By 1999, the heat in New Jersey was in my rearview mirror. I was 22 years old, fleeing to Sarasota, Florida with my girlfriend because the cops were getting too close and the air was getting too thin.
But I couldn’t leave my mother with nothing. Before I crossed the state line, I left her 8 pounds of marijuana to sell. When she got hit with a DUI and resisting arrest shortly after, that product became her lifeline. It paid for her lawyer. Even while I was spiraling, I was still the provider, still trying to protect the woman who protected me.
Florida was supposed to be the ‘fresh start.’ For a while, it looked like I’d made it. I was a 23-year-old with a Mercedes, a condo I shared with my buddy Chris, and a payphone business I ran while bartending and waiting tables. I was the definition of a ‘high-functioning’ addict.
But you can’t outrun a storm when you’re carrying the clouds inside you. I was drinking every day, doing acid and coke, and driving drunk through the Florida streets. I had the cars, the business, and the condo, but I didn’t have a clue that I was losing myself. I thought I was winning the game, but I was just playing on a faster track toward a dead end.
The year was 1999, and while the world was worried about the end of the century, I was just starting to see the beginning of my own end.