with the cops, that scared me. I had no place else to go. You know, I showed up at your mom’s house.

Dixie: You know, he was living in that house. And it was not a good situation. It was the police where there, I think, pretty often. They were certainly aware of the activities that were taking place there…But, I think, poor Greg when he came to my house that situation he was in was not good. All of how many people who lived there, they thought—whatever kind of state they were in—they decided that Greg betrayed them. He was seriously scared and for good reason.

And, like I kind of talked about earlier, his appearance: I had known just from hearsay or whatever, what he had been doing. That he was doing heroin. But, I hadn’t seen him. Or I would see him sporadically. But, when I saw him that night, his appearance was pretty drastically changed. He was thin. He was drawn. Like I said, what was most striking to me was the open sores which were kind of a telltale sign.

I’m taking to Greg. He’s telling me about the situation at the house. And like I said he was scared. Somehow in the course of our conversation, he looked at me, and he ‘Do you know what I’ve been doing?’

And I said ‘I know that you’ve been doing heroin.’

And this just broke my heart, because the look on his face, he said ‘Does my dad know?’

I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. Tell you what. I am not going to be the one who tells him. That’s for you to do.’

Greg: That was rock bottom for me. I was scared. And I knew that I had to make changes.

---

Soon after Chris graduated from high school in 2003, he and his future wife Jamie moved around Wisconsin. They were married with children a few years later. And they started to make a life for themselves. For what Becky remembers, Chris loved being a dad. This part of his life made things better.

Becky’s life moved in a different direction as well. After years serving at a local restaurant, she realized how much enjoyed working with kids. She went back to Eau Claire to finish her degree in English education, and she was two years ahead of me in the same program. It was a good chance to hear about Chris, his two younger brothers, and Bill.

During this time, Chris and Becky began to grow apart—connecting through phone calls or social media. And this was hard for Becky. For the better part of 20 years, she helped Chris. More importantly, she had an ability to help him. He was right there, within an arm’s distance. Now, he wasn’t close enough. But, Chris’s drug problems didn’t go away. At the most, they were sidelined. Even from a distance, Becky caught on:

Becky: I think a lot of it was the people he was with, the life style he as in. I know one Christmas Eve, Jamie had told me, ‘Oh, it’s really bad. He’s using crack.’ And so of course, what can I do? He’s twenty some years old.

There wasn’t much that Becky could do. Her and others encouraged Chris to seek counseling. Even getting Chris to take these first steps was difficult. As Becky suggests, admitting that you need help isn’t easy:

Becky: But, I think there’s such a stigma attached to people who have mental health issues or drug addiction issues that a lot of people are hesitant to seek out help. Because everyone is going to think I’m the bad person. And you don’t want people to think you’re a drug addict or alcoholic or whatever. And if it’s interfering with your life, you got to try to get help.

He didn’t want anybody’s help. He didn’t want to help himself. And he didn’t think he had any problems. And so, it’s extremely difficult. And I found myself extremely guilt ridden about every little thing. For years and years, you still think If just did this. And if I just did that. And you can’t change anything.

And as time went on, Becky noticed things weren’t getting better for Chris. She would see photos of him on Facebook. He looked tired, less like the boy she raised:

Becky: I think I knew that he was using heroin or getting into something really hard again because the crack use had stopped. But, he was a daily weed smoker and he had been in the hospital because his lungs collapsed a couple of times. Plus, he smoked cigarettes so it was not a good combination. But the heroin use, I just had an inkling because of the things he would say on Facebook. I don’t even remember what it was. But, it was like That sounds like you’re trying something you shouldn’t be trying.

Becky intervened at a certain point. Chris was facing possible backlash from a drug deal that left some people sour. Like Chris, she loved his children, and wanted to keep them safe. She didn’t realize what would happen next:

Seth: Were you having a bunch of contact with Chris at this time?

Becky: No. What happened was…He got caught with, I think, a lot of weed and was going [to be] arrested. And I think, in order to keep himself out of jail, he had to name names, so [Chris and Jamie] were afraid that a different drug guy…they were afraid for their safety. So, they were going to take the kids and move. Which they did. Which upset me greatly. So, I called Social Services on them to try to get them to stay, because I was very close to the kids and worried about them.

