The drug of choice was not some exotic, cinematic poison. It was pills. Leftover opioids from a grandfather’s surgery, bought from a classmate who had a cousin with a prescription. White, small, unremarkable. The first one made Liam feel like he had finally arrived home to a place he never knew he was missing. The second one made the world softer, blurring its sharp edges. The third one made him forget, for a few hours, that he had ever been anxious or lonely or afraid.
His mother cried in the kitchen late at night, her hand over her mouth so he wouldn’t hear. His father, a quiet man who fixed things for a living, looked at his son and saw a machine he could not repair. They sent him to rehab. He went, and he meant it, for about a week. Then the craving came back, not as a voice but as a physical law, like gravity. It pulled him downward, and he stopped fighting. a boy who lost himself to drugs
The worst part—the truly cruel part—is that Liam was still in there, somewhere. On rare, terrible mornings, when the high was wearing off and the withdrawal hadn’t yet begun, he would catch a glimpse of himself in a mirror. And for a moment, he would remember the boy with the volcano, the boy who loved clouds. He would feel a grief so enormous that it had no shape, no words. And then the grief itself would become another reason to use again. See? the addiction would whisper. This is why you need me. I make that feeling go away. The drug of choice was not some exotic, cinematic poison
There is no easy moral to this story. Liam is not dead, not yet. But the boy he was is gone, and no amount of recovery can bring him back whole. That is the lie we tell about addiction: that it is a choice, a weakness, a failure of will. It is none of those things. It is a slow, methodical erasure. It is the art of making a person a ghost while they are still breathing. White, small, unremarkable