This is a true life account of a man who struggled with heroin addiction for most of his adult life. He found help at Narconon Drug Rehabilitation and was finally able to put his addiction behind him and focus on the things that really matter in life. His real name will not be used to protect his identity.

 

 

Robert was born into a large Italian family in the early sixties in the northern part of the country. His father owned a music store and his mother was a stay at home mom for the first part of his life. Robert’s mother and father had three children, two girls and one boy. Robert was the middle child.

When Robert was five years old his parent got a divorce. His father was a very cruel man and would beat his mother and the children. The family was Catholic and the mother had a very hard time deciding to get a divorce because it was against her religion. She finally came to the decision that she had to, because her husband’s behavior was getting worse and worse and she did not want that amount of violence displayed in front of or toward her children.

 

Robert says that he remembers when he was five years old, he was at his fathers house and his mother came to the house with the police to retrieve him because his father told his mother that she was not going to take his children away from him. His dad saw the police car pull up with his soon to be ex-wife in tow and told Robert to run away and hide until the police left. His father said that if the police took him, he would go to jail. Robert did what his father said and hid under the porch of the house way in the back in the dark. He said that he heard his father talking to his mother and the police and he said he waited until they left until he came back out. He said he wonders if that laid the pattern that was going to be his life for many years.

 

 

From the moment his family got a divorce there was a battle over the kids in the family. Robert said that after a while his father decided to let the two youngest children, Robert and his sister, go live with their mother. It was too much responsibility for him to deal with and the eldest daughter was ten and old enough to stay out of her fathers way. Robert said that he loved his mother very much and she was a very sweet woman.

 

He would see his father sometimes, but he said it was rarely a good experience. His father was known to be a heavy drinker, and it was hard to know when his father was going to go into a drunken rage and beat Robert over some small infraction of the rules. He said that when he was twelve his father told him that he had broken another rule and was a disgrace and burden on his family. He told Robert that if he wanted to stay out of trouble he would have to fight his own father and if he won he would not be in trouble. Robert had grown into a big boy and his father was drunk. He said that he was scared but decided that he was going to do his best. He punched his father in the face as hard as he could and his dad fell down. He said after that point his dad stopped beating him, he would just verbally attack him.

 

 

One of Roberts’s father’s associates began to take an interest in Robert when he was about fourteen. The man was twenty five and for whatever reason decided that he was going to take Robert under his wing. The man was a drug dealer as well as an employee at the music store that Roberts’s father owned. Roberts father did not know about the man’s other job that he had when he was not working at the music store, but Robert did. The man, who we will call Tom, told Robert it would be better to not tell his father what he did, and if he wanted he could help Robert make money. Robert was really flattered that Tom had brought him into his confidence and was also excited about the prospect of making his own money. Robert had started smoking marijuana recently, and so when Tom recommended that Robert sell it at school, he was more than agreeable.

 

Robert was going to be the dealer and Tom was going to be the supplier. Robert started asking all the older kids at the high school he was attending if they wanted to buy marijuana from him. He knew that a lot of the juniors and seniors smoked, he also knew that a lot of them did not have good connections. He became that good connection.