Ultimately, Chris stopped taking me six months before he died. So, that was a bad choice on my part I guess, but I was trying to do the right thing.

In January 2012, Chris died of an overdose. He was 26. Arrangements were made for Chris’s wake in Marshfield. It was the first time Becky had seen him in 6 months, and the first time I had seen him since high school. Becky was upset with the mortician who did Chris’s make up. It was heavy, and she didn’t want him to look like someone else; she just wanted Chris. Becky pointed out something when I spoke to her years later. The overdose turned his lips from pink to blue. Even in the end, against the odds, Becky was going to help Chris.

Deconstruct. Rebuild.  

As reported by the Center for Disease Control,  the number of drug overdose deaths has quadrupled since 1999. As recent as 2019, 70% of roughly 800,000 deaths involved opioids. That’s half of a million people. Or, nearly the entire state of Wyoming.

And for some people, these are numbers or statistics. You read about it or watch some video, but it really doesn’t affect you. It’s an abstract existence. For Becky, she lived those numbers and had to learn how get through her day-to-day life. To complicate matters, she had to see kids not much younger than Chris as their English teacher. Saying that is was difficult, it’s an understatement:

Becky: No, I would call it two years of pure Hell. Just because every day you wake up and that was my first thought. He’s gone. And every day when I went to bed that would be my last thought. And your brain just does not work correctly. I mean, I had never been fired from a job in life and in that two year span I lost two jobs. Because you don’t even know what you are not doing. You just can’t think right.

All the little things mattered more. After Chris was gone, Becky couldn’t help but notice that he was missing, no matter where she went:

Becky: And you don’t even know what’s going to crop up that’s going to upset you. You plan for the Christmases. You plan to be upset. In reality, they don’t affect you as much as you think they’re going to. But then, the little things happen. His brother had homecoming and I think he was on homecoming court and that upset me. When I was at the school, because I don’t know why. Chris wasn’t there to know that. And like your wedding, that really upset me. Because you were there, and Leah was there, and Lindsay, and Elicia. And it was like ‘Oh, but Chris is missing.’

This didn’t occur to me until Becky told me: How her and others close to Chris would feel the years after his death. I could guess, but I was on the sidelines, seeing the aftermath of their grief. Even from here, it will only be an approximation.

Greg’s stay with Dixie was temporary. And, when his dad came to pick him up, Greg couldn’t move back to the farm. They all knew that it would enabled his addiction. This had happened before. Greg would get in trouble. They would bail him out. And it would start over again. They took a hardline approach with him, which Greg says was critical to his success. As Greg recounts, it took several failures before he realized something:

Greg: As you can imagine, everything that was going on, I was just so sick of…I was sick of being sick. And just everything that went into living a drug life. I mean just the people that were around. Just the things that were happening.

Greg deconstructed and rebuilt himself before. And, at this point, he wasn’t good at it. At this time in central Wisconsin, if you didn’t have access to health insurance or money for Betty Ford, it was an uphill battle. Greg found a place to live with a friend whose son left Marshfield to get away from his own drug problems. As Greg remembers, before he could get clean, he needed to truthful to himself:

Greg: The biggest thing for me was realizing that I would relapse. Like you said before, I knew that I would relapse. And I still know to this day that I will relapse. When I started to take the Suboxone, again initially I was taking it to try to get high, it didn’t work. All it did was make me feel normal. I wasn’t sick. I was able to function completely normal, because I actually wanted to get sober. When I went to the methadone clinic in Wausau, they wanted to put me on methadone. And I was like ‘No, I really want to do the Suboxone.’ Because I know, I’ve done methadone before. Methadone is amazing if you want to get high. But, I was at that point in my life were I was just done. And I still thankful to this day that I made that decision. I told them that ‘I don’t want to be on methadone.’ Because I can abuse it. Whereas with the Suboxone, I can’t abuse it. The only that is keeping me sober is being on the medication. I am completely…they call it maintenance. I will probably be on maintenance for the rest of my life.

Suboxone is one of the main maintenance medications used to treat opioid addiction. As Harvard Health Publishing states, it a combination medication which mixes an opioid with an opioid effect blocker—which blunts intoxication, prevents cravings, and allows addicts to transition off opioids and other drugs.

And, the use of Suboxone is open to debate. Some people see it as crutch, something that doesn’t address the root of addiction and prolongs the body’s opioid intake. For Greg, it’s complicated. After seeing his friends stay clean for years and then overdose, it’s not fear that drives him. It’s being pragmatic: You don’t control addiction. Addiction controls you. And he isn’t willing to take any more chances.

Suboxone is one part of the puzzle. Not the puzzle itself. Addiction treatment requires a triage of mechanizes like therapy, support groups, housing assistance, and employment support.  All of these can be costly. And honestly, sometimes, addicts can’t reach them without a financial backer or general support. On top of that, it takes months and even years for addicts to realize what combination works for them.

Becky has been an advocate for addiction awareness and resources since Chris’s death. Answering questions and organizing speaker events at her local high school, to her, it’s more than getting the word out:

Becky: When you tell somebody ‘My son died’ they are like ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ and they are very leery. And it’s like ‘No. I’ll talk about him because if you don’t talk about him it’s like he never existed.’ And as far as at school, I am very open with the kids you know. The biggest thing is they’ll see my tattoo, which is like Chris’s memorial tattoo. [Students ask] ‘Why do you have an Air Jordan on your ankle?’ And I’ll kind of explain it and they’ll [say] ‘Oh sorry.’ No, it’s okay.

Part of my reasoning to explain his story and what happened to him is because I want them to know how dangerous getting into drugs is….because a lot of high school kids are of the theory ‘Everyone smokes weed. It’s okay. It’s not a problem.’ I want them to know, yeah it’s maybe not a problem for 90% of people who then can get to adulthood and stop using drugs daily. But for that other percentage, it is a problem. And you are going to get into harder drugs and heavier drugs and it’s going to interfere with your life and it could be a dead-end road for you.

Again Dixie:

Dixie: It’s sad. And I think it’s…between him and Greg, it just kind of shows you, who ends up with an addiction is so random and not what you would typically think. Anybody can end up with that. I think with them too, it was at a time where [opioid addiction] was getting widespread in smaller towns. Now, people are fully aware that heroin is around all over the place. But then, I think it was still, you know, a pretty novel idea to a lot of people and kind of hard to grasp: That people from a small community were doing it and dying from it.

State and federal governments have passed initiatives to address the opioid crisis. If you have ever worked with government monies, it’s a slow process from legislation to visible outcomes. We are talking months to years if there isn’t a network already developed. As of 2018, Wisconsin DHS and Untied Way formed Wisconsin Addiction Recovery Helpline to bridge the gap between people and support agencies.

Greg has been able to stay clean with support of his friends and family. He’s been able to keep his job, remarry, start a family, and buy a new home. His family is happy:

Dixie: Like I said, there’s not a lot of people that can overcome [addiction]. And what he’s done is nothing short of amazing. Because when you look at how many times that kid had to go to rehab, there’s probably not a whole of people that go into rehab [three times]…go into rehab that many times that are able to kick their habit. He has done fantastic. He really has. I think he really beat the odds and came out ahead.

It’s difficult to comprehend what Greg and Chris experienced. It’s easier to say “they just should have said no”. But, so many times, life lacks a perfect black and white duality. Even for all his recent accomplishments, Greg doesn’t live in this world, and he can only remind himself of that in the end:

Greg: If I didn’t have this medication, knowing what I would lose if I used again, knowing that I would lose my family, knowing that I not be able to be a Jehovah’s Witness, being able to talk to my parents, lose my house—knowing that, I know at some point I would still use. I know it. I just know. And you have to have that realization.

(I would like to thank Greg, Becky, and Dixie for speaking with me. This podcast is the oral history of two people and their families’ stories about heroin addiction. This piece documents their accounts and recollections of a time period covering over thirty years. If you or someone you care about is dealing with addiction, please contact your local county department of human services or SAMHSA. All music by Seth Langreck.)